But still, he knew this feeling. When he had first met Sonia in his Penn Law days, she used to drag him up to Fairhill on Sunday afternoons for those long dinners with her extended family. She would lead him into the dining room to speak with her maternal abuela, who was a hilarious old woman—blind as an earthworm, and with skin as pale and juicy. She puffed through her packs of Virginia Slims and felt Sonia’s skirts and blouses to make certain they revealed just enough skin, but not too much. That abuela grilled Manny about his long-term goals, how he expected to make a living, what his intentions were toward her beloved Sonita, and about his family background. Manny had to just sit there and take it. You’re from California, but Puerto Rican? What kind of community do they have out there where none of us live? What kind of Puerto Rican kids go to school in Texas? Only Mexicans go to school in Texas! His every answer was yes, ma’am, no ma’am, I don’t know, ma’am—infallibly polite, because everyone in Sonia’s family deferred to this tiny, wrinkly, phlegmy little matriarch like she was a goddess incarnate, and if he gave her lip even once he would get turfed out of their house unceremoniously. Sonia had 16 tíos and tías, and so many damn cousins Manny couldn’t even begin to remember their names. He had to defer to all of them as well. One group of wiry tíos trapped him for hours in the backyard, plying him with beer, talking in excruciating detail about the benefits and drawbacks of this or that combustion engine. All those families lived within the same six-block radius in Fairhill, none of them had a decent job or education, they all charged through their abuela’s one-story house like it was Grand Central Station—and Manny was completely at their mercy. Even then he had dreams of graduating into the Unitary Executive of his own life. Sitting beside Sonia, holding her hand in his lap, saying nothing but please and thank you, he dreamed of absconding with his astonishingly beautiful girlfriend out of Philadelphia, out to the West Coast, where he wouldn’t be subjugated to and overwhelmed by the tectonic forces of her extended family—forces too big for him to manage, too powerful to fight. He felt the same thing as that—right now, right here, in the White House Office of Political Affairs. That same desperation and need for endurance. He tuned into Kale, who was still appeasing Cassandra.
“We won’t abandon you,” the White House Deputy Chief of Staff told her. “You’ve got our full support. Starting with today’s press release, we’ll make sure you’re portrayed as a competent professional, one of two consenting adults. Not some tawdry whore or seductress. You can take your time, Cassandra, and after your baby’s born, when you’re ready, you can come back to work. You have my promise we’ll work out something for you professionally—a great job in the White House or Justice Department, if you’d rather have a position here than in the IRS.”
He was standing behind Cassandra, rubbing her slumping shoulders, a real high school coach. He was laying the folksiness on thick—his Arizona, Alabama or Arkansas folksiness. The man grew up in a small town in one of those A states, but Manny couldn’t remember which.
“We got to be brave, here, okay? We’re going to get through this together. We have got to stay calm. All right, Cassandra? You calmer?”
“Yes.”
God, Gordon was savvy.
“And how about you, Manny? You with me, too?”
“Absolutely.”
Manny felt his anger fading away—all his fury toward Cassandra, and toward Gordon, which he had been holding onto for weeks. It was incredible how Kale had managed to soothe both of them simultaneously. No wonder he held such a powerful position in the Shaw administration. He was great at his job. Manny sighed, and his chest warmed with an emotion he hadn’t felt in years: gratitude. Thanks to Gordon Kale and no one else, he might still have a chance at making it onto the illustrious Supreme Court.
“Good morning, Judge Arroyo.” Lionel Mahoney sat behind the senators’ raised bench in room 325 of the Russell Senate Office Building, ready to begin his allotted half-hour of questioning. “I’d like to begin today with an inquiry into your views on the Unitary Executive Theory.”
Manny tensed his back, leaned his elbows on the green tablecloth. He locked his fingers together, sweating under C-SPAN’s camera lights.
