Eighteen Acres: A Novel (15 page)

“Jefferson was ahead of his time,” Brian said, gazing up at another one of the quotes.

“This one is my favorite,” Melanie said. She wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and walked to the far side of the rotunda. Brian followed her. She read the last couple of lines out loud:

“‘Institutions must advance to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under regimen of their barbarous ancestors.’”

“I can see why you’d like that one,” he said, putting his hands on her shoulders and rubbing them up and down to warm her. Melanie wasn’t sure if it was a romantic gesture or a friendly one. After a few seconds, he dropped his hands from her shoulders and shoved them into his pockets.

“You’re not going to like Washington very much,” she predicted.

He looked surprised. “No?” he asked.

“I’ve seen lots of reporters leave the foreign desk to come to Washington. You guys think you’re moving up, because you’ve left the region to come cover the decision makers, but most policy makers would kill to know what you know about how their decisions affect the region. Be careful not to stay in this town too long, or you’ll forget what you loved about your job in the first place.”

“Sounds like you had more than a bad day. Sounds like you’ve had a bad year. There must be some things you still enjoy about the job. You’ve been there longer than anyone else in White House history,” he said.

Melanie groaned. “God, you make me feel one hundred years old.”

“Surely you could have left between Harlow and Martin, or between Martin and Kramer, or after the midterm elections last year. I mean, that’s what most people do, right?” he asked.

“Yes, and I’m beginning to understand their wisdom.” Melanie sighed.

“No, it’s very cool that you’ve stayed. It says something about you. You stayed and put all these people—Kramer, Martin, Harlow—you put them ahead of yourself. It’s very impressive.”

“I don’t know about that,” she said gloomily.

“I see it’s true what they say about you, then,” he teased.

“What are you talking about?”

“I was told by people at my network and others around town that you are loyal to a fault and completely unaware of your stature,” he said, taking a swig of his beer.

“That’s not true!”

“Melanie, it’s a compliment. Your loyalty to these people is obvious. Why else would you still be there? And you’re one of the most powerful people in the federal government, but you act as if you’re a twenty-five-year-old staffer.”

His comments didn’t feel like a compliment, but Melanie was too tired to argue. She mulled over Brian’s description of her. It wasn’t how she saw herself, but she hadn’t spent much time worrying about her reputation lately. She looked across the Tidal Basin toward the Washington Monument. Her thoughts returned to the conversation she’d been trying to have with Charlotte since Sunday. She sighed. She had tried to force Charlotte to come clean before she was ready. It was a miscalculation, Melanie now realized. Charlotte would come to her. She’d tell her what was going on when she got back from Afghanistan. Melanie took another sip of beer and tried to shut out the flood of potential political nightmares heading her way. Just when she’d pushed her tense discussion with Charlotte out of her mind, she remembered her conversation with Michael. And once she pushed the day’s worries aside, her thoughts turned to the unpleasant assignments awaiting her the following morning. She had a breakfast meeting scheduled with the president’s domestic policy advisor in the White House Mess. The domestic policy advisor thought they were
meeting to discuss education reform, but Melanie had scheduled the breakfast so she could break the news to him that he could not work at the White House while he was under investigation for shoplifting. That meeting would be followed by all the other crises and snafus that would land on her desk by sunrise.

She’d nearly forgotten about Brian. When she looked over at him, he was smiling at her.

“What were you thinking about?” he asked.

“I was thinking about how I’d give anything to be a twenty-five-year-old staffer again,” she said. “I was so happy to be there in those days, and now each day feels like a punishment for sins I must have committed in a past life.”

“What did you love about it when you were twenty-five?” Brian asked, sitting down next to her.

Melanie smiled. “Everything. Walking up to the gate and watching the tourists’ faces light up a bit when I flashed my badge and passed through security, ordering lunch from the Mess, having the OEOB to myself early in the morning when I came in to prepare President Harlow’s clips, walking over to the West Wing to drop off the clips and seeing the staff vacuum the already spotless carpets. I loved everything about it. I used to give all the tours for the senior staffers’ families and friends. Some junior staffers hated doing it, but I loved it. I couldn’t believe they’d let me roam the entire White House complex. I used to wait for someone to say, ‘Sorry, ma’am, you can’t go in there,’ but they never did.” Melanie smiled at the memory. I gave one mean tour. I wouldn’t let anyone talk or take calls during my tours, and there was a quiz at the end to make sure everyone was paying attention.”

