The Unfolding, page 31
“Anyone can make one of these. And it doesn’t have her name.”
“That’s right.”
“So it’s a fake.”
“No,” he says. “When someone is adopted, they issue a new birth certificate.”
“You said I wasn’t adopted, that you were my father.” Her voice escalates.
“I am your father, but Mom had to adopt you. When that happens, they make a new birth certificate and put away the old one.”
“Where do they put the old one?”
“The state puts it under seal.”
“Washington, DC, is not a state,” she says.
“Whatever place you’re born in puts it away and it can be released only by a judge under extraordinary circumstances.”
“Does lying to someone count as extraordinary?”
“That’s the way they do it,” he says. “The idea was to protect the woman.”
“What woman?”
“The woman who gave birth and the woman who adopted the baby.”
“From what?”
“People finding out.”
“So it’s all like an accident that you have to cover up?”
He doesn’t say anything.
“Why didn’t she have an abortion?”
A long pause.
“She’s Catholic.”
“You would have liked it if she had an abortion?”
“That’s not what I said.” He’s starting to get angry.
“You didn’t say that you didn’t want her to have an abortion. You didn’t say you wanted me more than anything. You said she’s Catholic. Catholicism doesn’t allow abortions.”
“I wanted you more than anything,” he says. “But the choice was hers. I don’t think a man should tell a woman what she should or shouldn’t do.”
“How forward thinking of you,” Meghan says.
“Don’t talk like that.”
“You tell me I am or am not your child, and when I question you, you give me a look like you want to hit me.” She pauses. “Did you ever hit Mom?”
“No. Of course not.”
A moment passes.
“If a man shouldn’t tell a woman what to do with her body, does that mean you’re pro-abortion?”
“In what way?” he asks.
“Politically,” she says.
“I support a woman’s right to choose. I’m not sure that makes me proabortion.”
The doorbell rings. They stop talking.
“Did you order something?” he asks her.
She shakes her head no.
The bell rings again, followed by a hard knock on the door.
The Big Guy walks down the hallway to the door. “Yes,” he says through the door.
“Mr. Hitchens, it’s Chris from the front desk, would you mind opening the door?”
The Big Guy looks through the peephole. Two men are standing in the hall.
He slides the chain off and opens the door.
“Would you mind stepping out for a moment?” Chris asks.
“What is this about?” the Big Guy asks.
“Dad?”
“May I have a word?” Chris says.
The Big Guy steps out into the hall and the other man slips into the room.
Now Meghan is crying.
“I’m Eugene,” the other man says. “From hotel security. Someone called and said they heard shouting.”
Meghan looks embarrassed.
“Are you in danger?” Eugene asks. “Do you need help? Is the man you are with hurting you or keeping you here against your will?”
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “No, no, no. He’s my father. We were arguing about colleges.” She sucks in her sniffles. “He wants me to go to a small girls’ school like Bryn Mawr or Mount Holyoke and I want something different.”
Eugene looks relieved. “The tears,” he says.
She nods.
The Big Guy comes back into the room looking distressed. Nothing like this has ever happened to him. “My bad. The fact that it got as heated as it did tells me one thing.” He looks straight at Meghan. “We are very much alike—the two of us, peas in a pod.” He begins to tear up himself. “It is your life, your future. And it should be whatever you dream up for yourself, not my version of what should happen.” He turns to the two men, pulling out his money clip. “I had no idea anyone could hear us.” He peels off some cash.
When the two men leave, Meghan and the Big Guy are silent.
“Never in my life,” he says.
“Did you mean what you said?” she asks.
“About what?”
“That my future should be what I want it to be.”
“Yes,” he says. “Of course.”
“I’ve led a very sheltered life,” she says.
“We tried to protect you.”
“From the truth?”
“From life. From the pain.”
Another pause.
“That was our first fight,” she says.
“Was it?”
“My friends talk about fighting with their parents, but I never knew how.”
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“For what?”
“All of it.”
Long pause.
“Will you buy me a car? A car like the one that was delivered on Christmas Eve for Mom’s friend.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you are a child and children don’t need vintage cars.”
“Okay,” she says.
Another long pause.
“Do you need a car?” he asks, concerned that he had dropped the ball, that he had failed to provide something.
“No. I don’t even know how to drive.”
He is clearly upset. “I’m going to take a walk. Will you be here when I return?”
“Yes,” she says. “I have homework.”
“Fine thing.” He goes into the bathroom and returns with face washed and hair combed. “I’ll be back shortly.”
About twenty minutes later, the doorbell rings. Meghan is hesitant to answer. She goes to the door and looks through the peephole. There’s a man with a rolling cart. He rings again while she is watching.
