Mrs. Nixon: A Novelist Imagines a Life by Ann Beattie

Author:Ann Beattie [Beattie, Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2011-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Prophetic Moments

Princess Diana’s sisters, upon learning of her reservations about marrying Prince Charles: “Too late, Duch, your face is on the tea towels.”

Mrs. Nixon’s best friend, Helene Drown, upon learning that Eisenhower had chosen Nixon as his running mate: “Oh, Pat, you’re going to be in the history books!”

My Meeting with Mrs. Nixon

Yes, I met her. There was a store in downtown Washington called Woodward & Lothrop (“Woodies”), where my mother often took me shopping. My mother always got more pleasure from dressing her daughter than from dressing herself—with the exception of high heels. One pair for her, one for me.

I wasn’t a Birkenstock sort of girl. I wore high heels to college.

I met Mrs. Nixon not in the White House, but in the shoe department of Woodies. Tricia was with her, but at no time did she say anything. She looked pleasant but unapproachable, while Mrs. Nixon seemed almost giggly. Several Secret Service agents were in the area. Perhaps more I couldn’t see.

Mrs. Nixon was trying on shoes. If Tricia didn’t need shoes, or if nothing appealed to her, I don’t know. But many shoes appealed to Mrs. Nixon. Some had a higher heel than I’d seen her wear in photographs. One pair had an ankle strap, but she didn’t even close the strap—just slid her foot in and out, talking to her daughter about something I couldn’t hear.

“Do you belong with that group?” my mother said to me. It was the same comment she made to my father, those times he stared in restaurants and listened too intently to another table’s conversation.

Every salesperson in the area was pretending not to notice the Nixons. Mrs. Nixon sat with her coat folded on a chair next to her and shopping bags on top of it. Her daughter sat on the other side, with her coat on the chair next to her. The coats and packages were blockades, in case anyone wanted to plop down and visit. My mother was not even sneaking looks; she feigned interest in a mannequin being dressed in the lingerie department.

A Secret Service agent looked at me, blank-faced; I dropped my eyes and leaned a bit toward my mother. I was twenty-two years old, back in Washington on vacation from graduate school in Connecticut. It was 1969. In a bag at my feet was a long nightgown (Connecticut was really cold in those days) and some other small purchases, I think. But the shoes were what I was really interested in, impractical as they were. They had a very high heel and were a burnt orange color with black ribbons twined across the front. The toes were neither round nor pointy. I remember these shoes so distinctly because my mother bought them for me. It would have been counterproductive to tell my mother that I wore several pairs of kneesocks under fishing boots to walk the pathways of the snowy campus. The beautiful heels could be an art object. Come spring, I could wear them.

The Vietnam war was going on and on and on.

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