The Snowball_ Warren Buffett and the Business of Life - Alice Schroeder [266]
Susie was indeed loose about the timing, and by the fall of 1976 had made no plans to go back to New York. She still spent more time at Laguna than Warren. Moreover, her “clientele” around Omaha was a distraction. From Leila, who besieged Susie with hours of stories about the 38½ wonderful years with Howard; to Howie, who was running a backhoe outside Omaha; to Dottie, who seemed to be sleepwalking through her life, so passive that one day when she called and reported that there was a big fire at her house, Susie had no sooner hung up the phone than she wondered whether Dottie had called the fire department. Susie phoned her sister back. Dottie said no, she had thought only of calling Susie.26 And all these responsibilities came only from the family; outnumbering them by miles were Susie’s “vagrants,” lonelyhearts, and local relationships.
Instead of setting up commitments to sing in New York, therefore, she scheduled another round of performances for the spring of 1977 at the French Café in Omaha. With that, a magazine published by the Omaha World-Herald decided to do a cover piece on the millionaire’s wife who set out to become a cabaret singer in midlife. The reporter, Al “Bud” Pagel, started out with a routine story, approaching Susie’s friends and asking them simple questions about her life. What makes Susie sing? he wanted to know. Like many people in Omaha, of course, he had heard the rumors about Susie’s extracurricular activities.27 Susie’s friends were “defensive” and “protective.”
Eunice Denenberg “bristled” and declared, “Susie is one of those old-fashioned GOOD people that lots of folks today don’t think exist. So they attribute some of their own baser behavior to her because it bothers them.”28 The worshippers circled to protect the saint. Pagel admitted that, faced with such an aggressive pack of defenders, yes, it did bring out a subconscious urge in him to toss a handful of mud at Susie’s best white party dress.29
For her interview, Susie sat down with Pagel on the couch by the fireplace in the Buffetts’ family room, with its Ping-Pong table and the posters on the wall that said things like “Love Is Here to Stay” and “Damn Everything but the Circus.” She struck him as vulnerable.
“Being a performer is kind of the opposite of being a mother,” she told him in her interview. “I’m not used to the care and feeding of Susan Buffett. Maybe I am a reinforcement for someone who is on the verge of thinking, ‘I want to try something but I’m afraid to do it.’ I’m just one more person who tried something but was afraid to do it.” She paused. “That’s the only story I have.”30
The reporter gave some indication he was looking for more of a story than that. His curiosity had been piqued rather than muzzled by her pit-bull defenders. Susie opened up and talked about herself for five hours, without getting into her personal relationships. Still, by the end, she said she was astonished at what she had done: The woman whose lips were sealed like a mollusk’s when people tried to pry her open at dinner parties had given herself to Pagel. In the process she managed to win him over as a friend.
When the story was published, the cover of the magazine read, What Makes Susie Sing? and featured a photo of her with a “who knows?” expression, tentative smile, eyes tilted up, avoiding the camera. Inside, Susie faced away from the camera in the photographs, gazing down at Hamilton with a small smile and looking at her hands on the piano keyboard. Something inward, an uncertain dream, had replaced the open-jawed grin that nearly always appeared in pictures of her.
The morning the story came out, Susie showed up on Pagel