Stirring It Up with Molly Ivins (11 page)

10

UNDAUNTED BY THE HORROR OF SEPTEMBER
11, 2001, Molly returned to the City of Light in November 2002, breaking a long-standing tradition of family Thanksgiving at home.

She was determined to see Paris again, to make up for all those times she was too busy to go where she really wanted to go. Friends who joined her from as far away as New York and New Orleans still talk about it.

John Pope and his wife, Diana Pinckley, flew in from New Orleans. He is a reporter with the
Times-Picayune,
and she is a widely respected communications consultant. Pope, as he is generally called, had known Molly since his university days at UT and had shared many a meal at her home and in local eateries. It was my good fortune that John keeps meticulous notes on his travels, so rather than paraphrasing his chronicle of events, I've selected excerpts from his Paris diary, below.

Molly somehow managed to score three eight-pound turkeys—not bad in a country where the fourth Thursday in November is just another day—unless you're dining in an elegant St. Louis flat lent by San Antonio millionaire and Molly fan Bernard Lifschutz.

Thanksgiving Day began with Molly and Eden Lipson, a former
New York Times
editor and Molly's surrogate mother at the
Times
, removing quills from the birds with their eyebrow tweezers, while Pope and Pinckley assembled crudités and adorned each place setting with a little chocolate turkey that they had carefully brought from New Orleans. Guests began arriving around 6 p.m. The guest list included a foreign correspondent who had known Molly and his wife; a pianist from Plano, Texas; Molly's goddaughter, Nicole, an architect,
and her beau, Philippe, an editor at
Liberation
, a progressive publication started by French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre; journalist and author Charles Kaiser and his partner, Joe Stouter, who contributed Molly's much-loved haricots verts and a sublime Roquefort; and Joe and Charles's friend Mark Trilling, a nephew of Lionel and Diana Trilling, two of the twentieth century's most prominent authors and intellectuals. Other friends, including Tamara Kreinin, who now works with health programs for women and children at the United Nations Foundation, Rosalind Hinton, who teaches at Tulane University, and Roz's niece Nora, brought wine and Veuve Clicquot. Pope was bartender.

Of the experience, he wrote:

Charles, Eden, and I carved. Before we dined, we stood in a big circle—that flat had plenty of room—and Molly reminded us all of the importance of the day—to give thanks for our blessings and remember those who aren't so well off.

Dinner was at the dining table and the massive coffee table. In addition to the aforementioned beans, we feasted on baked sweet potatoes, creamed onions, two types of dressing and three styles of cranberry sauce from Neal and one from us, which we had found in Harrods Food Halls earlier in the week. Wine flowed.

Sometime during the evening, Molly decreed that, in honor of the apartment owner's hometown, we all should do something called the San Antonio Shuffle. We were waving napkins and doing a second line à la New Orleans.

Because we ate so much, Eden decreed that we take a good walk before tucking into dessert. So off we went into the brisk night to stroll the Ile St.-Louis. . . . We all marveled at our good fortune to be at that dinner in that city. All because of Molly. . . . Neal [Johnston; Eden's husband] had made four pies with precisely measured spices he brought over in medicine bottles. The pies: lemon, chocolate chess, pumpkin Cointreau, and a cranberry concoction. The last guests left around midnight. Pinckley cleaned up until about 12:30, when Molly ordered her to stop.

Susan Concordet, one of the Smith classmates Molly stayed in touch with over the years, couldn't join her because Susan's husband, Jean, was dying of cancer. Nicole, the Concordets' daughter, represented the family. Molly and Susan had
formed a strong bond during their time together at Smith. Both were somewhat estranged from their families, and Molly kept her counsel about her family's wealth.

“She was very discreet about her family,” Susan said during a telephone interview from France. “I never knew Molly was rich. She never talked about it, except when her brother was sick. She just said her father was a lawyer, not that he was the president of an oil company. Once, she made chili con carne for me and we talked all night. She told me stories; I was impressed by that easy, free, storytelling tradition. But I never knew she was famous until she came to Paris and spoke to the Democratic party here, and when she had that Thanksgiving party at the Ile St.-Louis. I knew she knew impressive friends, but I didn't know
how
famous. But then, that was Molly.”

MOLLY
'
S FAMOUS
“
ORPHANS AND STRAYS
” Christmas dinners were legendary. Give friends half a chance and anyone who participated will tell you a tale from one of them. One year she decided to make
caneton à l'orange
, known to the rest of us as roasted duck with orange sauce or, by its more familiar name, duck
à l'orange
.

The way these dinners worked, Molly provided the main event and everyone else brought a side dish, salad, bread, dessert, or something to drink. As always, the guest list might range from ten to twenty. One never knew. Courtney Anderson still gets a giggle out of recalling the orange duck evening.

“So Molly bought all these ducks and had them lying out on the counter to come to room temperature. She had rubbed them with butter and herbs and more butter and who knows what-all inside. Anyway, she counted out the ducks, and counted to herself the approximate number of dinner guests. She made periodic visits to the living room to survey the celebrants, refill wine-glasses, and pour more eggnog, only to return to the kitchen and notice what seemed to be an empty space where she was sure a duck had been.

“Figuring she had miscounted, she ran the numbers again, this time certain she was one duck short. Failing to associate a vanished poodle with a missing duck, Molly rejoined her guests momentarily, only to return just as Athena bolted with duck number two locked in her perfectly groomed aquiline jaws.”

Molly quickly contemplated the probability of rescuing the duck and possibly quietly assigning it to her plate—it would be instantly recognizable as the duck with the canine tooth marks—if she could catch Athena.

Which, of course, she couldn't.

The bad news was the purloined ducks were never to be seen again; the good news was Athena was strangely subdued throughout the remainder of the evening.

Molly's house sat on a quarter-acre corner lot with lines of demarcation intersecting at the bottom of a steep slope. Somewhere down there, in addition to duck bones, is a purple Birkenstock sandal that vanished several years ago during one of those visits when I brought only one pair of shoes—the ones I wore. Fortunately Austin's only Birky store at the time had another pair.

Athena's secret hiding place area was so overgrown that no one save the surveyor was ever known to have set foot at the bottom. In fact, it was so overgrown that it was a year or two before Molly knew it was also home to a lovely fox family. Apparently Mr. and Mrs. Fox lived in one section and Athena's stash occupied another.

It was here that the ebony purebred standard poodle sequestered shoes, bones, rubber balls, and as of that Christmas, butter-rubbed ducks.

Molly's response was predictable: “
Caneton à l'orange
,” she intoned, in her best French accent. “What did you expect? She's a French poodle.”