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IV President Eisenhower's Speech In "President Eisenhower's SPeech," the garish unreality of hotel life heightens a claustrophobic power struggle between Woolrich and his ailing mother. Despite the almost trivial plot, this chapter provides avivid portrait of Woolrich's psychological relationship with his mother, alternating between protection and entrapment, secrecy and revelation, love and death. One frantic day in 1957, a matter of months before his mother's death, Woolrich sought to protect her from the hotel fire raging beneath a distracting presidential radio address. The story shows these two residents of a small hotel suite finding small ways to assert their independence, while vainly hoping to deny a binding dependency they feel for each other. During most of Woolrich's adult life, after the failure of his unconsummated 1930 marriage to Gloria Blackton, until his mother's death in October 1957, they shared two or three small rooms in one of a series of Manhattan hotels. Woolrich's will specified that he be buried in the double crypt with his mother's remains after his own death in 1968. One can only assume that this account typifies the nature of their emotional life together during all those years. At nine o'clock that Wednesday evening, which was the twentieth of February, 1957, the President was to make a nationwide speech over the radio.! This had been announced some days before, as such things always are. When she heard of it my mother expressed an interest in listening in, and she mentioned it again as we sat at the table, a short while before the time scheduled for it to begin, I suppose in order to make sure it didn't escape my mind. But I had no intention of neglecting to put it on. It would have been difficult to avoid it, in any case, if one were to use the radio at all, for it was being carried by all four of the major networks and most of the smaller ones as well. However, she had too little diversion during the course of the tedious, protracted convalescence she was undergoing at the time for me to wish to deny her the privilege of listening. And I wanted to hear it myself, though perhaps with less of an intrinsic faith in whatever it was he had to 97 98 Blues of a Lifetime say. For she belonged to the generation of wholehearted national loyalties, pre-1914, and I belonged to the generation of wearied international cynicism, post-Munich.2 I had better explain that though she was not incapacitated in any degree-had full use of her limbs at all times and moved about the rooms at will-she had had a massive and almost fatal heart-attack less than a year before and had not been out of the apartment since. But the doctor, who came weekly, was finding steady improvement, and had promised that when the milder weather came around again she could go outdoors once more for a short while every day. Needless to say it was extremely inadvisable for her to move about too hurriedly, no matter what the occasion, or under the spur of any undue stress or fear or excitement. I had made it my job to keep such things at as great a distance as possible from her. This was the situation that existed as we put our emptied coffee cups back upon the table that night. I helped her to a more comfortable chair (the radio was in the same room in which we took our meals), and turned the dial to one of the stations at random. There were a few moments of dead air, as it is called in radio terminology, evidently the pause after whatever it was that had just ended. Then the national anthem began to play. Since we were alone in our own home, with only the eyes of God, let us say, upon us, I did not rise to my feet, no disrespect intended however; and she on her part was exempted from doing so by her infirm condition. The music stopped. "Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States," the announcer intoned. An impressive pause followed. Then the President's voice sounded. "My Fellow Citizens," he began, "May I first explain to you that for some days I have been experiencing a very stubborn cough, so if because of this I should have to interrupt myself this evening, I crave your indulgence...

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