The Ex-President

by Jeff Soloway

  Clark was the first man, to my knowledge, who had ever betrayed her. A little poisonous part of me thought it was right that she should at last taste what my father had subsisted on steadily for so long. But to my surprise, I was mostly outraged on her behalf. How could Clark have been so reckless with his undeserved fortune, so ungrateful for my mother’s magnanimity? Why couldn’t he at least have had the courtesy to delete his skanky texts? It would serve him right if the assistant sued for workplace harassment, but I hoped she wouldn’t. My mother deserved to enact her own vengeance.

  I realized that she and Carlton Chomp now had something in common: a lifetime of romantic triumph, followed by a late humiliation. They say the only thing that had surprised Chomp more than his wife’s divorce filing was his electoral victory two years earlier. But perhaps my mother was right and Chomp had, in addition to the stunning women he was constantly photographed with, another lover on the side, a secret soulmate. This, I realized, was my mother’s own fantasy. To be loved by all but to give her love only in secret, to the one person on earth who deserved and understood her. I hoped someday she would find him.

  * * *

  —

  When we met at baggage claim at the Miami airport (Will Kooser had arranged for me a cheap and inconvenient flight out of Newark that my mother had laughed at), my mother was wearing some kind of a lace wrap over a bikini top and cheerleader shorts. Here in South Florida she wasn’t likely to get any looks, but that wouldn’t bother her—she would be delighted to blend in. I would have to be quick with introductions to prevent people from assuming I was her fashionably younger boyfriend.

  “Dressed to kill, Mom.” A nearby Dade County cop turned to me. His long rifle was pointed dangerously (to my mind) close to his toes. He dimmed his glare when he saw that I was neither a Muslim nor a student, but I smiled apologetically anyway. Airport security agents these days were more aggressive and more humorless than ever. All too many took pleasure in hauling aside insufficiently obsequious passengers. The TSA and Homeland Security in general seemed intent on protecting not so much the nation’s security, but its sense of security. More and more, America’s pride seemed to depend on illusions of massive power and realities of minor aggression.

  “I mean you look good,” I clarified, for the cop’s sake.

  “Thank you.” My mother frowned at my Lands’ End shorts. “And you look ready to play Wiffle ball with the other fourth graders.”

  I should have told her she looked like a hostess at a Señor Swanky’s. Too late now. A troop of flak-jacketed TSA agents marched by. I’d never seen so much airport security. There were even a few television reporters trolling for passengers willing to express their anxieties on camera. The upcoming protest had unnerved the entire city.

  “Clark’s a mess,” she went on. “He called me four times this morning. Jacob, a man should never beg. Bad enough to beg for sex, much worse to beg for conversation. He’s lucky I refused him. I might have violated my first rule of breaking up, which is never to belittle a man for his physical or sexual inadequacies. I prefer to stick to his morals. Sadly for me, only married men care about morals, and then only if their wives find out they’ve mislaid them.”

  That she was dwelling on her humiliation, unsuccessfully trivializing it, told me she was suffering more than she had in years. But what if she’d been suffering all along? Until I met Clark, I’d never thought to doubt her contentment.

  “You’ll find another man. You always do. You’re still beautiful.”

  She grunted at still. I couldn’t even get my compliments right.

  Then I saw, in back of her, something stagger forth from behind the chrome of the adjacent baggage carousel, something shocking and bizarre. It was a man with dark, unruly curls that only partially hid the patches of skull underneath, like scrub in the desert. He lurched toward the carousel, then stopped, foiled by a mom pushing a minivan-size mega-stroller in his path. He would have to wait for his bag to come around again.

  The man was my father. Before I could even begin to ponder what he might be doing here, an old memory rushed into my consciousness. I was home alone with him, pretending to read but really peering over the horizon of my book to spy. He would sigh, check his watch, sip at his coffee, flip backward and forward through his novel as if he kept forgetting what the characters were up to. Sometimes he would heave himself to his feet and pace over the carpet, mouthing words to himself. I would say nothing. I knew if he caught me spying he would simply grin and claim he was pondering. What he was pondering was my mother.