“When was the last time you gave a tour?” Brian asked.

“I haven’t given one in years,” she admitted.

“Let’s go do one now,” he said.

“A White House tour?” Melanie asked.

“Yeah. You’ve got all the badges and stuff. Let’s go do a West Wing tour.”

“It’s almost one in the morning,” she objected.

“Perfect—no crowds.”

Melanie smiled. She knew more about the furniture and the art and the history of the West Wing than anyone.

They finished their beers and got into Melanie’s car.

“Back to West Exec, please, guys,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am,” Walter said.

Sherry turned around and gave her a thumbs-up while Brian was looking out the window.

They got out on West Exec and walked back into the West Wing.

“This is the West Wing basement,” Melanie said.

It was lined with photos of presidential events from recent days. Brian stopped to look at a photo of Charlotte reading to a class of first-graders.

“This was yesterday, right?” he asked.

“Yep. Quick turnaround. Sometimes they’re up by the end of the day they’re shot,” she said.

Melanie would have walked him into the Situation Room to point out the high-tech systems that allowed Charlotte to monitor the world’s hot spots and stay in touch with foreign leaders, but she was afraid he’d see something that would reveal Charlotte’s location as en route to Afghanistan.

They walked up the stairs toward the Oval Office. Melanie felt funny walking into the Oval when Charlotte wasn’t there, so they stood in the doorway, and she described everything to Brian in excruciating detail. With the exception of a small handful of them, every U.S. president had used the desk Charlotte had chosen. It was made from the wood of the HMS
Resolute,
and it was a gift from the British. She had designed her own rug, a presidential tradition, in shades of cream, beige, and yellow. Alongside photos of the twins, she had a picture of the Ellison family framed on her desk. Charlotte had met Mr. and Mrs. Ellison during her campaign for the White House. They had four sons serving in Iraq, and they had asked her to promise that they’d all come home. She’d taken an interest in the family, and she’d met all four of the boys on her trips to Iraq and Afghanistan. Charlotte spoke to Mrs. Ellison every Sunday.

Next, Melanie showed Brian the Roosevelt Room, with its portrait of Teddy Roosevelt hanging above the fireplace. Republican presidents
always placed Teddy’s portrait above the fireplace, and Democratic presidents placed FDR’s portrait there. It had been a long time since Democrats had decorated the West Wing, and Melanie felt a familiar wave of anxiety at the thought of turning the place over to the Democrats in November. If she couldn’t figure out how to turn things around, that would be the likely outcome. They walked into the Cabinet Room, which Melanie knew well. She’d sat in on hundreds of Cabinet meetings over the years. She’d seen the nameplate on the back of each chair changed for half a dozen different Cabinet secretaries for each agency. Every retiring Cabinet secretary got to keep the chair with his or her name engraved on the back. She showed Brian Charlotte’s chair, which stood slightly higher than those of the Cabinet members. They left the West Wing and walked past the Rose Garden toward the East Wing.

“Is the president sleeping?” Brian whispered.

She didn’t want to lie to him about the trip to Afghanistan, but she couldn’t risk a leak. She couldn’t figure out if he knew or not. “I don’t know,” she said.

He didn’t push it.

Melanie showed him the East Room, the Red Room, the Green Room, and the Blue Room. She lost herself in her memories and stories from each of the presidents she’d worked for.

“Remember when the British prime minister got food poisoning?” she asked.

“Yes. He threw up on Mrs. Martin,” Brian said.

“Exactly. They were sitting right here.” Melanie pointed to a settee in the Red Room.

“Fascinating,” he said, smiling at her.

They made their way back to the West Wing and ended up outside Melanie’s office. It was after two
A.M.

