Melanie, can you or Ralph go through the polls with us?” Charlotte called.
“Coming,” Melanie answered from the front of the bus, where she was going over the data with Ralph and trying to read the bill from the stylist who’d helped Tara with her look for her convention address. After throwing a tantrum about how frumpy the elegant suits looked on her, she had stuffed all of the clothes into duffel bags and squirreled them away somewhere. Two weeks later, she was back to wearing cheap, tight skirts and blouses that looked as if they’d been purchased in the young teens section. Melanie put the statement into her bag and made her way toward the back of the bus.
“What are you two doing up there?” Charlotte asked. She was sitting at the head of the small table in the back. Tara and her husband sat next to her, and two of Tara’s aides from the AG’s office were on the other side.
“We’re trying to figure out where to steer this jalopy next,” Melanie said, growing dizzy from facing backward. “Hang on,” she said, looking down at her phone. “It’s Brian.”
Charlotte raised an eyebrow.
Then Melanie’s other cell phone rang. She looked at the number quickly. It was Michael from the Dispatch. She picked up Michael’s call. “I need to call you right back,” she said to him.
Melanie was afraid she wouldn’t get Brian’s call in time. He was barely talking to her. “Brian, hang on one second,” she said, holding one phone on each ear.
“Roger shot himself,” Michael and Brian said in unison.
“What?” She didn’t know which one of them she was talking to, but she dropped one phone when the bus lurched suddenly to one side.
“The cleaning lady found him this morning in his apartment in Pentagon City,” Michael said. She’d hung up on Brian. “He’d been dead for hours, so it must have happened last night.”
“Jesus Christ,” Melanie said. Charlotte was eyeing her suspiciously.
“He left a note,” Michael said.
Melanie was silent. She was using all of her mental energy to command her body not to throw up the moon pie she’d eaten for lunch.
“For Charlotte,” he said.
“I’m going to need to call you back,” Melanie said.
“Hurry.”
Melanie stood in the doorway that separated the back section of the bus from the front. She looked around on the ground for her other phone. She didn’t see it. She took two deep breaths and turned around to face Charlotte. “Can I talk to you?” she said.
“What, what is it?” Charlotte asked.
“Why don’t you give us a minute?” Melanie said to Tara, her husband, and her two aides.
“They can stay,” Charlotte said.
“Fine.” Melanie’s mouth was watering, and her ears were ringing. “Roger killed himself,” Melanie said, turning and throwing up on the floor of the bus as soon as the words were out of her mouth.
Melanie apologized to the military aides who swarmed the area with 409, paper towels, and Lysol. She stepped over her mess to sit down next to Charlotte. Ralph followed, careful not to step in Melanie’s vomit.
“She needs to get back to the White House as quickly as possible to do a statement from the East Room. If we do it tonight upon arrival, it will air on tomorrow’s network morning shows,” Melanie said. “It needs to be somber—something along the lines of ‘My thoughts and prayers are with his family, he was a dedicated public servant,’ and so on,” she said, typing the same thought in an e-mail to the speechwriters that she was sharing with Ralph, Charlotte, and Tara on the bus.
A nurse from the White House medical unit handed Melanie a ginger ale with a straw in it. “Melanie, drink this, and we’ll get more fluids in you once you keep it down,” the nurse said.
Melanie looked up briefly and mouthed “Thank you.” She put the soda down on the table without taking a sip.
“Do we cancel the next event, or do we do the event and go to Washington afterward?” Ralph asked as the bus continued down the interstate toward a five P.M. “Conversation with Ohio.”
Melanie looked down at her BlackBerry and noticed that her hands were shaking. She moved them under the table and tried to focus on what Ralph was saying. “I’m sorry, what was the question?” she asked.
“The next event—keep it or cancel it?” Ralph asked.
“I’m not one-hundred-percent sure we should cancel it, but if we go forward with an event, how does she handle a question about the suicide? I’m worried that she gets a question, answers it, and then the tape that they run in a continuous loop about the suicide is from a campaign-style event. That would be bad,” Melanie said, frowning at her BlackBerry. It wasn’t getting a signal and had not transmitted her e-mail to the speechwriters. She held it above her head at various angles until it transmitted.
“If we pull the plug on the event, the local Republican committee will go crazy,” Ralph said.
“So you suggest we go to Washington after the event?” Melanie said.
