The President's Palm Reader: A Washington Comedy

by Robert MacLean

  Now, in cases like this you are quite naturally tempted to get in there and cheerlead. Put on the cape and boots, the thunderbolt sweatshirt, and tell the poor puke what to be happy about. With one arm around his shoulder you gesture at the horizon and tell him not to take it so seriously, right? Things can only get better, right?

  Wrong.

  a) He won’t respect you for it. You’ll be upsetting his whole ecology, his posture before Enigma. He wants to be judged by the quality of his pain and you’re taking that away from him? Not if you value your professional reputation.

  b) You would only be meddling with the immutable laws of karma. Guy doesn’t have enough fuck-youism to get him through the day, this is your problem?

  No. Best you can do is try to get him to accept himself. “You’re going to get a horrible disease and die,” I said.

  He nodded submissively.

  “If I were you I’d get a blood test.”

  It was all I could do to uh-huh him along while I cleaned my sunglasses. I had a whole fantasy while I was talking to him.

  “Do you have any questions?” I said.

  Well, he said, maybe he should call it all off, take the leap. Trust to the Other Side.

  I shook my head. “Competition and hierarchy. You wouldn’t like it. Go ahead if you want to of course, just don’t leave the body hanging around and spoil someone else’s day.”

  He sniffed and started blinking again. Well, he said, thank you for talking to me.

  “And don’t forget to pay your bill,” I told him. He had a history of that sort of thing. “And I’m not on any plan!”

  There were others but you get the idea. I certainly got the idea. I was pouring myself out to people until there was nothing left! I was drained!

  “Alberta!” I said. “I don’t want to do this!”

  “Darling! Of course you do!”

  I slouched in the doorway. “I’m a little disaffected, here.”

  “Oh, Wordy, you have such a short attention span!”

  I was ready to sulk. My old practice was going to seed. Phone service isn’t what it might be out there and Mrs. X was texting me her crises.

  “Hold on,” I wrote back. “You’re being very brave.”

  This was turning into a show-up-and-schlep job. I wanted to go to a hot place and just sort of surrender. When you leave a resort after a long stay it’s a little like getting out of hospital; you feel too tender for actual life. I was just out of the bubble wrap!

  “We’ve got enough now to live royally for years! We’ve done this place!”

  “Darling, we haven’t! If we can just be patient for a little longer, oh Wordy please! When I think what a chance this is it makes my nipples pucker.”

  I suffered along as best I could for a while. The pocket of life still unpicked, I guess. Not an unsound instinct.

  We were playing it low profile, public-imagewise, which meant no parties, no upscale restaurants. There was Washington itself to explore but you need steel-ribbed underwear once you get off the tour routes. I watched a lot of TV.

  Then, the call came. The White House. You-Know-Who had requested a reading.

  We toe-danced around one another singing in falsetto. Rainbowland! This was it!

  I carried her off kicking and threw us into bed.

  The appointed day found us quietly exhilarated and squeezing me into the proper shape to confer with the President. Cabinet meeting gray, blue tie, nothing de trop, no earring. She ran her hands down my lapels and close-range surveyed me.

  “Lean on it.”

  “You’ll crease your pants.”

  Two Secret Servicemen picked me up. They came in almost pirouetting with efficiency and had the place memorized before they doffed the shades. Big guys, real neat suits maybe a tad too small.

  “Mrs. Haines,” said one. “Mr. Wallace.”

  The other was Fes. I don’t know whether he’d worked it that way or was just smiling as if he had, but he was sure smiling. With Fes it was all or nothing, either the undead routine or the red-faced grin.

  His partner went through the briefcase and looked at both sides of everything. “That’s his stuff,” Fes explained. The other guy gave him a look but Fes could only do one emotion at a time.

  Alberta hugged herself like she was seeing me off to my first day at school. I resisted the impulse to wink and followed the boys out down the hall.

  We stood facing each other in the elevator. Fes’s smile was out of control but did not overflow into actual conversation.

