“Okay, you stop.” Jules clicked off the television and pointed at me. “Don’t give me that shit, ma’am. That ‘poor boy’ signed up, served his country, and knew the risks.”
“He knew he’d end up killed by his fellow Americans on a street corner? Really, Jules?”
“You think it never occurred to him that maybe being a Guardsman might be dangerous?”
Betty nodded. “My family’s been Navy going back generations. They take it seriously, ma’am.”
“So do I. I take it seriously! I take it seriously that I sent these kids in to get beaten by the people who elected me!”
“No offense, Madam President, but those people did not vote for you.”
“That’s for goddamn sure,” Jules said. “And we didn’t want their votes anyway.”
“It’s still my fault that—”
But Jules didn’t wait for me to finish my sentence. She spun around and walked to the portico doors, sticking her head out. “Hey, you two were military, right? Yeah, c’mere.”
Agent Danielle Ehrlmann stepped inside, followed by Ram Ruiz. They stood just inside the door, both of them looking as alert as ever. “Is there a problem, ma’am?” Danielle asked.
“Isn’t there always?” Jules shot back. “What branch did you serve with, Agent?”
“Air Force, ma’am.”
“You ever think about what would happen to you if things went wrong?”
I stood up. “Jules, that’s offensive. Dani, you don’t have to answer.”
“I don’t mind, ma’am. Sure, thought about it some. But you sign up to do a job, so you do a job. Same as with the Secret Service.”
They would step in front of a bullet if it was heading in my direction. It wasn’t the kind of thing I ever forgot, but I didn’t always remember it, either.
“See!” Jules said triumphantly. “Ram, what about you?”
“Marines, ma’am. It was an honor to serve my country. If I hadn’t come back, it would have been an honor to die for it, too.” He paused. “Can’t say everyone feels that way, but the people I know do. There’s no greater pride than wearing the uniform of the United States military. Any branch, any generation, any conflict.”
He didn’t say including this one, but I heard it anyway.
I had tears in my eyes again. “Thank you both for your careers in service.”
They chorused “Yes ma’am” and slipped back outside.
Two hours later, on the way back to the residence, Ram cleared his throat. I glanced back and slowed my steps. “Everything okay?”
“Yes, ma’am. I…don’t want to speak out of turn.”
“You aren’t. Say whatever you like.”
He nodded. “Ma’am, if I had died or been seriously injured while doing my duty to my country, the last thing I’d want anyone to feel for me is pity. Or responsibility. I made a choice, and I stand by that choice. And I’d want the dignity and respect that comes from knowing I lived by my principles. Ma’am.”
We were nearly at the door. “I can’t help feeling like if I’d been a better president, this wouldn’t be happening.”
“How could you have prevented it, ma’am?”
I stopped walking. “I’ve thought about it from every angle. I can’t come up with a single thing. Sure, there are things I could have done differently, but I’m almost certain none of them would have changed the hearts and minds of these people.”
“For whatever it’s worth, ma’am, I can’t think of anything you could have done that would have changed the outcome, either.”
“Thank you.” Abruptly, I wanted to cry again. “That means a lot, Ram. Thank you.”
He fell back so I could enter the building. “You’re welcome, ma’am.”
The violence continued for weeks, and I called two more sets of parents and one husband to offer my condolences. And each time when I praised someone’s courage and valor, I remembered Ram’s words, his noble profile in the bright lights of the portico. No pity, no blame. They were brave and they’d died doing the thing they’d signed up to do, and I would not disrespect their memories by feeling sorry for them.
But damn, I was relieved to call off the troops when the protesters took their white sheets and went home.
3
I’d staved off grief when Hank died, throwing myself into work, telling myself that work helped more than anything else would have. The person who didn’t let me get away with those sorts of lies was dead, after all. I could tell myself whatever I liked, and work eighteen hours instead of fifteen, and no one would confront me about it.
As First Gentleman he’d made recruiting kids to sports one of his main areas of influence, and since the election he’d managed to secure more scholarship funds and more access for inner city youth to join teams or classes than anyone had thought possible. The programs he’d started needed support. To rest was to insult his legacy.
But god, I missed him. I’d cleverly married a smart, passionate, charismatic man. We’d been best friends since college, and he’d proposed on the eve of my first election (for mayor, which I lost). “When you’re president, I want to have sex in the Lincoln Bedroom,” he’d said, raising a glass of wine.
“Deal,” I’d replied.
We had a long bucket list together, but at least we managed to mark that one off.
It takes a specific personality to pursue this job, and I tend to think most of us are the type who run toward work in a crisis, not away from it. When people offered their condolences I often found myself comforting them. I was relieved when I’d cycled through all that heartfelt sympathy. I was fine. Everything was fine.
Or so I kept telling myself that entire first year alone, as if repetition would make it true.
I was feeling uncharacteristically tired around ten p.m. one night—a time of day he used to refer to as Miriam’s off on a wild hare o’clock—when a light tap on the door to my office on the second floor of the residence woke me up.
I say “woke me up” because prior to that I’d been…somewhere else. Not asleep. Daydreaming. Thinking about Hank and I arguing about whether the expression was “wild hare” or “wild hair” (we eventually determined they had different meanings), thinking about the brand of box wine we’d been hooked on in college, when any sort of wine seemed fancy.
Then I was abruptly thrust back into a room in the White House where Hank would never again laugh, or tease me, or sigh dramatically when I came up with another wild hare to hunt down. I scolded myself for not being more resilient and stood to answer the door.
None of the florists should have still been at work, of course, but it would take a much more steely person than I am to question the residence staff in their wisdom. And I had the sneaking suspicion that the butlers informed everyone else when I kept strange hours, or when my routines changed.
It was clear, immediately, that Betty Sanderson did not have flowers on the mind.
“Ma’am.”
I couldn’t place her tone. She stood in front of me, looking down, brows drawn, a formidable black woman very nearly old enough to be my mother. She was also one of my favorite people in the building.
“Mrs. Sanderson. What can I do for you tonight?”
“So it’s gonna be like that? ‘Mrs. Sanderson’?”
I gestured to the other chair. “What is it?”
To my deep surprise, Betty sat down. She leaned forward, hands pressed together, and said, “Will you take a bit of advice from someone who knows what she’s talking about?”
“Of course.”
“If you keep pretending, you’re going to fall apart, ma’am. You need a break.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but she shook her head so I closed it.
“I see what you’re doing, and I’ve done it myself, but the only thing that happens when I’m worn out is I eat too many potato chips and smoke too many cigarettes. You—you’re the president.” She paused. “He was a good man, and we all miss him. But you can’t keep going on as if you don’t.”<
br />
“It’s been a year. I’m used to—this.” A lie. I swallowed after I said it, like I could swallow the words (and the disloyalty).
Betty shook her head again. “You need to feel it, ma’am, before you can be done with it. After that, you should go somewhere you don’t keep expecting to see him around the corner. Then you come back to us with a little bit of space in yourself where you’ve grieved for him.”
Part of me wanted to rear up like a wild horse, go on the attack. In fear and sadness and simple bewilderment. Part of me wanted to weep.
I am the President of the United States. I blinked a few times and focused on my guest. “He loved lilies.”
She smiled. “I know he did.”
“You make sure there are always lilies in our bedroom.”
Betty Sanderson, florist and ad hoc grief counselor, took my hands. “I lost my George twenty years ago and I was right back here the day after the funeral. The First Lady found me making flower arrangements past eight one night and before I knew it, I was crying on her. The First Lady! Me crying on her nice blouse!” She shook her head. “For you it might not be crying, it might be yelling. And it won’t be a sweet lady who happens to be your boss, either. It’ll be the president of somewhere, or the prime minister of somewhere else.”
“I take your point, Betty.”
“Then take my point, ma’am.”
No bullshit in her tone. A rare quality in my life, and one I valued. “I take your point. But I can’t just run off on holiday, I’m the president.”
She squeezed my hands, then released them. “Presidents, in my experience, always find a way to do what they need to do. I have faith. Goodnight, ma’am.”
“Goodnight. You can tell the butlers I’m going to bed.”
“They’ll want to know if you’d like anything else.”
Hank to walk in with a cup of tea and a smirk, maybe a good story to tell from his day. But even the unstoppable White House butlers couldn’t produce that. “No. Thank you.”
She nodded and withdrew. I took myself off to my bedroom.
Perhaps the universe thought I needed a nudge, even after that. Or perhaps some backstairs alchemy of whispers and significant looks and whatever other codes exist somehow managed the trick, but two days later Jules told me we needed to head to Oregon.
The only clear thing I remember from that trip is Agent Ruiz steadying me as I stepped off Air Force One. We’d landed in the middle of a storm and I hadn’t been prepared for the wind.
“Sorry, ma’am,” he’d said, pulling his hands quickly away and returning to his usual detached stance.
It was the first time he’d ever touched me.
And I remembered it after.
4
Time passed. The Democrats were destroyed in the midterm elections, leaving me with plenty of political challenges to occupy my mind. My administration did a great deal of good, but not enough. Never enough. I ran for re-election and won by a wide margin. My approval ratings remained in a decent range, with occasional dips.
It was a fair assessment of my own mental landscape: in a decent range, with occasional dips.
I’ve been a runner for years. At first, in the early days of my constant Secret Service shadow, they kept their distance. Later, when the campaign heated up and it became clear I wasn’t just a viable candidate, but that I was going to be the nominee, they got closer.
After the inauguration I only ran on White House grounds, and I ran with an agent beside me unless I requested they stay back.
My favorite running partner in my detail was Courtney Morrison, who always challenged me to go a little farther, a little harder. Not in so many words, of course, but running with a woman that fit would motivate anyone.
On Courtney’s day off, it was usually Roberto, but he’d broken his foot and couldn’t go immediately back to running, even after he was cleared to return to work.
I was ready to be disappointed when I left my bedroom with my sneakers tied and my hair pulled back.
Except the agent waiting for me was Ram.
I’d heard through various grapevines that the agents were responsible for physical fitness on their own time. They had a gym of their own (I’d been invited to use it—emphatically—but I hated treadmills), and I knew a lot of them could be found there before or after their shifts.
