The Henderson Equation Page 8

  At dinner that first night, Mr. Parker sat at one end of the big oak table in the dining room, his pince-nez shining in the glare of the chandelier, his hands gripping the carved arms of an antique throne-like chair. Charlie and Myra sat on either side of him, their heads turning attentively to the old man’s conversation. His speech was crisp and measured, each statement imperiously delivered; he was a man accustomed to power and to dispensing wisdom. The setting itself embellished the characterization, the exquisitely set table with its glistening silver and crystal, the high plaster-sculpted ceiling, the costumed maid who moved silently around them placing steaming dishes soundlessly on the lace cloth. In this setting any voice but Mr. Parker’s sounded tremulous and tentative. If Nick had any early suspicion that the scene had been staged solely for his benefit, to impress Charlie’s bosom friend, it was quickly dispelled. This was Mr. Parker’s authentic world, the self-realization of a willful mind, now in the process, obvious to Nick, of bestowing the mantle of succession on Charlie Pell. It had been explained earlier by Charlie, so casually that it seemed of little consequence, that Myra’s mother had died years before.

  Mr. Parker, Charlie had told Nick, could trace his line to a branch of the Brahmin world of Boston, and before that to acquisitive Tories who had persisted in service to the Crown, leaving their seed to begin again in the dregs of atonement. Perhaps the old guilt was still residual ten generations later in Mr. Parker’s fanatic approach to the democratic ethic. The early family acquisitiveness stacked wealth upon wealth until other generations seemed invisible behind the pile and working in the family bank in New England seemed a pallid way to spend one’s life. To Mr. Parker, service had more lure than greed, and he was one of the first traitors to his class to side with Roosevelt in 1932. In Charlie’s initial explanation, told as Nick watched Charlie shave before dinner, the old man had been appalled by the nation’s leaders’ failure to cope with the Depression and had, through observing the pain of it at second hand, become committed to people’s needs. Roosevelt had appointed him Undersecretary of Commerce in the early days of his first administration.

  Government and politics had left him singed. The old Tory strain could not compromise with venality, no matter how well intentioned, and he was soon left with only his integrity and a firm conviction that the real enemy of America was a diminution of the values of Jefferson. Materialism without values, he perceived, was the thickening destructive wave in the distance. But it was frustrating to preach ethics in abstraction, in the face of all those empty bellies. Because of his wealth he had been able to maintain an important salon and, despite the ineffectiveness of his wife, owing primarily to shyness and later to illness, he could still attract to his lavish home the cream of Washington society, not only the idle blue bloods, but the people who held the levers of power.

  But for a man like Mr. Parker, Charlie had indicated, it was like pissing into the wind. All that socializing had only left the old man adrift on a sea of good liquor and victuals and willing gullets, hardly offering anything constructive. He began to seek a more effective way to amplify his ideas. By then, he was more than simply a traitor to his class, he was a renegade, a stickler for truthful presentation of existing facts. Having seen the politician and his sinister ways of manipulation, the old man’s faith now resided with the people as the only force available in the democratic context to control their own destiny. Even Charlie seemed willing to suspend his newspaperman’s cynicism in the face of Mr. Parker’s somewhat naïve singlemindedness, since, by the time Charlie had arrived on the scene, Mr. Parker had found his voice in the Chronicle and his criticisms and ideas were beginning to find their way to the target.

  Ten years before, Mr. Parker had bought the bankrupt Chronicle at auction, a low fourth on the hierarchy of Washington newspapers, and since then, had poured in millions to sustain his voice. If the dent to his fortune had left him somewhat bemused and perhaps guilt-stricken, at the least, disloyal to the ancestral line, he could take comfort in the calm purity of his vision. All this could be inferred from exposure to the man, even during the brief weekend, with gaps of his life filled in by Charlie’s excited explanations.

  “The press is the last bastion,” Mr. Parker intoned, his impatience with small talk foreshortening the usual introductory trivia. “Hitler knew it and went for its jugular at the first opportunity. Lenin was luckier. The czars had already corroded the effectiveness of the press. The future of America rests on the First Amendment.”