The senator removed his glasses and leaned into the microphone. “The Shaw administration has used this peculiar Unitary Executive theory to justify their dubious tactics in the war on terror, including imprisoning American citizens in Subic Bay without charge or trial, holding non-Americans as enemy combatants, and authorizing torture. Judge Arroyo, you have repeatedly supported the theory. That greatly concerns me. Would you allow this administration to ignore settled law by invoking a Unitary Executive, who rules without subjection to court review?”
“Well, Senator, I think we need to step back for a moment and clarify our terms. Because I’m pretty sure there’s been a larger misunderstanding here. There are two kinds of questions being conflated when you invoke the Unitary Executive theory. The first questions—which you’re asking now—address how much power the executive actually has. Those are quantitative questions. Can the president do this, that, or the other? Are certain actions within the scope of his constitutional powers? Those are open inquiries, and the answers are up for debate. But there are secondary questions as well, which arise when a power is firmly understood to be maintained by the executive. Who exactly within the massive executive branch holds a declared power? Which person or group? Those are qualitative questions, Senator, and they are the only ones that the Unitary Executive theory has explicitly addressed. All the theory claims is that the president alone holds the reins of powers ascribed to the executive branch. He is our unitary leader. That’s what’s written in the Constitution, and that’s the reading of the theory I have long maintained.”
Manny sipped his water. It was a perfect answer, delivered without stuttering or self-doubt, exactly how Attorney General Nicolaides had instructed him in their clandestine mock hearings in the White House press room.
“But that’s not true. Justice Bryce’s dissent in Bakhish explicitly mentioned the Unitary Executive when she argued for an expanded scope of presidential powers. The theory addresses more than just your secondary questions. So the American people need to know, Judge Arroyo, if you had decided Bakhish, would you have joined Justice Bryce in her radical dissent, or would you have stuck with the majority opinion—written by Justice Van Cleve, by the way, whose seat you will fill if confirmed?”
“Again, Senator Mahoney, I don’t believe the Unitary Executive theory addresses any questions about the scope of the executive’s powers in—”
“Justice Bryce says it does.”
“I don’t recall Justice Bryce using the term ‘Unitary Executive’ in her dissent in Bakhish.”
The senator’s face reddened, and in his aggressive and showboating style he reaffirmed that Justice Bryce had indeed used that loaded term, and then he expounded on the full implications of the Unitary Executive theory, how it would remove independent counsels and be used to maneuver around precedents like Myers through Humphrey’s Executor, Frank and Planter. Good. The more Mahoney took the bait, and wasted his half-hour lecturing the world on useless tangents, and padding his own ego, the fewer difficult questions Manny would have to answer.
“We cannot allow the war on terror to continue unregulated under this administration’s terms, with its never-ending timeline, dubious logic, and the entire world declared as its—”
Arroyo pressed his thumbs together. He tried not to blink too frequently. There were only seven of 18 senators left on the Judiciary Committee to question him after Mahoney. Four of those were solid Republicans. So he was entering the home stretch. Manny hadn’t done half-badly. He had addressed their substantive questions with aplomb, and weathered the Democrats’ tepid and politically motivated probing of his relationship with Cassandra without talking back and making it worse. He always kept in mind one basic fact: he had the votes to win.
Manny was buoyant that night, at one in the morning, humming a
favorite saxophone riff as he rode the elevator up to his rented Watergate apartment. He texted sleep to Gordon Kale, a mock answer to Kale’s question about his plans for tomorrow. Manny pocketed his BlackBerry as the elevator opened, having already fielded calls from Rimm and MacKneer, from Vice President Bloomfield and President Shaw, who had all praised him for how he had handled his second and final day in the Senate’s hot seat, the committee’s inevitable abortion-rights questions, their Second Amendment and Commerce Clause attacks, and of course Mahoney’s tirade on executive power.
