American Wife (77 page)

“You deserve a gigantic apple plaque,” Ella says. Ella is merely making a joke; she thinks I went to see my mother this afternoon and doesn’t know about Gladys Wycomb’s threat, doesn’t know what a long day it’s been. In any case, I’ve already lost track of the chrome apple. I believe Jessica’s assistant Belinda carried it away.

Jessica says to me, “Take it easy tonight, okay?” She looks at Ella. “Make her relax.”

“The same to you,” I say.

“I’m not the one in the eye of the storm,” Jessica says. Abruptly, she jumps out of the elevator and hugs me, and as she does, she whispers in my ear so Ella can’t hear, “You did the right thing.”

Ella and I sit in the Family Kitchen, and Ella pulls cheese, hummus, and baby carrots out of the refrigerator. She isn’t a fan of the food here—even though downstairs the chefs will fix anything we want exactly to our specifications—so I always make sure we’re stocked in the residence when she visits. I call down to ask for a Cobb salad for myself, and Ella and I analyze the evening for a while, discussing the impressive delivery of the girl who recited “Theme for English B,” the vaguely and uncomfortably sexual overtones of the baton-twirling fourth-graders, and Ella says, “Did you talk to Senator Zimon tonight? I think he’s had hair implants.” She adds, “Does Jessica ever annoy you because she’s so perfect?”

I smile. “Does that mean Jessica annoys you because she’s perfect?”

“Not at all!” Ella grins her father’s grin. “No, I’m totally not threatened by this woman who’s close to my own age, who you spend all your time with and like better than me. Not one little bit!”

“I think the world of Jessica, but I only have one daughter, and there’s no one I love more. Would you like to sit on my lap?” I am mostly teasing, as Ella is, too, but she rises, turns, and lowers her rear end onto my thighs for a second. I run my palm down her back, over her still-long caramel-colored hair. Then she stands, reaching forward for a carrot that she dips in the hummus. She bites into it and says over one shoulder, with her mouth full, “What I’m really hungry for right now is a poop sandwich.”

“You’re a class act,” I say. This is an old joke between us, a requirement whenever eating a meal together after time apart. (Needless to say,
I
never make the joke, but Ella can be counted on.)

“Are you and Dad in a huge fight?” Ella asks.

“Why would you think that?”

“There has to be some fallout from your heart-to-heart with that Franklin guy.”

“Don’t worry about Dad and me. We’ll be just fine.”

“So what’s the thing you wanted to tell me?”

“Oh—” Should I do it? I no longer need to, now that I’ve been spared by Gladys Wycomb’s death, but I still could. What is the difference between giving voice to an overdue truth and being a parent who indulgently unburdens herself? Telling Ella wouldn’t be fair to her, I realize, it would be unsettling—not just because of her religious convictions but also because (I know Ella, and I, too, was an only child) it will make her think she could have had a brother or sister. I say, “It was nothing.”

Ella leans over and kisses my cheek. “Then I’m going to go call Wyatt. Tell Dad when he gets up here that I have something hilarious to show him on YouTube.”

I lightly swat her rear end. “Put your plate in the sink.”

When Ella is gone, I move to the West Sitting Hall, which has a beautiful lunette window overlooking the Old Executive Office Building, the Rose Garden, and the West Wing. I take a seat on a sofa and remain there for an hour and a half, reading. The book I left here yesterday,
Stop-Time
by Frank Conroy, has been waiting for me for twenty-four hours—all night last night and all day today, while I hopped from Arlington to Chicago to Riley. I enter it, and it welcomes me back.

Just before eleven, I set down the book and stand, and when I do, I remember Pete Imhof’s envelope, folded into the pocket of my linen jacket. I lift it out, and before I reach inside—the envelope is not sealed but already torn open—I see that on the back, in my own seventeen-year-old handwriting, it says,
Mr. and Mrs. Imhof.
Right away, I know exactly what it is, and with the tip of my thumb, I press against the envelope’s uneven bump, confirming its outline. (It’s so small! Not over half an inch at its widest point.) I pull out the note.

