Things You Should Know Page 18

“Stress fracture,” she says, “Did they call?”

  He nods. “About fifteen minutes ago. I reported vibration and minor damage.”

  In their backyard there is a global positioning monument, a long probe sunk deep into the earth. Every thirty seconds one of five satellites registers the position of the monument, measuring the motion in scientific millimeters. There are hundreds of them, up and down the state. She and Ben get a tax credit for “the friendly use of land.” And every time there’s an event, the phone rings. “Just checking in.”

  When she stands near the monument, when she focuses on it, she can feel the satellite connecting, a gentle pull for a fraction of a second, a tugging at the marrow.

  “There are footprints,” Ben says, pointing out the press of a paw on the loamy ground behind the house. “I’m thinking dog or deer.”

  “Mountain lion,” she says, bending to sniff the print, pressing her hand into the dirt over it.

  Ben takes a dry towel and rubs her hair—at the roots her hair is fluorescent orange, the rest is brunette. The color changes according to her mood, or, more accurately, her emotional temperature. The only way she can disguise her feelings or not look like a clown is to dye her long locks. “Are you especially frightened?”

  “The tremor threw me,” she says. “Do I need a dye job?”

  He nods. “You’re bright orange.”

  She is cleaning her brush, her comb, saving the strands, spinning and weaving a Technicolor carpet.

  “Did you go out today?” She notices that all the grocery bags on the counter are from iDot.com, the online food store—type in your list and your groceries are at the door within an hour.

  “The pollen was high,” he says. “The air was bad. I stayed inside, working. I made you a wonderful puzzle.”

  Ben is perfecting a kind of time-sensitive material, a puzzle that shifts so that the image changes as you are piecing it together. Every day he downloads photographs and turns them into something new. This time it’s a picture of the sky at twilight, a single cloud. As they put the pieces together, the blue deepens; it becomes an image of the night sky and, as more of the pieces fit, a small plane flies across the sky, moving silently from piece to piece.

  In every room there is a clock; Ben likes listening to the tick, tock, tripping of the hands as he travels from room to room, as sound shifts, time bends.

  He runs her a warm bath and sits by the edge while she soaks—ever since the fall in the well, she can’t bear to be in water alone.

  “Benjamin, are you still thinking you can stop time?” she asks as he washes her back.

  “I’m working on it,” he says.

  “How well do you know me?”

  “Very well,” he says, kissing her. Her skin is the skin of youth, of constant rejuvenation, delicate, opalescent, like mother of pearl.

  “Is there a beginning or an end?”

  “No beginning or end in sight—infinity.”

  Out of the bath, he wraps a towel around her.

  He presses his mouth to her skin, telling her stories.

  Her heart races, the watch on her arm ticks faster. She begins to shift, to change; first she is the coyote, then a zebra, a mare, and a man. Her bones are liquid, pouring. She is laughing, crying in ten different languages, barking and baying. His hands slide over her skin, her coat, her fur, her scales, her flippers and fins. He is sucking the toes of a gorilla, kissing the ear of a seal. She is thick and thin, liquid and solid.

  They are moving through time: lying on pelts in a cave, in a hand-carved bed in a palace, nomads crossing the desert, calico pioneers in a log cabin, they are on a ship, in a high-rise, on the ice in an igloo. Their cells are assembling and disassembling. They are flying through history. She is a cloud, vapor and texture. She is rain and sky and she is always and inescapably herself.

  “Is that still you?” he asks. “I never know if you’re really in there.”

  “It’s me,” she says, sliding back into herself. “In the end, it is always me.”

  THE FORMER FIRST LADY AND THE FOOTBALL HERO

  The white van accelerates. He is in back, strapped in, seat-belted, shoulder-harnessed, sitting between two men in suits. She, too, is supposed to be in back, but she is up front, next to the driver. Wherever they go, she is always up front—she gets carsick.

  There are escort cars front and rear, small unmarked sedans—white on the West Coast, black on the East.