His apartment was dark. He threw his keys on the small table in the foyer and went into the kitchen. He poured himself a large glass of milk and downed it in a single gulp. Cool, sweet and creamy—exactly what his body needed after a long day under the lights. He put his glass on the counter, and his eyes caught a flash of pink in the living room. He squinted and hit the switch for the corner lamp.
Cassandra looked small in his giant leather chair. She was wearing a gray stretch-wool suit, a large-collared pink blouse and a pale pink belt, as if she had been working in an office all day. Her eyes still retained hints of black mascara, but she had washed most of it off, along with her lipstick. She had removed her heels, probably left them in the extra room where she was sleeping. Her feet, with the toenails painted red, pressed flat against the wooden floor.
Manny moved closer to her, and rested his weight against the counter. For the first time since Cassandra had moved in with him—on the White House’s request—she didn’t escape into her room when Manny entered the apartment.
“It’s done. The Senate has dismissed me as a witness.”
“I know. I watched.”
“Thought it went pretty well, considering.”
Cassandra didn’t agree or disagree. “Are they calling any witnesses tomorrow who could get us in trouble?”
“I don’t think so. A few professors and colleagues. Looks like they’re willing to let us be.”
Cassandra nodded, but she didn’t look pleased or relieved. She certainly wasn’t about to congratulate him.
“Looks like you went out tonight,” Manny said.
“I went to dinner with my brother.”
“I noticed he hasn’t been sitting with the press. I looked for him today.”
“The Post pulled him off your hearings. They didn’t think it smart for him to cover his sister’s lover.”
“They never had a problem with him covering his father.”
“He would have drawn focus.”
Manny nodded. “How’s he doing?”
“Angry.”
“Still?”
“He’ll be furious at me for the rest of his life.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah, well, I can’t exactly blame him.”
Cassandra stared out the window, beyond the brightly lit Kennedy Center, into the murky blackness of the Potomac River. She looked calm but drained. She had been living in limbo, really. No longer working on Manny’s confirmation, but not yet ensconced in her new position at the Justice Department. Stuck, at the White House’s request, living in Arroyo’s Watergate apartment, biding her time until after his confirmation, when she could move back into the dinky Dupont Circle apartment she had rented. Forced, as per instructions from Kale and Rimm, to leave the Watergate complex once a day, if only to go to the grocery store, so that any papers, networks, blogs or magazines could snap pictures of her if they so desired and confirm their cohabitation. Her sole job these days was to be the future Justice’s trophy girlfriend, to maintain the fiction of their romance. That must have been pure torture for an ambitious and educated woman like Cassandra Sykes. Harder than Manny imagined.
Without anger contorting Cassandra’s expressions, she was pretty. Her hair, pulled back straight, allowed her cheekbones to rise in prominence, and the bright pop of her pink collar suggested color in her cheeks. This woman was pregnant. Manny’s third child was growing inside her. His heart sped up as he thought about that, and he pressed his palms into the kitchen counter, tensing his triceps. He had been too goddamn busy, too preoccupied with his confirmation hearings to register that incredible fact. He was going to have another child, a brother or sister for Lonny, with his tubby belly and never fully brushed buck teeth, his ridiculous knowledge of obscure baseball stats. Another sibling for perfect Carmen, so beautiful and bright. A new baby: little feet, downy head, a tiny nose. Every child was a miracle—there was no more appropriate word. Manny felt like crying with relief that Cassandra hadn’t aborted their child or promised it up for adoption.
“I have never properly thanked you, Cassandra.”
Cassandra cocked her head in surprise.
“I know this process has been difficult. And I know you don’t share my religious beliefs. I’m grateful you decided to have this baby.”
“Thank you for saying that.”
“Although I’m surprised.”
Cassandra considered that. “I guess I am, too.”
“Why are you going through with it?”
“I don’t fucking know.”
She pulled her feet up and sat cross-legged on the chair. Cassandra was so somber tonight, so unusually calm. She gazed placidly over the water, which was a black void at night, although punctuated by the bright red warning lights atop the buildings in Rosslyn, for planes flying low into National Airport.