“Who’s there?” she asks through the door.
“Room service,” the man says.
“I didn’t order anything.”
“It was ordered for you. You can call the front desk if you have questions.”
“I’m not supposed to open the door. Sorry.”
“No problem. I can leave it here. Just call room service when you are done and we’ll pick up the tray.”
The man takes something out of an insulated box under the tablecloth and sets it down on the floor, a plate with a silver cover. She watches him wheel the cart down the hall. When he’s almost out of view, she opens the door and picks up the plate. It’s cold.
She brings it into the room, sets it down on the desk, and lifts the lid—voilà.
A banana split.
The doorbell rings again. She goes back. “Sorry to bother you. I forgot that there’s a card that goes with it.” The man slides the card under the door.
“Thank you,” she says, opening the door. “Can I trouble you for a spoon?”
While eating the banana split, Meghan reads the card.
Dear Daughter, I hope you will accept my apology. I am not good at fighting and probably worse at making up. I am enormously proud of you—a senior in high school! Voting for the first time! You have been a source of great joy and inspiration to me from the day you were born—don’t ever question it—and don’t ever forget it.
Love—Dad
PS: When you learn to drive, I will buy you a car.
“I want to go to the zoo,” Meghan says when the Big Guy returns. He is sweaty even though it’s December.
“Now?”
She nods.
“Okay, well, I’ll call downstairs and see if there’s anyone who can take you.”
“I want you to take me,” she says.
“I haven’t been to the zoo in years.”
“Exactly,” she says. “When I was little, we used to go to the zoo.”
“Indeed we did. All right then, the zoo it is.”
* * *
• • •
“what is your favorite animal?” she asks, as they are walking the pathways of the National Zoo.
“Elephant,” he says. “You?”
“Lion. And panda.”
They walk and talk.
“It’s a good place,” he says. “Good of you to think of it.”
“We used to come here a lot.”
He nods. “I used to do business with a man who lived in the building next door.” He points it out. “The Kennedy-Warren. Lots of folks used to live there, including LBJ and Lady Bird when they first came to Washington. And a plethora of admirals and generals—including Edwin Watson. He was FDR’s right-hand man—died on the boat coming back from the Yalta Conference in 1945.”
“You are obsessed with history,” she says.
“I am. I love it. Nothing better, the best stories, the most profound events.”
“I like it too. But I’ve been noticing that a lot gets left out of history. They only put it in later when they have to.”
He doesn’t say anything.
“Is there something you wish you’d done, like something you wanted to be when you were growing up that you didn’t do?”
“Yeah,” he says, sounding a bit resentful. “The truth is, I would have liked to do something really big.”
“Like what?”
“Invent the atomic bomb,” he says.
“Really?” she asks. “That’s kind of weird.”
“It ended the war. And there hasn’t been another world war since,” he says, as though that proves the point.
“A lot of people died.”
“There is a human cost to everything.”
“If that’s true, you’d think people would change, that they’d learn from it and behave differently,” she says.
“Never going to happen. People want power. No one in power just gives it up.”
They walk.
“If you couldn’t invent the atomic bomb, if that wasn’t an option, what would you pick?” Meghan asks.
“Chips. I’d have my own computer chip operation. The future is in chips. And a bank—I’d take a piece of a bank. This year the market was crazy, nose-dived in March. People blame it on deregulation in the financial sector. Most people don’t realize that big money is like a liquid poured back and forth from one glass to another—the trick is that you don’t want to lose any while it’s being poured. What you’d like is that as it’s poured it gains a little bit right there in midair. I like to think of that as atmospheric condensation, which adds weight to the pour—like cash out of thin air.”
“Does that really happen, money out of thin air?”
“I like to think it can happen,” he says. “I usually don’t talk about these kinds of things with you because I assume women find them boring.”
“Not sure you know it, but you’re always insulting women.”
“I just think it’s a different set of interests. If you want to know how the world works, don’t take English classes. Study history or, better yet, economics. All the secrets are in economics. Follow the money. Does that ring a bell?”
“No.”
“It’s what Deep Throat said to Bob Woodward when he was trying to figure out exactly what Nixon did—follow the money. Money leaves a trail. Something that I’m working on these days is trying to reduce my ‘footprint.’ Going forward, I’m making a concerted effort to lessen my trail. And if I get it right—one day, poof, I might actually evaporate.”
“That’s not funny.”
“I wasn’t kidding.”
“Don’t evaporate,” she says. “I need you.”
They walk a while longer.
“Do you think Mom will ever come back?”
“Yes,” the Big Guy says definitively. “It never occurred to me that she might not.”
“She’s free now,” Meghan says. “Cat’s out of the bag and I’m supposedly going off to college. Maybe she wants a life of her own.”