  “Trash day,” one of the agents in the back seat says, trying to make conversation. All along the curb are large black plastic trash cans and blue recycle bins. The path is narrow, the van takes the curves broadly, swinging wide, as though it owns the road.

  Something happens; there is a subtle shift, a tremor in the tectonic plates below, and the trash cans begin to roll. They pick up speed, careening downhill toward the motorcade.

  “Incoming on the right,” the agent shouts.

  The lead car acts like a tank, taking the hit head on, the trash can explodes, showering the convoy with debris: empty Tropicana containers, Stouffer’s tins, used Bounty. Something red gets stuck on the van’s antenna and starts flapping like a flag.

  “Son of a bitch,” she says.

  In the lead car, an agent whips a flashing light out of the glove compartment, slaps it down on the roof, and they take off, accelerating rapidly.

  The motorcade speeds in through the main gate. Agents hover in the driveway and along the perimeter, on alert, guns drawn.

  “The Hummingbird has landed. The package has been returned. We are at sea level.” The agents speak into their lapels.

  The gates automatically pull closed.

  “What the hell was that—terrorists on St. Cloud Road?” she asks.

  “Earthquake,” the agent says. “We’re confirming it now.” He presses his ear bud deeper into his ear.

  “Are you all right, sir?” they ask, helping him out of the van.

  “Fit as a fiddle,” he says. “That was one hell of a ride, let’s saddle her up and go out again.”

  His eye catches the shiny red fabric stuck on the antenna. He lifts it off with his index finger, twirling it through the air—bright red panties, hooked on their lacy trim. The underpants fly off his finger and land on the gravel. Whee.

  “Where are we?” he asks, kicking gravel in the driveway. “You call this a quarry? Who’s directing this picture? What the hell kind of a movie is this? The set is a shambles.”

  The problem isn’t taking him out, it’s bringing him back.

  “Home,” she says.

  “Well, it’s no White House, that’s for sure.” He pushes up his sleeve and picks at the Band-Aid covering the spot where they injected the contrast.

  Earlier, at the doctor’s office, two agents waited in the exam room with him, doing card tricks, while she met with Dr. Sibley.

  “How are you?” Sibley asks when she sat down.

  “Fine. I’m always fine, you know that.”

  “Are you able to get out at all?”

  She nods. “Absolutely. I had lunch at Chasens with the girls earlier this week.”

  There is a pause. Chasens closed several years ago. “Nothing is what it used to be,” she says, catching herself. “How’s he?”

  Dr. Sibley turns on the light boxes. He taps his pencil against the films. “Shrinking,” he says. “The brain is getting smaller.”

  She nods.

  “Does he seem different to you? Are there sleep disturbances? Does he wander? Has he ever gotten combative? Paranoid?”

  “He’s fine,” she says.

  Now he stands in the driveway, hands on his hips. Behind him is blue sky. There is another tremor, the ground vibrates, shivers beneath his feet.

  “I love that,” he says. “It reminds me of a carnival ride.”

  She puts her arm through his and leads him into the house.

  “I don’t know what you’re thinking,” he says, “but any which way, you’ve got the wrong idea.”


  She smiles and squeezes his arm. “We’ll see.” Soledad, the housekeeper, rings a bell.

  “This must be lunch,” he says when Soledad puts a bowl of soup in front of him. Every day they have the same thing—routine prevents confusion, and besides they like it that way; they have always liked it that way.

  If you feed him something different, if you give him a nice big chef’s salad, he gets confused. “Did they run out of bread? What the hell kind of commissary is this?”

  “What’s the story with Sibley?” he asks, lifting his bowl, sipping from the edge.

  She hands him a spoon. She motions to him how to use it. He continues drinking from the bowl.

  “He doesn’t seem to be getting me any work. Every week I see him; squeeze this, lift that, testing me to see if I’ve still got the juice. But then he does nothing for me. Maybe we should fire him and get someone new. How about the folks over at William Morris—there has to be someone good there. How about Swifty Lazar, I always thought he was a character.” He puts the bowl down.

  “Swifty’s dead.”