It wasn’t like Melanie to solicit Ralph’s opinion. He looked at her to determine whether she was patronizing him. “If we cancel,” Ralph said, “we would need to promise that this is the next event we do when we return to the ‘Conversation with America’ tour. The tickets were gone in fifteen minutes, and the crowd has been waiting for four hours.”
“My gut says cancel it, but I could be convinced that canceling would be interpreted by the press as an overreaction. I don’t know. It’s a close call,” Melanie said with uncharacteristic indecision.
“Why can’t she just stand alone outside Air Force One and read a statement in front of the cameras?” Tara asked. “That way, it would look presidential, and it would separate her from the day’s campaign activity, but we could stick to the schedule.”
Melanie shot Tara a look that said, Stay out of this, and sighed loudly before she spoke. “Because she can’t. Roger was her secretary of defense, and they went through a lot together. This morning, he shot himself. He has a wife. He has kids. And he left a suicide note—not for his wife or his kids but for Charlotte. That’s why she can’t just walk out of a campaign rally with hay in her hair from some state fair and say, ‘I sure am going to miss old Roger.’ This is a presidential moment, Madam Attorney General,” Melanie said.
“I see,” Tara said.
Melanie was sure she’d back down. But she didn’t.
This time, Tara faced Ralph when she spoke. “Isn’t this also a moment when we risk turning the discussion back toward the past and everything they didn’t like about Charlotte’s first term? And aren’t we moving up in the polls and succeeding in making the election about the future?” Tara asked.
Melanie was furious that Tara assumed she had a seat at the table for presidential decision making. So what if Charlotte’s numbers had surged since Tara had joined the ticket? It didn’t give her the right to weigh in on the things Charlotte did in her capacity as incumbent president. That was squarely Melanie’s domain.
Melanie pasted a smile on her face and cleared her throat. “Madam Attorney General, with all due respect, the voters expect a leader to stand by her friends when the situation is this dire,” she informed her.
“It’s a little late for that, isn’t it?” Charlotte said.
She’d been sitting at the table staring out the window, and it wasn’t clear to Melanie whether she’d been listening to the exchange. If she had been listening, Melanie was irritated that she hadn’t chimed in sooner to take her side.
“I mean, if I were inclined to stand by him when things were dire, I wouldn’t have forced his resignation or agreed to all the recommendations from the panel,” Charlotte said. “If I were inclined to stand by him, I would have called him when the report came out to see if he was doing OK. I would have called Stephanie. She was my friend at one time, too.” Charlotte spoke in a voice that was so soft Melanie had a hard time hearing her. “I don’t know why I drew such a bright line. I don’t know why I hardened so completely against him,” she practically whispered.
“Madam President, this isn’t your fault,” Melanie said quietly.
And she meant it. Roger’s suicide wasn’t Charlotte’s fault. It was hers. He had called her nearly a dozen times.
Melanie still hadn’t found her other cell phone. How was she supposed to manage the situation without her phone? She looked under the table, but every time her eyes moved to the floor of the bus, she felt as if she would vomit again. She shifted her gaze to the window and saw Tara whispering quietly to her husband. They looked as if they were conspiring.
“Madam President,” Tara said, “I don’t know if this is of any help, but I could pick up the ‘Conversations with America’ for a while if you want to go back to Washington to make a statement like Melanie suggests.”
“Thanks, Tara. I appreciate that,” Charlotte said. “Let’s see what Melanie and Ralph decide. And I really do appreciate your offer.”
“It’s the least I can do,” Tara said.
Charlotte returned her gaze to the view outside her window, and Melanie caught the look that Tara gave her husband. Tara looked satisfied that she’d infiltrated the inner circle, and her husband appeared to nod slightly, as though things had gone exactly as they’d planned. Melanie was tempted to say something to put her in her place, but she had too many other things to handle.
She moved slowly over to where the president was sitting. “Madam President, I’m going to have the speechwriters start working on a statement about Roger,” she said.
Charlotte nodded.
“Is there anything else I can do for you?”
Charlotte was silent, but she moved her hand to her head and started rubbing her temples.
“Madam President?” Melanie said.
“I didn’t have any idea that he was taking things this hard, or maybe I just didn’t want to know,” Charlotte said.
