THE PRESIDENT'S GIRLFRIEND (24 page)

SIXTEEN

It felt like a nail in his own coffin.  What was supposed to be his triumph after introducing Gina on the world stage, at a state dinner no less, without a glitch, was turning into a funeral march.  His own.  Meeting after meeting was all about Kate.  It had been about the Regina arrest problem.  Then the Marcus
Rance
problem.  Now the Kate
Marris
problem.   And her problem wasn’t external to the president.  Her problem was the president’s problem.

     But Dutch wasn’t thinking about his problem, or the press, or even his reelection campaign.  All he could think about was Gina.  All that day and when she arrived at the White House that night to have dinner with him, Gina was on his mind.  Yet, it wasn’t until after dinner, when they were settled in the sitting room, seated side by side on the sofa, did he find a way to tell her.

     She stared at Dutch.  “She’s
pregnant
?” she asked, astounded.

     Dutch took her hand in his, and nodded his head.  “I’m afraid so, honey.”

     “But it’s not yours, right?  She’s not pregnant with your child.  Is she?”

     Dutch looked into her eyes.  “Yes.  It’s more than likely mine.”

     Gina couldn’t believe it.  “But you said you broke up with her, that y’all weren’t together anymore.”

     “We weren’t.  We aren’t.  She’s four months pregnant.  We were still together, albeit barely, four months ago.”

     Tears danced around in Gina’s eyes, but she held on.  “So what’s the game plan?” she asked.  “What does Max say you have to do?”

     “Kate is saying she’ll go to the press,” Dutch said, looking away from Gina, “unless I marry her.”

     Gina’s eyes stretched.  “
Marry her
?”

     Dutch nodded.  “Yes,
sweety
, that’s what she’s demanding.”

     “But,” Gina said, unable to wrap her brain around such a demand.  She looked at Dutch.  “What are you going to do?” she asked him.  “If she goes to the press and says you impregnated her but won’t marry her, that will ruin you.  You aren’t that kind of man.  But your political enemies will twist it around and make it seem as if you’ve always been some kind of deadbeat.”

     “I know,” he said.  She sounded as if she was panicking, she sounded how he felt, but there was no way around it.  This was shocking, devastating news.

     “So what are you going to do?” Gina asked him again, her earnest eyes staring at him as if expecting him to be his honorable self and say he had no choice, he had to dump her and marry Kate
Marris
.

     Dutch, however, got off of the sofa and down on his knees, his hand still holding Gina’s.  Gina stared at him.  “Regina Lansing,” he said, his eyes wide with tension, “will you marry me, sweetheart?”

     Gina fell into his arms.  There was no thinking about it, no trying to figure out how in the world
were
they going to get around their Kate
Marris
problem, there was just love.  Her love for him and his love for her. 

     “Well?” he asked her, tears in his eyes.

     “Yes,” she said, without hesitation.  “Oh, yes!”

     Dutch’s heart soared and he stood to his feet and lifted her into his arms.  It was a wellspring of relief for Dutch, a feeling that Kate and Max and Allison and anybody else who tried to tear them apart, could go to hell.

+++

Thirty miles off of the southern coast of Cape Cod, the presidential helicopter arrived on Nantucket Island amid tight security and privacy, and deposited Dutch and Gina in what was the backyard of the Harber family compound.

     Dutch held onto Gina as if she was a fragile doll and they hurried, ducking copter wings, their hair and suits blowing from its wind shear, onto the back colonnade that led into the mansion.

     Although Gina had been schooled by Dutch on what to expect, she still felt unprepared.  And as they walked down the long porch that looked like a corridor in a roman coliseum,  following the butler, she had a sinking feeling that this wasn’t going to turn out well.  The Harber family consisted of only two people now, Dutch and his mother, Victoria Harber, and nobody was going to tell Gina that that woman, with all of her wealth and position, was not going to have near-impossible expectations for her only son and heir, the President of the United States.

     But Dutch was hopeful, although cautiously so.  To know his mother is to love her, he had said last night when they laid in bed talking about this very trip.  Although they weren’t particularly close, Dutch was always more of a father’s son than a mama’s boy, there was a respect he held for his mother that seemed to Gina to border on the mythical.  Which usually meant, she felt, that he probably didn’t know his mother’s true character much at all.

     She marched with Dr. King in the sixties, he said.  She was always a liberal voice of reason in Massachusetts politics, he said.  She was and remain a defender of the poor and downtrodden, just like you, Gina, he also noted. 

