What It Takes (68 page)

The difference was, Oletha got more serious. It wasn’t just the pressure of advancing age (though she was
twenty
now, and a girl had to think of
what she would do
, if she wasn’t married by the end of college). At the same time, she was getting more serious about herself: What kind of woman did she want to be? Gary made her think about herself: Why did she do those things, why did she believe that, why did she say things like that? ... It wasn’t that he pushed or demanded that she change—not at all. He was sweet to her, so courtly. (Valentine’s Day, he gave her an adorable furry kitty, a stuffed animal—she kept it for years.) It was just that she saw herself, as if for the first time, with the help of his eyes. All those little tricks, the ruses she’d learned as a girl ... what were they for? She didn’t
like
playing those games. She didn’t
want
to be that way. ...

She wanted to be straightforward, and honest—as honest as Gary. Somehow, other boys she’d dated now seemed ... just full of hot air. She’d never be as smart as Gary. She used to say that. (Her girlfriends would stare at her cockeyed. What was she talking about? Oletha always got straight A’s!) But she could think for herself. Had to think for herself. And had to make a difference in the world. That was the other thing. She wasn’t just going to stare into herself, checking her soul, every day, every hour, for its purity, its standing on the scale of salvation. (That’s what half the stupid chapels were about, and the big revival meetings, with President Talmadge there on stage, whipping up the believers—it almost made her laugh.)

No, there was a great and needy world outside the gates of Bethany ... and outside the self. Gary felt it—that was the year he went to Oklahoma City, to the arena, to hear Eisenhower speak. Gary always had his eye on the wider world (he was already talking about graduate schools, the best schools, in big cities—he would get there, too), though he’d hardly been anywhere. It was Oletha who’d traveled, with her dad, in the summers. She’d been to New York! Her father had gone to Europe! But she knew (and it wasn’t just her who said this—Gary always said ...) that their church was born as a movement, a drive to
remake the world
. What happened to that? They lost track of that. Even her dad said so. He gave a speech about the role of the church college, and he told them all, they’d lost the way ... the orphans’ homes, the street services, the missions to the jails ... what happened to them?
We have lost our sense of social vision
. That’s what her dad said, her junior year.

That was the year ... she just knew. It wasn’t just dates anymore. They were together, all the time, whenever they could be. They’d eat together in the dining hall, and sit in the student lounge, or study together, or baby-sit at Prescott’s. And weekends, they’d double-date, find someone with a car, or Oletha would check out of the dorm for the weekend, and stay with a friend who had a place off-campus, and then, Gary could come, and they didn’t have to worry so much about the rules ... And they could kiss, and hold each other, and have the time. And they could talk. Lord, how they could talk—all day, all night—about what they could do, if they were off on their own ... together.

And she could feel Gary’s sense of power growing, the unease slipping off him. He’d made the grade, with Prescott, with his friends, with her, with her friends ... and now, he was looking onward. He would not stop. She knew that about him, without talking. So much had changed: the stars of Prescott’s circle moved on in time, Dale Tuttle, Don Conway, Tom Boyd ... and now, quietly, with unstated authority, Gary was the leader. Now he was president of the junior class, and he didn’t even run—not really. His friends put him up ... and he accepted. Now he’d moved in from The Barracks; he was a counselor in a campus dorm. There were younger men now, who’d come to his room, to listen to the talks there about the Great Questions. That was the spring Gary got a car—Carl had a Buick he let Gary take to school ... and then, they weren’t scrambling for double dates. They could go where they wanted ... together.

And he stood again, that spring, for president of the student council. Talmadge’s term was ending, and this time, there was almost no contest. Friends put Gary’s name up, and he won. People knew him, see, and admired him. And she was pleased she’d had something to do with that, with his own growing ease ... so he could
be himself
. He’d told her—this meant a lot to Oletha—with her, he could be himself.

That was the wonderful thing.

And so, in the spring, at the Junior-Senior Banquet (it was always banquets for the Nazarenes, as eating was the only licit sensual event), when Gary was emcee, as president of the junior class, he stood up at the head table and read his announcement, to Bethany and the world, that he and Oletha were engaged to be married ... and there was no surprise in that room, just great applause and joy.

