First Lady

by Philips, Susan Elizabeth

  First Lady

  First Lady

  First Lady

  You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

  - Eleanor Roosevelt

  First Lady

  1

  Cornelia Litchfield Case had an itchy nose. Otherwise, it was a very elegant nose. Perfectly shaped, discreet, polite. Her forehead was patrician, her cheekbones gracefully carved, but not so sharp as to be vulgar. The Mayflower-blue blood that rushed through her veins gave her a pedigree even finer than that of Jacqueline Kennedy, one of her most famous predecessors.

  A French twist contained her long, fair hair, which she would have cut off years ago if her father hadn't forbidden it. Later her husband had suggested—oh-so-gently, because he was always gentle with her—that she leave it long. So there she was, an American aristocrat with a hairstyle she hated and an itchy nose that she couldn't scratch because hundreds of millions of people all over the world were watching her on their televisions.

  Burying a husband sure could take the fun out of your day.

  She shuddered and tried to swallow her hysteria as she crept another inch closer to falling apart. She forced herself to concentrate on the beauty of the October day and the way the sun gleamed on the rows of grave markers at Arlington National Cemetery, but the sky was too close, the sun too near.

  Even the ground felt as if it were pushing up to crush her.

  The men on either side of her moved closer. The new President of the United States gripped her arm. Her father clasped her elbow. Directly behind her, the grief of Terry Ackerman, her husband's closest friend and advisor, rolled over her in a great, dark wave. They were suffocating her, stealing the air she needed to breathe.

  She beat back a scream by curling her toes in her neat black leather pumps, biting the inside of her bottom lip, and mentally launched into the chorus of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.” The Elton John song reminded her that he'd written another song, one for a dead princess. Would he now write one for an assassinated President?

  No! Don't think about that! She'd think about her hair, her itchy nose. She'd think about the way she hadn't been able to swallow food since her secretary had broken the news that Dennis had been assassinated three blocks from the White House by a gun fanatic who believed his right to bear arms included the right to use the President of the United States for target practice. The assassin had been killed on the spot by a Washington, D.C., police officer, but that didn't change the fact that her husband of three years, the man she'd once loved so desperately, lay before her in a gleaming black casket.

  She broke her father's grip to reach up and touch the small enameled American flag she'd pinned to the lapel of her black suit. It was the pin Dennis had worn so frequently. She'd give it to Terry. She wished she could turn around right now and hand it to him, perhaps ease his grief.

  She needed hope—something positive to cling to— but that was tough even for a determined optimist. And then she hit on it...

  She was no longer the First Lady of the United States of America.

  * * *

  A few hours later, that small bit of comfort was snatched from her by Lester Vandervort, the newest President of the United States, as he regarded her across Dennis Case's old desk in the Oval Office.

  The box of Milky Way miniatures her husband had kept in Teddy Roosevelt's humidor had disappeared, along with his collection of photographs. Vandervort had added no personal touches of his own, not even a photograph of his deceased wife, an oversight she knew his staff would soon correct.

  Vandervort was a thin man, ascetic in his appearance. He was fiercely intelligent, almost entirely humorless, and a confirmed workaholic. A sixty-four-year-old widower, he was now the world's most eligible bachelor. For the first time since the death of Edith Wilson eighteen months after Woodrow Wilson's inauguration, the United States had no First Lady.

  The air inside the Oval Office was climate-controlled, the three-story windows that rose behind the desk bulletproof, and she felt as if she were suffocating. As she stood by the fireplace, staring blindly at Rembrandt Peale's portrait of Washington, the new President's voice seemed far away. “.. . don't want to appear insensitive to your grief by broaching this now, but i have no choice. I won't be remarrying, and none of my female relatives is remotely capable of handling the job of First Lady. I want you to continue in that role.”

  As she turned to him, her fingernails bit into her palms. “It's impossible. I can't do it.” She wanted to scream at him that she was still wearing her funeral clothes, but excessive displays of emotion had been leached out of her long before she'd come to the White House.

  Her distinguished father rose from one of a pair of couches covered in cream damask and assumed his Prince Philip posture—hands clasped behind his back, weight toward his heels. “This has been a difficult day for you, Cornelia. You'll be seeing things more clearly tomorrow.”

  Cornelia. Everyone who mattered in her life called her Nealy except her father. “I'm not going to change my mind.”

  “Of course you will,” he countered. “This administration has to have a competent First Lady. The President and I have considered it from every angle, and both of us agree this is the ideal solution.”

  She was an assertive woman, except when it came to her father, and she had to steel herself to challenge him. “Ideal for whom? Not for me.”

  James Litchfield gave her the patronizing look he'd been using to control people for as long as she could remember. Ironically, he had more power now as chairman of the party than he'd had during his eight years as Vice President of the United States. Her father was the one who'd first spotted the presidential potential of Dennis Case, the handsome bachelor governor of Virginia. Four years ago, he'd capped off his reputation as a kingmaker by escorting his daughter down the aisle to marry that very same man.

