Chapter 108: Settling In

I was sworn in as a Congressman on January 3^rd, 1991, as the 102 ^nd Congress convened.

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”

Everybody in Congress, all the Representatives and the new third of the Senate, must take this oath. It dates to 1884.

Both Brewster and Chuck, my new Chief of Staff, insisted I had to have Marilyn and the kids there for my swearing in. That meant we had to take them out of school for the day. I argued against it but was told this was not optional. They had to be there!

In most ways, it really is optional. It is nothing but a gigantic photo op. For one thing, all 435 of us are sworn in at one go, in the House. Since no photos are allowed, nobody can see us. Instead, they have a bunch of empty rooms with flags and backdrops set up, and photographers. You get called into one of the rooms, with your family and whoever else you want in the photo, and it all gets faked! You could bring in the cast of Sesame Street and be photo’d with your right hand raised and your left hand on Grover’s head and it would be totally legit. In fact, donate enough money to the campaign and you can be in the background, smiling as Congressman Needsdough gets sworn in. You don’t even have to be sworn in with your hand on a Bible. There are no laws saying you have to. It can be on a Koran or the Book of Mormon or a set of car keys. I settled for the small King James Version bible I had received as a gift from my godmother after my confirmation. That was back in the days when I still lived at home and Hamilton hadn’t totally gone crazy yet.

We didn’t get silly. We asked Suzie if she wanted to come down with her family for the fun and games. She had a good laugh, but then called us back the next day. John couldn’t take the time off, but he had (foolishly to my way of thinking) agreed to take care of the boys for a couple of days and she flew down. She couldn’t believe we had sent a plane for her, and then I told her she’d have to come down with just her husband one day and waggled my eyebrows at her. Both she and Marilyn turned bright red and spluttered, which made it money well spent.

We had also asked Harriet and Big Bob to come down, but they were going on a Caribbean cruise, and couldn’t make it. They did, however, accept my offer to have them flown to San Juan, Puerto Rico, so they wouldn’t have to fly commercial. They promised to see us after the trip.

I didn’t invite my parents. After Suzie and I reconnected, I prevailed on her to get in touch with dear old Mom and Dad. She was nervous about it but made calls. Afterwards she called me, crying. Our mother was damning me to no end, and complained that Suzie wasn’t being supportive, and was no better than I was. Dad, on the other hand, would be happy to see her again. She should visit and meet his new girlfriend. He wasn’t overly happy with her contacting me, either, since I had caused so much trouble, even if some of it had been forced on me by Hamilton. What a pair of fucking nut jobs! No, I didn’t need either one of them anywhere near me or my family or the United States Congress.

We were still figuring out the commuting and living thing, and I was still at the L’Enfant Plaza. We had closed on the house on the 30^th but our designer wasn’t through with it yet. I wasn’t surprised when the designer Stayman-Huestis had recommended turned out to be a ‘Republican’ designer, the wife of a Senate committee staffer. I had this horrible feeling that by the time she was done, the interior decorations would end up costing more than the Hereford house total, including property, pool, and pool house! She had put off the grand unveiling by a week already, and I was sure I was going to need a very strong drink before I went inside.

The commuting-airplane angle was working out neatly. I had put Lloyd Jarrett and his partners together with Jake Junior, and they had produced an interesting plan. Junior had said, we’re in the equity business, so let’s do this as an equity deal. The Buckman Group would come up with the money, partly through sales of my shares, and buy an appropriately sized chunk of Executive Charters. Executive Charters would use this capital investment to purchase a mint condition slightly used Gulfstream IV and a brand-new Bell LongRanger. I would have primary use of them, the Buckman Group would get secondary use, or a substitution of something equivalent, and they would also be available for charitable or mercy flights. That sort of thing was always good as public relations and had a few tax benefits - and it’s simply good citizenship.

Marilyn and the kids came down on Friday night, and we got our first look at the new house, now ready for us to move into. Imagine House Beautiful, only nicer. The designer showed us around, and assured us the price was quite reasonable, that price being somewhere in between “Holy Christ!” and “Oh my God!” The kitchen was the type with the matching $10,000 custom pots-and-pans set hanging from the mahogany rack over the granite island. I used a skillet that probably cost $500 to make burgers with. I was worried that the gods of décor would shoot lightning down through the roof at us.

Saturday was going to be a big day for Marilyn and me. We had a very important dinner to attend, and we had needed to dig up a sitter for the kids. I didn’t know anybody in the neighborhood, so I simply asked around my office. Anybody have a kid interested in babysitting Saturday night, maybe late, good money? It worked out that Sherry Longbottom, my Legislative Director, had a niece going to school at Georgetown and doing some intern work on the side with us, and she could do with a few bucks. She came over Saturday afternoon with a pile of textbooks. That gave her the time to meet Charlie, Holly, Molly, and Dum-Dum, and time enough for us to feed them before we ran out. Our security detachment would stay out of sight in the basement office we had set up for them. Sherry’s niece took over feeding the kids, and Marilyn and I went upstairs to clean up and get dressed. It was an important dinner, black tie, so I was in my tuxedo and Marilyn had a new black evening gown.

We were dining at the White House.

