The Snowball by Alice Schroeder

Author:Alice Schroeder
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780553905496
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2008-09-29T10:00:00+00:00

45

Call the Tow Truck

Omaha • 1982–1989

Once disembarked from the QE II, Susie Buffett listened to her husband’s tales of Mrs. B or whatever his latest fixation might be from a distance, just like everybody else. She and Warren talked nearly every day on a special “hotline” installed in her apartment. When the phone rang, she jumped up instantly. “That’s Warren!” she would say, and run away from whatever conversation she was having with a friend to answer it. He was still her number one obligation. But unless he needed her, her life was under her own control.

Susie had moved out of her minuscule apartment at Gramercy Tower and into another cubbyhole on the Washington Street cable-car line with a splendid view over the bay. She chose the building because Peter was living there with his wife, Mary, and her two daughters. He was still pursuing his musical career and had started renting out studio time to pay the bills, while writing music for anyone who would pay him—student films, the production company Video West. 1

In the past few years, Susie had lost both of her parents. Doc Thompson had died in July 1981; Dorothy Thompson followed only thirteen months later. Susie was so close to her parents that their deaths left a wrenching hole in her life. Afterward, her hyperkinetic tendencies did not abate; if anything, they increased. Warren had stopped taking her for granted, and his desire to please the woman he now idolized more than ever found expression partly through the money he gave her. In her younger days, Susie’s idea of a shopping spree had been buying a basketful of greeting cards.2 That had gradually expanded to an annual attack on Bergdorf’s shoe department. Warren’s tightfistedness began to let up in light of the unspoken but inexorable reality that he now controlled the money by Susie’s grace and favor. At any time she could take it back and use the money herself. Torn between two fur coats, she wanted to know, “Why do I have to choose?” The answer was, she didn’t.

But mostly the looser purse strings fueled Susie’s penchant for generosity to a ragtag collection of colorful friends that grew and grew. Nobody ever left the beguiling Buffetts. Even Peter’s college girlfriend had gone to work for Susie as a secretary several years earlier, despite Susie having been the one to break off the relationship before it became an engagement after Peter started having second thoughts. The rising tide of old friends, family dependents, and her new San Franciscan entourage would have overwhelmed almost anyone, but Susie Buffett was not just anyone. Unleashed from the confines of Omaha, with buckets of money at her disposal, she sprang to life as if powered by magic, like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice’s broom. How much do you need for Christmas? Warren said. Oh, seventy-five thousand would do it, Susie replied.3 He wrote the check.

Her special cause was artists, creative types, anyone who had potential or whose talents she felt were not being recognized.

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