WASHINGTON, DC
First Lady Merle Talmidge stood behind her husband’s shoulder in the Oval Office as he signed the stack of letters before him, just beginning to make a dent in the pile. The president stopped suddenly, his expression taking on the blank, quizzical look she’d come to know all too well and had seen exhibited with increasing frequency as of late.
“It was a wonderful funeral, wasn’t it?” Corbin Talmidge asked her, sighing deeply.
“Whose funeral?”
“Our son’s.”
“He wasn’t our son. That was just part of your speech.”
“I gave a speech?”
“You spoke beautifully, from the heart,” the first lady assured him.
“Then why can’t I remember what I said?”
“It was an emotional afternoon.”
“I should think so, the funeral of our own son.”
“It wasn’t our son,” Merle Talmidge repeated.
“Then why I was there? I remember crying. Why would I cry if it wasn’t our son?”
“Because it was someone else’s son. And you were there to offer comfort and support and make the greater point that we cannot tolerate violence in our schools.”
“How did I do?”
“You were wonderful,” the first lady said, meaning it.
“Then why can’t I remember what I said? Were you there?”
“I joined you on stage.”
“When?”
“Near the end of your remarks.”
“What remarks?”
Merle Talmidge didn’t respond right away, having learned that sometimes it was better to let things go and allow her husband’s failing mind to move elsewhere on its own. And, in this case, “elsewhere” turned out to be the formidable stack of letters still before him.
He’d been diagnosed with something called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which occurs when prion protein, found throughout the human body, folds into an abnormal three-dimensional shape. Ultimately, the prion protein mutation in the brain causes a type of dementia that worsens much faster than even the most rapid of all Alzheimer’s cases. Through a process that continues to baffle experts, misfolded prion protein lays waste to brain cells, the damage leading to a rapid decline in thinking, reasoning, and cognitive capacity in general. The symptoms vary by the patient, but one thing that doesn’t is the utter lack of medical treatments to slow the progression even slightly.
Watching her husband’s steady and rapid decline had been the worst and most painful experience of Merle Talmidge’s life, and the lack of hope for anything but a steady decline was the most agonizing part of all. But at the same time it had hardened her to other realities, including political. She came to see the fragility of human life as no different from the fragility of the country in general. She found herself only able to relieve the agony of her husband’s condition by contemplating a fitting legacy for him, one he would want for himself if he could so choose. He wouldn’t accept defeat and go quietly into obscurity. He wouldn’t want his achievements squandered. He knew the country wouldn’t survive the opposing party rising back to power in the chaos of the next election, staged without him as a candidate. He’d want to do anything and everything to see his vision for America come true.
“You mean the remarks I need to give at the vice president’s funeral?” Corbin Talmidge resumed suddenly.
“They’re being prepared now. We can go over them for the first time tonight.”
Fortunately, perhaps anomalously, her husband could still give a prepared speech. It had proven the one saving grace, but it no longer satisfied the press’s demands that he make himself more available. There were rumblings of something afoot with his health, rumors the White House Press Office had managed to deflect and define up until this point.
And they only needed to continue doing that for three more days now. Three more days until America was changed forever.
“She was a good person,” the president said.
“Yes, she was,” the first lady agreed.
“I just saw her, didn’t I? Was it yesterday?”
“No, dear.”
“Last week?”
“Last month,” the first lady said.
“Oh,” the president said, looking confused.
Stephanie Davenport had been ushered into the Oval Office just over a month ago for a lunch her husband’s chief of staff had canceled too late, though Merle Talmidge suspected an increasingly suspicious vice president had gotten the message and had shown up anyway. The first lady been dealing with something else at the time, and the Secret Service agent who’d passed the vice president through was new to the detail. By the time Merle Talmidge got there, the damage had already been done; she could see the concern, fear, and befuddlement on the vice president’s face, could see that it had taken her all of five minutes alone with Corbin Talmidge to realize his deteriorating condition.
FIVE WEEKS EARLIER …
What’s going on?” Stephanie Davenport demanded, in the private office off the Oval that was normally utilized as a waiting room for guests.
“I don’t think I know what you—”
“Yes, you do. Is it dementia, Alzheimer’s, a stroke?”
“It’s not a stroke,” Merle Talmidge managed to assure her.
“I guess that answers my question.”
The first lady had grasped the vice president’s arm tenderly, a show of friendship. “Please, Stephanie.”
“Shouldn’t it be ‘Vice President Davenport,’ under the circumstances?”
“We’re going to deal with this appropriately. We just need a little more time.”
“How much time?”
“A month. I promise. That’s all.”
“And it’s too much, with the election so close.”
“Do you want to take my husband’s place that badly, Vice President Davenport?”
Davenport’s eyes looked as sharp as daggers. “Do you?”
Merle Talmidge had known in that moment that the vice president was a threat, but one she believed could be mitigated, stalled at least for a brief period. The timetable for the operation had been moved up as much as possible. Even then, though, Davenport’s concerns quickly escalated to the point that she had insisted on a clandestine independent review of the president’s condition. It had been around that time that she’d scheduled her own angioplasty procedure at Walter Reed, providing the first lady the opportunity to have the problem remedied in a wholly different fashion by placing a time bomb in the vice president’s chest. She had pushed Davenport as far as she could, put her off for as long as she could. But when the threat she posed became too great and it became obvious she intended to force the issue, that bomb had to be detonated.