President Bush was giving a dinner for all the new Congressmen and Senators, along with the various Congressional and Senate leadership. I had bought a tux back when I began donating to the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in the early Eighties. With the kind of money I was donating, you get invited to a fair number of black-tie affairs. The nice thing is that when you buy your own tux, you can buy what you want. It’s really nothing more than a fancy black suit. I went with a full vest instead of a cummerbund, bought several types of black bow ties and such, and formal shirts in several different colors, all with French cuffs. By the time I was finished, I could have worked as a busboy at any number of excellent Washington restaurants!

For the White House, I selected a crisp white shirt and some gold Rensselaer cufflinks Marilyn had gotten me for my 30^th birthday. Marilyn wore a new black evening gown with a slit up her right leg to a few inches above the knee, and slender straps up top. It had some interesting, but tasteful, cleavage on display. Our children were predictable in their opinions when we came down the stairs.

Holly oohed and said, “Mommy, you’re pretty!” Molly agreed with her.

“Dad, what’s with the fancy suit?” asked Charlie. “You look like a waiter in that TV show last night.”

My wife rolled her eyes and bit her tongue to keep from laughing. I just gave him a deadpan, “I’m auditioning for a new job.”

“I thought you just started a new job,” he replied.

“That one might not work out,” I told him. Marilyn started giggling at that, so I shuffled her out the door before the kids could say anything else. To her I said, “I sure hope they serve drinks at this thing!”

“Maybe you should stop off somewhere and buy a hip flask,” she laughingly said.

“Sounds like a good gift for Father’s Day.”

We had our driver take us in a limousine over to the White House. The plus side, if you could call it that, to the new security regime was that nobody was going to photograph me in my ‘foreign sports car’. I should have sold it, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

We pulled up to the White House behind a black limousine, and out of the car stepped John Boehner and his wife. When he saw who we were, he stopped and waved. I waved back, and when Marilyn climbed out, I led her over to them. “John, good to see you again. Marilyn, this is John Boehner, another Republican Congressman like me. We met him and his wife Debbie during Orientation, remember?”

“Pleased to meet you,” came from the others. We shook hands all the way around.

The Boehners went in ahead of us and we followed. Once inside, we took off our coats and handed them to a liveried waiter. Like me John was wearing a trench coat, although I had a fedora on. Debbie was wearing a long camelhair coat with a hood attached. Marilyn, however, was wearing a calf length sable coat and a matching sable cap. I had bought it for her for Christmas, as a thank you for putting up with the election nonsense. Marilyn wasn’t big on fur coats, but she had owned a rabbit fur coat in high school, and this was much, much nicer! For all her complaints about what I spent, I would occasionally see her running her hands through the fur and smiling. I would laugh at her and she would blush and tell me I was imagining things.

After we were relieved of our outerwear, we were directed through a set of magnetometers towards a hall. The Secret Service was being vigilant, and they took my cane (dark mahogany, with an oiled bronze head) and examined it. I knew security would get worse in the future.

We ended up in a line outside a reception hall. A young lady greeted us and told us the drill. The President and First Lady would greet us, we would shake hands and pose for a photo, and then we would continue into a reception for a few drinks. After that we would move on to a dinner, after which the President would say a few words. Then she was further down the line for the newest arrivals.

After we were left in the line, John turned to me and said, “I’ve seen you with the cane a few other times as well. You need that all the time?”

“Mostly just in the evenings. My knee stiffens up in the evening and starts bothering me,” I answered.

“If you don’t mind my asking, what’s wrong with your knee?”

I smiled. It was a common enough question, and I gave my usual answer. “I used to be a paratrooper, and I made one jump too many. I had a hard landing and wrecked my knee.”

“Well, no wonder!” exclaimed Debbie Boehner. “That’s so dangerous! Weren’t you worried your parachute wouldn’t open?”

I couldn’t help it. I grinned at her and said, “I never worried about that. Our parachutes had a hundred percent guarantee.”

“A guarantee? How do you guarantee a parachute?” she asked.

“Well, if your chute fails to open, all you have to do is take it back, and they’ll give you a brand new one, free of charge!” I answered.

Debbie’s eyes opened wide at that, but her husband chuckled. Marilyn said, “Please, don’t get him started! You wouldn’t believe how many jokes they have about this stuff.”

“Like what?” asked John, laughing.

“Like, ‘We’ve never left anybody up there’ and ‘It’s not the fall that gets you, it’s the sudden stop at the end!’ I used to hear these guys all the time back in the day.” She turned to face me and wagged a finger at me. “It used to get old even then!”

“I would have paid good money to watch you jump out of a plane, good money!” I replied.

“You guys were crazy,” commented John. “I enlisted in the Navy but screwed up my back and they cut me loose while I was still in basic training.”

“My dad was Navy, but I get seasick, so I went into the Army instead,” I admitted.

By this time, we had worked our way up the line to where we would be going in soon, so we quieted down. Another young lady took our names and reported them. Then John and Debbie were ushered forward, where they shook hands and posed for pictures, and after that it was Marilyn and me. Forget about any impromptu discussions of foreign policy; it was “Thank you for coming,” followed by smiles and the flash of a camera. Then we were off and into the reception.

We circulated around the room, being polite and trying to make small talk, but it was a bit surreal to both of us. I mean, this was theWhite House, the home of the President of the United States! Congressman or not, what in the fuck was I doing being so presumptuous as to think I could be here? At one point I whispered to Marilyn, “This is just so fucking weird!”