  His partner gave me an evil-Anglo-Saxon look, to which I replied with my the-President-insists-on-my-presence-and-I-have-not-the-authority-to-refuse look.

  The Pres-aye-dent, baby!

  Moving through the streets felt like Destiny. The black Buick, the smoked windows, the smooth inevitable ride. The agents sat up front, coachmen on my pumpkin, the one at the wheel’s eyes in the mirror. Hard to say if he saw me or not.

  On the sidewalks, crossing in front of us, a swarming scene of the unknowing. Unadvised of my trajectory. Pimps, pushers, petty thieves, gun-carriers without portfolio. Grim kids, duckers-out. Scared secretaries. People dodging, shouldering through. No easy-steppers taking the sun, everybody steered around by some blinkered sense of hustle. And up ahead, the power that ruled America, and let’s face it, the world. The terrific tensions of history and everything, I was excited!

  The light changed and we glided by and came out into the wide white center of things. All that gleaming granite, I put my shades on. Above immobile shoulders Fes’s head inclined with the turns. Even his back smiled.

  We did a detour around the White House—disappointing, you know how you like to come up on the front of things—and were nodded in at a checkpoint. We veered around in the grounds in a promising way but then dropped down an incline and got out at a side door. Fes and me. The other guy stayed in the car.

  We went down some steps to the door, a marine in a dress uniform and two more agents. One of them walked us a short way along the hall and put us in an elevator. I’d been expecting pillars and plaster wedding cake, high ceilings, that sort of thing. This was about as splendid as a high-school corridor. Not exactly red-carpet but Fes’s smile was unembarrassed.

  We came out into a richly muffled environment of wall fabric and thick carpet. More agents. Halls left, right and straight on.

  A cheerful woman shook my hand, told me she was Mrs. Somebody-or-other the President’s secretary and led us ahead past open doors and antiquey-looking furniture. People in offices worked in low tones. The rug kind of bounced you along.

  Some open double doors came up on the right and with that lift in the plexus that comes from not quite hesitating I was in the hallowed, carpeted, surprisingly huge intimacy of what had to be the Oval Office!

  It was like intruding into one of those museum displays where they set everything up like some other century, stepping over the cordon into The Queen’s Bedroom or something, only this place actually existed! And I was in it!

  Large, sunny, I don’t know, floating. And of course Oval. And there, sitting at his desk, I give you my honest word, was the guy! The actual guy! Sitting there!

  I don’t know if he was doing any work or anything, I could only hope it wasn’t something important, but he got up and came around with this long-legged lope like he might jump the desk corner. The smile was modest and dignified but by the time he reached me—I mean I just waited there feeling sort of hyper-considerate, paralyzed by the Presence, you know what I mean?—it was broadening out into real warmth.

  “Mr. President,” said the secretary, “this is Mr. Word Wallace. Mr. Wallace—”

  “How are you, Word?” he said, shaking my hand.

  He put his left hand on my arm below the shoulder when he shook, almost like an embrace. A defensive reflex of course, probably flip you if you tried anything, but one understands all that and it was a solid gesture. The President was there in his handshake.

  “Fine, sir.�
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  Stupid, right? I should have said How do you do, Mr. President, but I was gone.

  Maybe it was just he was so tall that overwhelmed me. I mean I’m tallish but he was tall! He had a chin like an anvil that drew the lower lip down a little and showed the bottom teeth, and blue eyes that squinted through the smile and knew you, knew you, and said you were okay. And you believed it.

  The suit was perfect.

  “Come on in and have a seat.” He had these bushy gray eyebrows with tufts like antennas that lifted as he said this. What wicked fun it would be to come on in and have a seat! He was as high as I was!

  Two chairs were arranged this side of the desk and almost facing. He pulled his a hair closer to mine and we sat, not knee-to-knee like 60 Minutes but sort of at an angle with room to cross our legs.

  The secretary went out through a door on the right. Fes put the briefcase on the desk and backed out smiling, gave a whole tone to the thing. He closed the double doors.

  “Nice to get some privacy,” whispered the President. “The only time I get it is when I have visitors.” He twinkled with the irony of it.

