Things You Should Know (23 page)

“But you have such nice furniture,” Soledad says.

“Exactly.”

“Are we expecting a hurricane?” he asks, passing through. “I saw the boy taping up the window.”

He knows and he doesn't know.

Jorge is in the bedroom, putting a huge combination lock on the dressing room door.

“Do we have any white paint?” She asks Jorge.

“No, Señora.”

“We'll need some,” she says. “Until then use this.” She hands Soledad a bottle of Maalox. “Paint his mirror with it. Use a sponge if there isn't a brush. Put it on thick, so he can't see himself. It may take a couple of coats.”

He is alone with Philip. They are in the kitchen, making chocolate chip cookies—slice and bake. The President plays with a hunk of dough, molding it into a dog.

“There are a couple of things I wanted to ask you, if you don't mind.”

The President nods. “Go ahead, Tom.”

“Who were your heroes?”

“Tarzan and Babe Ruth.”

“Who was the most exciting person you ever met?”

“That would have to be Knute Rockne. I used to play ball with him. One hell of a guy.”

“And in that whole Iran Contra thing, what was the bit about using the chocolate cake as a bribe?”

“Funny you mention it.” He tilts his head, adopting the interview pose of careful consideration. “I was just thinking about her last night.” He pauses. “You know, Bob, America is a country of families, companies, individuals who care about
each other. This is another of those unavoidable tragedies, but in the end…It's them I worry about, the people who are out there.”

“Any regrets?”

“I never walked on the moon. I was a little too old, they gave the part to another fella.” He eats a clump of dough. “Listen,” he says. “When I come to, everything will be fine, we'll get back on course. We're strong people, Mike, we'll get through.”

 

She is online, catching up. The king of Toda has died and all the first ladies are going to the funeral. She can't leave him alone. “Now's not the time,” she e-mails her secretary. “Tell them I have the flu, so no one gets suspicious.”

She checks into the Alzheimer chat rooms.

—Her life must be a living hell. Imagine having everything in the world, all that help, and still you're on a sinking ship.

—She's an inspiration, how gracefully they handled it, and that letter he wrote about going off into the sunset.

—Do you think she even sees him? Does he recognize her? What condition is he in? We never hear a word.

They are talking about her. She is tempted to chime in, to defend herself. She wants to say, I am N.R. and you know nothing about my life.

—Think of all the people she got to meet and all the free clothes. She got a good deal. It's more than enough for one life-time.”

—Got to go, Earl just wet himself. It's one thing when it's a twenty-two-pound infant the size of a turkey, it's another when it's a two-hundred-forty-pound man the size of a sofa.

She pedals faster. She's gone about thirty miles, when
EZRIDER
sends her an instant message.

—Where did you disappear to, EZ wants to know? Hope I didn't scare you.

—Telephone rang. Long distance.

—Where did we leave off?

—You were taking me for a ride on a Ferris wheel, we were high above it all…

There is a knock at her door. She ignores it. It comes again, harder.

“What the hell is it?”

The door opens. It's one of the agents. “Sorry to interrupt, but the President has disappeared.”

She continues pedaling.

“We can't find him. We've searched the house, the perimeter, and Mike and Jeff are going up and down the block on foot.” Mike and Jeff, he says—it sounds like Mutt and Jeff. “Should we call the police?”

She logs off, calmly gets off the bike, and punches the panic button on the wall. They all come running.

“Who last saw him, where, and when?”

“We were baking cookies about twenty minutes ago, the last batch just went into the oven, he said he had to go to the bathroom,” Philip says.

“He was in the yard,” one of the agents says, “relieving himself against a tree. That was maybe twenty-five minutes ago.”

“He's eloped,” Philip says. “It happens all the time, they have the urge to go, and then, as if summoned, they're gone.”

“How many cars do we have?” she asks.

“The sedan, the van, Soledad's, and mine,” Philip says.

“Divide into teams. Philip, you go on foot, I'll go with Soledad, does everyone have a cell phone?”

They quickly get their phones and exchange numbers.

“Those lines aren't secure,” the agent says.

“No hysterical calls,” she says. “Code name Francine.”

She hurries out to the driveway and into Soledad's old red Mercury.

“We can't send you without an agent.”

“Your agents can't find my husband,” she says, slamming the door, missing the man's fingers by an eighth of an inch.

“We should call the police.”

“The last thing we need to do is draw attention to what Keystone cops you are,” she says, signaling to Soledad to start the engine.

“I think we're required to by law,” one of the younger agents says. “We've never had a President disappear.”

“Oh sure we have,” one of the older men says. “We just don't talk about it. John Kennedy was gone for seventy-two hours once and we didn't have a clue.”

She and Soledad take off. They see Mike down the street, talking to the Bristol Farms deliveryman, and Jeff following the mailman from house to house.

“Take a right,” she says, and she and Soledad go up the hill, looking for signs.

Philip moves from door to door with an old glossy head shot. He rings the bell and holds the head shot in front of the electric eye. “Have you seen this man?” he asks, and then repeats the question in Spanish.

It can't end here, with him disappearing, the Amelia Earhart of politics. She is in the car with Soledad, imagining stories of mysterious sightings, dinner parties with him as the prize guest, him being held hostage in a Barcalounger in some faux paneled recreation room. She imagines him being found months later, when they get tired of taking care of him and pitch him out of a car in the Cedars-Sinai parking lot in the middle of the night, dirty and dehydrated.

They come upon a dog walker with eight dogs on eight different leashes, each dog a statement of sorts.

“Have you seen anyone walking around here? We've misplaced an older white man.”

The dog walker shakes her head. “No one walks—if they want to walk, they get on the treadmill and watch TV.”