“Thanks for the tour,” Brian said.

“You’re welcome. Thanks for making me do it.”

“You probably have to be back here in about three hours, right?”

“Something like that.” She leaned toward him, and he seemed to lean toward her.

“I’d better let you go,” he said.

“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea,” Melanie agreed, stepping back and feeling embarrassed that she’d thought he might try to kiss her.

“I’m going to grab a cab,” he told her.

“Are you sure you don’t want a ride? I can ask Walter to drop you off.”

“Nah, I’m fine. They should get you straight home.”

“I’ll walk out with you,” she said.

They walked down the stairs and out to West Exec. Brian gave her a peck on the cheek and turned to walk toward the gate on Lafayette Park. Melanie climbed into her car with Walter and Sherry.

Walter kept eyeing her in the rearview mirror.

“Stop giving me that look, Walter,” Melanie said.

“I didn’t say anything,” Walter said, smiling at her.

They drove in silence the rest of the way. Melanie said good night and went upstairs to her apartment. Her alarm would go off in less than two hours.

Dale

Dale considered texting Peter one last time, but the ride to the airport had been too strange to summarize in a text message. She had a strange feeling that the animosity toward her that the White House staff had long expressed as coming “from the top” had been an exaggeration. Sure, her reporting had helped usher in the end of Charlotte’s honeymoon in the early days of the administration, but the White House beat brought that out in everyone. And Dale had more to prove than her colleagues. She’d been dubbed a “pageant correspondent” by the
Washington Post
’s media critic. The term was a reference to the growing number of attractive, inexperienced on-air reporters being assigned beats long reserved for more seasoned journalists.

As the military aide made his way down the aisle to collect everyone’s BlackBerrys and cell phones so that there wouldn’t be any temptation on the part of the reporters to inform their bosses or families of their whereabouts, Dale quickly typed “love you” to Peter’s personal cell number. The aide arrived in her row and asked her to turn the phone off before the message could transmit.

She tried to shake off the anxiety Peter had created with his concern for her safety and focus on the opportunity the trip presented. She’d been on a meteoric rise, and at thirty-two, she sometimes wondered
how much longer she could keep up the pace. As much as she fantasized about a life with Peter, she also coveted a spot at the top of her field. The year before had seen the third woman ascend to the anchor spot, and Dale was hoping to make a good enough impression on her superiors to be in the running for the weeknight anchor post when the job opened up in another couple of years. She had the talent and the confidence to pull it off. As the only child of a doctor and a schoolteacher, she’d been surrounded with so much love and praise that she never experienced self-doubt until she found herself shooting her own stories and filming her own stand-ups as a television reporter in Redding, California, one of the smallest media markets in the country. The reporter she’d replaced as the Redding bureau chief had gone on to anchor a newscast at ESPN, and she had taken the job hoping for a similar leap from local to national news. When the opportunity had failed to materialize after nine months, she’d almost given up on reporting. She was in New York visiting a friend from college when she decided to drop in on an agent who’d spoken at her journalism school years before. She was surprised that he’d agreed to see her and even more surprised when he’d agreed to represent her. She’d been quickly promoted to a job as a reporter and anchor in Cleveland, Ohio. From there, she’d done a short stint in Miami at a network affiliate before being promoted to the overnight shift at ABC in New York. She’d been noticed by the morning anchor, who’d championed her for a spot as a special correspondent for the morning show. She’d started doing stories about Charlotte Kramer when she was the California governor, and her connections and history of covering Kramer had landed her the spot as the network’s “girl on the bus” with the Kramer campaign.

Now, Dale was one of six reporters following the American president to the battlefield. She selected a movie from the Air Force One entertainment system and adjusted the volume on her headset. Dale had just kicked off her shoes and tucked her legs under her when the press secretary entered their cabin. Even he looked excited.

“How’s everyone doing?” he said cheerily.

He went over travel times and information about when and where they’d be able to file their reports. Dale was promised a ten-minute
interview with the president that she’d “pool” for all of the networks—essentially sharing her content with all of the broadcast outlets.