  It sounded to Nick like something written in a textbook. The News had taught him a harsher reality.

  “Objectivity,” Mr. Parker said, lifting the first wine-glass of the meal, “that’s the ticket. The press must wring out all emotions, squeeze it out of the pulp like water from a wet mop. Objectivity.” He let the word roll on his pallet like the taste of the wine. “Trust the people to discern the truth. That’s the heart of the system. Leave opinion to the editorial pages. That’s the appropriate place to give one’s views in sober, reasoned fashion, based on logic, after weighing both sides of any question.”

  Nick watched Charlie as he listened to Mr. Parker. He had expected signs of exasperation, an eye lifted briefly to the ceiling, a bite of the lip. But Charlie seemed oddly absorbed as if he had been actually listening with all his brain cells.

  “Impossible to achieve, Mr. Parker,” Charlie said suddenly, giving Nick his first clue. Myra, conditioned to the debate, also watched its progress with some concentration. “You can’t totally eliminate personality from the reporting of the news. Somebody has to register the facts. Somebody has to fashion them into words. Somebody has to write a headline. That’s three different lenses, not to mention the way it is presented graphically on the page by still another person. At the News . . .”

  Apparently the mention of the name was enough to bring a light flush to Mr. Parker’s cheeks.

  “That’s a panderer, a garbage dump. What happens in the pages of the News takes place in Captain Patterson’s pygmy mind.”

  “But he’s dead.”

  “From the grave, then. That’s not a newspaper.”

  “Please don’t take offense, Nick,” Myra interjected. “Father’s insult is purely generic.”

  “Not necessarily,” Mr. Parker said, trying but failing to smile broadly. No one, not even Myra, could trifle with his obsession.

  “Every man who works for the News bears responsibility.”

  “Like the Germans,” Charlie said, shrugging his shoulders.

  “Exactly, Charlie.”

  The maid brought trays of steaming food, which they ladled ceremoniously onto their plates. The old man was silent for a few moments, chewing carefully, absorbed in his own thoughts. Midway through his dinner, Mr. Parker began again, fork in midair.

  “Personality,” he said, as if it were a chapter heading, like “Objectivity” earlier. “It will ruin journalism. That’s why the Chronicle has no by-lines on its front page. I will not have personality dominate the news. It is not fair to the people. By-lines are merely an excuse to editorialize, to bring the news into the realm of personal opinion. We have a high responsibility to unbend the truth, especially in Washington, where the truth is in short supply.”

  “But it makes for boring reading,” Charlie said, firm but respectful. “It’s too reasoned, too juiceless. The competition is not building stories in pyramids the way the journalism textbooks teach. And we are competing, for attention. It’s not enough that we’ve got to fight other newspapers for the reader’s interest, but television’s beginning to happen. And life itself is getting more frenetic.”

  “Exactly why we need a newspaper, at least one, that subjugates personality, that tells the straight story. The people must be given a chance to form their own opinions, to get the facts without bias.” He was silent for a moment as he finished the food on his plate.

  “Bias,” he began again with his peculiar pedantry. To Nick, the method of presentation was contradiction in itself of the old
man’s point of view, since his personality dominated his own presentation. “Most, I say most, newspapers in this country reflect the bias of their owners in their news columns. Study the way the Washington Post or the Star present their news, the Scripps chain; even the failing Hearst newspapers roar out their bias as a kind of tribute to crazy Bill. And McCormick. There’s egomania for you. And Cissy Patterson. Her personal prejudices still reek from the pages of the Times-Herald. Go from city to city and see if it isn’t true. The process of disseminating information is the product of only a few obsessed minds, the bias of power and personality.” He seemed to be trying desperately to convince Charlie, a special clue, it seemed, in assessing what was obviously so tantalizing to Nick’s friend.

  “Mr. Parker,” Charlie said slowly, uncommon to his style, searching for a diplomatic path. He was walking on eggshells here.