  What was he doing now? I turned away. He hadn’t seen us. He was intent on finding his suitcase. Was it still the ugly brown one?

  I should never have told him about the cruise, that much was clear. He must have come to surprise us. To talk to us, as he had threatened. To beg her for conversation. As far as he knew, Clark was still planning to propose on this cruise. Perhaps he hoped to talk her out of it. In her current mood, she’d savage him. I had to get her away. But if we left the baggage claim, we’d pass right by his post beside the next carousel. She’d see him; he’d grin hopefully; she’d charge like a wounded bull. I remembered how patiently he would stand up to her rare tirades, with an expression so pathetic it made me want to rage at him with her. As I watched them, I’d feel angry, ugly, ashamed, and resentful. I never wanted to feel that way again. They would make me if I let them.

  But maybe he hadn’t come for her at all. Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe he had a girlfriend in Miami he’d never told me about. That was about as likely as him having a fishing boat in the Keys.

  “Come on, Jacob.” My mother twitched her nose toward one of the terminal exits. Passengers were assembling around a tired woman clutching the staff of an equally limp Union Jack—RMB’s insignia. She was gathering passengers for the VIP shuttle to the cruise port. Will Kooser had finagled shuttle tickets for us.

  “Hold on. I want to take a few pictures of baggage claim. For the security atmosphere.”

  I aimed my cellphone in the opposite direction of my father.

  “You’re just like your father. Nothing like photos of infrastructure to spice up a vacation. Let’s go.”

  “What’s the rush?” I glanced offhandedly behind me. My father had spotted his bag again. It was indeed the ugly brown one. He yanked it off the machine so hard that it toppled onto its side and landed on his foot. He looked to the ceiling, his face aflame with suppressed pain. We would still have to walk right past him.

  “Jacob, please.”

  “You’re worried about the protesters, aren’t you? Relax. Check out all the security.” I pointed to a nearby cluster of baby-faced soldiers in camouflage. I was careful not to snap their picture too obviously.

  “I’ve seen their machine guns. They’re not exactly relaxing.”

  Their rifles were semiautomatics, not machine guns, as any Chompian NRA fanatic would be happy to explain to her at patronizing length; but she had a point. People were staring, especially people with kids. Frequent flyers are used to heightened security, but half the people at airports are vacationers for whom air travel is a rare adventure. Many had never seen an M-16 outside of the movies.

  I glanced again at my dad. He was plodding toward the nearest exit, which thankfully was nowhere near the RMB group. He had his camera around his neck.

  “Jacob!” Her voice was piercing, her eyes pleading, the lines in her face stretching longer and digging deeper.

  “Sorry, Mom. I’m ready.” I took the handle of her suitcase. “But there’s really nothing to worry about, not in the airport. These guards—”

  She shut her eyes, as if to hold in an explosion in her brain. “I love you, but you’re a real idiot sometimes. Look.” She pointed behind me.

  My father?

  I turned, feeling both panicked and sick. But all I saw was luggage thumping down onto a carous
el, and a crowd of travelers waiting hungrily to receive it.

  “Can’t you read? It’s luggage from the Newark flight. Clark’ll be on it.”

  She suddenly reminded me of so many of my friends in the days after Chomp’s election, not just disturbed, as I was, but sickened with humiliation at the surprise defeat. Nothing could soothe their nausea, not even Chomp’s resignation. What they needed was victory. So did my mother.

  * * *

  —

  We followed the herd of cruise-bound VIPs out of the terminal and into a parking lot where the shuttle bus waited. Chomp’s name ran along its side in gigantic but flattened letters, five hunched Godzillas. Armed men watched over the loading of our suitcases into the vehicle’s belly and checked our IDs and carry-on bags. The lot was curiously empty of other cars and non-RMB passengers. It must have been cleared for us. From some unspecified place in the distance, somewhere far outside the garage, a low steady unceasing chanting rose. The protests had begun.

