"So what is it, Mr. Ogle?"
"Two people talking to each other."
"And what exactly are we talking about?"
"Surfing."
"Surfing?"
"Media is like a wave," Ogle said. "It's powerful and uncontrollable. If you're good, you can surf on it for a little bit, get a boost from it. Gary Hart surfed on that wave for a few weeks in 1984, after he won New Hampshire from Mondale. But by the time the Illinois primary came around, he had fallen off the surfboard. The wave broke over him and swamped him. He tried again in 1988 but that time he just plain drowned. Perot rode the wave for a month or two in '92, then he lost his nerve."
Ogle turned in his chair and focused in on Mary Catherine now. "You and your family, you've been having a day at the beach. You've been out wading in the shallow waters where everything is warm and safe. But the currents are tricky and suddenly you find that you have been swept far out into the deep black water by a mysterious undertow. And now, great waves are cresting over your heads. You can get up and ride those waves wherever they take you, or you can pretend it's not happening. You can keep treading water, in which case the tsunami will break on top of you and slam you down on to the bottom."
Mary Catherine just kept her mouth shut and stared into her water glass. She was feeling several powerful emotions at once and she knew that if she opened her mouth she'd probably regret it.
There was fear. Fear because she knew that Ogle was exactly right. Resentment because this total stranger was presuming to give her advice. And there was a frightening sense of exhilaration, wild thrilling danger, almost sexual in its power.
Fear, resentment, and exhilaration. She knew that her brother, James, was experiencing the same feelings. And she knew that he was ignoring the fear, swallowing the resentment, and giving in to the exhilaration. Holding up his hand in the V sign, egging on the crowd. It was unforgivable. A hundred million people were going to see that.
She looked at Ogle. Ogle was looking back at her, a little bit sideways, not wanting to confront her directly.
"There's a third outcome you didn't mention," she said.
"What's that?" Ogle said, startled.
"You start riding the wave because you enjoy the thrill of it. But you don't know what you're doing. And you end up getting slammed into the rocks."
Ogle nodded. "Yes, the world is full of bad surfers."
"My brother, James, is a bad surfer. He's a really bad surfer," Mary Catherine said, "but he thinks he's good. And he seems to have located a really big wave."
Ogle nodded.
"Now, I have no idea, still, what it is that you want, or what you are proposing, or what you think you're going to get out of it," Mary Catherine said. "But I can tell you this. James is a problem. My father and our lawyer Mel and I would all agree on that. And without committing myself or my family to anything financial, let me say that if you can provide some advice in dealing with this problem, it would not be forgotten."
"You did what!?" Mel said.
She knew he was going to say it. "I asked him for advice," Mary
Catherine said. She was in the back of the limousine, riding back to the hospital.
"You shouldn't have done that," Mel said. "You shouldn't even have met with the guy without my being there."
"I was very good. I'm not the sap you think I am, Mel. I didn't make any kind of financial commitment. It was just a couple of people having lunch together, talking. And I asked him for advice."
"About what?"
"About James."
Mel sounded disappointed, wounded. "Mary Catherine. Why would you ask a total stranger for advice in dealing with your own flesh and blood?"
"Because half of my family is dead, or nearly dead, you're away on business, and James is being a complete asshole."
"What do you mean? What's James doing?"
She explained it all to him: the wave, the V sign, the cheers of the crowd, the hysterical reaction of the businessmen inside the bar.
But Mel didn't get it. He listened, he understood, but he hadn't seen it. He hadn't seen the emotion on people's faces. He didn't understand the power of what was going on here. To him it was all TV, it was all Smurfs, and he couldn't bring himself to take it seriously. He didn't get it.
She was glad she had talked to Cy Ogle, who definitely did get it.
"What did this guy say?" Mel said.
"His name is Cy Ogle," Mary Catherine said, "and he said that he would think about it."
"What kind of a name is Ogle?"
"That's beside the point. But he said that it was originally Oglethorpe, which is a big name in Georgia. But somewhere along the line someone had a bastard child, who ended up with the name Ogle, and he's descended from that person."
"So he comes from a long line of bastards."
"Mel!"
"Don't Mel me. He charmed you with some kind of southern shit, didn't he? I can smell it from New York. Told you a bunch of wacky tales about his picturesque family down in the land of cotton, seemed like the nicest guy in the world."
"Mel. Be honest. You don't know anything about handling the media. Do you?"
"I happen to know a lot about it."
"Then how did that happen today? That thing with James? If you're so good at handling the media, then why is it that everyone in the country has the impression, today, that Dad is running for president?"
Mel didn't say anything. She knew she had him.
"Because of what happened today, we have to have a media person," Mary Catherine said. "It doesn't have to be Cy Ogle. But depending on what he does with James, it might very well be."
Mel sounded glum. "I hate the media."
"I know you do, Mel," she said. "That's why we're in deep shit now. We need someone who loves the media. And I can tell you that whatever imperfections Cy Ogle might have, he definitely loves his work."
22
William A. Cozzano was a lousy patient. mary catherine had never understood this until she became a doctor in her own right, and got into the habit of judging people's ability to receive medical treatment.
Good patients were as close as possible to being laboratory rats. They were meek, docile, cooperative, and not very intelligent. The intelligent ones gave you fits because they were always asking questions. They knew full well that they were as smart as the doctor was. That if they were to go off and enroll in a medical school, they'd know as much as the doctor did within a few years.
William A. Cozzano was one of those patients who disputed everything the doctor said. Who forgot to take his medicine - deliberately. Who pushed his recovery schedule into the realm of the absurd. Partly it was a holdover from the war, where you had to keep going even when you were wounded, and partly it came from football, where the standard treatment for broken bones was a layer of athletic tape.
The stroke had been hell for him because it left him unable to argue with his doctors. Mary Catherine had seen it in his face. A doctor would come in and tell him to turn off CNN and get some rest, because he needed sleep. Dad would get a certain look on his face, the look that signaled the beginning of intellectual combat, the look that he got when he was marshaling his arguments and preparing to demolish an opponent. Then he would open his mouth and gibberish would come out. The doctor would turn off the TV, turn off the lights, and leave him there in the dark.
He had been much the same way during his four-day stay at the Radhakrishnan Institute in California. But there it wasn't quite so bad. It was a cross between a research institute and an exclusive private hospital. From the very first contacts the Cozzanos had with the Institute, it was made plain to them that here, the patient wasn't just a laboratory rat. Here, the patient was a partner in his own treatment and recovery. He was consulted on a number of major decisions. He sat in on the meetings where recovery strategy was discussed. These people weren't afraid of intelligent, questioning patients. They welcomed them. They preferred them.