  “The name of the game is circulation. Without circulation, readership, you’re working the tiller of a doomed ship.” The nautical reference seemed another hint to Charlie’s new life among the swells, confirmed later by pictures of sailboats in the library. “You can’t run a mass media enterprise for the happy few, unless you run it as a hobby.” It was a cutting reference, since Nick could almost feel Myra wince. “In a way, the Chronicle reflects your own bias. I don’t necessarily mean ideological, although the editorial pages leave no mistake about where you stand personally. Even the objective truth as you present it is, after all, only your objective truth. We’re dealing with an onrushing river of facts, plucked at random by your reporters as they ride the tide. It only appears to be objective in the heat of the moment, within the time frame demanded by your headlines. It’s only an ideal.”

  Mr. Parker was listening carefully, an ear cocked, as if he were probing Charlie’s words, picking through them like a man searching for something. When he did not speak, Charlie continued.

  “I’m not saying you should pander like the News, but you’ve got to make some compromise with the public. Besides, the idea that all you have to do is tell both sides of a story and the public will react with reason, is naïve. It assumes that the public has a balanced brain and is waiting patiently to weigh both sides of any given question. In the first place, the public has little patience, and little time, to steep itself in the questions. They may not even be paying attention. And you don’t just run a newspaper for only the informed few.”

  Mr. Parker nodded as the plates were cleared.

  “The New York Times,” he began. “There is the closest thing we have to an objective newspaper.”

  “And even that has bias in its news columns.”

  “That’s because they’ve let personality interfere. The by-line again. I can remember when the Times had few by-lines on its front page. You could trust its consistent vision, then.”

  “I think it took the only road open to it, a compromise,” Charlie said. “The Times’ bias is in what they leave out, not what they put in.”

  “Exactly,” Mr. Parker agreed for the first time. “ ‘All the news that’s fit to print.’ Who decides what’s fit? There’s the personality factor.”

  “You just can’t eliminate the humanness from people, Mr. Parker. Especially people who control information. It’s one hell of a newspaper no matter how you slice it.”

  Mr. Parker concentrated on his dessert. He was silent for a long time. Myra’s eyes kept moving from him to Charlie. She was a silent victim of the male supremacy in the room, and in retrospect Nick realized the scene provided a clue to later actions.

  “Do you think Truman is finished?” Nick asked, feeling the obligation of the guest to pay for his dinner with some participation in the conversation.

  “It looks that way, although he’s a tough old bird,” Mr. Parker said. “I’m inclined to support him.”

  “Only because he’s as contrary as you are, Father,” Myra said.

  “Any man that’s smart enough to defer to Marshall and Acheson cannot be all wrong.”

  “He seems such a pygmy next to Roosevelt,” Charlie said. “That’s his major handicap, that damned comparison.”

  “You see how we make our judgments,” Mr. Parker said quietly. “Personality dominates. I worked for Roosevelt. I’d sooner play poker with Truman.”

  “Father did play poker with Roosevelt,” Myra said.

  “Precisely why I’d rather play with Truman.” For the first time, Nick saw Mr. Parker laugh.

  After dinner, Mr. Parker disappeared for the rest of the evening.

  “He’s gone to the paper,” Myra explained.

  He’s afraid that if he didn’t read every word before it hit the street, his damned objectivity would suffer,” Charlie said.

  “Objectivity,” he mimicked Mr. Parker.

  “I’m worried about him, Charlie. He’s burning himself out over that paper,” Myra said, a frown darkening her face.

  “It’s an impossible burden,” Charlie said, reinforcing her observation. “The burden of truth.”

  “He’s stubborn,” Myra said. A telephone rang in the distance. The maid came in and called Myra. She stood up.

  “Hey, fellows. Tomorrow’s our engagement party,” she said, getting up.

  “It’ll be quite a bash,” Charlie said. “Everybody will cover it except, of course, the Chronicle.”

  “Not objective?” Nick asked.

  “Not objective.”