  As the bus zoomed off down the ramp and onto the airport exit road, I looked through the window and saw my father in line at the taxi rank, his camera hanging heavy from his neck, his unwheeled suitcase hanging heavier from a strap over his shoulder. He’d had that suitcase for decades. I remembered watching him unpack it after one of his business trips to rejigger hospital networks in Sioux Falls. He’d brought me back a stuffed buffalo. I remembered how ecstatically it emerged—my dad must have been making it paw, snort, and rear up—from the suitcase and leaped into my arms. Back when the suitcase was new. Now it was battered and old, like my father. What was he doing here? He turned in place, bewildered, the bulky, out-of-date suitcase an impossible burden over his butt. Another loser unable to accept defeat. I glanced at my mother, who was cleaning her nails with the corner of a New York magazine subscription card. It wasn’t her fault she’d been his only chance.

  Chapter 4

  The Chompians on the bus were not those nightmare fiends of the liberal imagination, the gun-packing, beer-swilling, slur-slinging lumpenproletariat so often captured on viral videos outside Chomp’s rallies, but instead were ordinary-looking middle-aged white people, only normally lumpy. This being a VIP bus, the riders were donors or friends and family of donors, the kind of people who booked top-deck suites. Their pudgy cheeks had the rosy glow of health, money, and satisfaction. The other kind of Chompian was known for detonating insults at the foreign-born, the poor, the unemployed, liberals, moderates, the government, modernity. In recent months, a roving squad of professional protesters had adopted a strategy of rushing the perimeters of Chomp rallies and peppering the faithful with questions designed to elicit newsworthy racial slurs. I had been expecting to witness such encounters through the bus windows today. But that kind of provocation wouldn’t work with these Chompians. They were mild and world-weary. They might have been the adults I’d known back in my hometown. They would merely shake their heads at hippies shouting insults and murmur sadly about the dangers of indulgent parenting. They would deplore the idea of racism, but at the same time insist it had been effectively eradicated, like polio.

  As the bus slowed in traffic, my mother stood up to stow her bag above the seat. It was a small fake LV she’d bought at an upstairs shop on Canal Street, where connoisseurs buy superior counterfeits. In recent months, since Chomp left and various federal priorities changed, such consumer goods had gotten easier to come by. The man in front of us noticed and offered to help her.

  “I think I can manage,” my mother assured him, patting him on the elbow. The man beamed.

  His wife turned to us over her seatback. Her dark face glowered under a cumulus puff of white hair. “He’s not going to steal it,” she told us. “He’s not one of them.”

  “One of who?” I asked.

  “The Stinky Bunch outside. I hear they let half of them out of jail today for this.”

  “The Witch sent ’em.” This from a jittery mustachioed man behind us. He was drumming on his seatback with both index fingers. A few nearby passengers harrumphed in support. Many Chompians believed that Chomp’s old rival for the presidency had somehow maneuvered to force his resignation, either through blackmail or old-fashioned sorcery, and now was secretly conspiring with her underground political allies (including prison wardens, apparently) to prepare for another run. Chomp supporters were said to scare their children with tales of the Witch who would never die, who would snatch them away in their sleep if they talked back to their elders, Googled their homework problems, or failed to stand up to insults to their country’s values.

  “She better be scared,” the mustachioed man said. “We’re about to change history.”

  By taking a cruise? Nearby passengers nodded, thumped armrests in agreement, even thumped spouses to make sure they were listening. One young mother, a toddler’s pudgy face squished against her shoulder like a deflated kickball, turned to face us. Her expression was not so much puzzled as expectant. “How?” she asked, as her child might ask, to prompt the rest of the bedtime story.

  The mustachioed man slammed both fingers down at once. “Show those people what it is to live free.”

