Regrets Only

by Sally Quinn

  What to wear? Her first instinct was something loose. In case he… no, that was ridiculous. Not right here in the White House. But certainly not some uptight First Lady suit or anything. Des had told Jenny he was not bringing a photographer. They would set up a photo session after the interview. It was very hot at the end of July, but this particular day it wasn’t too humid, and there was a breeze coming across from the Ellipse. She had opened the windows in the solarium, even though the air conditioning was on, so that it was rather tropical and slightly sensual. They were mowing the grass down below and you could smell it upstairs. She had ordered up a large pitcher of pink lemonade and some cookies. There was a small refrigerator, which she had had stocked with drinks, including beer. She must have been up to the solarium a dozen times to check everything out. She had finally decided to wear a pale peach jersey tank dress. Loose, easy, casual, chic, sexy, and, as much as she didn’t want to admit it to herself, accessible.

  Underneath she had on a pair of flesh-colored bikini underpants and a soft flesh-colored bra. No stockings. It was too hot. She chose a pair of peach leather sling-backed sandals. Her auburn hair was neat but not set. It had taken her hours to get it to look like that. Her makeup was soft: just a little eyeliner and light peach lipstick. No jewelry. She took her purse upstairs with her so she could freshen up if she had to. She had had a small mirror installed over the bar. Everything was perfect. Now where was he? Well, it wasn’t two thirty. Jenny had walked her upstairs to the solarium, then gone down to her office. He would be arriving at the West Gate. Now she was alone for a few minutes to think about what she was going to say, to do. One thing she was going to do was get rid of that green-and-white print on the furniture. It was too bold. The “octagonal sky parlor,” as it had been called for so many years, was surrounded on three sides by glass, and the view of Washington was spectacular—the Capitol, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the Potomac. There should be soft, subtle solids which would enhance the view. There she was decorating again. Always when she was nervous. Maybe she should divorce Rosey and become an interior decorator. Maybe she could earn her living that way after she was impeached. Her palms were beginning to sweat.

  She was beginning to perspire under her arms, and the backs of her knees were damp. She could feel tiny beads of perspiration appearing on her upper lip. She could imagine the lead: “The First Lady was sweating profusely in the swelter of a Washington summer.…”

  Maybe she had better close the windows and turn up the air conditioning, although she wasn’t sure that the temperature was her problem.

  “My God, it’s hot up here.” She heard Jenny’s voice and turned to see Jenny and Des standing at the door of the solarium.

  “I was just about to close the windows and turn up the air conditioning,” she said.

  “Good idea,” said Des. He smiled at her as she invited him to take off his jacket. He loosened his tie. “We need it.”

  * * *

  “Would you like the door shut?” asked Jenny.

  “Please.” Sadie didn’t explain.

  Now that he was here, what would he do? She had fantasized.

  “Darling,” he would say, grabbing her and pressing her body close to him as he smothered her with kisses. “How I have longed for this moment when we would finally be alone again.”

  “Pink lemonade?”

  “As pink,” he would say, “as your perfectly formed adorable nipples.”

  “Do you mind?” asked Des as he poured himself a glass and added several large ice cubes.

  “Do you mind,” he would say, “if I press my throbbing member between your velvet thighs?”

  He walked over and sat down on the opposite end of the sofa from where she was sitting. He was wearing a wide-striped shirt in pale green and white and a beige linen tie. His tan summer slacks were wrinkled. His sleeves were rolled up. His skin was deeply tanned the way most men’s skin looked in August. His black hair was combed today and slightly wet, like a little boy’s, dressed up for a birthday party. There were white wrinkles around his greenish-brown eyes. Every time she saw him, he looked handsomer. He was the kind of man who looked at a woman so directly that she could feel his gaze between her legs. He always wore a smile that seemed to say “Are you game?—because I am.”

  “You don’t look like a First Lady,” said Shaw. “But then you didn’t look much like a Second Lady either.”

  “You look like a piece of ass,” he would say.

  “I don’t feel like a First Lady,” she said, ignoring his reference.

  “I feel like making love to you,” she would say.

  “Nevertheless, you are one. Which brings me here today.”

  “For the interview?”

  “For the interview.”

  He was mocking her. But she could give as good as she got.

  “Well, then, let’s get on with it,” she said. “Where would you like to start?” She leaned back in the corner of her end of the sofa and looked at him.

  “Start by kissing the back of my neck,” she would say. “And work your way down.”

  “Why don’t we start by having you tell me how you feel?” he said.

  “About being First Lady?”

  “About being First Lady.”

  “I feel…” she said.

  “You don’t mind if I take notes?”

  “Notes? Oh, notes. Of course not. After all, that’s why you’re here.”

  “Right.”

  He reached over to the chair where his notebook and pen were protruding from his jacket pocket. She couldn’t help noticing, because his legs were spread apart, the large bulge between them.

  She unconsciously crossed her breasts with both arms and rubbed her arms protectively, gently, with her hands.

  “So,” he said as he turned back to her, opened his notebook, then noticed her caressing her arms. He was momentarily distracted.

  “Where were we?”

  “You were asking me how I feel,” she said.

  “I feel I want your taut body next to mine,” she would say.

  She could see him catch his breath as she looked into his eyes; then he glanced down at his notebook, though without anything to write.

  She suddenly realized that he would have nothing to write unless she actually did give him an interview. Ultimately, there was going to be a cover story on her in The Weekly. He’d have to write something. Rosey would ask her how the interview had gone, and Jenny would want to know every detail.

  She wasn’t sixteen, and it wasn’t funny. She had better get serious if he didn’t. He had nothing to lose. She had everything. Or did she? Wasn’t it really Rosey who had everything to lose?

  “Actually,” she said, and the change in her tone of voice made him jerk his head up to look at her. “Actually, I’ll tell you how I feel. I feel that it’s not as much fun to be First Lady as I thought it would be.”

  She watched him turn from a potential lover into a journalist so fast that it surprised even her. He began to scribble. He knew a good—no, not good, fabulous—quote when he heard it. She had just given him his lead, maybe even a cover line. She knew it, and he knew it. He realized she had turned this meeting into an interview. She could almost feel his relief. Only then did it occur to her that he had been as scared as she was.

  “Why is that?” he asked in a soft voice the way reporters often do when their subject has just opened up a forbidden subject, in the same way a hunter doesn’t want to frighten a deer in the forest.

  “Because,” she said, “I’m married to the President. I can’t think of any job in the world that would be more exciting, challenging, more rewarding, more fun than being First Lady as long as you didn’t have to have a husband.”

  Des was writing fast. “Could you explain what you mean?” he asked in that same soft, unobtrusive voice.

  She couldn’t decide whether to be annoyed or amused. He declares his love, creates an enormous ploy to meet with her, risks her reputation and
the downfall of the Democratic Party by coming to her, and all she has to do is throw him a crumb and he forgets totally about her and is preoccupied with his story. His attitude toward her now is one of a psychiatrist with a patient on a couch. He thinks she is going to tell all and he’s going to have a scoop. He is, after all, in a no-lose situation. Either way things go this sultry summer afternoon, the son-of-a-bitch is going to score.

  “Think of all the things I could do if I didn’t have a husband,” she said, warming to her subject.

  Just as quickly, his eyes looked up at her and she could see he had forgotten his notebook again.

  “I’m thinking,” he said finally. “I’m thinking.”

  * * *

  She was in love. She was forty years old and in love for the third time in her life. Danny, her first love in Savannah; Tag; and now Desmond Shaw. Her life was half over and she had lost the two men she had loved. She didn’t have that many good years left. She wasn’t going to lose this one. Even if it cost her everything else.

  They had been talking for more than an hour and a half. She was musing as carefully as she could about the role of First Lady. He was scratching away in his notebook. Lovers will often tell each other about themselves—a sort of introductory offer—before consummating their relationship. They had done this once before, a year and a half ago. Now they were repeating the ritual. Sadie reflected on her life during the previous months. Des talked about coming to Washington for the first time as the Weekly Bureau Chief with much to learn.

  “That’s when your marriage broke up, isn’t it?” she asked.

  “It was a time of reassessment, yes,” he said. “I was only a little older than you are now. Men are just slower than women at certain things, I guess.”

  They paused and looked at each other with such longing that it seemed as if nothing could break their gaze.

  “We were, uh, talking about my role,” said Sadie finally. “I’d just like to say off the record that I didn’t mean to be flip when I said it would be wonderful to be First Lady without a husband. I’m deadly serious. A woman can come to this job, if I may call it a job, with all sorts of plans and projects and goals. But everything she does has to be weighed as to how it will affect the President politically. I care about Planned Parenthood. But I can’t go all out on it because it’s just too controversial. Not to mention abortion. There are so many things I would like to say and do. I care about the problems of the country, the inequities in people’s lives, the poverty and the injustice. I’m really not just a redheaded fluff who cares only about decorating and clothes. You get criticized for caring about those things, but they are considered acceptable concerns for a woman. If a First Lady tries to get involved with anything politically substantive, she gets crucified. Just look at the past and see what has fared the best. Beautification, restoration, disabled children—all those areas are safe. But step out of line, say what you think, give an opinion that one American, one voter might disagree with and you get killed. And not just by the churchgoing conservative little ladies, either. Your colleagues have been known to go after any First Lady, or any political wife, for that matter, who sticks her head up above the foxhole, who steps out of line for a second. The First Lady is supposed to be an asset to her husband. Period. It’s the toughest job in the country. Tougher than any other job. And I don’t know what the answer is. Maybe we should elect First Ladies. Maybe it shouldn’t necessarily be the wife of the President. Or maybe we should elect a First Lady and let her husband be President. Or maybe we should leave her alone. Treat every President as if he were a bachelor and let his wife lead her own life without the obligations that a normal First Lady would have to assume. I don’t know what the answer is. I only know now, in this era of changing roles for women and feminism, that something in the White House is going to have to change. I’m not sure I’m the one who can do it.”