  “Glad to oblige, sir.”

  “Saw you on Haines, Word. Pretty rough. The press can do that. But you came through it all right. That was fine.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “You know, talking of things like what you do, I heard tell of a lady faith-healer, Mrs. Something, I forget. Called people back out of comas. She was listed in the Yellow Pages, can you imagine? She must have been, oh, some-odd old but she fell in love with this young fellah who got in an accident”—his voice lowered respectfully—”slipped away on the table. One of those things that could go either way. And she called him back!” He touched my arm. “And he didn’t want to come! Said he was on his way somewhere wonderful! Never forgave her!”

  “Weird,” I said.

  He laughed. “I don’t know if I believe it. The most I ever had to do with the occult was an aunt of mine who was het up on Buddhism and ESP! Karl Jung!”

  I laughed too. The President had aunts like everybody!

  “Only premonitions I get are about how the Senate’s going to vote and they’re always wrong!”

  “Hah!” No but it was the way he said it, it was really funny!

  “So, Word, how’d you get onto this? When did you realize you had the ability?”

  “Well, to tell you the truth, sir, this is just a scheme of mine to make money. I don’t know anything about reading palms.”

  He didn’t close down, he just paused. “Oh, really?”

  “Yes, sir. That’s the kind of thing I do. I had an operation going here for a while, mail-order things, but the Post Office was catching on and I had to relocate. After I hung out in the East for a while I hit on this.”

  I mean I wasn’t going to bullshit the President, kids, I’m sorry.

  “Word, you mean you sold illegal things through the U.S. mails?”

  “Not exactly illegal, sir. It was—Well, I had an ad out for a coat hanger. Guaranteed to fit any garment and last a lifetime. I sent the takers a nail and instructions how to hammer it in. Things like that. Sold some seats for a Kennedy Wedding. Five hundred dollars got you a folding chair, that sort of thing. Not strictly speaking against the law.”

  He looked at me.

  I guess it was, I don’t know, this patriotic thing that came over me. The White House, the President. He was so disarming I guess I just gushed.

  And now I had disarmed him. I mean I wanted my moment, right?

  He shook his head and gave an embarrassed snort as if a waiter had cleared his place before he’d finished the soup. Then another snort, and another, and he kept pumping them out until he realized he was having a good time. He slapped his knee—actually lifted his knee and slapped it!—and laughed wickedly.

  “Sort of a snake-oil salesman, eh, Word? Fine old American tradition. Ahah!” He wiped an eye.

  Here was the devil-may-careism that had tickled the voters, I’d read about it in the Trib.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  I was blushing like a schoolgirl. The All-Father himself had bestowed his absolution! I had ventured into the presence of Power, and Power smiled.

  “But look,” he said, “you must be doing something right! You’re famous at this!”

  “Well, sir, it’s the damnedest thing, people respond! It gives them something they need or something! It kind of works!”

  “Well my wife says you’re good.” He lowered his voice. “Probably be better for both of us if we go through with this. You want to give it a crack?”

  Wow! What a guy! I was still light from leveling with him, I hadn’t known it meant that much; but after that what could I expect but the velvet push? The good old President!

  “I’ll be glad to show you how it works, sir!” With giddy elation I snapped open the briefcase and assembled the props.

  “Let me just do this, Word.” He went behind his desk and touched a button, watched the light on a console and came back around. “This is in the nature of a private conversation.”

  “We don’t have to have this on either, sir.” I nodded at my Sony.

  “No, no, whatever. Show me the whole thing.”

  I cranked the inkpad. “This is how we do it, sir.” I was talkin’ trash with the President!

  It didn’t bother me what to tell him. Mostly you have to be careful what not to say. Give somebody a good reading, send him home with a clean bill of health, you can put him over the top for weeks. That was something I could do for the President.

  We got him wiped up and went into consultation.

