Things You Should Know

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, with 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.”

“Smoke and mirrors,” she says. “Hollywood magic.”

The agents look away, their eyes, ever vigilant, scan the room. In Los Angeles, the agents dress down. They dress like golf pros — knitted short-sleeved shirts, sweaters, and permanent-press pants. They keep their guns in fanny packs under their sweaters. Their ear buds are clear plastic, like hearing aids.

“That’s lovely,” she says. “I’ll take a jar.”

A woman comes rushing across the store toward her, the agents pull in. “I heard you were here.” The woman moves to kiss her on the cheek, they brush the sides of their faces, their hairdos against each other.

“You look fantastic,” she says, unable to remember the woman’s name — she thinks it might be Maude.

“Of course I do,” the woman says. “I’m like a time machine. Every year, I intend to look five years younger. By the time I die I’ll look like Jon Benet.”

“Could I trouble you for an autograph?” someone interrupts, handing her a piece of paper to sign.

A woman standing off to the side pushes her little girl in the First Lady’s direction. “Go and shake her hand,” she says. “She used to be married to the President of the United States.”

The First Lady, practiced in the art of greeting children, reaches out. The child extends a single finger, touching her like she’s not quite real, like tagging her — You’re it. The little girl touches the former First Lady the way you’d touch something that had cooties, the way you’d touch something just to prove you were brave enough to do it. She touches the former First Lady and then runs.

In Niketown she buys him a pair of aqua socks — they won’t fall off the way his slippers do, and he can wear them everywhere: inside, outside, in the bath, to bed. She buys the aqua socks and when she realizes that no one there knows who she is, she leaves quickly.

“That was nice,” she says when they are back in the car. She has started to enjoy these impromptu excursions more than official functions. At First Lady events, at library luncheons, disease breakfasts, she is under the microscope. People look at her, checking for signs of wear and tear. She keeps up a good front, she has always kept up a good front. She is careful not to be caught off guard.

“Removed from public view”—that’s how they describe him on his Web site. He was removed from public view in 1988, like a statue or a painting. She will not allow him to be embarrassed, humiliated. She will not allow even the closest of their friends to see him like this. They should remember him as he was, not as he is.

Meanwhile, the two of them are in exile, self-imposed, self-preserving.

When she gets home, he is in the backyard with Philip, playing catch with a Nerf football.

“Did you miss me?” she asks.

“Liz Taylor called,” he says. “She’s not well. I couldn’t understand a word of what she said.”

Is he making it up — getting back at her for having gone out for an hour? She turns to Philip. “Did Liz Taylor really call? Do I have to call her back?”

Philip shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“Don’t play games with me, Philip. He’s not a toy, he’s a man. He’s a man,” she repeats. “How am I supposed to know what’s real? How am I supposed to know what the truth is anymore?” She shouts and then storms off to her room.

Philip and the President resume tossing the ball.

“My grip is stronger than it ever was,” he says, squeezing the ball, squishing it, not realizing that it’s not a real football. “I could never have done that as a young man.”

Philip, running for a pass, stumbles over a lounge chair and plunges into the pool.

The President instantly dives in, wrapping his arm around Philip’s neck, pulling. Philip, afraid to fight, afraid he will accidentally drown the President, guides them toward the shallow end. Philip climbs out, pulling the President out of the water, the President’s arm still wrapped around his neck, choking him.

“They call me the Gripper, because I don’t let go.”

“I think it was Gipper, sir. They called you the Gipper, as in ‘win one for the Gipper.’”

“Seventy-eight,” he says.

“What’s seventy-eight?”

“You’re the seventy-eighth person I saved. I used to be a life guard,” he says, and it is entirely true. “Hey, does that count as a bath?”

