Citizen Hughes - Michael Drosnin [41]
Until now they had known each other only as disembodied voices on the telephone, but with their marriage began an incredibly intimate pen-pal relationship, a daily exchange of love letters and letters of lost love, interspersed with plans for multimillion-dollar deals and plots to buy the government of the United States. An epic domestic quarrel that soon had the newlyweds bickering like an old married couple and would ultimately disrupt the domestic affairs of the entire nation.
SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE: Act I
“I regret last night as much as I assume you do, perhaps I regret it more.
“Anyway, I have only one desire now and that is my sincere wish that you and I, in deference to what I hope remains of our friendship, take steps best calculated to avoid any chance of a repetition.
“To this end, Bob, and with the assurance of continued friendship, I want to ask that you place in my hands completely the resolution of such problems as may exist between us.”
“First of all, I hope you understand that you do not have an exclusive to sleepless nights.
“For some strange God damned reason which I’ll never comprehend, everyone seems to believe me except you. When I told you that I would be with you for the duration and that I would not leave you—that is precisely what I meant. I did not say and did not intend to say that I was leaving you.
“The only conclusion I can reach is that you do not believe me and in reality perhaps you are sub-consciously trying to find a successor for me.
“As I have told you repeatedly—I am committed to you but you are not to me.”
“Well, Bob, I will be very happy to believe you about everything. I think a good starting point would be for you to affirm your original promise to stay with me permanently, and without the necessity of my getting down on my knees and begging you to do it.”
“How in the world you can interpret my statement that I want to be with you in Las Vegas or wherever in hell you choose to go for the duration of our lives—as an act of hostility—I’ll never know.
“You will never know how much it upsets me when I do something which disturbs you. I try so hard to please you and meet all of your demands.
“Howard, please let me know immediately if you are satisfied that this horrible incident is over.”
“Thanks very much, but no thanks!
“I have just read your message which breathes hostility out of every line.
“I dont think that relationships entered to at the point of a shotgun are any good.”
Interspersed with the “love letters” were fights on the phone, back-and-forth calls late into the night, and first thing the next morning more memos recapitulating the phone fights, followed by handwritten notes fighting about the recapitulations.
“I am returning your message for reference,” wrote Hughes. “At the top of page 2, the underlined portion puzzles me. The only time I mentioned anything that might be interpreted this way was very recently when I said that I got the feeling from you that you no longer had the same enthusiasm for this position that I had sensed at the start of our relationship.
“Then I reminded you of the remark you made, which caught me by complete surprise, the remark that you had a deep instinctive feeling that we were headed on a collision course, and that perhaps we should be best advised to end it now in a friendly way. I never will forget this remark and the calmness with which you said it, because I was literally dumbfounded with surprise. Anyway, I reminded you of this and I said I wondered if you were having a return of these feelings. You said: ‘not in the least!’
“So, Bob, I am sure you will agree that on no occasion have I suggested that we part on friendly or unfriendly terms. I would not dream of making a remark like that. As a matter of