Oletha always remembered that last year as a busy time, not especially romantic. She and Gary had moved beyond the point of decision. Now they were making plans.

Big plans: Gary had applied, almost on a flier (at least that’s how he talked about it) to Yale, to the finest divinity school in the country. It was eastern, urban, Ivy League, it was the big time.

He pushed on that door ... and it swung open. Just as he’d imagined, just like they talked about. And there was quite a bit to talk about. They’d be married, that summer, after graduation. (S.T. Ludwig would give the graduation speech.) Then, a short honeymoon, and they’d drive east. Yale would offer Gary financial help ... but it wasn’t going to be easy. They wanted to get to New Haven in time for Oletha to find a job.

But first things first—there was a wedding, her wedding! A big church wedding—First Church, Kansas City—and five bridesmaids, and her sister, Martha, would be maid of honor. (Dale Tuttle, Bethany’s leading actor, would serve as Gary’s best man.) Meanwhile, she was a senior, and she had her solo drama recital, and there were parties, and the banquet, of course, and graduation ... well, she was awfully busy.

As for Gary, he would remember that year as a quiet time. Perhaps it was his first and most languorous moment of attainment, of pause, looking to the next hill.

He was going to Yale, with the best of the best. Would he make the grade?

Bethany ... well, he had that licked. He had a pretty sweet deal that last year. His position as student body president afforded him tuition. His room and board were free, as a resident counselor in a campus dorm. He even had a job as campus mailman—that earned him pocket money. He had the Buick, he had his girl ... not just a girl, the campus queen.

He felt he’d come to some peace with that campus—or at least an understanding. The deans didn’t look at him like a bomb-thrower anymore. They knew he was serious, maybe even fair-minded. And if he liked, from time to time, to poke the powers with some uneasy questions, well ... at that point, it was mostly for fun. In his own mind, he had moved on. That was his way with attainments.

Gary and Oletha wrote their own wedding vows (which raised a few eyebrows in 1958).

Then there was a week in the Ozarks, and off to New Haven, where Oletha did find a job—at the Yale registrar’s office. It gave her a window into their new school.

And it was awfully exciting, the new school, new city, the new world. She even got a new name with her new job: they just couldn’t handle Oletha, so they called her Lee—and somehow that fit. Everything was new, see ...

Lee saw her first movie, Walt Disney’s
White Wilderness
. And she had her first glass of wine, and got her first pair of earrings: faux pearls surrounded by tiny paste diamonds. It was the first time she could wear jewelry ... that is, if they had someplace to go.

Mostly, their life was constrained by the limits of her salary ($199 a month) and by Gary’s work. He worked hard (though within months he was not too sure he ever wanted to teach), and thought hard, and read constantly, working through the Great Questions. So much was new, even to him—the Divinity School was peopled with all stripes of seeker: Protestants, Catholics, foreigners! ... When they’d get together, it was pig heaven for Gary, who wanted to know ... everything.

It was hard for Lee, those discussions—the boys arguing and one-upping each other like philosophic toreadors. (So, I said to him, “Well, if you countenance
teleology
...” Haw!) Like any graduate students, or med students, or other bores, their world was The World ... they were in thrall to its tiny fascinations.

And the funny thing was, it was because of how hard she’d thought about the way she was ... she wouldn’t play her old social games—those little ruses, what were they for? Gary was always reminding her, when she’d say something stupid, like about how somebody looked, or dressed: “Now, Lee,” he’d say, or, “Lee-ee ... we don’t need any of that.” But it was hard to have a new way to play, just like
that
. And the way Gary’s conversations flew, with those jousting boys ... well, she really didn’t feel she had the background. (She’d only taken one philosophy course, and she thought she’d only got through because Gary was grading the papers.) And anyway, she wasn’t reading all day, she was working, and working hard.

So a lot of times, she wouldn’t talk. It was fine, she’d say. She’d just listen. ... But somehow, even listening was hard. It was easy to get lost, and she did not want to ask anything dumb—not then. So, mostly, she was quiet. And she’d say, if she did speak, that it wasn’t just her—
Gary
always said ...

And often, it was something Gary had said about what she did, or the funny way she acted. That was always the safest thing, some funny self-deprecation. She really did remember everything he said, and she’d think about it, too, whenever the same thing came up.

