The Unfolding, page 38
“The patient is a woman and I doubt he said anything. Look,” Tony says, nodding toward the main platform. “See that guy making faces? That’s Mr. Confident, Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff. I don’t like him. Too big a personality for the job.”
“Are we going to talk about the elephant in the room?” Meghan asks.
“That we’re Republicans at a Democratic inauguration?” Tony says jokingly. “Or that I haven’t seen you since you met Irene?”
“Did you ever meet her?”
“No. I didn’t know about her until it became a problem.”
“You mean until she got pregnant.”
Tony nods.
“It’s all very weird, like I’m falling through space, splintered. I can’t talk to Mom or Dad about it because they clearly have their own feelings about the whole thing. It’s like I’m in a thousand pieces. I’m Humpty Dumpty on the floor and have to reassemble myself from scratch by asking not just who I am but who do I want to be.”
In the background, a military band plays brassy celebratory tunes.
“Can we talk about the other elephant?” Meghan asks. “About why you didn’t tell me that you were gay?”
“Of all the times I imagined how we might have this conversation, there was never this version,” Tony says, gesturing to all that is going on around them.
Meghan looks at him. She’s not going to let him off the hook.
“One doesn’t talk to children about sex,” Tony says. “End of story.”
“It’s not about sex, it’s about love.”
“That’s a very modern idea. Spoken with the naivete of youth, for which I adore you. But no.”
“It’s also about honesty.”
“Sweetie, being gay was a crime in Washington, DC, until 1993. People went to jail for it, lost their families; careers were ruined; people were killed.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Crazy and true. During the Lavender Scare in the 1950s and 1960s, men and women were interrogated and asked, ‘Do you identify as homosexual?’ The son of Lester Hunt, a Democratic senator from Wyoming, was arrested for soliciting sex. And the Republicans decided to make a thing of it. They tried to get Hunt to resign from the Senate, which would have given the Republicans the majority.”
“That’s not cool,” Meghan says. “What’s that saying about the sins of the father being visited upon the sons?”
“This was the ‘sin,’ if you even want to call it that, of the son being used as blackmail against the father. You know what happened?”
“No idea.”
“Senator Lester Hunt shot himself in the head in his office right in that building behind us with a rifle he brought from home.”
“That’s awful.”
“Stewart McKinney, a Republican congressman from Connecticut, died of AIDS in 1987 while in office. And so did Freddie Mercury, Mr. We Will We Will Rock You, and Rock Hudson and the guy who played the father in the TV show The Brady Bunch and tens of thousands of others.”
“That’s all really bad,” Meghan says. “But not telling me also meant that despite knowing you all my life I never really knew you.” She starts to tear up. “There’s a difference between secret and private.”
“Some things are generational.”
Meghan shakes her head. “Secrets cause damage. Look at my mother.”
Tony says nothing. He adores Charlotte.
“Have you seen this?” Meghan shows Tony a photo of Charlotte and Terrie. “She’s hiking in Zion with her new girlfriend.”
Tony is surprised. “You think they’re girlfriends?”
Meghan shrugs. “Something’s putting that smile on her face.” She shows Tony a text from Charlotte: “New Year’s PS—One thing I’ve learned along the way, keep your eyes on the horizon. Don’t focus on what you think others want you to be, focus on who you want to become.”
“That’s very sweet,” Tony says.
“It’s sweet. But it doesn’t sound like her—too normal.”
They both laugh.
“And speaking of something that doesn’t make sense.” Meghan pauses. “How can you be gay and be a Republican?”
“Rest assured, you’re not the first to ask. One shouldn’t speak in generalizations, but we all live with contradictions of one kind or another.”
In the background, speeches are being given.
“The fact that Rick Warren is giving the invocation is one of them,” Tony says.
“How did you meet William?”
Tony pauses for a moment. “In a bar downtown. About ten years ago.”
“Are you going to get married one day?”
Tony scoffs. “Doubtful.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. It just seems unlikely.”
“Because you don’t want to?”
“I don’t even know why.” He pauses. “You might think because I’m gay that I’m automatically radical, but as you know, I am quite old-fashioned, like a colonial old lady.”
“Knitting by the fire with wool you spun yourself?”
“Doing crossword puzzles with a magnifying glass. Take a peek over there.”
“John McCain. He showed up.”
“They all show up.”
“It must be hard for him.”
“Feelings are not easy for the majority of the people up there. They don’t stop long enough to have emotional lives.”
Meghan makes a sad face. “What keeps them going?”
“Power,” Tony says. “Proximity to power. When I first met Obama, he asked me, ‘What do your people want?’ I thought he meant Republicans. I must have looked confused because then he tapped his hand on his heart. And I knew that he knew I was gay and was asking me what gay people wanted from him. ‘My people are your people, sir,’ I said, and he smiled. ‘It’s true,’ I said. ‘We are all the same people.’ ”
“That is so not Republican of you.”
“I’ll tell you something I’ve never discussed with anyone.”
“Okay.” Meghan waits.
“The AIDS epidemic changed me. I saw men I’d known for years crusted with sores and wasting away. Their families refused to visit, refused to claim their bodies, refused to bury them. It was a side of human behavior that intellectually I knew was possible, but not humanly. It broke me. And I know it will happen again. It won’t be the same thing, but something will turn American against American.”
Meghan nods. “When I asked Dad about the common man, he said he never wanted to be the common man because the common man was a poor son of a bitch.”
Tony laughs. “That’s what he said?”