She is in her dressing room. It started as a walk-in closet and kept expanding. They broke through a wall into one of the children’s bedrooms and then through another into the guest room, and now it is a dressing suite, a queen’s waiting room. The carpet is Wedgwood blue, the walls white with gold trim, calmly patriotic, American royal. It is her hide-away, her fortress, command and control. She’s got a computer, fax, private telephone lines, and a beauty parlor complete with a professional hair dryer. There’s a divan that used to belong to Merv Griffin, photographs of her with everyone — the little lady with the big head standing next to Princess Di, Mikhail Baryshnikov, the Gorbachevs.

In her favorite velour sweat suit, she mounts the contraption — a recumbent bike with built-in screen — she can watch TV, go online, surf the Web, write e-mails, or pedal her way down an animated bucolic country lane.

She needs to be in motion — constant motion. That’s one of the reasons they call her the Hummingbird.

She logs on, checking in with her secretary — would she be willing to host a Los Angeles event with the head of the Republican Party? “OK as per N.R.,” she types. She reviews a proposed album of photographs and sends a message to the chief archivist at the Presidential Library. “Dig deeper. There is a better picture of me with Raisa, also a nice one of the President and me waltzing. That should be the closing image.”

She e-mails the lawyer, the business manager, the White House Alumni Office. Nothing happens without her knowledge, without her approval. She is in communication because he can’t be.

Using a series of code words, she moves in further, signing into the First Ladies’ Club, a project started by Barbara Bush as a way of keeping in touch; trading helpful hints about difficult subjects such as transition times — when you’re not elected, you’re not wanted — and standing by your man when indictments come down. They keep each other updated on their special interests, literacy, mental health, addiction, “Just Say No.” They all talk about Hillary behind her back — she’s a little too ambitious for them. And Hillary doesn’t update her weekly “What I Did for the Good of the Country” column, instead just sending impersonal perky messages like “You Go Girl!”

The communications man has her wired up, six accounts under a variety of names — virtually untraceable. This is her solace, her salvation. This is the one place where she can be herself, or better yet, be someone else.

Under the name Edith Iowa she logs into an Alzheimer’s support group.

“What do you do when they don’t recognize you anymore? ‘I know you from somewhere,’ he says, looking at me, worried, struggling.”

“He asked for more light. He kept asking more light, more light. I turned on every light in the house. He kept saying, Why is it so dark in here? Don’t we pay the electric bills? I grabbed the flashlight and shined it in his face — is this enough light for you? He froze. I could see right through him and there was nothing there. Am I horrible? Did I hurt him? Is someone going to take him away? Do I ever say how much I miss him?”

She reads the stories and cries. She cries because she knows what they’re talking about, because she lives in fear of the same things happening to her, because she knows that despite everything it will all come true. After a lifetime of trying not to be like everyone else, in the end she is just like everyone else.

When the doctor told them it was Alzheimer’s, she thought they’d deal with it the same way they’d dealt with so many things — cancer, the assassination attempt, more cancer. But then she realized that it was not something they’d deal with, it was something she would deal with, alone. She cries because it is the erasing of a marriage, the erasing of history, as though the experiences, the memories which define her, never happened, as though nothing is real.

“How brave you are,” Larry King said to her. What choice does she have?

She orders products online, things to make life easier: plastic plugs for the electric outlets, locks for the cabinets, motion detectors that turn on lamps, flood alarms, fold-down shower seats, a nonslip rubber mat for around the toilet, diapers. They arrive at a post box downtown, addressed to Western Industries. She stores them in what used to be Skipper’s room. Like preparing for the arrival of an infant, she orders things in advance, she wants to have whatever he’ll need on hand, she wants there to be no surprises.

Under her most brazen moniker, Lady Hawke, she goes into chat rooms, love online. The ability to flirt, to charm, is still important to her. She lists her interests as homemaking and politics. She says she’s divorced with no children and puts her age at fifty-three.

— Favorite drink?

— Whiskey sour.

— Snack food?

— Caviar.

She is in correspondence with EZRIDER69, a man whose Harley has a sidecar.

— Just back from a convention in Santa Barbara — ever been there?

— Used to go all the time.

— U ride?

— Horses.