     But Gina also knew that she was rich, and it had been her experience, when soliciting donations for BBR, that rich liberals were no different than rich conservatives when it came to their family legacy.  And no matter how much Gina wanted it, or how grand Dutch talked up his mother’s outward attributes, she just couldn’t see a woman like Victoria Harber welcoming with open arms a woman like her.

     And she was right.  Dutch and Gina were shown to the morning room by the butler, where they sat side by side on the sofa and waited for the great dame to arrive.  And when she walked in, surprisingly more petite and frail from the photos Gina had seen of her, a coldness came with her that could chill the sun. 

     Dutch stood and hurried to his mother, kissing her on either cheek.  Gina stood and waited, her heart pounding, her worst fears confirmed as soon as the widow Harber turned and looked at her.

     “Mother,” Dutch said, escorting her toward the couch, “this is Regina Lansing.”

     “How do you do?” Gina asked with a very slight bow of her head.

     “Do you care, or is that what they told you to say to me?”

     Gina stared into this woman’s hard blue eyes and realized immediately that sugar coating her wasn’t going to work.  Okay, she thought, so you want to play it that way?  “I care because I care about your son,” she said.  “And yes, they did tell me to say that.”

     Victoria seemed taken aback, as if she hadn’t expected that level of honesty, but it didn’t thaw the chill.  “Have a seat,” she said to Gina.

     Gina sat back down while Dutch helped his mother to a flanking chair.  They were surrounded by beauty, a home more fancily decorated than the White House, but somehow Gina felt as if beautiful was the last thing in the world this home was about.

     When Dutch took his place back beside Gina, taking once again her hand in his, Gina could see his mother’s jaw tighten.  She expected to have to entertain a tough audience, but nothing like this.

     “Since you never come just to say hello to me,” Victoria said to her son, a note of bitterness in her often frail voice, “I assume this rare visit has everything to do with this young lady before us.”

     “That’s correct,” Dutch said pointblank.

     “I see.  I saw her at the state dinner, looking marvelous I might add, and my telephone became a hotwire.  What is she really like, Vicky, they kept asking me.  What’s her family like?  And I had to say without hesitation that I have no idea.  Never met the woman.  Had no clue that my son, my only son and heir, had suddenly
contracted
jungle fever and was now sleeping with the natives.”

     Gina looked at Dutch. She already had expected venom.  But Dutch hadn’t.  And by that look of disappointment in his eyes, he hadn’t expected any venom at all.  “Is that how you see my relationship with Regina?” he asked her, studying her.

     “How else am I supposed to see it?” Victoria wanted to know.  “You haven’t exactly given me any beforehand notice.  You haven’t telephoned or written or even emailed any such information about your relationship.  I thought Kate
Marris
was the love of your life, now here she comes.”

     Dutch stared at his mother.  Where did they get this love of his life nonsense?  Was it because Kate was beautiful and blonde and from the kind of family presidents usually married into?  It certainly wasn’t because of the reality of the relationship, or anything Dutch had said or may have even implied. 

     But there it was again.  Kate was supposed to have been the love of his life, the woman they all had expected him to marry.  When, in truth, she was a woman he had never loved, and, other than fucking her, barely liked.

     “Kate
Marris
is not now,” he said, “nor ever has been the love of any life of mine.”

     “Well, you certainly could have fooled me,” Victoria said, “the way the two of you were carrying on.”

     Dutch refused to make this visit about Kate.  “Regina has my heart,” he told his mother, “and she’s the only woman to capture it after Caroline’s death.  The only woman.  And that’s why, Mother, I am going to marry her.”

     Gina looked at Mrs. Harber.  The disdain just poured from her.  “
Marry her
?  Have you taken leave of your senses?  Marry
her
?  Some poor black from
Newark
?  You must be out of your mind!  Marry
her
?” 

     Gina wondered if the woman was going to have a conniption.  She was tossing fiery darts and hitting bull’s-eyes as far as Victoria chose to see it.  She was tossing fiery darts and hitting herself, as far as Gina saw it.  Because Dutch just stared at his mother, his legs crossed, his eyes filled with a sad disappointment, a shame even, and, to Gina’s surprise, a kind of dislike she had only seen in Dutch when he spoke of his political enemies.  Now he knew what Gina had known all along: that rich liberals fighting for liberal causes in the abstract were well and good, as long as you didn’t bring any of those “causes” to their front door.

     When it was clear that Dutch was not going to respond to Victoria’s verbal attacks, she exhaled.  “What about Kate?” she asked him.