A CHANGE IN PATTERSON’S SPIRITS, or condition, or in some interior weather system of her own took a long time in coming, but when it came she seemed to turn around as on the proverbial dime. April on the banks of the St. Mary’s, sunshine, soft warm winds blowing up the Florida coast, camellias beginning to bloom, egrets and cormorants in the air. Josephine came down for a post-Easter visit, to bring cheer or at least companionship to her drooping, ailing, perhaps permanently melancholic sister, also to get away from the still frozen Midwest, but instead found Alicia already on the bustle, a spring in her short steps, full of talk, plans for Newsday, though at the same time second-guessing herself about her strength and nerve: Did she still “have it”? Was she ready to go back and run a paper, a staff, a newsroom? One morning, after Alicia had led them on a panting, spirited hike through the woods, the two sisters were relaxing on the little dock by the river, talking of this and that, when up from the dark waters beneath them, climbing one of the support poles, appeared one of the river’s many water moccasins, sleek, glistening, deadly; Josephine could see the snake, now gliding in their general direction across the gray wood planks of the dock, but didn’t know if Alicia had seen it; Alicia, still talking, rose to her feet, grabbed a nearby oar, raised it, smacked the snake to snake heaven; “You’re ready,” Josephine told her. “Go back to work.”
Two weeks later, halfway home so to speak, she joined husband Harry in Louisville for the seventy-second running of the Kentucky Derby; a day in the sun in the company of the country’s horse-racing ton, those grimly beaming men in linen suits, their blondish wives in floral-print dresses, wide-brimmed hats, drinks in their hands, a military band playing “My Old Kentucky Home” over and over again. As it happened, this was the year Harry Guggenheim’s horse won the Derby. There’s a photo of the four of them in the Winner’s Circle: From left to right, Mr. Harry Frank Guggenheim, splendid in a double-breasted linen suit, sporty fedora on his head, racetrack binoculars hanging from one shoulder, proudly holding the reins of his Cain Hoy Stables thoroughbred Dark Star; the fine bay horse himself, sternly handsome as a matinee idol despite the frilly necklace of flowers around his neck; his rider, the tiny, fierce Panamanian jockey Manuel Ycaza; and then the owner’s wife, Mrs. Harry F. Guggenheim, not looking too bad at all, in fact looking pretty good, all things considered seemingly happy to be where she was, at least for the time being.
Then, late Sunday morning, with the weekend winding down, with Harry, his voice hoarse from giving interviews, though still giving more interviews—on his way back to Cain Hoy, Patterson took a plane north, to New York, Falaise, and Newsday.