— Would love to take you for a spin in my sidecar.

— Too fast for me.

— How about on a Ferris wheel?

She feels herself blushing, it spreads through her, a liquidy warm rush.

— Dinner by the ocean?

EZ is asking her out on a date. He is a motorcyclist, a self-described leather man with a handlebar mustache, a professional hobbyist, he likes fine wines, romance, and the music of Neil Diamond.

“Not possible,” she writes back. “I am not able to leave my husband. He is older and failing.”

— I thought U were divorced?

She doesn’t respond.

— U still there?

— Yes.

— I don’t care what you are — Divorced, Married, Widowed. You could be married to the President of the United States and it wouldn’t change anything — I’d still like to take you to dinner.

It changes everything. She looks at herself in the mirrored closet doors, a seventy-seven-year-old woman flirting while riding an exercise bike.

A hollow body, an elected body, a public body. The way to best shield yourself in a public life is simply to empty the inside, to have no secrets, to have nothing that requires attention, to be a vessel, a kind of figurehead, a figurine like a Staffordshire dog.

She goes to the entertainment channel and gets the latest on Brad and Jennifer. They are all in her town, down the road, around the corner. She could summon any of them and they would come quickly, out of curiosity, but she can’t, she won’t. Like a strange Siamese twin, the more removed he becomes the more removed she becomes.

She changes screen names again — STARPOWER — and checks in with her psychic friends, her astrological soul mates. You have to believe in something and she has always loved the stars — she is a classic Cancer, he is a prototypical Aquarius. Mercury is in retrograde, the planets are slipping out of alignment, hold on, Cancer, hold on. The planets are transiting, ascending — she works hard at keeping her houses in order.

She is pushing, always pushing. She rides for three hours, fifty miles a day. Her legs are skinny steel rods. When she’s done, she showers, puts on a new outfit, and emerges refreshed.

Philip has taken him out for an hour. He still gets great pleasure from shaking hands, pressing the flesh. So, occasionally Philip dresses him up like a clown, brings him to random parking lots around town, and lets him work the crowd. In his costume, he looks like a cross between Ronald McDonald and Howdy Doody. It makes the agents very nervous.

“Mommy,” he calls when he’s back.

“Yes?”

“Come here.” He is alone in the bedroom.

“Give me a minute,” she says. “I’m powdering my nose.”

She goes into the room. He beckons to her, whispering, “There’s a strange man over there who keeps talking to me.” He points at the television.

“That’s not a strange man, that’s Dan Rather — you know him from a long time ago.”

“He’s staring at me.”

“He’s not watching you, you’re watching him. It’s television.” She goes to the TV and blows a raspberry at the screen. Dan Rather doesn’t react. He keeps reporting the news.

“See,” she says. “He can’t see you.”

“Did I like him? I don’t think I liked him.”

She changes the channel. “You always liked Tom Brokaw.”

At twilight, he travels through time, lost in space. Terrified of the darkness, of the coming night, he follows her from room to room, at her heels, shadowing.

“It’s cocktail time,” she says. “Would you like a drink?”

He looks at her blankly. “Are you plotting something? Is there something I’m supposed to know? Something I’m supposed to be doing? I’m always thinking there’s a paper that needs to be signed. What am I trying to remember?”

“You tell me,” she says, making herself a gin and tonic.

He wanders off, in search. She stands in the living room sipping, enjoying the feel of the heavy crystal glass in her hand, running her finger over the facets, taking a moment to herself before going after him.

He is in her dressing room. He has opened every drawer and rummaged through, leaving the floor littered with clothing. Her neatly folded cashmere sweaters are scattered around the room. He’s got a pair of panty hose tied around his neck like an ascot.

He has taken out a suitcase and started packing. “I’ve been called away,” he says, hurriedly going to and from the closet. He pulls out everything on a hanger, filling the suitcase with her dresses.

“No,” she screams, seeing her beloved gowns rolled into a ball and stuffed into the bag. She rushes towards him, swatting him, pulling a Galanos out of his hands.