She only wished he’d say more—he got so wrapped up in thought. Like she wasn’t even there! After that first year at Yale, they were driving back to the Midwest—two cars, the Hartpences and the Boyds. That was Tom Boyd, and his wife, Beverly, friends from Bethany who’d also moved on to Yale. And somewhere beyond the Appalachians, they stopped at a station, Gary hit the men’s room, and Lee came up to the Boyds’ car to chat ... but not idly. Lee wanted to know:

“Let me ask you something. Do you two talk?”

They stared at her, murmured: “Well, yeah ... sure.”

“Well, what do you talk about?”

It was hard to say, exactly.

Lee said: “We haven’t said a word. We just sit there. I don’t know how to talk.”

Sometimes, Gary wondered why Oletha, why Lee, did not have that ease that was her accustomed grace ... but he didn’t say anything. Not to her.

One day, at lunch in the Divinity School basement, he said to his friend Tom Boyd:

“It’s so strange ... you go to the school you’re supposed to, and you date the kind of person you’re supposed to marry, you get married. ... And you wake up six months later, and you say, ‘What am I
doing
?’ ...”

But Tom knew (he was an old hand at marriage—three years!—he’d gone through the same thing), it wasn’t that Gary didn’t love Lee, it was just ... he was questioning
everything
.

To Gary, it was just ... everything was different: it was Bethany that now seemed another world, a smaller world, a narrow place. Gary and Lee went a couple of times to the Nazarene Church in New Haven, but it was ... well, it was nothing: it was no more sophisticated than the church on Seventh Street in Ottawa!

It was almost funny, for Gary to look back ... at that church, his little college ... it was so strange, how they shrank, as he moved outward ... it would be funny—if it weren’t tragic.

Years later, he would still be startled—shocked—when confronted again with the power of those places, the grip they had on some people’s lives ... even when they tried to wriggle free.

Don Conway, God bless him, killed himself while he was doing graduate study at Berkeley, in 1967. ... Then, Dale Tuttle, Gary’s best man, killed himself in 1971. ... They were brilliant, both, the best of the best. Dale was likely gay. He suffered with it terribly. Don ... well, who could know? But whatever it was, they could not turn away from the dark battle with their imperfect selves, their failures, their
humanness
. That was the Bethany disease: that morose, myopic self-investigation that never ended, never stopped cutting away inside. ... And here was the horrible cosmic joke: it happened to the best! ... Well, it would not happen to Gary.

He was not going to turn that diamond bit on himself. He was faced determinedly outward, to the wider world. He would not stop now—would not stop
ever
—to peer into, to pick apart the layers of his life. That was morbid. It was obsessive. It was not what
his
life was about!

And Bethany—well, he would not soon go back. (Not even when Lee did, in 1984.) And he would not look back. He would not concede it any hold on him. Not for years, anyway ... not even to recognize the comic twist, the cosmic joke that God and Bethany played on
him
: he fell in love with Oletha Ludwig for her queenly ease, never knowing—how could he know?—that past Bethany she would so seldom find it again.

I
T WAS AT DINNER
, two nights before announcement, that Dick made them all sign. There was a form he had to fill out for the Federal Election Commission—a notice that he was seeking the office of President. But instead of just signing, he brought it to dinner, passed it around. He wanted Jane to sign, and each of his three kids ... Dick called it their “bond.”

This bit of family hardball was mostly aimed at Matt. Already, Gephardt had worked it around to where Matt
asked him
to run. But this sealed the deal. It was like cosponsors in the House. (What do you mean, you don’t know? Your name’s on the bill!) Dick was so sure: Matt would learn a lot, it would take his mind off things. ... Wasn’t it exciting already?

Everyone was flying into St. Louis: from Long Island, brother Don and his wife, Nancy, and their kids, and Cassells from all over, and Gephardts—cousins no one had seen for years ... and old friends, guys from Northwestern, and law school at Michigan ... and from Washington, a whole planeload took off, despite a killer snowstorm. The chartered DC-9 would cost the young campaign something like thirty thousand dollars, but on the big day, Monday, February 23, there would be twenty-one Congressmen standing behind Dick. That was backing from all over the country, entrée into a score of states. And why not? Dick Gephardt was one of their own, a man of the House, a guy who would play ball, to make the system work.