He was a stern father who seldom smiled, but he wasn’t who the press made him out to be. Truth is, I was a little afraid of him until I was about eight. But he was more present to me than my mother. He was never one to talk much—at least at the dinner table. When he was on the phone, it was a different matter. He talked in a steady stream. I was amazed at the different personalities he evinced. Like a Shakespearian actor, sometimes he was winsome and charming, and when he talked that way, he talked with his whole body, smiling and making jokes to whatever CEO or banker or stock trader was on the other end of the line. Other times he was aggressive, commanding, invincible. Other times frighteningly brutal, whatever it took to get the job done.
The first time I realized he loved me—the real