“It’s all right,” he says, going into the closet for more. “I’ll be back.”

Soledad, having heard the scream, charges through the door.

The place is a mess, ransacked.

“Sundowning,” Philip says, arriving after the fact. “It’s a common phenomena.”

“Where the heck are all my clean shirts?” he asks. At the moment he is wearing four or five, like a fashion statement, piled one atop the other, buttoned so that part of each one is clearly visible. “I’m out of time.”

“It’s early,” she says, leading him out of the room. On one of the sites she read that distraction is good for this kind of disorientation. “It’s not time for you to go,” she says. “Shall we dance?”

She puts on an old Glenn Miller record and they glide around the living room. The box step is embedded in his genes, he has not forgotten. She looks up at him. His chest is still deep, his pompadour still high, though graying at the roots.

“Tomorrow, when Philip gives you your bath, we’ll have him dye your hair,” she says, leading him into the night.

“I don’t want to upset you,” he whispers in her ear. “But we’re being held hostage.”

“By whom?” she whispers back.

“It’s important that we stay calm, that we not give them any information. It’s good that I’m having a little trouble with my memory, Bill Casey told me so many things that I should never have known…Did I have some sort of an affair?”

She pulls away from him, unsettled. “Did you?”

“I keep remembering something about getting into a lot of trouble for an affair, everyone being very unhappy with me.”

“Iran Contra?”

“Who was she? A foreign girl, exotic, a beautiful dancer on a Polynesian island? Did my wife know?” he asks. “Did she forgive me? I should have known better, I should not have put us in that position, it almost cost us everything.”

She changes the record to something faster, happier, a mix tape someone made her — Gloria Gaynor, Donna Summer. She spins in circles around him.

He looks at her blankly. “Have we known each other very long?”

They have dinner in the bedroom on trays in front of the television set. This is the way they’ve done it for years. As early as six or seven o’clock they change into their night clothes: pajamas, bathrobe, and slippers for him; a zipped red housedress with a Nehru collar and gold braiding, like a queen’s robe, for her. They dress as though they are actors playing a scene — the quiet evening at home.

She slips into the closet to change. She always undresses in the closet.

“You know my mother used to do that,” he says while she’s gone.

Red. She has a dozen red housedresses, cocktail pajamas, leisure suits. The Hummingbird, the elf, the red pepper, cherry tomato, royal highness, power and blood.

“Why is the soup always cold?”

“So you won’t burn yourself,” she says.

He coughs during dinner, half-choking.

“Chew before you swallow,” she says.

After dinner she pops one of his movies into the VCR. A walk down memory lane is supposed to be good for him, it is supposed to be comforting to see things from his past.

“Do you recall my premiere in Washington?”

“Your inaugural? January 20, 1981?”

“Now that was something.” He stands up. “I’d like to thank each and every one of you for giving me this award.”

“Tonight it’s Kings Row,” she says.

He gets a kick out of watching himself — the only hitch is that he thinks everything is real, it’s all one long home movie.

“My father-in-law-to-be was a surgeon, scared the hell out of me when he cut off my legs.”

“What are you talking about?” she asks, offended. “Dr. Loyal never wanted to hurt you,” she said. “He liked you very much.”

“Where’s the rest of me?” he screams. “Where’s the rest of me?” He’s been so many different people, in so many different roles, and now he doesn’t know where it stops or starts — he doesn’t know who he is.

“What movie are we in?”

“We’re not in a movie right now, this is real,” she says, moving his dinner tray out of the way, reaching out to hold his hand.

“What time does the flight get in?”

“You’re home,” she says. “This is your home.”

He looks around. “Oh yeah, when did we buy this place?”

At eight, Soledad comes in with her knitting, trailed by Philip with a plate of cookies, four glasses of milk.

Philip flips on the game and the four of them settle in on the king-sized bed, Philip, the President, she, and Soledad, lined up in a row, postmodern Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. When the game begins, the President puts his hand over his heart and starts to sing.