  That earned a number of yessirs and amens.

  “Show ’em who’s boss,” he added, in what struck me as total contradiction of the previous.

  “What if the media keeps lying about him?” the woman asked.

  “God knows they’re digging his grave every day,” said the mustachioed man. “You want to throw up? Check out CNN. But after this, the lies end. They’ll be ashamed to tell ’em. Everyone will see what he’s done.”

  We passed a mob of protesters just outside the limits of the airport. They stirred to life at the sight of the Chomp bus, like fans at the Tour de France when the cyclists finally come into view, leaping up on the metal barricades, tossing their fists in the air and waving their signs, a great frothing river of fury. Their chant rattled our windows:

  We chased out the racist

  We chased out the racist

  This had been a favorite since Chomp’s resignation speech. The opposition’s pleasure was hardly warranted—Chomp’s appointees were in place in the courts and the cabinet, Chomp’s budget had been rammed through Congress, former vice president Farthing was proving a reliable assassin of whatever progressive policies and hopes that remained—but activists were desperately protective of whatever success they could claim. They still feared Chomp more than anyone else. If Chomp did manage to return to power, if he dealt them one more unforeseen defeat, they’d be utterly crushed.

  When we stopped at a light, protesters hurdled the barricades and flooded the intersection. At the green, the bus was forced to nose through their bodies like a limousine escaping the revolution. I heard screaming and for a moment I thought the bodies outside, mostly young, mostly brown-skinned, were getting run over, and I stood up in my seat—and then I realized that the screams I was hearing were of fury, not pain, and they were coming from my fellow passengers.

  “Run ’em down,” the jittery man pleaded.

  “It’s like they know!” the woman in front of me murmured.

  Through the crack between seats I could see her husband pat her hand. His pale arm was lined with blue veins and red splotches, age’s little injuries. Red, white, and blue—an American flag. “They can’t know.”

  “But if they did—”

  “If they did,” said her husband, “he’d take care of them. The gentleman’s right. The networks are liars. He’s stronger than ever.”

  Chomp could do anything: summon an army, win an election against all odds, bend the nation’s institutions of science, economics, and law to his will. Why shouldn’t his supporters have faith in him? He had already summoned the whirlwind.

  Cops used their riot shields like plows to clear the road, and the bus lurched ahead and gathered speed. The passengers cheered; even my mother sighed in relief. But
still the mustachioed man was anxiously drumming, the woman in front of us clinging to her husband. I agreed that these protesters had a right to live without fear, that Chomp was antithetical to American values, that youth and hope deserved to triumph. But Chomp was gone from power. Was he really still so dangerous that it was necessary to terrify these elderly bus riders?

  What if he was?

  * * *

  —

  The rest of the route was better fortified, but protesters continued to line the road, chanting, drumming, booing, and snapping selfies of themselves doing all these things. Their signs read STICK TO TWITTER, CHOMP’S A QUITTER; HOPE PREVAILS, CHOMP SETS SAIL; and THESE PUSSIES CHOMP BACK. Instead of merely holding these signs, the protesters shook them, bounced them, and twirled them, with all the superfluous energy of youth, driving us out to sea as they had driven Chomp out of office. My fellow riders were less nervous now, but their faces told clearly just how much the celebration galled them. A few stopped their ears with headphones, but this was not a crowd accustomed to finding refuge in their favorite jams.

  As the bus chewed up the city miles, though, their mood began to improve. Our speed increased. It seemed unlikely that we’d be boarded. And none of the protesters were smashing, burning, or throwing things.

  The woman in front of us muttered to herself. “I’d like to clamp that wiener’s little rat face in my waffle iron.” The wiener she was glaring at was brandishing a YOU’RE WITH STUPID sign that featured a caricature of Chomp cleaning his ear during a debate with the Witch. (She had won every debate decisively and to no practical effect whatsoever.)

  Her husband chuckled. “Might taste better than your waffles.”