  “I know better than anyone how traumatic this has been,” he continued, “but you're the most visible link between the Case and Vandervort administrations. The country needs you.”

  “Don't you mean the party needs me?” They all knew that Lester's lack of personal charisma would make it difficult for him to be elected President on his own. Although he was an able politician, he lacked even a kilowatt of President Dennis Case's star power.

  “We're not just thinking of reelection,” her father lied as smoothly as new cream. “We're thinking of the American people. You're an important symbol of stability and continuity.”

  Vandervort spoke briskly. "As First Lady, you'll keep your old office and the same staff. I'll make sure you have everything you need. Take a month to recuperate at your father's place on Nantucket, and then we'll ease you back into the schedule, beginning with the white-tie reception for the diplomatic corps. Keep mid-January blocked out for the G-8 summit, and the South American trip is a necessity.

  All of this is already on your schedule, so it shouldn't be a problem."

  He finally seemed to remember these events were on her schedule because she'd been planning to do them at the side of her charismatic, golden-haired husband. Dropping his voice, he added belatedly, “I know this is a difficult time for you, Cornelia, but the President would have wanted you to go on, and keeping busy should help ease your grief.”

  Bastard. She wanted to shout the word at him, but she was her father's daughter, schooled from birth to hide her emotions, so she didn't. Instead, she regarded both men steadily. “It's impossible. I want my life back. I've earned it.”

  Her father came closer, crossing the oval rug with the presidential seal, stealing even more of the oxygen she needed to breathe. She felt imprisoned, and she remembered that Bill Clinton had once called the White House the crown jewel in the federal correctional system.

  “
You have no children to raise, no profession to pursue,” her father said. “You're not a selfish person, Cornelia, and you've been raised to do your duty. After you spend some time on the island, you'll feel more like yourself. The American people are counting on you.”

  And how had that happened? she wondered. How had she managed to become such a popular First Lady? Her father said it was because the country had watched her grow up, but she thought it was because she'd been trained from childhood to be in the public eye without making serious missteps.

  “I don't have the popular touch.” Vandervort spoke with the bluntness she'd frequently admired about him, even though it cost him votes. “You can give it to me.”

  She vaguely wondered what Jacqueline Kennedy would have done if LBJ had suggested something like this. But LBJ hadn't needed a surrogate First Lady. He'd been married to the best.

  Nealy had thought she'd married the best, too, but it hadn't worked out that way. “I don't want to do this. I've earned a private life.”

  “You gave up your right to a private life when you married Dennis.”

  Her father was wrong. She'd given it up the day she was born James Litchfield's daughter.

  When she was seven, long before her father had become Vice President, the nation's newspapers had run a story telling how she'd turned over the Easter eggs she'd found on the White House lawn to a disabled child. The story didn't say that it was her father, a United States senator at the time, who'd whispered to her that she must give up those eggs and that she'd cried afterward because she hadn't wanted to.

  At twelve, her mouth gleaming with braces, she'd been photographed ladling up creamed corn in a Washington, D.C., soup kitchen. At thirteen, green paint smeared her nose while she helped repair a home for seniors. But her popularity had been sealed forever when she'd been photographed in Ethiopia at the age of sixteen holding a starving infant in her arms as tears of rage ran down her cheeks. The picture had run on the cover of Time and established her as a symbol of America's compassion.

  The pale blue walls were closing in on her. “I buried my husband less than eight hours ago. I won't discuss this now.”

  “Of course, my dear. We can finish making arrangements tomorrow.”

  In the end, she managed to buy herself six weeks of solitude, but then she was put back to work again, doing what she'd been raised to do, what America expected of her. Being the First Lady.

  First Lady

  2

  Over the next six and a half months, Nealy grew so thin that the tabloids began printing stories that she was anorexic. Mealtimes became torture. She couldn't sleep at night, and her sense of suffocation never went away. Despite that, she served the country well as Lester Vandervort's First Lady ... until one small event brought it all crashing down.

  On a June afternoon, she stood in the pediatric rehabilitation facility of a Phoenix hospital and watched a little girl with curly red hair struggling with a new set of leg braces.

  “Watch me!” The chubby little redhead gave Nealy a bright smile, leaned on her crutches, and began the laborious process of taking a single step.

  All that courage.

  Nealy hadn't often felt shame, but now it overwhelmed her. This child was putting up a gallant fight to regain her life, while Nealy was watching her own pass by.

  She wasn't a cowardly person, nor was she incapable of standing up for herself, yet she had allowed this to happen simply because she hadn't been able to give either her father or the President a good reason why she shouldn't continue to do the job she'd been born to perform.

  Right then, she made up her mind. She didn't know how or when, but she was going to set herself free. Even if her freedom lasted only for a day—an hour!—she would at least make the attempt.

  She knew exactly what she wanted. She wanted to live the life of an ordinary person. She wanted to shop in a grocery store without everyone staring at her, to walk down a small-town street eating an ice-cream cone and smiling, just because she felt like it, not because she had to. She wanted the freedom to speak her mind, to make mistakes. She wanted to see the world as it really was, not polished up for an official visit. Maybe then she would finally be able to figure out how to live the rest of her life.

