White House East Wing Residence—June 21
Lem Jordan was sitting outside the private office of the First Lady. The door was closed. He rose abruptly when Addis appeared.
“How is she?” Addis asked.
“Fine. Going through papers.” His usual stammer was absent.
“And you, Lem?”
Jordan raised a finger in the air. It was an odd pose for him, Addis thought, as if he were imitating a politician.
“Well, I keep thinking that if I had been there …”
“There were a dozen Secret Service agents in the room. I don’t think you could have done anything. And your job has always been her, not him.”
“Yeah, I know. But I keep thinking … You know those g-g-g-guys h-h-h-hate me. They do.”
Addis knew; this was Jordan’s constant complaint.
“We were at the hospital with Ja-Ja-Jack, and when they got the news, they tried to pu-pu-pu-pu—”
Jordan paused to catch up to the stutter.
“—push me aside, and take her away.”
“They were upset.”
“Guess they d-d-don’t remember Cincinnati.”
There it was, the sentence used whenever anyone in the White House wanted to mimic Jordan. Among the more mean-hearted of the White House, these words had become a catchphrase to end a conversation. Guess they don’t remember Cincinnati—a threat that the discussion would go on and on, unless it finished then and there.
Heroism to mockery, Addis thought, can be a short journey. In Cincinnati during the first presidential campaign, Jordan was by the side of Margaret as she shook hands in a busy mall. He spotted a fellow wearing
an unbuttoned overcoat, and Jordan positioned himself next to the man. When the man went for the gun he was carrying in a back holster, Jordan tackled him before a shot could be fired. Jordan had realized that the image on the man’s T-shirt was a photograph of Squeaky Fromme, the woman who had tried to kill a previous president. None of the Secret Service agents had noticed that. Only Lem Jordan.
His speech impediment, his habit of repeating stories ad nauseam, and his seemingly bottomless devotion to Margaret Hanover prompted most White House people to regard him as a near-buffoon-though the sentiment never was expressed in his presence or before Margaret Hanover. She was as loyal to him as he was to her. He did more for her than most White House staffers realized, Addis suspected. On those occasions when Margaret seemed particularly well informed about a meeting or conversation to which she had not been privy, Addis uttered a one-word explanation to himself: Lem. So Addis listened patiently to Jordan’s stories. He even enjoyed a few of the tales, especially those from the years when Jordan had been a prison guard. “You d-d-don’t know p-p-people ‘til you seen’em in jail,” Jordan liked to say.
“They’ll always remember Cincinnati,” Addis said to him, “especially now. Okay if I go in?”
“Sure,” Jordan said.
“Thanks, Lem.”
“P-p-p-people ought to not underestimate p-p-people. You know that, N-n-nick?”
“Yes, I do,” Addis said, and opened the door. He patted Jordan on the arm. Then, as he entered the office and left Jordan at his post, Addis wondered if that gesture had been condescending.
“Not eavesdropping on the new regime?” Margaret Hanover asked. “Missing out on the first meeting of the Mumfries administration?”
She was at a desk in what had once been a dressing room. When the Hanovers had moved into the White House, she had turned a portion of the residence into a personal office, one more private than the space reserved for her in the Old Executive Office Building. The move—which coincided with Hanover’s announcement that Margaret would attend Cabinet meetings—had prompted criticism, with her predecessor as First Lady pronouncing it “unseemly.”
The widow Hanover was alone. She had dispatched her aides to the West Wing with various instructions on whom to invite to the funeral, a seating chart for the cathedral, a list of foundations to be designated as the recipients of donations in lieu of flowers. Her face was pearl white. It
looked as if it would be cold to the touch. Addis felt uneasy. Was he here to grieve with her or to plan?
“Not interested right now,” Addis said in reply to her questions.
“He didn’t even ask me to come,” she said. “But Kelly came by a few minutes ago to explain. Merely an oversight. That Sam—I mean, the President—assumed that I was busy and not available. And that, of course, I was invited.”
“Not interested, either?”
“Not ready to see him in that chair. Or to be stared at. To have my mourning judged … .”
She pulled a tissue from the box on her desk.
“You know what Mumfries is going to do?” she asked.
Addis shook his head. Was the question rhetorical? Years ago he had trained himself to follow the advice of his father, a professor of music history and the author of the definitive biography of Woody Guthrie: When you do not know what to say, listen. Later on, at law school, a negotiations expert had told his class that one should always let the person across the table speak first. Addis had developed his habits. Waiting was one of them. Margaret looked at the papers and folders on her desk.
“You know,” she complained. “I asked for storage boxes over an hour ago.”
Addis wondered if anyone had put their arms around Margaret since the … the event. Her focus returned.
“I don’t think Sam knows what he’s going to do. But I’m sure Kelly does. And I doubt we loom large in the picture.”
“They certainly don’t need to move quickly,” Addis said.
“I am thinking of the grander scheme.”
Whose grander scheme?
She paused before continuing. “When we were at the Cape, that first summer, we were on the beach, alone—except for the usual pack of watchers. But they were giving us our space. Jack was in his wheelchair on the deck. He could see us, and we waved at him. Bob took my hand. He held it tight. It almost hurt, but I didn’t say anything. He said, ‘if anything ever happens to …’ I wouldn’t let him go on. But he insisted. ‘You’ll have to finish,’ he said.”
She was crying now. Addis felt the moisture forming in his eyes; his throat was tightening.
“Imagine Sam in his place. Brings in his hacks. Undoes the little we’ve been able to do—what he and his idiot pals on the Hill weren’t able to stop. Or that Brew didn’t water down. We will have to … But Sam—ever notice how he smells? Moldy. I can’t bear it. Never could.”
Addis didn’t want to consider where she was leading. Her husband’s
body was still in pieces at Walter Reed Hospital, and she was thinking of … . Of what? Where was her invalid son, Jack, now? Who was watching him?
“The funeral will be the day after tomorrow,” she said. “Taking calls, receiving visitors, accepting sympathy and pity—I’m not very good at that. Then, then, after that I …”
Addis did not ask what she meant. If he did not ask, he would never have to lie about his first conversation with Margaret Hanover after the assassination of her husband—in which she was thinking of politics. But of what precisely? Succession? The election? She had said “I.”
This is too much. Mind if I just slip out, and …
But perhaps this was her manner of dealing with the shock and pain. Fixate on a concrete future.
“Nick, will you do a favor for me?”
“Anything.” He clenched a fist behind his back.
“I know you were planning a trip to Louisiana, to sort things out. After the funeral is done, will you still go? I’d like to have that business cleared up. Find the missing pieces—we all have our missing pieces, don’t we? Make certain.”
I’d rather the fuck not.
“I’m sure no one will bother with it now,” he said.
“You’re right, but just to be sure. Will you see what you can do?”
As Addis nodded, the questions began. Would this be an official trip? Would he have to explain his absence? Should he tell McGreer? Or anyone else? It felt wrong, he thought. But he couldn’t do anything but agree. He didn’t have the heart—or was it the strength?—to say no.
Damn. I’ve become a floater … . Call a press conference. Time to rewrite all those magazine profiles about Nick Addis.
He took a step toward her. She got up and paced about the room. Her hair had fallen out of the bun. She held her shoulders up. She stared at a point on the far side of the room.
“You were his—” she began to say.
She walked past him to the entrance to the room. She opened the door. Jordan peered into the office.
“There’s still much to do,” she said.
“Yes,” Addis said, and left.
In his office, more messages, more email. A note from McGreer: Hamilton Kelly had promised that a draft of Mumfries’s speech would be ready soon.
Addis pulled a book from one of the cartons scattered throughout the office. He thumbed through the pages. There was no notepad on his desk,
so he reached into the trash can and found a plain white envelope. On the back, he wrote down a passage:
We never know what we have lost, or what we have found. We are only ourselves, and that promise. Continue to walk in the world.
—Robert Penn Warren
A light rain had just begun as Addis walked from the West Wing to the Old Executive Office Building. Inside, his wet heels squeaked against the tile floor of the hallway. He entered the suite; the secretary was gone. He pushed open the door to Kelly’s office. It was empty. He placed the envelope on the desk. He noticed that the rain had caused the ink to run.