DUTCH AND GINA: A SCANDAL IS BORN (7 page)

Gina leaned back in a state of puzzlement, as she wondered what in the world that was all about.

SIX

Monday morning, as the first photo of the First Son was being released for the entire world to see, Gina lay in bed watching that very son on the Nursery’s CCTV.
 
He was still asleep in bed, which meant, she thought with a smile, that he kept his mother’s hours.
 
Unlike Daddy, who had already been to the White House gym and was now coming out of the shower freshly scrubbed and raring to go, looking ever so tanned and fit in his nakedness, while she was just turning over.
 

“Good morning,” she said as he moved toward his underwear drawer, his rod bouncing and seemingly expanding with his every movement.

“Awake?” he asked, staring at her as he moved.

“Just,” she said with a smile.
 
She glanced down, at his thickness, and back up into his face.
 
And it was that look on her face, that sincere, almost sensual-without-meaning-to-be-sensual look, which always did it for him.
  
He walked past the drawer and toward the bed.
 
Gina’s body began to relax in anticipation, because she knew what was coming next.

He got in bed with her, pulling the covers down and then back over both of them, as he drew her into his arms.
 
She was in her sheer, silk nightgown, but it didn’t interfere with any plans of Dutch’s.
 
He reached underneath it and placed one hand on her bare back, and the other hand on her bare backside, massaging it.
 

But instead of kissing her and then, as was usually his way, putting her underneath him, he just lay on his side holding her, inhaling her sweet smell, and staring into her eyes with a troubled look in his.
 

“You okay?” he asked her.
 

“Yes.
 
Why?”

“You worried me last night.”

This surprised Gina.
 
“Me?
 
How?”

“You tossed and turned most of the night.
 
You mumbled in your sleep.”

“Did I?
 
I wasn’t aware of anything like that.
 
I thought I slept well.
 
What was I mumbling?”

“I couldn’t make it out.”
 
Then he exhaled.
 
“I know this photo release is difficult for you.
 
For both of us.
 
But I can’t have you obsessing on this nonsense, Gina.
 
It’ll do neither one of us any good.”

Gina nodded.
 
“I know, but . . . I should have ignored that reporter.”
 
She looked up at Dutch, her eyes now troubled too.
 
“Why didn’t I just ignore that reporter? Why didn’t I just ignore him when he asked me that ridiculous question?
 
I know how they are.
 
I knew I was probably walking into a trap.
 
But I answered anyway.
 
Even had the gall to jokingly answer.
 
I mean, I was laughing for crying out loud, Dutch!
 
I was laughing as I answered.
 
But they still took my answer and ran with it as if I was as serious as a heart attack.”

“What did you expect them to do?” Dutch asked.
 

Gina looked at him more closely.
 
For the first time in a long time she could see that her
antics
, as the press enjoyed calling them, was beginning to take a toll on him.
 
And she realized, to her horror, that while she was beating herself up, he was probably inwardly beating her up too.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked him.

Dutch removed his hand from her butt and laid flat on his back.
 
He was disturbed, and she knew it, and she was dying for him to be straight with her.

“What?” she asked, anxious for him to just spit it out.

“You said it yourself.
 
You know how they are.”
 
He looked at her.
 
“I need you to understand that, Gina.”

“I do understand it.”

“No, you don’t.
 
You keep saying you do, but you don’t.
 
Not the way you have to understand it.”

“Dutch, what are you talking about?”

Dutch sat up and on the edge of the bed, his feet once again touching down, his naked body barely covered.
 
He ran his hand through his silky black hair.
 
Gina had never seen him so agitated.
 

“What is it, Dutch?”

He turned to face her, moving so swiftly that his penis whipped against her thigh.
 
“You can’t keep doing this, you understand me?
 
Every time those vultures ask you a controversial question, you can’t keep answering it.”

“I was joking, Dutch!”

“Yeah, you were joking.
 
But that joke, Gina, just got our child exposed!”
 
He stood up, as if too agitated to sit any longer, and then moved toward his underwear drawer.
 

Gina, surprised by his display, sat up in bed, her hands around her legs, her chest beginning to pound.
 
She looked at her husband.
 
He wasn’t the kind of man who angered easily, especially when it came to her, but his anger this morning was almost life-like.

“It’s just one photograph,” she said in a conciliatory tone.

“It’s exactly what we said it wasn’t going to be,” he said as he grabbed a pair of boxer’s and angrily slipped them on.
 
“I agreed to stay in this fishbowl of a town, with my family by my side, only on our terms, Gina, not the terms of some gotdamn press corps!”

“But why are you acting like I have a say in what the press does?”

“Because you keep giving them the hammer to hammer you with!” he said explosively.
 