  “Well, sir, we usually start off with a few remarks on the general shape of the hand. This is the large-palmed, balanced hand of The Leader of Men, for example. The thumb is flexible”— I demonstrated—“which means cooperation, working with people, but the fingers are long and not tapered: forceful, determined. Now, this line here reinforces that. Strong line of authority. No islands on it, no chains. This star here—”

  I said the obvious things. Gave him a long life and lots of right moves. Threw in some resourcefulness and dynamism, gifts for statecraft and service—a picture he could frame and hang on the wall.

  Once the outline was down it just sort of filled itself in. I was motivated as never before, coming up with things he couldn’t fail to nod at.

  He leaned forward, curious, courteous. The calm gaze, the face for Rushmore.

  It takes a while to say the obvious and I was talking along comfortably when I noticed he wasn’t following. He’d fallen into himself as people will, ricocheted along some private path. That’s why we give them a tape!

  Suddenly he got up and went to the window. I thought perhaps he was finding it burdensome to be characterized, so I waited.

  He gazed out at America. “It’s not easy,” he said. And after a while: “It’s not easy.”

  “It must take everything you’ve got, sir.”

  “The decisions,” he said. “The trouble is I have to make a lot of decisions. Too many decisions. I have to know what to do.” He turned to me, smiling sadly. “And I don’t.”

  “No one really does, sir.”

  He laughed. “You wouldn’t know it around here. Everybody around here knows exactly what to do. They all know what to do. And they tell me. They tell me. I have no lack of advisers, I assure you. Everybody’s right around here. Everybody’s got a case to make. But!” he said, raising a finger, “But: they don’t agree. I have to decide. It’s all up to me, in the end. It all falls on me.”

  I didn’t answer, and he didn’t seem to expect me to.

  “So what should we do? Punish Pakistan? Or help India? Negotiate with Iran? Betray the Iraqis? Pull the missiles out of Germany and put them in Turkey? Upset the balance with the Greeks? Sell tanks to Israel? Planes to the Palestinians? Support the left against the dictators? Prop the right up against the communists? Star Wars? Disarm? Go into Brazil and stop them burning off the rain forest?
Or do we belong out there at all?”

  He began to pace the Office.

  “All right, what about here? What do we do here? Raise taxes or cut social programs? Business? Labor? Farmers? Bankers? Industry? The environment? Get tough? Go slow? Prayer in the schools? What! I’m asking you! What! Am I supposed to know? They all expect me to know!”

  For the first time I noticed that the President had a tic, an elaborate shudder that jerked his head several times sideways, shook his shoulders and passed through his body like a wave until he was obliged to kick free of it with one foot, as from sticky paper, though it barely interrupted his oval orbit.

  “All right,” he said. “All right, forget about the world. Forget about America. Let’s talk about the decisions I have to face right here, the people around me right here. I have to promote them or pass them by, I have to—and not on the basis of merit, you understand, I have to leave aside good people, I have to think about what slant the person has, what they’re known for, what they’re on record as saying because every time I appoint one of them it advertises my own approach, it makes me visible, it commits me and I, and I—it could be wrong, suppose it’s wrong!”

  He stopped and orchestra-conducted the way he did in his speeches, arm straight out, finger down-slanted and rigid: “They make fun of you when you’re wrong! They laugh at you!” He paced again, musing. “They laugh at you. I have to do what’s right, I have to do what has to be done, and these people—”

  The thought stopped him. He lowered his voice. “These people here. Right here. They hate me. I can’t even walk in the hall, I can feel them hating me. Looking at me! I can feel it! The Vice President knows, the Vice President knows, he tells me how they hate me. He listens to them and tells me about what they say. They don’t know he’s listening, he doesn’t let on he’s listening but he is, and then he comes and tells me. And I know. That I know. That I know. I never go out there. I have my own bathroom in here, I stay in here. They can’t get me in here.”

  He passed behind me, his head twitching, a nod that broke to the side. I sat staring at nothing.

  “Oh, yes, I have enemies. I am a man with enemies. Enemies, enemies, enemies. Lots of enemies. You,” he said, wheeling on me so that I looked up quickly, “are looking at a man with enemies! Wait. Wait. I’l1 show you.”