I will never be able to express to you how sorry I am,
my seventeen-year-old self explains in blue ink.
I know that I have caused you great pain. If there was anything in the world I could do to change what happened, I would. This pendant is something of mine Andrew once told me he liked, so I thought it might comfort you to have it.
My pulse is racing as I withdraw the pendant, and it is very tarnished—I will never polish it—and I look at it in my palm: my silver heart. This is what Andrew leaned in to touch that afternoon before he went to football practice, the gift my grandmother gave me for my sixteenth birthday. (Oh, the past, the past—how the memories of the people I loved sear me.)

I’m not sure what I’ll do with the pendant; it’s obviously an inexpensive piece of jewelry, not particularly suitable for a sixty-one-year-old woman and even less so for the first lady, but maybe I can wear it on such a long cord that it won’t be visible beneath my shirts. No object in the world could be dearer to me, and I marvel at the strangeness of its source. Perhaps, though I didn’t yet know I had it, this is what nudged me to go talk to Edgar Franklin—that Pete Imhof had given me back my heart.

I MEET CHARLIE
in the hall outside our bedroom. He is walking from the opposite direction, and I can tell that he’s trying to decide how friendly or unfriendly to be—after we make eye contact, he immediately looks away, then seems to realize how absurd it would be to pretend not to see me when it’s only the two of us, or only the two of us and Snowflake, who scampers off as soon as he notices me. A valet hovers outside our bedroom and opens the door as we approach, nodding once at Charlie. “Good night, Mr. President,” and then to me, “Good night, ma’am.”

“’Night, Roger,” Charlie says as we walk by, and I smile without speaking.

When the door closes behind us, I say, “Please don’t give me the silent treatment. If you’re angry, let’s talk about it.”

“
If
I’m angry? Lindy, how the fuck could you blindside me like this? You know how it looks if there’s not even unified support for the war in my own marriage? I’m the laughingstock of the world tonight, and I have to sit there clapping for baton twirlers.”

“Sweetheart, I think you’re overreacting. What I said to Edgar Franklin wasn’t a political statement.”

“What planet are you living on? When the first lady of the United States talks, it’s always political!” Between our bed and the flat-screen television above the fireplace is a sitting area: two wingback chairs, a sofa, and a wooden table off which Charlie grabs the remote control. “Hmm, I wonder what they’re saying on TV. I’m sure this isn’t all over the networks, because obviously, it was just you speaking as a private citizen, it wasn’t a political statement, and the media fully understands those subtle distinctions.” When the screen comes to life—it’s Fox News—there’s a clip of Charlie’s press secretary, Maggie Carpeni, saying this evening, “Listen, we
all
want to bring the troops home, every person in America does. The question isn’t if, it’s when, but the first lady knows as well as anyone else that a precipitous withdrawal would have disastrous consequences. She and the president stand united in their certainty that victory will come when stability and freedom have been achieved.”

“I don’t think that makes you look like a laughingstock at all,” I say. That Maggie is misrepresenting my own remarks doesn’t particularly bother me—first because of my belief that the fact of someone saying something about me, even when the someone is in my husband’s inner circle, cannot make it true or untrue, but also because I didn’t realistically imagine that the White House would leave my statements to Edgar Franklin untouched. That I said them once, in earshot of only Colonel Franklin and my agent Cal, has to be enough, at least for now—if I ever expect to reaffirm or expand on them, or to reassert my pro-choice stance, I will have to do so with great care. And Maggie or Hank can minimize what I said, but they can’t erase it. It exists. While I often have been surprised by the trusting nature of the American public, people clearly have become more wary during Charlie’s presidency, and so I can hope that at least some of them will assume the truth: that Edgar Franklin quoted me accurately, and that I meant exactly what it sounded like. Whether my words will have any positive effect, including on my husband, remains to be seen.

Charlie clicks to CNN, where the caption at the bottom of the screen says
ANTIWAR FATHER RETURNS TO GEORGIA.
Edgar Franklin stands before an electronic bouquet of no fewer than a dozen microphones; beside him is a plump woman identified as his sister Cheryl. It is still light out, which means the press conference must have been filmed several hours ago. “I believe that I’ve gotten as close as I will to the president,” he says. “Today I spoke from the heart to Mrs. Blackwell, and I choose to think she heard me and will act as a conduit to her husband. Whether he will listen is up to him. Although I’m going home tonight, I know that for as long as the war continues, it’s my responsibility to protest it.”