Meghan nods. “That and more.”
“Economic status is one thing, but the struggles of different communities for recognition and equal rights need to be shared struggles. Progress isn’t made in isolation.”
“Now I’m worried,” Meghan says. “You have devoted your life to furthering the conservative values of the Republican Party but on the inside, you’re like what? A socialist?”
“No.”
“Why are you involved in whatever it is my father is doing?”
“Do you know what your father is doing?”
“Not exactly. I know he is piling up money, building a ‘war chest.’ I hear him talking to people. Preserve and protect, those are the key words.”
“I share your father’s deep love for this country and concern about its future.”
Meghan is all ears.
“Your dad and his friends call me a liberal.”
“A chameleon,” Meghan says. “Who changes with the temperature.”
“Your father says that?”
“No, not Dad, but one of his friends. I don’t remember his name.”
“There are those who demand attention and others who do not need to be known,” Tony says. “Perhaps it is safer to go unseen. Long ago I taught myself not to need the approval of others—that is the key to my success. Your father wants to reclaim his vision of America, to go back in time. What he doesn’t accept is that we can’t stop the clock. So the question is, with his set of values and point of view, where does one locate the future? I am watching, waiting for the moment to reveal itself.”
“Like a superhero with a cape?” Meghan teases.
“Or a man with a mind of his own.”
“But seriously, what are you doing in Washington? Who is the real Tony Armstrong?”
“This is where I belong, but when I was younger, I did think it would be fun to work at Buckingham Palace.”
“Funny.”
“Delusions of grandeur,” Tony says. “By the time I was out of college, I had a job here and a mentor who told me, ‘Kid, go where the action is. It doesn’t matter what you believe or don’t believe; put yourself in the action; that’s how you start and the rest will figure itself out.’ It was good advice. I’ve always been an outsider. I do my work with a sense of remove that gives me a long view of most situations. In DC there is a public view and a private view, and they are very different. I never wanted to run for office. To have a public life, you have to be charming and made of steel. People know everything about you and use what they know against you. But behind the scenes, if you have the ear of those in power, they take your call. Well, I find that very satisfying. Despite it being news to you, I’ve always known that I was—”
“Swiss,” Meghan says.
“What?”
“My father used to say you were Swiss.”
Tony cracks up. “Not Swiss. Swish. That’s how they used to say someone was gay. He’s swish. I love your dad. He was always so serious. His idea of a good time was going to visit battlefields. But he was real and so straight that my being gay meant nothing to him. ‘I cannot imagine wanting to be in relation to another man’s—’ ”
Meghan holds up her hand to stop him. “I don’t need to hear more.”
They pause. The crowd is silent as Chief Justice John Roberts swears Obama in on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible. If ever air could be filled with import and dreams, it is at this moment. The crowd applauds and the band begins to play “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
“The thing you have to remember,” Tony says, “is that the world evolves: society, culture, what is normal, what is expected. All over the world people have had to fight for their rights and those fights aren’t over. Personal experience changes people. Most white men are oblivious to discrimination because it doesn’t happen to them. A lot of the people who are here today didn’t expect to see a Black president in their lifetimes. Look around . . .”
A man walking by stops and shakes Tony’s hand. “Are you here for outgoing or incoming?”
“I am simply present,” Tony says.
“Ever the middleman,” the guy says.
Meghan gives Tony a quizzical look. “Don’t you have to take a stand? Is being present enough?”
“Bearing witness is a role. Working to shape and tell the story, writing yourself and ‘your people’ into history—that’s the important thing.”
“OMG,” Meghan says. “I see Miley Cyrus and Demi Lovato.”
“I’m assuming Miley Cyrus is not Cyrus Vance’s granddaughter?”
Meghan doesn’t get the joke.
“The thing William is going to be mad about is missing Yo-Yo Ma.”
“Generational,” Meghan says. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. What is a Yo-Yo Ma?”
A little while later, Tony tugs on Meghan’s coat. “Let’s go.”
“It’s not over,” Meghan says.
“Exactly.” Tony leads Meghan through the crowd into the Capitol, down a hallway and then another, then down some stairs. The building is warm compared to the air outside. The sounds of the events outside are dampened.
“Where are we going?” Meghan asks.
“When the ceremony is over, President Obama will escort former President Bush to the helicopter and we will be there to say goodbye. We have time for a bathroom break if you need one.”
“Thank you,” Meghan says.
Tony and Meghan make their way through the Capitol to an area that is for the most part empty except for the Secret Service and military honor guards. In the background, they hear the whine of the helicopter’s rotors outside.
“It’s called Marine One when the president is on board and Executive One when the outgoing president is on board.”
They wait silently. There is the echo of feet, almost like the sound of a horse’s hooves; a procession approaches, the Obamas and the Bushes surrounded by a phalanx of Secret Service agents. Meghan sees Tony and the former president exchange a nod. The whine of the helicopter engine outside becomes louder. She starts to cry.
“Why are you crying?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “It’s a lot. The Bushes are leaving. I really liked them. We had a good time at the White House.”
Tony nods. “We’ll have a good time again. I promise.”
A few minutes later, as the Secret Service agents are ushering the Obamas through the building, the new president sees Tony and stops.
President Obama puts out his hand and pats Tony’s shoulder. “How we doing so far?”
“Beautiful,” Tony says. “If I might introduce my goddaughter, Meghan.”
Meghan extends her hand. “Congratulations, Mr. President.”
“Thank you,” