Audition (43 page)

I never did see Charles Revson again. What I hadn’t known on that one summer date in 1974 was that he was suffering from cancer. I always wondered if that was why he so unceremoniously decided to leave his wife. (Shades of Frank McGee.) He died the following summer at the age of sixty-eight.

These were just some of the various men in my life during the early and middle seventies. Which brings me to the more important part. There were, during those years, three men who were, then or later, extremely well known. They were all distinguished and accomplished. What they had in common was that they were all in government. That’s not really a surprise. After all, people in government were the ones with whom I was most often in contact. Other than that, they were very different.

They did, however, have one other thing in common. I cared about each of them very much.

Special Men in My Life

E
DWARD
W. B
ROOKE
was the first African American elected to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction. He served two terms, from 1967 to 1979. He was a Republican from the mostly Democratic state of Massachusetts, so he clearly did not fit a senator’s traditional profile. Before going to Washington, he had served two terms as that state’s very popular attorney general, and then had run for the Senate at a time when few people expected a black man could be elected to that all-white, very exclusive club. He won, and in the Republican Party he became a star.

One magazine of the time described him as “a model of how blacks could rise through the whole white-dominated ranks of mainstream politics.” There was some thought that he might be the first African American nominated to run as vice president or could even rise as high as running for president. A most distinguished man. Anyone can find this information easily. What they will not find, and what only my closest friends knew, is that Senator Edward W. Brooke and I had a long and rocky affair.

Oh, yes. He was also married.

Where do I begin? Where did the affair begin? It was 1973. I certainly wasn’t lacking for men in my life, or for romance. I was dating more than I ever had. Why, therefore, did I have a clandestine affair with a married man? A black married man? Though racial tolerance was on the rise—interracial marriages more than doubled in the 1970s—having a romance with a married black senator would have raised more than eyebrows. I had a daughter to think about and a network that would be less than thrilled to see me involved in any kind of scandal. None of that seemed to matter to me.

Ed Brooke was simply the most attractive, sexiest, funniest, charming, and impossible man. I was excited, fascinated, intrigued, and infatuated.

We met first in New York at a restaurant. I was with friends. He was with friends. We were introduced. He shook my hand and smiled. He had a big, wicked smile, more of a grin. “Now just who is this?” I remember thinking.

Months later I was in Washington. We were doing some kind of a panel on Nixon and China, and Senator Brooke was booked on the panel. He asked if I was staying in town that day. I said I was. He asked if he could take me to lunch. I said, “Sure.” He took me to the Senate Dining Room, where guests were often invited. Perfectly innocent, and despite a serious expression to fool all onlookers, he flirted excessively.

He told me that he had never stopped thinking of me since the night we met. Really? He told me that he watched me every morning. No kidding? He told me that he was married to an Italian woman who was white and that he had met her in Italy when he served in the army (segregated in those days) during World War II. After the war he came home and sent for her, his young war bride. She spoke no English. Even now, Brooke said, after almost thirty years of marriage and life in America, she had barely learned English. He said sadly that after the novelty of their relationship wore off, they had little in common except their two daughters, by then almost adults. He rarely saw his wife except on holidays or when he was campaigning. She was, he admitted, a very good campaigner, especially among the large Italian American population in Greater Boston. It was a marriage that had long ago run its course, but politicians didn’t get divorced in those days, and besides, his wife was used to his absences and never questioned him. Why divorce?

It is very difficult to explain to anyone else why you are attracted to someone. It certainly wasn’t because Brooke (I never called him Ed) catered to me or flattered me. Or maybe it was precisely because he didn’t do either. I had always liked men who were kind to me. I was not a masochist. But Brooke played with me. He was hard to reach. Hard to pin down. I found it both funny and frustrating. After the initial compliments, Brooke often joked, and sometimes, I thought, wasn’t really joking, that I was the oldest woman he had ever been attracted to. I was in my early forties. He was ten years older, but age didn’t seem to touch him. He had been attracting women most of his life.

Sometimes when he said that I was the oldest woman he had ever been with, I thought of telling him: “Oh, yeah? Well, you are the blackest man I have ever been with.” But the truth is it didn’t matter. Not that I was blinded to the fact that if our romance became public, his color wouldn’t matter. But Brooke being black just didn’t seem important one way or the other. It was also something we never discussed.

Looking back, maybe that was strange. I remember thinking that Brooke, who was light-skinned, didn’t truly consider himself black. He never talked about his background or any problems black people might have. If he had felt discrimination, and he
must
have, he never mentioned it.

Part of the attraction was that Brooke wanted to be in control. I wasn’t used to that, and at first it was pleasing to me. But then he would try to control me in ways that made no sense except to prove that he could. For example, we once made plans to be together in New York. I sent Jackie to stay at Shirley’s. My cousin hated the whole idea of Brooke but loved Jackie and was happy to have her sleep over. Jackie also found a night away from Mommy very adventurous.

Zelle and Icodel, who were at home, loved me and protected me with their silence. Dinner was cooked. Music was playing. And then Brooke phoned to say he had decided not to leave Washington. No excuse. In one way I was relieved. I had felt so guilty sending Jackie away for the night. On the other hand I was furious, and for a week or so refused Brooke’s phone calls. But then I gave in and began to see him again. Why on earth? The simple answer was that he excited me.

There was one couple who knew about us, old friends of Brooke’s. They had a home in Virginia. Sometimes we stayed there. Sometimes we stayed in Brooke’s apartment at the Watergate. We were very careful, and besides, we didn’t see each other all that much. I lived and worked in New York. He lived and worked in Washington. And most important, I didn’t want to be away from Jackie unless I truly had to.

Summer was a different matter. Brooke had a big house in Oak Bluffs, an elegant section of Martha’s Vineyard that, then and now, caters mostly to upper-class, affluent African Americans. My close friends from Washington, Ann and Vernon Jordan, also have a house in Oak Bluffs. I always thought Vernon suspected something, but if he did, he was too much a gentleman to say. I visited Brooke there one weekend. I met his mother (his father was dead), a most charming woman who adored her accomplished son. God knows what she thought of me, but she was cordial. Her son could do no wrong.

The next summer, with three weeks off from the
Today
show, I took a house myself in a different part of the Vineyard. I asked Shirley to stay with me, and she brought her granddaughter who was the same age as Jackie. We were very private. Brooke visited us two or three times a week. Jackie still vaguely remembers him. She rarely saw him on his visits to me in New York. She sort of liked him, but not a lot. He once gave her a present with a note typed on U.S. Senate stationery, her name spelled wrong. The note was dated November 14, 1974. It said, “Dear Jacquie: Here’s Raggedy Ann to be your friend. And now you will have ‘company for dinner every night.’” It was signed “Love, Mr. B.” I wonder now if his secretary typed the note. I wonder, too, when he said that Jackie would have company for dinner, if it was because he wanted me to have dinner with him alone.

I was still seeing other men in a more or less casual way. One was the very kind and gentle John Diebold, whom I’ve already told you about, and who was as different from Ed Brooke as day and night. He was so thoughtful and dependable. When I wasn’t seeing Brooke, I was most often with John. I used to sing a song by Rodgers and Hart that began: “He was too good to me,” because it reminded me so of John, who, of course, never knew about Brooke.

In spite of these complications, my relationship with Brooke grew. Politics was his passion and my great interest. We never ran out of things to talk about, and of course there was the fascination of our having to be so secretive. Forbidden fruit and all that. But I was beginning to resent the sneaking around, and I slowly began asking myself if we could ever be married. Would such a marriage destroy his career? Would it destroy mine? We would never know if we couldn’t have a public relationship. By this time things were getting serious. That Thanksgiving, when we had been seeing each other for almost two years, Brooke didn’t go home. Instead, he stayed in New York with me. He was planning to spend part of the Christmas holiday with me, too. His wife, who had condoned his romances for many years, now suspected that something different was happening.