There is then a jump away from Edgar Franklin and back to the commentators in the studio—now the caption across the bottom reads
ET TU, ALICE
?—and one of the pundits, a man in a bow tie, says, “I’m sure all our viewers remember President Blackwell’s claim that he wouldn’t withdraw the troops even if Alice and Snowflake are the only ones left who support him—well, Mr. President, you may want to keep a very close watch on the first cat!” (This is yet another strangeness of being a famous person—that sometimes, on television or a website or in an article, a person addresses you directly but rhetorically directly, seemingly never imagining that you might see or read what they’re saying.)

The four commentators sit at a long, narrow triangle of a table, and they all chuckle at the bow-tied fellow’s quip. The show’s host says, “The big question now is whether the Dems will see this as an opportunity to kick Blackwell while he’s down vis-à-vis his Supreme Court nominee, Ingrid Sanchez.”

“Do you really want to watch this?” I ask. Charlie usually stays away from television news, believing the vast majority of producers and reporters have a liberal bias. Fox, obviously, gives him the most favorable coverage, but even with them, he gets fidgety after a couple minutes.

“Just don’t act like your betrayal isn’t the topic on everyone’s lips tonight.” Charlie raises the remote control and clicks off the TV. “If you think that, you’re kidding yourself.”

“Aren’t you at least happy that Edgar Franklin has gone home?”

“You mean because you sold me out and gave him what he’d come for?”

I sit on the brocade-covered bench at the end of our bed (the bed frame is French walnut, acquired by Theodore and Edith Roosevelt; the mattress is a custom-fitted Simmons Beautyrest World Class with memory foam and pillow top). Charlie is still standing behind one of the wingback chairs eight or nine feet away from me.

“I love you,” I say.

“Maybe you should sleep in the other room.”

“Did you hear what I just said?”

“You want us to kiss and make up, and then what will you do tomorrow, join Greenpeace? I still don’t know what the hell got into you.”

“Charlie, talking to Colonel Franklin wasn’t out of character for me. He’s a father, and his son died, and the fact that the White House was ignoring him made me very uncomfortable.”

“Then you should have said something to me, or to Hank, or to—”

“I
did
say something to you! Or I tried to, but you might recall that as recently as this morning, when you brought over the newspapers, you’d only give them to me if I didn’t mention him.”

“So I left you with no choice but to slam my foreign policy?” His expression is skeptical. He is wearing the charcoal suit, white shirt, and red tie from earlier—neither of us, it turns out, changed for the gala, though by now he has unbuttoned the top button of the shirt and loosened the tie. Perhaps I’m a pushover, but I’ve always found this to be an endearing style in any man and especially in my husband. He says, “You ever think the time has come for you to forgive me for being elected president?”

We watch each other, and I say nothing. Then—a lump has formed in my throat—I say, “The reason I didn’t want you to be president is that I was afraid it would turn out like this.”

“Like what? You mean you and me?”

I shake my head. “Not us. Just the—the responsibility. How much is at stake when you decide something.” This is a way we never talk, Charlie and I. We speak of when he is giving a speech where, when he is traveling where, or when I am. We discuss in small, momentary ways how the State of the Union went, whether an airplane flight was bumpy, if his cold is any better. It would be crushing, I think, for us to analyze the enormity of our lives now, their meaning and repercussions, yet surely it is this very reticence, our workaday manner of communicating, one foot in front of the other, that has landed us in a place we wouldn’t thinkingly have gone. This has been Charlie’s presidency: episodes of experience, choices he’s made based on the input of advisers reluctant to tell him anything he doesn’t want to hear; he has prayed, but I’ve often worried that the voice of guidance he’s heard has been not God’s but Hank’s, or possibly Charlie’s own, echoing back at him.

But he doesn’t see it this way. He looks incredulous as he says, “Do you think I’m not aware of the responsibility of being leader of the free world every minute of every day? Lindy, if at this point it’s news to you that the president is under tremendous pressure, then I don’t know where you’ve been for the last six and a half years.”

“But aren’t you—” I pause, start again. “Don’t you feel guilty?”

He stares at me. “For what?”

“A lot of the soldiers who are dying are younger than Ella. They’re younger, but some are married, they have kids of their own. Or they come back, and what if you’re twenty-six years old and both your legs were blown off and you never had a college education? We met a fellow like that at Walter Reed, remember? What’s he supposed to do now?”