The vice president’s funeral had been scheduled for the very day that would change America forever, with the unfolding of a plot that she and others had hatched to maintain the administration’s hold on power in the face of the president’s otherwise inevitable decline. And once that plot came to fruition, the election that was just six months away would be utterly forgotten. Americans would be left with far too much on their minds to worry about voting.
“Why do I have to do this?” the president asked her suddenly, looking up from the stack of letters.
In counterpoint to his deteriorating mental condition, Corbin Talmidge still looked strong and vital, not all that much different from when they’d met, more than thirty years before. He had the same build, the same hair, the same smile, and the same eyes, though those eyes had lost their certainty and luster in a gaze that had grown increasingly tentative and unsure. It was like living with someone who was forever waking from a nightmare in the middle of the night in abject disorientation. But there were still enough moments where those eyes took on a youthful innocence and vibrancy, the look that had made her fall in love with him from the first time they’d met, though these days their view was considerably narrowed.
“To offer comfort and support, just like at that boy’s funeral.”
“Our son’s…”
“No, dear, someone else’s son, remember?”
“Oh. If you say so.”
“And congratulations in some cases, as well,” the first lady picked up. “And thanking them for their service.”
“Thanking who?”
“The people those letters are addressed to.”
“Why do I have to sign them?” the president asked, his gaze shifting back to the pile before him.
“Because you want to.”
“I do?”
Merle Talmidge nodded. “You’ve always had a gift for seeing the good in people and wanting to see them rewarded for that. Those letters provide that opportunity.”
“Oh.”
His interest renewed, the president slid the next letter from the top of the stack and readied his pen. “I forgot how to write my name.”
“Want me to help you?”
He nodded, looking more like a child than the president of the United States. “And my hand hurts.”
The first lady eased an armchair behind the big Resolute desk, presented to President Rutherford B. Hayes by Queen Victoria in 1880, built from English oak timbers salvaged from the British exploration ship HMS Resolute, and mostly a fixture in the Oval Office ever since. She had practiced signing her husband’s name so much over these past few months that her elbow ached. Corbin Talmidge had actually gotten through more of the letters than she’d expected, a nominal improvement over the process last week. A small victory, since the big ones were in the past now, salvageable only in memory.
With one exception, that exception being the biggest victory of all—a victory for her husband’s administration and for all of the United States, though at a cost that would change the country forever.
Of course, Corbin Talmidge never would have conceived, much less approved, of such a plan. He had too big a heart, too much genuine fondness for those like the boy buried earlier in the day. As a result, he’d become the most popular president in a generation. Corbin Talmidge had won the presidency as the antipolitician. The country had fallen in love with him, and the affair continued to this day.
And now it would be prolonged. Indefinitely. At least long enough to secure the vision of America the first lady now held in her husband’s place. First and foremost, the team of like minds she had assembled needed to go about selecting the right candidate for vice president.
But who? And, under the circumstances, what if no such person existed?
The first lady slid the stack of letters before her and began signing them robotically as her husband looked on with a distant expression that seemed whimsical.
“Can I watch television?”
“Later.”
“Can you turn it on for me?”
“Of course.”
The first lady signed ten more letters before he spoke again.
“What was his name?”
“Who, dear?” she asked her husband.
“The boy whose funeral it was.”
“I’m afraid I don’t remember.”
“I should know his name. My own son and I can’t remember his name.”
Merle Talmidge let that go, knowing the president’s attention would be diverted soon enough.
“Shouldn’t I be signing those letters?” he asked suddenly.
“You need to rest.”
“I’m not tired.”
“You have a lot of work ahead of you.”
“Can I watch television now?”
“I wonder what you’d say if you knew the truth,” the first lady said, as she continued scrawling her husband’s name in the proper place. “Would you tell me to stop? Would you tell me I’d gone too far?”
The president just looked at her.
“This was the only way to keep you from embarrassment and pity. You don’t deserve that. You’re much too good a man. So I’m really doing this for you. I’m committed because I know in my heart you would approve of the ends, despite the means.”
“I’m not mean,” Corbin Talmidge insisted.
“No, you’re good, and what we’re doing is good for the country. The country needs you, and the people will need you to comfort them in the wake of the greatest tragedy the United States has ever faced, one that will leave scars for generations. But it’s a tragedy to be celebrated, my love.”
“Like a birthday party?” the president asked her.
“Pretty much, yes, as a matter of fact.”
“I’d like a birthday party. When’s my birthday?”
“Two months ago.”
He looked down, then up again. “Did I have a party?”
“A big one,” the first lady lied.
“What about presents?”
“Lots of them.”
The president beamed. “How many?”
Merle Talmidge tapped the top of the stack of letters. “This many. These are the thank-you notes.”
“Then I want to sign them! Let me sign them!”
“I thought you wanted to watch television.”
“After I sign them,” Corbin Talmidge said, sliding them back before him and centering himself in his chair again. “Will you watch with me?”
“Sure, I will.”
“But I get to choose the show.”
“Of course you do.”
“And not the news. I hate the news. Boring.”
Not for long, the First Lady of the United States almost said out loud. Not for long …
“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” her husband was saying.
Merle Talmidge looked at him with a start, a crystallizing thought striking her like a lightning bolt. So clear and vivid, she couldn’t fathom how she hadn’t considered it before.
Of course!
“I’d like to discuss something with you,” she said to her husband.
Before he could respond, though, Merle Talmidge heard a knock and watched the entry door to the Oval Office open and then close behind her chief of staff, Alan Moorehouse. She saw the look on his face and had a sense of what he was going to say even before he spoke.
“We’ve got a problem, ma’am.”