“I miss my mom.”
Of course. Cassandra’s mother had been dead for only a year and a half.
“It’s going to be especially hard for me when the baby’s born. I get teary thinking about it. But I also get excited. I want so badly to hold this child and look into its eyes. I guess it’s obvious that having a kid is a disaster for my career and life, but I still want to do it. I’m alone, Manny. I don’t have a family. I’ve alienated my brother and Denny. I could use someone on my team.”
“You have your father. Rodney is on your team.”
Cassandra shook her head. “No, he’s not.”
“Why don’t you call him, Cassandra?”
She chuckled, sadly.
“I’ve been sitting in this chair for hours thinking about my father. I can’t call him. You compared him to Adolph Eichmann. I knew what had happened between the two of you, but that didn’t stop me from sleeping with you. I humiliated him, Manny, and now the whole world is party to that humiliation.”
“It’s too bad it worked out this way, but you couldn’t have foreseen these circumstances.”
“No, that’s just it. I thought about sleeping with you as soon as I interviewed in your chambers. I considered it seriously and dismissed it as a crazy idea, specifically because of your past with my dad. But then after my mom died, and I started working for you, I suddenly knew I was going to do it. It’s like I had to do it. You and Sonia were finished, and I could tell you would do it, too.”
“Don’t read too much into it, Cassandra. We were attracted to each other. That’s all.”
“No, there’s more. I did it at least in part because of how my father behaved. He sat in that funeral office with the funeral director and he had to pick a coffin off the menu. The guy asked him to pick the coffin, not me, not Sam, because Rebecca was his wife, but my dad kept saying whatever you kids prefer, over and over, and smiling, too, like it was all nothing to him. Like he was just ordering lunch, and it was pleasant either way. How would you kids like to handle the service? Bagels and tea and coffee back at the apartment, or shall I get it catered by Giordino’s? Perhaps a two-day shiva or six? Either would be fine with me. Why don’t you children decide? Not once did he howl or cry or scream. I even screamed at him once—which I’ve never done before—that I didn’t fucking care one iota if the funeral was scheduled for eleven or one. Even then he said, all right, whatever you prefer, Cassandra. And what do think your mother would’ve wanted? I just couldn’t stand him. He had no fucking spine. My mom was dead, and it meant nothing to him. She didn’t even know if he loved her.”
“People deal with grief in all sorts of ways.”
“There was never anything in my father to hold. He is a nothing man. He’s nonexistent. You weren’t wrong to compare him to Eichmann.”
Cassandra stopped talking suddenly. She turned away, stooped her shoulders, astonished at herself. “I don’t mean that.”
“You’re just upset.”
“I can’t believe I said that.”
“Yeah, I know the feeling.”
Cassandra looked at him and smiled—an actual smile. For him.
“And then back in San Francisco, there you were: decisive, clear-headed, present. I remember saying to myself: I think I would prefer, Rodney, since you have no real objection to anything, to fuck this man you hate right on his desk.”
“Cassandra.”
“How would you feel about that, Rodney? Would you, perhaps, mind? But then who can say, who can say?”
“Stop it.”
Cassandra paused, chuckled at herself. “We were perfect for each other, you and I.”
“Just call your father. Make peace. It’s not that hard.”
Cassandra crossed her arms and sank deeper into the soft chair.
“My father’s not doing well. Sam saw him last night. Apparently he missed lunch with Morris Bayfield—I mean, missed it for no reason. They talked and made plans, but then my father just forgot. Didn’t show up to the restaurant or call.”
“That doesn’t sound like Rodney.”
“No. And Sam had a similar experience with him last week. Sam called and left him a message, but my father didn’t return his call for days. Usually he’ll call back in ten or 15 minutes. And when they finally had dinner last night, my father was like a ghost. Tired and very haggard.”
“Do you think he’s sick?”
Al-Tounsi Page 19