They climb up St. Cloud, higher still. She remembers when she first came to Hollywood in the late 1940s as a young actress. She remembers going to parties at these houses, before they were married, when they used to spend
evenings with Bill and Ardis Holden, when Jimmy Stewart lived on Roxbury Drive. She recalls the first time she visited Frank Sinatra's place on Foothill Road. She is reading it all now, like a map of the stars' homes.

The air is unmoving, smog presses down, hanging like a layer of dust waiting to fall, sealing them in. Soledad's car doesn't have air-conditioning; they drive with the windows down, it's the first time she's been in real air in years. She is sweating, there's a clammy glow to her skin.

Mike and Jeff wind downhill toward Westwood, UCLA, and Beverly Hills.

“Have you seen Ronald Reagan?”

“You might want to check on the quad—a lot of people were going over there, there's a puppet show or something.”

“Ollie-ollie-oxen-free,” Philip yells down the street. “Come out, come out, wherever you are. Come on down, The Price Is Right.”

The Bel Air police pull him over. “Where do you belong?”

“At 668. I'm the President's personal trainer.”

“You're the trainer?”

Philip pulls out his card. “Yes, the trainer. Now if you'll excuse me.” He walks on, singing loudly, “hi-de-hi, hi-de-ho.”

She is panicked that someone has him, she worries that they won't know who he is, they won't treat him well. She worries that they know exactly who he is and they won't give him back. She worries that he is wondering who he is.

“We had a dog who disappeared,” she tells Soledad. “There was something about it that was horrible, the idea that he was out there somewhere, suffering, hurt, lost, wanting to get home and unable to.”

“He can't have gotten far,” Soledad says.

She has never told anyone, not even herself, but there are times lately when she just wishes it was over. As there is less and less of him, it becomes more painful, and she wishes it would end before he is no longer a man, but a thing, like a potted plant. She imagines making it happen, hastening the
process, putting him out of her misery—she can't go on like this forever.

The cell phone rings. It's a conference call from the agents.

“Mike and Jeff are at the circle by the Beverly Hills Hotel. They believe they see Francine. She's out there in the middle of the circle directing traffic and apparently doing a pretty good job of it. They're waving at him—I mean her—and she's waving back. They're parking now and walking over. Yes, we have Francine. Francine has been found.”

 

She is back at the house when the white van pulls through the gate.

He gets out, wearing an orange reflective safety vest.

“Where'd he get that?”

“We don't know.”

She puts her hand in his pockets; there's money—singles and a five.

“Did someone take you away? Did someone give you a ride?”

“I got tips,” he says.

The Bel Air police pull up with Philip in the back of the car. “Sorry to bother you,” one of the cops says.

The agents grab the President, like a mannequin, and protectively pull him behind the van for cover.

“Do you know this man?” the cop asks.

“Has he done something wrong?” she asks.

“He was out, walking and singing, and he has a glossy photo of your husband and, well, we thought he looked a little like John Hinckley.”

“He's our trainer,” she says.

“That's what he said. And you're sure about that?”

“Quite.”

“All right then, I'm sorry.” The cop gets out, lets Philip out of the back of the car, and unlocks the handcuffs. “You can never be too careful.”

“Of course you can't. Thank you.”

“How did he get all the way to Beverly Hills?” Philip asks, when he finds out where they found him.

“I don't think he walked,” she says.

She is livid. She wants to take him and shake him and tell him that if he ever does that again she's sending him away, putting him in a home under lock and key.

Instead she goes inside, picks up the phone, and calls Washington. “Head of the Secret Service, please, this is Nancy Reagan on the line.”

“Can I have him return?” his secretary says.

“No.”

“One moment, please.”

The head of the service comes on the line. She reads him the riot act, starting calmly and working her way up. “I don't know what kind of agency you're running…” By the time she's finished she is screaming and the man on the other end is blithering. “How many men have you got there? We'll do a full investigation. I'll replace the whole crew. I don't know what to say. Maybe they weren't thinking. Maybe they're burned out.”

“Burned out…You're supposed to be the best in the world and the man wandered away from his own home.” She slams the phone down.

Philip helps him take a shower and change into clean clothing—jeans and a cowboy shirt. Philip has a cowboy hat for him, a toy guitar, and a piece of rope. They are in the backyard doing rope tricks.

“I've upset Mother,” he says.

“It's all right, Chief, you gave us all quite a scare.”

She is brittle, flash-frozen. And she has a backache. She takes a couple of aspirin and tries to catch her breath.

 

Later, he is in the bedroom, sitting on the floor playing with his toy guitar.

She goes to the padlock, starts spinning the numbers, one to the right, two to the left. She takes a sharp breath, makes an odd sound, turns around, gives him a surprised look—and falls face down on the floor. The sound is like a plank of light wood; there's a distinct snap—her nose breaking, her beak bending to the side.

“The hummingbird is down, the hummingbird is down.” The call goes out when Philip finds her.

He rolls her over and attempts CPR. “Someone dial 911—dial 911,” he shouts.

“That man is kissing Mother,” he says, strumming his guitar.

Philip's breath, his compressions are useless. The paramedics arrive and try to jump-start her. Her body bounces off the floor, ribs snap. They are about to call for backup when Soledad steps forward, living will in hand, and tells them to stop. “No heroic measures,” she says. “It's enough.”

Soledad calls Dr. Sibley, who arranges for someone to meet them at Saint Johns, and they slide her into a garment bag, and discreetly tuck her into the back of Jorge's gardening truck under a pile of grass clippings. The ambulance stays out front while she is taken out the back. Jorge's Ever Green Gardening Service pulls away just as the news trucks pull up, raising their satellite dishes into the sky.

And he still sits on the bedroom floor strumming the guitar and singing an old cowboy song—“Yippee-ti-yi-yay, get along little dogies, you know that Wyoming will be your new home.”