  “Is he? Well, then, he’s not much better than Sibley.” He trails off. “Who am I?” he asks her.

  “You’re my man,” she says.

  “Well, they certainly did a good job when they cast you as my wife—whose idea was that?”

  “Dore Schary,” she says.

  He nods. “And who am I really?”

  “Who would you like to be?”

  They sit in silence. “May I be excused?”

  She nods. He gets up from the table and heads down the hall toward his office. Every afternoon he writes letters and pays bills. He uses an out-of-date checkbook and one-cent stamps, sometimes a whole sheet on a single envelope. He spits on the back of the sheet of stamps, rubs the spit around, and wraps the letter in postage.

  “Would you like me to mail that?” she asks when he is done.

  “This one’s for you,” he often says, handing her an envelope.

  “I look forward to receiving it,” she says, taking the envelope from him.

  Once, a letter was accidentally mailed—a five-thousand-dollar donation to a Palestinian Naturalists’ Organization—Nude in the Desert.

  Every day he writes her a letter. His handwriting is unsteady and she can’t always read every word, but she tries.

  Mommy—

  I see you. I love you always. Love, Me.

  He smiles. There are moments when she sees a glimmer, the shine that tells her he’s in there, and then it is gone.

  “Lucky?” he says.

  “Lucky’s no more,” she says.

  “Lucy?”

  She shakes her head. “That was a long time ago,” she says. “Lucky is long gone.”

  She gives him a pat on the head and a quick scratch behind the ears. “Errands to run,” she says. “I’m leaving you with Philip.”

  “Philip?”

  “The pool boy,” she says.

  “Is Philip the same as Bennett?” Bennett was his bodyguard and chauffeur from gubernatorial days.

  “Yes,” she says.

  “Well, why don’t you just say so? What’s all the mystery? Why don’t you call him Bennett?”

  “I don’t want to confuse him,” she says.

  Philip is the LPN. He fills the daily minder—pill container, doles out the herbal supplements, and gives the baths. The idea of a male nurse is so unmasculine that it sickens her. She thinks of male nurses as weaklings, serial killers, repressed homosexuals.

  Philip was Dr. Sibley’s idea. For a while they had part-time help, a girl in the afternoons. One afternoon she came home from shopping and asked how he was.

  “He have good lunch,” the girl said, followed by “Your husband have very big penis.”

  She found him in the sunroom with an erection. “Would you look at me,” he said.

  “Sometimes, as memory fades, a man becomes more aggressive, more sexual,” Sibley said. “The last thing we’d want is a bastard baby claiming to be the President’s child. Avoid the issue,” Sibley advised. “Hire this Philip fellow. He comes highly recommended. Call him the President’s personal trainer.”

  From the beginning, there is something about Philip that she doesn’t like—something hard to put her finger on, something sticky, almost gooey, he is soft in the center like caramel.

  She picks up the phone, dialing the extension for the pool house.

  “Should I come in now?” Philip asks.

  “Why else would I call?”

  “Philip is going to give you your treatment, and then maybe you’ll take a little nap.”

  His treatment is a bath and a massage. He has become afraid of the shower—shooting water. Every day Philip gives him a treatment.

  “Don’t leave me here alone,” he says, grabbing at the edge of her skirt, clinging, begging her not to leave.

  “I can’t disappoint the people, now can I?” She pries his fingers off.

  “I wouldn’t be myself without you,” he says rummaging around, looking for something. “Where is my list? My lines? I’ve got calls to make. Remind me, what’s her name, with the accent? Mugs?”

  “Margaret Thatcher?” Philip says.

  He looks at her for confirmation. She nods.

  “See you later,” she says.

  He picks up the phone. It automatically rings in the kitchen. In order to get an outside line you have to dial a three-digit code.

  “Operator,” Soledad says, picking up.

  “Put me through to Mrs. Thatcher,” he says.

  “One moment, please,” Soledad says. She makes the ring, ring sound. “Good afternoon, London here.” Soledad mimicks an English accent. “America calling,” she says, switching back to her operator voice. “I have the President on the line.”—“Jolly well, then, put him through,” she says in her English accent. “You’re on the line, sir, go ahead,” she says.