“Oh say can you see…”

“Did you see that?” Soledad asks him. “He had that one on the rebound.”

Philip, wanting to practice his reflexology, tries it on the President. He slips off the President’s bedroom slippers and socks.

“Hey, quit tickling me.” The President jerks his feet away.

Philip offers his services to her.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she says. “My feet aren’t in good shape. I haven’t had a pedicure in weeks.” She pauses. “What the hell,” she says, kicking her slippers off. He is on the floor at the bottom of the bed. “That feels fantastic,” she says after twenty minutes.

Soledad is crocheting a multicolored afghan to send to her mother for Christmas.

“What color next?” she asks the President. “Blue or orange?”

“Orange,” the President says.

At night she is happy to have them there; it is a comfort not to be alone with him, and he seems to enjoy the company.

He sits on his side of the bed, picking invisible lint off himself.

“What are you going for there?” Philip asks.

“Bugs,” he says. “I’m crawling with bugs.”

Philip uses an imaginary spray and makes the spraying sound. Philip sprays the President and then he sprays himself. “You’re all clean now,” Philip says. “I sprayed you with disinfectant.” The President stops picking.

At a certain point he gets up to go to the bathroom.

“He’s getting worse,” she says when he’s gone.

They nod. The slow fade is becoming a fast forward.

He is gone a long time. After a while they all look at each other. “Are you all right?” she calls out.

“Just give me a minute,” he says. He comes out of the bathroom with black shoe polish all over his face and red lipstick in a circle around his mouth. “My father used to do this one for me,” he says, launching into an old Amos ’n’ Andy routine.

“What did you use?” she asks, horrified.

“Kiwi,” he says.

“I’m sorry,” she says to Soledad, mortified that she is having to watch. Luckily, Soledad is from the islands and doesn’t quite understand how horrible it is.

At eleven, Philip puts the rail on his side of the bed up, turns on the motion detector pad on the floor, tucks him in, and they call down to the gatehouse and tell them that the package is down for the night.

“Good night,” she says.

“See you in the morning,” Soledad says.

She stays up for a while, sitting next to him reading while he sleeps. This is her favorite part of the night. He sleeps and she can pretend that everything isn’t as it is, she can pretend this is a dream, a nightmare, and in the morning it will all be fine.

She could remove herself, live in another part of the house and receive reports of his progress, but she remains in love with him, profoundly attached. She doesn’t know how to be without him, and without her, he is nothing.

The motion detector goes off, turning on the light by her side of the bed. It is six-thirty in the morning.

“Is this conversation being taped?” He speaks directly into the roses, tapping his finger on the open flower as if testing the microphone. Petals fall to the floor. “Who’s there? Is someone hiding over there?” He picks up the remote control and throws it into the billowing curtains.

“Hey, hey,” she says, pushing up her eye mask, blinking. “No throwing.”

“Go away, leave us alone,” he says.

She takes his hand and holds it over the vent.

“It’s the air,” she says, “the air is moving the curtains.”

He picks up the red toy telephone that he carries around everywhere—“just in case.”

“I can’t get a goddamned dial tone. How can I launch the missiles if I can’t get a dial tone?”

“It’s early,” she says. “Come back to bed.” She turns the television on to the morning cartoons, pulls her eye mask down, and crawls back into bed.

He is in the bathroom with the water running. “There’s someone around here who looks familiar.”

She pops her head in. “Are you talking to me?”

“Yes,” he whispers. “That man, I can’t remember that man’s name.” He points at the mirror.

“That’s you,” she says.

“Look, he waves and I’m waving back.”

“You’re the one waving.”

“I just said that.”

She notices an empty bottle of mouthwash on the sink.

“Did you spill your mouthwash?”

“I drank it,” he belches. Hot, minty-fresh air fills the bathroom.

In the morning, she has to locate him in time and space. To figure out when and where he is, she runs through a list of possible names.

