The Golden Age by Gore Vidal Read Free Book Online Page B

look!” Caroline gazed at the drowned but still intact chicken croquette. Tim had already eaten his.
    “It wasn’t so bad. Just like Holy Cross.”
    “I’m sure nothing like The Salad was ever seen at Holy Cross. It is Mrs. Nesbitt’s most belligerent creation.”
    “It appears to have the stigmata, a very Holy Cross touch.”
    “Watch the President.”
    The black waiter had presented the huge mountain of a salad to the President’s back.
    “What’s in it?” Tim had put on his glasses.
    “Mostly mayonnaise from a jar, with slices of tinned pineapple, carved radishes—the ones with spongy interiors—and, sometimes, deep under the mayonnaise, there is cottage cheese decorated with maraschino cherries, to add gaiety to this Hudson Valley Staple.”
    The President, aware of the waiter on his left, turned expectantly. When he saw The Salad his smile ceased; sadly, he shook his head, lips moving to frame: “No, thank you.”
    “Now watch Eleanor,” Caroline whispered. Their hostess was watching her husband with relish. She had already got halfway through her own salad and now she was watching him grimly: would her husband take his punishment? He would not. When the waiter was obliged to move on, Eleanor simply looked more than ever resolute.
    Tim was awed. “She is taking a great revenge.”
    “It’s positively Greek, isn’t it? Euripides. The Furies.”
    “Actually, I think I’m going to like this.” Tim helped himself generously to The Salad. Out of the corner of Caroline’s eye, she saw that Eleanor was smiling with approval: Tim was making a hit.
    At the end of dinner, the President vanished and Mrs. Roosevelt and her brood retired to the oval study, the Douglases in attendance.
    “I’m here,” said Caroline outside the door to the Queen’s room. “Come on in. We’re not expected to join the seminar. Eleanor has a nicely haphazard way with guests. You come and go as you please. Some have actually stayed a month or more. There are also a dozen rooms on the floor above.” They sat before an unlit fire. Rose was the predominant color in the room. “The President’s secretary lives up there above us, in a nice suite.”
    “Missy Le Hand.” To Caroline’s surprise, Tim knew her name. But then he lived in America full-time and read the press, while she was now once more a foreigner.
    “She’s the actual wife, at least when it comes to arranging his life, keeping the sons out of jail, running the office, telling him which angry letters not to send. She’s very wise.”
    “Mrs. Roosevelt …”
    “… is not jealous. Relieved, I’d say. They get on very well, the two wives.”
    “Positively French,” said Tim, reprising Caroline.
    Caroline found it curious to be once again in such close proximity to someone with whom she had, for the most part contentedly, lived and then, for no reason other than geography, parted from. “You see, I had to go back to France,” she heard herself say.
    “I don’t think I ever asked you why you had to.” Tim was cool. “Why?”
    “Did I never tell you?”
    “If you did, I’ve forgotten.”
    As they had parted for no reason, they were now for no reason reunited, each trying to inhabit a previous self, and each quite willing to say exactly what was thought if not necessarily felt.
    “I suppose I felt, or thought,” Caroline edited herself, “that I’d come to the end with movies as I had with publishing the
Tribune
.”
    Tim removed the cellophane from a small thin parchment-brown cigar; he bit off the end. “Nobody gets to the end with movies. But they do get to the end of us pretty fast.” He puffed blue smoke.
    “I thought I was old then. I see now I wasn’t, really.”
    “At least not so old as you are now.”
    “Thank you. I needed that. Life is less than fair to women.”
    “I don’t need to hear that. At least not from you to me. Maybe from Emma Traxler to Melvyn Douglas. What
are
you doing here?”
    “I have found a book.”
    Tim