“I told you to keep your answers on point, didn’t I tell you that?
 
If you’re attending a ribbon cutting ceremony, you answer questions only related to that ceremony, not about our child, Gina, geez!
 
Not about our son.
 
I can’t believe you did that!”

Gina was floored.
 
She had never seen Dutch so animated.
  
She stared at him, as he ripped open the new dress shirt that was laid out for him each day.
 
Watched him as he slung on his dress pants, zipped, and then buckled his belt.
 
Stared into his stormy green eyes as he sat on the edge of the dressing table chair and put on his shoes.
 

Where in the world all of this emotion was coming from, she wondered.
 
He was angry, there was no doubt about that.
 
But she was detecting something else, too.
 
Something just as palpable.
 
She almost wanted to call it fear, although she couldn’t imagine what a man like Dutch, the strongest man she’d ever known, would be fearful of.

“What’s wrong?” she asked him.

Dutch stopped fumbling with his shoes and looked at Gina, the disappointment in his eyes paining her.
 
“You have got to learn to zip it and not keep letting the press push your buttons.
 
I don’t want you and our son hurt.
 
It’s my job to protect you and Walt and it’s the last thing that I’ve been able to do.
 
And I’m tired of it.
 
I’m tired of the fights.”

“But you act as if I’m the one fighting?
 
I didn’t start any of this, Dutch.
 
I didn’t ask for any fights from anybody.
 
But I damn sure won’t back down when they come at me, either.”

“It’s not a matter of backing down.”

“Yes, it is.
 
That’s exactly what it is.
 
You don’t know what it’s like.”

Dutch is offended.
 
“I don’t know what it’s like?
 
They ask me crazy-ass questions too, Gina, but you don’t see me rising to their bait.”

“That’s because your questions aren’t personal like mine are.
 
They don’t question your character the way they question mine.
 
They don’t disrespect you with the same level of disrespect they show me.
 
You’ve never had to prove yourself, over and over, like I have.”

She exhaled, grabbed her braids and tossed them from the front to the back of her head, a frown enveloping her pretty, troubled face.

Dutch exhaled too.
 
“I know it’s a problem, Gina.”

“It’s more than a problem,” Gina said with some agitation of her own, tears now staining her eyes.
 
“Don’t try to minimize it.
 
They’re just taking this too far, Dutch, as if I’m made of stone and they can treat me any way they please and I just have to take it.
 
It’s like they don’t want to give me credit for anything!
 
I’m a trained attorney, a highly educated woman, but they talk of me as if I’m some ignorant, back water hillbilly who wouldn’t know sophistication if it bit her in the butt!
 
And I know it shouldn’t matter, and I know I should just screw them and their racist foolishness, I know all that.
 
But it does matter, Dutch.”

Tears were beginning to drain from her big, brown eyes.
 
“Every time they try that crap on me,” she continued, “I feel like I have to call them out on it.
 
I can’t just let them get away with that.
 
Because I know the deal.
 
I know it’s not about me anymore.
 
It’s about those little black girls in Newark and places like that who looks up to me, and expects me to never sell out, to never go along to get along as if their pain doesn’t matter.
 
It does matter, Dutch.
 
That’s why I can’t let the press get away with their nonsense.
 
I’m going to call their asses out every time they even think about undermining my character, and what I represent.
 
Because it’s not just about me anymore.”

Dutch was by her side before she could finish speaking.
 
He leaned down, lifted her up, and wrapped her into his arms.
 

“Oh, sweetheart,” he said as he held her, as she began to sob in his arms.
 
He understood where she was coming from.
 
He knew what she had to endure since hitching her wagon to his.
 
And what angered him most was that he knew what a dynamic First Lady she could be.
 
He knew what a great contribution this country was missing because of the caricatures the press chose, instead, to paint of her.
 

“I didn’t mean to hurt our child, Dutch,” Gina was saying.
 
“I was joking.
 
I never dreamed they would take me seriously.”

“I know that, sweetie,” Dutch said, now himself feeling like an ass for being so hard on her.
 
When he knew it wasn’t her fault.
 
When he knew that his wife wouldn’t do anything to harm him or their child or anybody else for that matter.
 

But there was more to this story, and the fear of what could happen to her was eating him alive.
 
They were trying to destroy her, to take away every ounce of confidence and courage and sense of self-worth she still had within her.
 
They wanted to cut her down to size, to put her back in her place, to, in essence, knock what they perceive to be her uppity black butt back down a peg or two.

But he would see them in hell, he thought ruefully as he tightened his grip around her, before he allowed anyone to come close to bringing this wonderful, spirited, dignified woman down, or anywhere near some sordid ground.