  Nick and Charlie sat in the huge living room, near a grand piano on which perched a forest of photographs in a variety of gilt frames, mostly family pictures with famous personalities. There was a picture of Mr. Parker, Myra, and what was certainly her mother, with Roosevelt. Charlie’s eyes swept the long room.

  “Well, what do you think, old buddy?” Charlie asked. He seemed back in familiar character.

  “I think you’ve stepped in shit.”

  “Not bad, right?”

  “Right.”

  He leaned back on the soft upholstered chair in which he was sitting and put his hands behind his head, elbows up, a pose of contentment which did not quite fit the uncertainty that Nick caught in his eyes.

  “What do you think of Myra?”

  “She’s lovely.”

  “She’s got this thing about her father. A kind of worship. It bothered me at first, but as I get to know the old boy, I’m beginning to feel the same way. He’s obsessed, as you can see. The paper’s taking a bad financial licking. Myra says he’s already poured in five million. Five million! Now there’s an expensive obsession for you.”

  Nick looked around the room.

  “It seems that there’s lots left.”

  “Who knows? They don’t discuss money around me,” he sighed. “They don’t discuss a lot of things.” His eyes glazed over for a moment.

  “He wants me to go to work for the Chronicle,” he said suddenly. “Imagine me as the Son-in-Law. We’ll be at each other’s throats in a week. I keep refusing.”

  “What does Myra think?”

  “There’s the problem, at least I think it is. He’s a man that puts great stock in his life, tortures himself inwardly about the continuity of his precious expensive hobby. He doesn’t believe Myra can handle it.”

  “Handle what?”

  “The running of the paper. It’s hard to imagine these old rich types. They see double vision. Look back and forth in time. He sees the continuity of the Chronicle, his half-baked idea of a newspaper continued into the future ad infinitum. But he has no faith in females. Was disappointed in his wife, but loved his mother. Freud would have a field day with his libido. They’re plotting to have me take over. I’m the compromise candidate.”

  “That’s fantastic, Charlie,” Nick said. “My God, it’s like having the biggest electric train on the block.”

  “In effect, I’d be working for my wife. He has too much faith in bloodlines to ever will the stock outside the line. He’d expect, of course, that we produce sons.” He stood up and stretched. “Come on, let’s take a walk.”

  T
hey walked briskly down Massachusetts Avenue, past stately homes, many now converted to embassies. The night air was soft, warm. They passed over a bridge, below which traffic rolled quietly through Rock Creek Park.

  “What do you think?” Charlie said again, dropping a cigarette onto the grass in front of the British Embassy and punching it into the ground with the toe of his shoe. Nick felt the weight of responsibility. It was a burden he wouldn’t accept. He remained silent. Charlie looked at him and shrugged.

  “Do you love Myra?” A question with a question. Now it was Charlie’s turn not to answer. He punched Nick on the upper arm.

  “It’s great to see you, kid. I really missed ya.”

  The engagement party itself was in keeping with Mr. Parker’s life-style, the kind of party a doting father would throw for his only daughter. Flashbulbs popped as Washington’s high and mighty paraded, tuxed and bejeweled, into the great hall of the big house. Nick recognized famous faces. But he was not experienced in party talk and preferred to stand aside and observe the scene. He watched Mr. Parker, an always imposing figure, his huge girth bound by a purple cummerbund, greet his guests and move through crowds of familiar faces, touching hands, kissing cheeks.

  To unaccustomed eyes it was a feast of power, and Nick remembered thinking how much of his own destiny was affected by the decisions of these men.

  Charlie occasionally took respite with his friend, identifying the cast of characters with an amusing running commentary.

  “That hayseed is Barkley. He’s the Senator who outfoxed Roosevelt. He loves filthy stories. They always take place in Paducah. And that’s Senator Taft, the balding fellow with the hair pasted over the knob. And there’s Perle Mesta, our hostess with the mostest, and the Cafritzes, if you like to count Jews.” Myra came over and planted a kiss on Charlie’s cheek, looking radiant in a pink chiffon dress, like a girl at her first prom.