An Interview with Nancy Reagan

By Laurence I. Barrett

"All you 're thinking is you ve got to hold yourself together..

Control. Along with cool charm, good looks and an obsessive desire to walk in her husband's shadow, control is a buttress of Nancy Reagan's persona.

That willed restraint is visible in hurly-burly crowd scenes, in interviews that usually leave reporters unsatisfied and on the rare occasions when she speaks from a platform. And the control is there just four days after the attempt on her husband's life as she greets a correspondent in the East Wing sitting room on the second floor of the White House. The chamber has been Reaganized. There are two jars of jelly beans and a dish of bonbons. A pair of massive traditional sofas has come cross country from their former home in Pacific Palisades.

The First Lady's friends say that she feels "guilty" about being * when the slug tore into Reagan's left side. She has spent the week visiting hospital rooms--the President's and those of the three men shot with him. She has been consoling Sarah Brady, knowing that a slight change in the angle of the gun barrel could have laid Reagan as low as Jim Brady, or worse.

But her smile is as warm as the sunshine that engulfs the room. In a beige tweed skirt and tasteful silk blouse, with every dark blond hair in place and her huge hazel eyes clear, Nancy Reagan looks as much like spring as the tulips and hyacinths that festoon the room. And when she starts talking, the control is there. No, she had not worried much about physical assault, not any more. Reagan had been threatened frequently while Governor in Sacramento; in 1968 a security man shot at someone trying to fire-bomb the Governor's residence.

"It was the tenor of the times," she says of that period. "But during the past campaign, and certainly since the election, the only thing we felt was such warmth and affection that [fear of attack] wasn't up front Her restraint begins to dissolve as she goes over the events of Bloody Monday. She was on the third floor of the mansion, in guest quarters that are still being renovated, when a Secret Service agent told her: "There has been a shooting. The President has not been hit, but he is at the hospital." She decided to leave immediately, even though, as she recalls it, she was told, "It is such bedlam there, so much confusion, maybe it would be better if you stayed here a while."

When she arrived outside the emergency room she was at first informed, by Mike Deaver, that Reagan had been wounded, but only slightly. Her worry escalated slowly. Moments later, doctors told them that it was more serious than Deaver had thought, and she saw her pale, prostrate husband.

What did she feel? Fear? Anger?

"There's an unreal kind of feeling ... It's hard to describe. There's an unrealness to it..." Nancy Reagan gropes for words. something rare for her. Usually she dismisses an unwelcome question politely, as if it were a boring suitor. This time she seems as interested in finding the answer as the reporter is.

"You're frightened, sure," she says finally. "Of course you're frightened, especially because he was having trouble breathing. But it just seemed so unreal. And I guess you ... must go into a sort of a ..."

The thought trails off. She sighs.

She hugs herself with both arms as if to feel the image before she speaks it. "Then all you're thinking is you've got to hold yourself together and not be a bother to anybody so that they can do whatever has to be done."

What had to be done at that moment was an exploration for abdominal bleed ing. Nancy's recollections now rush out.

"They put me in a tiny, tiny little room, really tiny, no window, and it was hot.

There were so many people running back and forth in the halls, police and doctors and a lot of noise, a lot of people shout ing, 'Get back, get out of the way.' " Then she went to the hospital chapel to say a prayer and weep a little.

Nancy and the man she still insists on calling Ronnie have been as close as any couple can be in politics. She travels with him constantly, she fusses over small details of his care and feeding, she casts looks of adoration or amusement, as the EE scene demands. Now, in the worst mo- ments of their 29-year marriage, she was demoted to spectator. That passed I in a few hours. The day after, she was bringing him jelly beans and his slip pers. She also accompanied the White House physician, Daniel Ruge, when he told Reagan that Jim Brady had been seriously wounded. Reagan turned teary-eyed at the news.

All week two schools of thought were in conflict: a concession that at tacks on the President are inevitable vs. outraged demands that something -- anything -- be done. Reagan's eldest child, Maureen, went on television to pronounce her angry demand that violence be quelled by public indigna tion. Where does Nancy stand? "I guess I'm somewhere in between there." Her composure is back and for once she ventures into what she usu ally pretends is terra incognita for her, public policy. The excursion is signaled with an apologetic little laugh. "You know, I'd be happier if they didn't make the violent movies that they make and maybe titillate people who are not mentally stable. I'd be hap pier if sentences ... if people were brought to trial more quickly and if the whole thing [criminal justice] were tightened up. I think that would cer tainly be an improvement."

What about the ubiquity of psychopaths and firearms? The answer is rapid: "You know Ronnie's position.

He just doesn't believe that's where the problem is." In fact, she notes, Reagan mentioned his continued opposition to gun control to several visitors in his hos pital room.

Her husband's convalescence will dominate Nancy Reagan's next several weeks. Eventually there will be trips and public appearances. Maybe she will nag Reagan about wearing a bulletproof vest, as he occasionally did during the presidential campaign. But will they be able to go into crowds comfortably again?

"Well, I don't know how it's going to feel the first time. I don't know. It really comes down to this: you have a job to do and you do it the best you can. Time will tell if it's going to be harder." Certainly Nan cy Reagan will need all the control she has.

-- By Laurence I. Barrett

*Mrs. Reagan had attended a luncheon at the Georgetown home of Michael Ainsley, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. She returned to the White House minutes before the attack.

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