“Alone?”
Meghan shrugs.
“She’ll come home. Like I said, follow the money.”
“If she doesn’t want to come home, you have to let her go,” Meghan says. “And you need to give her money—it’s like reparations.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure that’s how the world really works,” he says. “Maybe you want to be a divorce lawyer when you grow up.”
Sunday, December 28, 2008
The White House
Washington, DC
11:00 a.m.
After breakfast, they go to the White House. It’s a little different from a routine visit to a family member at work. They show photo identification and pass through a metal scanner before Tony meets them at the reception booth.
“I always worry that they’ll say my name isn’t on the list,” the Big Guy confesses.
“Your name will always be on the list,” Tony says. “But this one will be brief; he’s only here for a few hours.”
“I’m not looking for a lovefest,” the Big Guy says.
The hallways are filled with moving cartons. A few staffers are quietly packing up their offices.
Tony knocks on the office door before pushing it open.
“The place is starting to look like a turkey carcass that’s been had at,” President Bush says, as they come into the Oval Office.
“You’ve been on my mind,” the Big Guy says, putting out his hand.
“Yeah, I’m looking forward to getting outta town; good to see you,” the president says, taking the Big Guy’s hand in both of his.
The president looks at Meghan, who is suddenly shy. “I don’t mean to get in your business, but did Santa bring everything that was on your list?” he asks with a sparkle in his eye.
Meghan doesn’t know what to say.
“My girls make very detailed lists; they include sizes, colors, and the names of stores where their dreams can be fulfilled. Sometimes Laura and I would surprise them. I always think a puppy is a perfect gift for any occasion, but it turns out that not everyone shares my views on that.”
“I’d love a puppy,” Meghan says, as though it were a possibility.
President Bush makes like he’s looking around to see if there’s a spare one to be had, opening and closing desk drawers. He gives the impression of being a kid in a candy shop. “Fresh out of puppies,” he says. “But we do have pens. Would you like a pen?” He hands her two. “One for you to keep and the other for you to negotiate with.”
The Big Guy laughs.
“And you know what else I’ve got?” The president digs around in the drawer and pulls out several boxes of White House M&M’s. They are cigarette-size boxes with the presidential seal. “We have these on the plane. Air Force One. Used to be they gave out cigarettes, but Nancy Reagan stopped that. Ron had jars of jelly beans, but honestly, how many people want jelly beans?” He hands Meghan six boxes of M&M’s. “That should be enough for an international trade deal.”
Everyone laughs.
“Thank you,” Meghan says, and curtsies. She has no idea why; she just does.
“But seriously,” Bush says to the Big Guy. “I want to thank you for your support over the years. It meant a lot to me personally.” There’s a pause. “You wanna know what I’m looking forward to next?”
“Of course,” the Big Guy says.
“Hobbies,” Bush says. “When you’re president, there is no time for hobbies; you can ride a bike, go for a run, or play golf with the bigwigs, but you don’t get to do anything that’s just for yourself.”
“Interesting,” the Big Guy says.
“Painting,” Bush says. “I haven’t told anyone yet, but that’s what I’m gonna do.”
“House painting?” the Big Guy asks, sounding a little worried.
“Picture painting,” Bush says, reassuring him. “Do you know how many shades of blue there are?”
A long silence passes between them.
“I better get back to it.” President Bush pats the Big Guy on the shoulder. “Thanks for stopping by,” he says, giving Meghan a wink. “I was up at Camp David with the family, but I had that itch to come in and get a few things done.” He pauses. “The truth is, I just wanted to be by myself in the Oval Office for an hour or two before it’s all over.”
They move toward the door.
“And you I’ll see later,” Bush says, pointing at Tony.
“We promised each other one last game at the bowling alley,” Tony says, as they’re walking down the hall.
“I love that man,” the Big Guy says to Meghan when they’re back out on Sixteenth Street.
“Really?” Meghan says, shaking the M&M’s. “I thought you didn’t like him so much; you didn’t think he was a great leader.”
“Feelings change,” the Big Guy says. “It’s a hard job, especially for someone like him, but he did okay in the end; he’s all right.”
“Don’t you think it’s weird,” Meghan says, “how that one building is a cross between an office where people work, a historic monument, and a house where a family actually lives. I mean, when you’re in there, it’s kind of hard to believe that that’s the place that runs the whole country. Did you see the carpet?”
“It’s not about the carpet,” the Big Guy says. “They’ll get new carpet. The White House is the seat of our government. The president is the leader of the free world and inspires democracy all over the globe.”
“But seriously, do you think that if everyone in America saw how it really works they’d still be as intimidated?”