  “Margaret,” he says, “she’s left me, gone for good, now it’s just the two of us. Are we on the same team? Are all our soldiers in a line? Are you packed and ready to go at a moment’s notice? Is there enough oil? Are we on the same team? Did I just ask you that?”

  When she goes, she’s gone. She passes through her dressing room, freshens her face, sprays her hair, puts a red suit on, and practically runs out to the car.

  Whenever she wants to be seen she wears a red suit—she has a dozen of them: Adolfo, Armani, Beene, Blass, Cassini, Dior, Galanos, Saint Laurent, Ungaro. When she goes out with him, when she goes incognito, she wears pastels. No one looks at an old woman in pastel pull-on pants.

  “The Hummingbird is in the feeder.” Her agents talk into their lapels.

  “Where to?” Jim asks as the gate swings open.

  “Let’s go down to Rodeo and window-shop. Maybe we’ll stop at Saks or Barney’s.”

  Sometimes she has the men drive her to Malibu to clear her head, sometimes she goes walking down Beverly Boulevard, like a tourist attraction. Sometimes she needs to be recognized, reminded of who she is, reminded that she is not the one evaporating.

  “Notify BHPD that we’ll be in their jurisdiction. Anticipate R&W.” They radio ahead. “R&W” stands for the vicinity of Rodeo and Wilshire.

  They notify the Los Angeles field office and the local police department just in case. A couple of months ago an old drag queen paraded up and down Rodeo Drive doing a convincing imitation of her, until he asked to use the ladies’ room in the GAP and came out with his skirt tucked into the back of his panty hose, flashing a flat ass and hairy thighs.

  They pull into the public lot on Rodeo Drive.

  The attendant waves the white car away. “Lot full,” he says.

  “It’s okay,” one of the special agents says, putting the OFFICIAL GOVT. BUSINESS placard in the window.

  She carries a small purse with almost nothing in it: a lipstick, some old Republican Party pens and tie tacks to pass out as little gifts, and a bottle of liquid hand sanitizer. She is one of the few who, wit
h good reason, regrets gloves having gone out of style—too many clammy hands in the world.

  A couple comes up to her on the sidewalk. “We’re here from Terre Haute,” the husband says, snapping a picture of his wife with her.

  “We’re such big fans,” the woman says. “How is the President feeling?”

  “He’s very strong,” she says.

  “We voted for you, twice,” the husband says, holding up two fingers like a peace sign.

  “We miss you,” someone calls out.

  “God bless,” she says.

  “I’ve been hoping you’d come in,” Mr. Holmes in the shoe department of Saks confides. He is her regular salesman. “I’m holding some Ferragamos for you—they’re on sale.” He whispers as though protecting her privacy.

  “There’s nothing nicer than new shoes,” she says, sliding into the pumps. She looks at her legs in the half mirror. “At least my ankles are still good,” she says.

  “You are very thin,” Mr. Holmes says, shaking his head.

  For years she was a six, and then a four, and now she’s a two. After a lifetime of dieting she is just four sticks and a brain, her thin hair teased high, like spun caramel sugar, hard.

  “The shoes are down to one-sixty but with my discount I can get them for you at one-thirty-five.”

  “You’ve always been good to me.”

  He knows enough to have them sent. He knows to put it on account, not to bring her the bag or the paperwork. She doesn’t sign bills of sale or carry bags, and the agents need to keep their hands free.

  In Barney’s, she stops at the makeup counter.

  “Is that really you?” the salesgirl asks.

  “Yes.” She glances into the magnifying mirror. Blown-up, she looks scary, preserved like something dipped in formaldehyde. “I need something for my skin,” she tells the girl.

  “I’ve got just the thing for you,” the girl pulls out a cotton ball. “May I?”

  She nods. “You may.”

  “It goes on light.” The girl dabs her face with the moisturizer. “But is has enough body to fill in any uneven spots. Your skin is lovely, you must have a good regimen.”