Good lord, he looked younger in track pants. I suddenly felt like a pervy old woman.
“How old are you, Ram?”
His eyebrows rose. “Thirty-seven, ma’am.”
Well. It wasn’t as bad as I’d imagined. I was only…oh god. Sixteen years older than him. “I was in high school when you were born.”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Never mind.” What was I doing, interrogating my nominal bodyguard about his age? “Let’s go. You sure you can keep up?”
He smiled. “I think so, ma’am. But you can go easy on me if you want.”
I did not want. In fact, I tried to show off—for about twenty minutes. That’s when I came to my senses and realized if I didn’t start pacing myself, my thirty-seven-year-old running partner would end up carrying me back to the residence.
Not the impression I wanted to make.
I’d coasted the first thirty years of my life without any inclination to exercise. Right around my thirtieth birthday, I’d acquired a sort of…Hank called it melancholia, because that fit the spirit of the thing, and also didn’t scare people the way depression did. Since I knew I wanted to run for senator (after I lost my incredibly premature bid for mayor), I didn’t want to officially enter treatment. A good friend of Hank’s talked me through some of what he called “lifestyle changes” that might help.
So I quit smoking and started working out. It wasn’t quite that easy—and it sure wasn’t quick—but little by little I clawed my way up out of the melancholia. And I was lucky. In the midst of it Hank told me that if it came between choosing my life or my career, I could get a job at Starbucks for all he cared, but I was sure as hell going to get treatment.
He was so outraged that I couldn’t simply search for a therapist, make an appointment. Find medication. It took me years to feel that outrage on my own behalf.
But it was never hard to feel it for others, to try from within to dismantle the systems that kept mental health treatment so electrified in policy, and so judged—sometimes overtly, sometimes subtly—in person. Even a brief survey of my various political offices will make it clear that I went out of my way to fund mental health right alongside physical health. (Note: After my presidency ended I finally walked into a therapist’s office without fear of exposure. It is a goal for my remaining years that someday everyone will be able to do the same.)
Perhaps foolishly, I found myself sharing some of this with Ram on that first run we took together. Maybe because I liked his smile. Maybe because it was always on my mind between trying not to cut funding, and trying to find programs that would make funding go further. Or maybe just because talking gave me an excuse to slow down a little.
“It makes sense to me, ma’am.” He wasn’t even a little out of breath. “I do something every day—weights, yoga, karate, swimming. Keeps my brain lively.”
“Oh, you swim? You need to try the residence pool. It’s spectacular.” I said it without thinking, focused more on pushing my legs a little farther.
He raised an eyebrow. “Hard to protect you if I’m in my trunks, ma’am. I’m pretty sure our guns aren’t waterproof.”
I winced. “Of course. I apologize. That was…” Silly? Stupid? Wildly inappropriate? Please come swimming with me, Mr. Secret Service Agent. It’ll be fun. Yet it would have been fun, I had no doubt. And hell, he should be so lucky. I might have been sixteen years his senior, but I looked good and I felt great. And I was the president.
“I suppose you really can’t just switch into a suit for an hour in the middle of the day. Obviously. But you’re missing out, because that pool is amazing.”
“I’m sure it
is, ma’am.” He paused. “Though I’m not sure when the last time you had an hour in the middle of the day to swim was.”
“Ha. Good point. I mostly go in the evenings.” Which he knew, so why was I telling him? “My point was the same as yours, though you said it better: doing some amount of exercise each day really does seem to keep my brain clearer. I think you’ll agree that’s a good thing.”
“A very good thing, ma’am.”
Damn, that speech had been too long. I slowed to a walk. “You pass. You may accompany me on my runs.”
Ram Ruiz looked over, one side of his lips quirked up playfully, but all he said was, “Pleased to hear it, ma’am.”
“Oh shut up.”
That grin again. His eyes twinkled. “Ma’am?” All innocence. Except not in the least.
“If it wasn’t beneath the dignity of my position, Ram, I’d shove you over right now and run back without you.”
“You really think you’d make it all the way back before I caught up?”
“You really think you’d have the audacity to catch up with me if I tried?”
“It’s sort of my job.”
“Don’t hide behind that. What if it wasn’t?”
“Well, then, ma’am, you would have never been able to shove me in the first place. I’m very agile.”
“Is that right?”
We both heard it at once—the teasing, the edge of flirtation. I looked away fast. He fell back half a step. I started a very slow jog and didn’t stop until we were almost at the end of the loop.
But I had to say something. “I apologize again.” Unspecific, but I thought he could take it for any number of things.
“There’s really no need, ma’am. Please don’t hesitate to request another agent if you—if I’m—if you want another agent on your runs.”
“I don’t.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
And that’s how we left it.
5
By year six of my presidency, I felt strong. I felt, in fact, like I’d figured the whole thing out. I knew who my allies were. I knew how to work with the folks on the other side. I knew who to send to talk to the recalcitrant folks purported to be on my side, which was far more tricky. I had the political capital to push through on topics that were important to me—pay equity, family leave, health care, improved access to higher education.
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