The Snowball_ Warren Buffett and the Business of Life - Alice Schroeder [274]
The inequality of this particular triangle was multiplied because in fact it involved two triangles—but only one of them knew that. In a state of ignorance, Warren thought of Susie as the one who had been wronged. He tried to square things by placating her in private and showering her with lavish attentiveness in public, which left Astrid exposed and vulnerable. In a similar state of ignorance, Astrid—who admired and practically worshipped Susie—accepted that Warren would never marry her, ceded Susie the turf of all social and business events outside Omaha, and unhappily tolerated being called Buffett’s housekeeper and mistress so that his marriage to Susie would appear as intact as possible. Buffett would come to rationalize this: “Astrid knows where she fits with me. She knows she’s needed. That’s not a bad place to be.” And indeed, her role, however narrowly defined, did give Astrid a security that she had always lacked.
It had taken a literal change in geography for Susie to maintain her aura of the selfless Mrs. Warren Buffett while simultaneously seeking fulfillment in a life completely outside that role. Yet it was Warren who looked as though he were getting the best of both worlds, even though the new relationship didn’t compensate for his loss. He couldn’t defend himself against the impression that he had driven his wife to move out through his relationship with Katharine Graham or—because some people got the time line wrong—his relationship with Astrid.
He wanted desperately to hold the remaining pieces together, and would try for the rest of Susie’s life to make up for what he had done to disappoint her. But of course that didn’t change who he was and obviously didn’t mean he would stop seeing Kay. Buffett invited Graham to Omaha to visit the Strategic Air Command, probably as a pretext to introduce her to Astrid. Graham brought her best friend, Meg Greenfield, editorial page editor of the Post and one exception to Graham’s freely acknowledged weakness—she did not usually get on well with other women when men were around.8 On meeting an attractive woman, Buffett says, “Kay’s first thought would be how to get her out of the room.”
Buffett took them all to dinner with Stan Lipsey at the Omaha Club. Kay carried on a spirited conversation with Warren; Meg and Stan occasionally joined in. The conversation left Astrid, who was not the type to put herself forward, entirely on her own. Except for ordering, she sat in silence for the entire meal. Mesmerized as always by Graham, Buffett did nothing to help. A couple of dozen people at a huge table nearby carried on with a raucous birthday celebration. Finally the celebrants got up, stood in a circle, and started to make squawking-beak motions, flap wings, and wiggle tail feathers with their hands to the sound of music, doing the Chicken Dance. Ever Miss Proper, Graham sat staring with a “priceless” look on her face.9
From then on, Buffett almost always saw Graham outside of Omaha. When she called the house and Astrid answered the phone, Kay had nothing to say.10 She handled the situation mostly by acting as if she believed that Astrid didn’t exist, except for calling Astrid once to ask how to work her VCR.11
Susie and Astrid were on a wholly different footing; they were perfectly comfortable with each other, and Astrid even went to San Francisco to visit Susie. Susie’s stark cubicle on Nob Hill now looked like a little girl’s room, gussied up with dolls and pillows and posters and a Mickey Mouse phone. She used the kitchen cabinets to store her blouses.12
Susie by now was grateful to Astrid for making her life easier, as long as Astrid accepted the limited public