Washington, at least some people in Washington, also began to suspect that the senator and I had more than a professional relationship. We would occasionally be at the same reception or dinner. We deliberately sought out these parties to which we had both been invited. At these occasions, purposely out loud, Brooke would ask if he could take me home. People were noticing.

There was, at that time, a tough and shrewd gossip columnist for the
Washington Post
named Maxine Cheshire. Everyone feared her, as did I, especially when she began to write blind items about Brooke and me seeing each other. Things had to change. I told Brooke that I could no longer live like this. He was married. It had to end. But Brooke was not having just another flirtation. Our relationship had all but reached the point of no return. So he did something neither he nor I had ever imagined he would do. It was something that would put his whole political career in jeopardy. He went home and asked his wife for a divorce.

She was furious. I don’t blame her. Not that she would actually miss her husband as he was so rarely home, but she was, after all, Mrs. Edward W. Brooke, a very important woman. She was also the mother of their two daughters. And though she may not have spoken English well, she sure spoke her own language well. The Italian voters would be unforgiving.

She fought back. With inquiries, perhaps to his staff, she found out that I was the woman for whom her husband wanted a divorce. She hired detectives. She knew someone who worked for the tabloid
National Enquirer
. The paper loved the story and assigned its own investigator. Brooke, at that time, owned a vacation house on the Caribbean island of Saint Martin. He often went there on vacation, sometimes with a “guest.” Could I have been such a guest? The
National Enquirer
reporter, I heard, was roaming the island with photographs of me hoping a storekeeper or a restaurant waiter would recognize me. I had never been there with Brooke, but their search went on. I was getting very nervous.

Around this time I received a phone call from a very good friend, Pete Peterson, who had been secretary of commerce under Richard Nixon. I trusted Pete and knew he had my best interests at heart. With some embarrassment and pain, he told me that he had heard of my relationship with Ed Brooke and he felt the story would soon burst into the public. It would all but ruin my career, he said. NBC might have trouble standing by me. My divorce from Lee had been very quiet and dignified, and my reputation was solid and aboveboard. Pete thought I had better seriously examine what the ramifications of continuing my relationship with Ed Brooke might be.

I did. So did Brooke. He could not afford to risk his career. He was proud of being in the Senate, and his future could only get better. I also could not risk my career. I had a child and my family in Florida to think about. We decided wisely but very sadly that we had to stop seeing each other. That was that. We stopped.

I missed him terribly at first. He had been so much a part of my life and my fantasies. However, the truth is that after the years of hiding, it was also a relief. But by this time Brooke had burned his bridges with his wife. He decided he still wanted the divorce and hoped that a divorce with no recriminations would not affect his Senate seat. But that was the trouble. The divorce became very acrimonious, and there
were
recriminations.

His wife’s fury led to stories in the newspapers about his private life. This led to an investigation into the financial affairs between him and his mother-in-law, then living in Boston in a nursing home. Brooke was accused of improperly transferring funds from his mother-in-law’s account so that Medicaid would pay her nursing-home bills. He claimed it was an honest bookkeeping error, and he was never convicted of anything. But it undermined his reputation. In the middle of it all, Brooke ran for reelection. He lost the election, and his promising political career ended.

It was by then 1978, and even though it had been several years since we had seen each other, a part of me always felt it was my fault. I still feel that way. Maybe I’m giving myself too much credit, or perhaps too much blame, but before me, no matter how many romances or affairs Brooke had had, he never sought a divorce. His asking for one and his wife’s anger led to his political downfall.

But his life went on. He married a beautiful African American woman. They had a son, who by now must be a young man. In 2004 President George W. Bush awarded Brooke the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Happy news. Not such happy news was the story I read about him in 2003 in the
New York Times
. He had breast cancer and had undergone a double mastectomy. He had gone public with the news, he said, because he wanted other men to be aware that breast cancer, though extremely rare, could happen to men. It was very brave of him. The article gave his age as eighty-three.