Losing Mum and Pup (21 page)

Mum had spent a considerable portion of her career as Mrs. William F. Buckley Jr. trying to make Pup look good—not just in
the larger sense, but
presentable
. He was not a clotheshorse, my old man. Handsome, yes; slim-figured, to be sure; a bit of a slob? Um, yeah. Left to his own
devices, he’d show up in khakis, Top-Siders, and a ratty blazer. Mum was forever saying, “
Bill
, you
cannot
go out dressed in that
ridiculous
attire,” and then performing fashion triage on him, removing the tie with the stain, combing his hair, making him put on
shoes that were shined,
for heaven’s sake
. Her own sense of style was impeccable, and he delighted in it, even as he continued to shuffle along beside her, slightly
unkempt.

The first time I was aware that Mum was, well, not like most other moms was when I was fourteen and under lock and key of
the monks at boarding school. The day after parents’ weekend, at which they had dutifully shown up, one of the older boys
said to me, “Hey, Buckley, your mom’s a piece of ass.”

I stood there with face burning, trying to figure out what the appropriate response was. I wasn’t actually sure if what he’d
said constituted an insult, inasmuch as there was no higher accolade at Portsmouth Priory School, circa 1967, than “piece
of ass.” But it sounded like fightin’ words, so I let fly. The scuffle was over in about five seconds, with me on my back
on the floor and the older boy kneeling on my chest, explaining—sincerely, as I seem to remember—that he’d been referring
to “her clothes.” Well, okay, then.
^*

Further evidence that she was a bit different came from the school’s switchboard operator—a fat, gossipy woman who regularly
pored over the “Suzy Says” society column in the
New York Daily News
. “Your mutha went to a big party last night for Walter Cronkite!” she would yell out at me, into the crowded room where we
checked our mailboxes. “She wore an Eves Saint Lawrent dress! Musta cost a
fortune
!” she bellowed, occasioning smirks from thirty other boys as I attempted invisibility.

It was around this time that the phrase
the chic and stunning Mrs. Buckley
entered our lives. It first appeared—we think—
not
in
Women’s Wear Daily
, but in some other publication. Typically, Mum would use it when she was coming in from the garden—dirty, in jeans and black
T-shirt, hair pulled back, no makeup. (She was never more beautiful to me than when she appeared thusly.) She’d say, “So much
for the chic and stunning Mrs. Buckley.”

Chic and stunning, she was, whether in Oscar de la Renta or her favorite Bill Blass. Pup was so proud of her, despite his
own relative slovenliness. When she made the Best Dressed Hall of Fame, the Valhalla of Seventh Avenue, he called me up and
said, “Be sure to make a big fuss. This is apparently a
very
big deal.” I called her and made a big fuss. She changed the subject to the dog’s bladder infection.

I asked her, many years later, where she had gotten her high sense of style, given that she had grown up in provincial British
Columbia.
^*
“From me,” she said, not terribly interested in the subject. “I think I’ve always had an eye for my own sense of style. Mind
you,” she added heavily, “there have been
many
mistakes made. Fashion is fun,” she went on, “as long as you don’t embarrass your husband. I remember last year coming down
the staircase at the apartment in an outfit that I thought was absolutely, startlingly gorgeous, and your father said, ‘Ducky,
you look absolutely gorgeous. Where’s the rest of the dress?’ It was up to the kazoo.”

I
KNEW THE DRILL BY NOW
. Chris slid Jessica Mitford’s price list across the table. I wasn’t going to haggle over the embalming fee ($1,395). Or “dressing
and casketing of deceased” ($495). Whatever. Burial is, of course, pricier than cremation. There’s a lot of itemizing involved.

Truck rental? Do we really need a truck? He wasn’t
that
big.

Actually, a “truck” is the rolling stand that the casket rests on.

Aha. Well, yes, we’ll definitely want one of those.

Finally, it was time to go into the next room and look at coffins. Death’s showroom. All the latest models, a coffin for every
taste. Some of them would not have been out of place in, say, a
Sopranos
episode.

I remembered years ago Pup telling me about going into Frank Campbell’s in Manhattan to choose his father’s coffin and the
look of horror on the face of the salesman when he picked out the plainest. From his description of it, it sounded like something
they’d put a John Doe in for burial in Potter’s Field. I was six when Pup told me this story, and I vaguely remember asking
him why he’d picked out such a plain one for his pup. Wasn’t Grandfather rich? Yes, Pup said, but Grandfather was a humble
man and the son of a very poor Texas sheriff, and he was
very
religious and didn’t want God to think he needed to be buried in some $500 coffin. (This was 1958, bear in mind.)

There were some pretty plain coffins in Chris’s showroom. I liked them, but Chris pointed out that they were for Jewish funerals.
Jews—quite sensibly and admirably—shun funereal ostentation. (Either that, or they don’t have any money left after the bar
mitzvah.) I was tempted, but on closer inspection they looked almost as if they’d been hammered together by thirteen-year-olds
during woodwork at summer camp. I imagined the Buckley family seeing Pup wheeled up the aisle of St. Bernard’s in one of these
jobs and murmuring about how that cheap SOB Christo was clearly trying to shave a few nickels off the tab. Danny and I settled
on one made of pecan wood, a steal at $2,795.