  “I think,” he said, “you are.”

  * * *

  It happened so quickly that when she was trying to relive it later she couldn’t remember how it had begun.

  She had gotten up to get some more lemonade. It was still warm in the solarium and she had reopened the window just to let a breeze in, even though the air conditioning was on. When she walked across the room she could feel his eyes on her body. He watched as she slowly poured herself a drink, then made her way back to the sofa.

  There was something about his presence that made her want to caress her own body, and she began slowly to move her hand up and down her thigh, almost unconsciously, as she settled into her corner and returned his smile. He didn’t say a word, but she could see the perspiration on his forehead, and he had licked his lips as if he were thirsty. He had dropped his notebook to the floor, and his palms were resting lightly on his knees. His hands were strong and masculine, his tanned fingers short and square, but lean, not thick. She became fascinated by them, imagining them on her again, and as she did she moved her own hands slowly up her thigh, across her abdomen, lightly brushing her breasts, and up to her neck, which she rubbed with a deliberate movement while she continued to stare at his hands.

  “Don’t do that,” he whispered, and she could hear his lips crack.

  “Don’t do what?” she asked, almost absentmindedly, as she looked up at him. She knew immediately when their eyes met that it had been a mistake to return his glance. Now she couldn’t look away. Now she would have to acknowledge what they both understood.

  Her throat tightened, and when she tried to swallow, she couldn’t. She couldn’t even get any air into her lungs, even though she gasped. Once, at Tybee Beach, outside Savannah, when she was about ten, she had gone into the ocean alone and had stepped off an underwater ledge and been pulled under by a wave. She remembered later, after she was rescued by a lifeguard, seeing flashes of scenes from the beach every time she came up for air, then being dragged under again, until she had nearly lost consciousness, her lungs filled with water. She had never felt so helpless until this moment. She had no power over herself, any more than she had had that summer day at Tybee. Now as she sat there she could see scenes of her life, of Rosey, of the White House, of their children darting into and out of her vision. She had the same certainty, at this moment, of losing everything as she had had then, and she could do nothing about it.

  He was moving across the sofa, in a crouch, his eyes fixed on hers. His face bore a look of pain which she understood. It was the kind of pain men feel when they have lost control.

  He reached an arm over and grasped one of her arms, brusquely pulling her down on the sofa under him, then pressing his heaviness upon her, knocking the air out of her so that she thought she would faint. She closed her eyes at the same time her mouth opened before she even felt his lips. After that she remembered only one thing.

  She gave in as she had finally given in to the waves at Tybee Beach.

  This time there was no lifeguard.

  CHAPTER 13

  Nick was back.

  She used to wonder what it would feel like. Nick had been the first.

  She was at her desk in the White House pressroom when he called from the foreign desk at The Daily, just back from the Middle East.

  “Sonny?”

  She waited for her stomach to drop.

  “I’m here.”

  “So I gather.” Her mouth was dry.

  “I’d like to see you.”

  “That’s inevitable.” Why was she being so cool? It was twelve years.

  “Can we make it more specific?”

  “How about tonight?” Might as well get it over with. She hadn’t meant to sound so bitter. It was as though she were blaming Nick for Des. It was Des. Nick was stirring up the anger she felt toward Des, toward men. This was where they had left off. No point in reviving old hurts. She should be friends with Nick.

  “Let me see if I can get out of dinner with Roland. He’ll be pissed, but you’re more important than the Foreign Editor.”

  “Oh, that’s okay,” she sai
d too quickly. “We could do it another night. How long are you going to be here?”

  “Several days. I’ve got plenty of time. I’ve been hanging around the foreign desk all morning. It just reminds me how much I like being out in the field. I’m not cut out for all the bureaucratic bullshit. I’ve been on my own too long.”

  She laughed. She could feel herself relax. She remembered now that she had liked Nick as well as loved him.

  “Well, do you want to do it tonight, then?”

  “Sure. You pick a restaurant.”

  “What’s your mood?”

  “Anything but stuffed grape leaves.”

  “There’s a little French restaurant around the corner from my house in Georgetown…”

  “Forget little French restaurants. Let’s go all out. Roland’s buying.”

  “An important French restaurant, then?”

  “Now we’re talkin’.”

  “I’ll make reservations at Jean Louis at the Watergate.”

  “Sounds like a hairdresser.”

  “Wait till you see the prices.”

  * * *

  She got there a little early. She had left the White House after filing a routine story about President Grey and the visiting Japanese Prime Minister and had gone home to change.

  In the old days Nick had always liked clothes that were a little far out—anything but the debutante look he had grown up with in Philadelphia. Once he had bought Allison a fringed purple suede tunic. When she wore it she felt like a member of the cast of Hair. She chose a sleeveless silk in a cool-looking soft blue-gray—perfect for August—and pearls. Pearls made your skin look younger. At the last minute she had dabbed some wrinkle-disappearing cream under her eyes.

  The waiter led her to a banquette in a corner of the mirrored room.