“Honey, Sweetheart, Running Bear, Chief, Captain, Mr. President.”

He stands before her, empty, nonreactive. She sticks a finger first into one ear and then the other, feeling for his hearing aid, they’re both in, she plucks one out, cranks up the volume until it squeals.

“I’m checking the battery,” she yells. “Can you hear me?”

“Of course I can. I’m not deaf.” He takes the hearing aid from her and stuffs it back into his ear, putting it into the ear that already has one.

“Wrong ear,” she says, fishing it out. She starts again. “Mr. President, Sir, Rough Rider, Rick, Daddy, Dutch.” There is a flicker of recognition.

“Now that sounds familiar.”

“Do you know who you are?”

“Give me a clue.”

She continues. “Mr. P. Junior, Jelly Bean.”

“Rings a bell.”

“Jelly Bean?”

“That’s me.”

“Oh. Jelly Bean,” she says, relieved to have found him. “What’s new?” She hands him his clothing one piece at a time, in order, from under to outer.

Soledad rings a bell.

“Your breakfast is ready.” She urges him down the hall. “Send the gardener in when he gets here,” she instructs Soledad as she steps into a morning meeting with Philip and the agents.

“Don’t call him Mr. President anymore — it’s too confusing. It’s best not to use any particular name; he’s played so many roles, it’s hard to know where he is at any given moment. This morning he’s responding to Jelly Bean and talking about things from 1984.”

“We’re not always sure what to do,” the head agent says, “how far to go. Yesterday he cleaned the pool for a couple of hours, he kept taking the leaves out, and whenever he looked away we just kept dumping them back, the same leaves over and over.”

She nods.

“And then there were the holly berries. He was chewing on the bushes,” the agent says.

“Halle Berry? George and Barbara?” Philip asks.

“The shrubbery — like a giraffe he was going around eating—” The agent stops in mid-sentence.

Jorge, the gardener, is standing in the doorway. He has taken off his shoes and holds them in his hand. He curtsies when he enters.

“Thank you,” she says. She takes out a map and lays it on the table for everyone to see. “We need a safer garden; this is a list of the plants — they’re all nontoxic, edible.”

In the distance there is a heavy thump. The phone rings. She pushes the speakerphone button.

“Yes?”

“The President has banged into the sliding glass door.”

“Is he hurt?

“He’s all right — but he’s got a bump on his head.”

She sends Philip to check on him and she, Jorge, and the agents go into the yard and pace off where the wandering garden will be.

“Everything poisonous has to come out,” she says. “Azaleas, birds of paradise, calla lilies, and daffodils. No more holly berries, hydrangea, tulips, poppies. No wisteria. No star-of-Bethlehem.”

Jorge gets down on his knees, ready to begin.

She stops him. “Before you get dirty. I need you to put a lock on my dressing room door.”

He is in the sunroom with a bag of ice on his face.

“Are you in pain?” she asks. He doesn’t answer. “Did you have a nice breakfast?”

Again he belches, mint mouthwash.

“It won’t happen again,” Philip says, using masking tape to make a grid pattern on the sliding glass door, like a hurricane warning, like an Amish stencil in a cornfield, like the bars of a cattle crossing. “For some reason it works — they see it as a barrier and they don’t cross it.”

“Soledad, may I have a word?” She refrains from saying more until they are out of the room. “We need to make a few changes.”

“I will miss you very much,” Soledad says.

“It’s time to get the house ready,” she says, ignoring the comment, taking Soledad from room to room, pointing out what’s not needed, what has to go in order to make life simpler, less confusing, safer.

“Put it away, send it to storage, keep that for yourself, this goes and this goes and this goes. Up with the rug, out with the chair.”

They put safety plugs in every outlet, toddler latches on every cabinet. She moves quickly, as though time is limited, as though preparing for a disaster, a storm front of some sort.

“Send someone to one of the thrift shops and get a couple of Naugahyde sofas and some chairs.”

“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.”