“Now, I should let you know,” Chris said, “pecan
is
a slightly heavier wood than some others.” At first I didn’t get it, but then I inferred that he was trying gently to point
out that the coffin, fully loaded with Pup, who’d added a few pounds toward the end, might have the pallbearers popping hernias
or collapsing as they groaned their way up the church steps. We did some quick math: six hundred pounds gross weight divided
by eight (manly) pallbearers. No, that was doable. Sold.

We talked handles. This model, as others, came with or without handles. The coffin was grooved underneath on both sides so
that pallbearers could grip it with their fingers and then heft it onto their shoulders, à la, say, Princess Diana. “It’s
an elegant approach,” Chris said, “but I think in this case I would recommend handles. I could tell you stories.” Yes, I said,
let’s go with handles. So we settled on that and went back to the conference room for the final tabulating.
Ka-chung, ka-chung, ka-chung….
$11,105. But—remember, when it’s your turn to do all this—tax-deductible! Perhaps someday, some congressman will bravely
introduce a bill to remove the coffin deduction. I just hope I’m still alive to watch.

Finally, I said to Chris, “I’m going to want to put a few things in the coffin with him. Should I have you do that or is it
something I can do when you bring him to the house for the wake?”

Chris nodded thoughtfully, frowned, shifted in his seat, and said in a very soft voice, “Before I answer, let me ask you:
How frankly may I speak about the condition of Dad’s remains?”

Dan and I glanced at each other. I said, “Shoot.”

After the heart attack, he had lain on the floor for a while, facedown, before Julian found him. Blood had pooled. He looked
“a little flushed.” One doesn’t want one’s last glimpse of a parent to be a startling one that you can’t ever get out of your
head. My last glimpse of Mum, as she lay dying, is not the one I prefer to recall, but it comes to me at times and I have
to consciously put it back inside that locker in the hippocampus. I said, “If he’s not looking his best, why don’t I bring
you the items and you can put them in.”

He called me on my cell as Danny and I were driving home to say, “I was just with Dad, and good news, he’s looking much better.”

I
was about to leave for another meeting with Pup’s lawyer. Our now-regular meetings consisted of a series of tutorials on the
U.S. tax code, which seems to have developed over the years into a version of
The Da Vinci Code
. Figuring it out requires that you have a law degree and accounting degree; alternatively, you can hire lots of people who
do. Boiled down, it basically says, “We’ll split it with you.”

The phone rang. It was Sam Tanenhaus. Sam is Pup’s biographer as well as editor of
The New York Times Book Review
and—since then—also the “Week in Review” section. I respected Sam. I’d been hugely impressed by his biography of Whittaker
Chambers. Over a lunch, he’d told me he was now casting about for a new project. I’d said,
I’ve got one for you.
He’d leapt at the idea of writing a biography of WFB.

He said how sorry he was about the news. I thanked him. He said, “I’m calling because of something I’ve written for the newspaper.”

“Yes?”

“A month ago I was out to Stamford and had dinner with your father. He told me that he was thinking about committing suicide.”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“He said that he had discussed it with two priests and that they had told him that while it would be a sin, it would be a
forgivable sin.”

“Uh-huh. Well, he didn’t commit suicide.”

Pause. “Oh?”

“He died of a heart attack, Sam.” I began to feel uncomfortable.

Pause. “So that’s official?”

“Well, I have the death certificate here in front of me. It says under cause of death, ‘Cardio-pulmonary arrest.’ So, yes,
that would appear to make it official.”

“Well, that’s why I called. I wanted to run it by you.”

We rang off politely. My mind was reeling, but I went on with getting ready for the lawyer. Then, a few minutes later, I did
a sort of mental double take. Had he said “something
I’ve written
for the paper”? I called him back.

“Sam,” I said, “sorry, I’m a bit confused, with everything going on. Did you say you’ve already written something about this
for the paper?”

“Yes.”

“You mean, you’re running a story about this?”

“Yes.”

I took a breath. “Sam,” I said, “if Pup told you that, and I don’t doubt that he did, he was surely telling you that in your
capacity as his biographer. Not as a reporter for
The New York Times
.”

I saw a headline: I
N
F
INAL
D
AYS
, B
UCKLEY
C
ONTEMPLATED
S
UICIDE
. Fine, but run that through the blogosphere and in thirty seconds it becomes B
UCKLEY
K
ILLED
S
ELF
. This is not mere filial hysteria on my part. This is America.

I wrote a book some years ago about the UFO world and learned a bit about what passes for “evidence” out there in this great,
credulous nation of ours. I’ve read a little, too, about the Kennedy assassination. Roughly the same percentage of Americans
believe in UFOs as believe that JFK was killed in a conspiracy. (Seventy-five.)

I knew Sam Tanenhaus to be a writer who gets his facts straight, but given the way America often connects its dots, I felt
I had legitimate reason to fear that many would leap to the conclusion that the Lion of the Right had offed himself. And this
was not a story I wanted to read and see rereported and twisted around as it zinged through cyberspace. And frankly, there
was this, too: My father wasn’t forty-eight hours dead. Why was Sam subjecting me to this?

After a pause, he said, “That’s why I called you.”

“Well, Sam,” I said, shifting gears, “I think that were such a story to appear in the paper, a great number of people would
be very upset.”

“You do?”

“Yes. It’s one thing if this appears on page 684 or whatever of your biography. You have every right to include it. But it’s
another matter if it appears in
The New York Times
as a news story. People are going to leap to conclusions, never mind what the death certificate says.”