Melanie couldn’t meet Charlotte’s eye. “We should call Stephanie. Do you want me to see if I can get her on the line?” Melanie asked.
“I don’t know if she’d take my call, but yes, we need to try.”
They rolled along for twenty more minutes before the bus pulled up alongside Air Force One at the airport in Columbus, Ohio. Ralph convinced Melanie that Tara could handle the president’s scheduled appearances while Charlotte was in Washington. Charlotte barely looked at Ralph and Melanie when they made the recommendation.
Before she boarded the plane, Charlotte moved over to where Tara and her husband were sitting and did her best to look cheerful. “Tara, I really appreciate your willingness to step in and handle the ‘Conversations.’ They’re nothing more than town-hall meetings, but since I promised no campaign, they’re all we’ve got.”
“Madam President, it is my honor,” Tara said.
“I’ll give you a call in the morning to check in,” Melanie told her.
“Great. You know where to find us,” Tara said.
“Ralph is going to stay behind to staff you. We’ll send written remarks to the bus overnight. Everything will be fine. Don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried. And don’t you worry about us. We’ll be fine.” Tara gestured at the staff staying behind to work for the vice-presidential nominee’s first solo trip.
“You’ll be great,” Charlotte added before she walked off the bus.
Melanie watched Charlotte walk up the steps of Air Force One. She didn’t turn and wave to the cameras as she normally did. As soon as she disappeared into the front cabin, Melanie hurried up the front stairs and walked straight to the senior staff cabin to call the speechwriters back at the White House.
“Hey, guys, can you meet me when we land?” she asked.
“Yeah. We started something already based on your e-mail. We’ll have a first draft for you to review. Couple questions, Mel. Where and when are we doing this?” one of the writers asked.
“I think we want to do it tonight. I need to talk to the president again. And I don’t have a speech venue yet, but it will be somewhere on the eighteen acres. If you guys have suggestions, let me know. At first, I thought East Room, but that doesn’t feel right. I was toying with Rose Garden, but I could be persuaded to move it indoors, maybe to the Briefing Room. I don’t know. I’ll call you back. If you have something you can fax to the plane before we land, we’ll start reviewing it here.”
“Melanie, one more question. Does she want to mention what happened in Afghanistan or just keep it broad? Lifetime of service, that sort of stuff?” the writer asked.
“I don’t know. Let me call you back.”
She hung up and asked the Air Force One operator to place a call to Brian’s cell phone. His voice-mail picked up. Melanie was getting ready to leave a message when Charlotte appeared in the doorway to the senior staff cabin.
“I need to talk to you,” Charlotte said. She turned and walked straight back to her cabin. Melanie stood and followed her, shutting the door behind her.
Charlotte was standing in front of her desk, leaning against it with her arms crossed. As soon as Melanie closed the door behind her, Charlotte motioned for her to come closer.
“He tried to see me,” Charlotte said. “He called Sam, and he asked her for ten minutes to come see me, and we didn’t give it to him. How would you feel? I should have shown him more compassion. He was my friend.”
“He called me, too,” Melanie said. “On multiple occasions. If anyone is to blame, it’s me. I should have seen him. It’s my job.”
Charlotte didn’t say anything.
“Madam President, even if we were unkind for not returning his calls, I do not believe we are responsible for what Roger did.”
“Do you really believe that, Melanie? That we’re not responsible? That we didn’t hold the power to absolve him?” Charlotte said.
Melanie stared at the ground.
“Because I think we screwed this one up. Big time. We let Roger get destroyed because we saw this the way we see everything—black and white. There was no room to forgive, because we don’t have a box for that in November. We cut him out like a cancer because he traded one life for another, right?” Charlotte said.
Melanie looked up. “Yes. You said at the time that doing so made him just like the enemy,” Melanie reminded her, not sure where Charlotte was going.
“I remember. But didn’t we just do exactly the same thing?” Charlotte said. “Didn’t we trade Roger’s life for Dale’s?”
Melanie felt goose bumps rise on her bare arm. “No, no, it’s not the same,” she said, shaking her head.
“Melanie, if you are capable of that kind of denial, you are much better suited for this job than I am,” Charlotte said.
Neither of them said anything else, and after a few moments, Charlotte sat down at her desk and pretended to read pages from a briefing book.
Melanie turned to leave. “Let me know if you need anything,” she said.
Charlotte didn’t look up.