  Nealy Case, what do you want to be when you grow up? When she was very little, she'd told everyone she wanted to be President. Now she had no idea.

  But how could the most famous woman in America suddenly become an ordinary person?

  One obstacle after another sprang up in front of her. It was impossible. The First Lady couldn't simply disappear. Could she?

  Being guarded required cooperation, and contrary to what people thought, it was possible to get away from the Secret Service. Bill and Hillary Clinton had stolen away in the early days of his administration, only to be reminded that they had given up that kind of freedom. JFK had driven the Secret Service crazy with his disappearances. Yes, slipping away was possible, but there would be no point if she couldn't move freely. Now all she had to do was find a way.

  A month later, she had her plan in place.

  * * *

  At ten o'clock on a July morning, an elderly woman slipped into a White House tour group that was making its way through the rooms on the State floor. She had snowy white hair in tightly curled corkscrews, a green and yellow patterned dress, and a large plastic purse. Her bony shoulders were bowed, her thin legs encased in elastic stockings, and her feet encompassed in a pair of lace-up brown shoes. She peered at a guidebook through a large pair of glasses with pearly gray frames and a bit of swirled goldwork at the stems. Her forehead was patrician, her nose aristocratic, her eyes as blue as an American sky.

  Nealy's throat worked as she swallowed, and she had to resist the urge to tug on the wig she'd ordered through a catalogue. Another catalogue had supplied the polyester dress, shoes, and stockings. To preserve her privacy, she'd always relied on catalogue shopping, using the name and address of her chief of staff, Maureen Watts, plus the phony middle initial C, so Maureen would know it was Nealy's order. Maureen had no inkling of the contents of the packages she'd recently delivered to the White House.

  Nealy stayed with the crowd as it crawled from the Red Room with its American Empire furnishings into the State Dining Room. Video cameras were recording everything, and her fingers felt cold and numb. She tried to steady herself by gazing at the portrait of Lincoln that hung over the fireplace. The mantelpiece beneath was inscribed with the words of John Adams that she'd read so often. I pray heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under its roof.

  A female tour guide stood near the fireplace politely answering a question. Nealy might be the only person in the room who knew that all the White House guides were members of the Secret Service. She waited for the woman to spot her and sound the alert, but the agent barely glanced in her direction.

  How many Secret Service agents had she gotten to know over the years? They'd accompanied her to high school and then college. They'd been with her on her first date and the first time she'd had too much to drink.

  The Secret Service had taught her how to drive and witnessed her tears when she'd been rejected by the first boy she'd ever liked. A female agent had even helped her pick out a prom dress when her stepmother had caught the flu.

  The group headed into the Cross Hall and from there, out through the north portico. It was muggy and hot, a typical July day in Washington. Nealy blinked at the bright sunlight and wondered how many more steps she could take before the guards realized she wasn't an elderly tourist, but the First Lady.

  Her heart rate kicked higher. Next to her, a mother snapped at her young son. Nealy walked on, growing tenser with each step. During the dark days of Watergate, a tortured Pat Nixon had disguised herself in a scarf and sunglasses. Accompanied only by a single Secret Service agent, she'd escaped the White House to wander the streets of Washington window-shopping and dreaming
of the day it would all be over. But, as the world had grown angrier, the time when First Ladies were permitted that kind of solace had disappeared.

  She struggled for another breath as she reached the exit. The Secret Service code name for the White House was Crown, but it should have been Fortress. Most of the tourists passing by didn't know there were microphones located along the fence so that the security detail inside could monitor whatever was said around the perimeter. A SWAT team appeared on the roof with machine guns whenever the President entered or left the building. The grounds were armed with video cameras, motion detectors, pressure sensors, and infrared equipment.

  If only there were a less complicated way to do this. She'd thought about holding a press conference and simply announcing that she was retiring from public life, but the press would have dogged her every step, and she'd have been no better off than she was now. This was the only way.

  She reached Pennsylvania Avenue. Her hand trembled as she slipped the guidebook into her plastic purse, where it bumped against an envelope that held thousands of dollars in cash. Looking straight ahead, she began walking along Lafayette Park toward the Metro.

  She spotted a policeman crossing toward her, and a trickle of perspiration slid between her breasts. What if he recognized her? Her heart nearly stopped as he nodded to her, then turned away. He had no idea that he'd just nodded to the First Lady of the United States.

  Her breathing slowed. All members of the first family wore tracking devices. Hers, as slim as a credit card, rested under her pillow in the bedroom of the private apartment she kept on the fourth floor of the White House. If she were very lucky, she'd have two hours before her disappearance was discovered. Although Nealy had told Maureen Watts, her chief of staff, that she wasn't feeling well and needed to lie down for a few hours, she knew Maureen wouldn't hesitate to wake her if she thought a matter was urgent. Then she would find the letter Nealy had left along with the tracking device, and all hell would break loose.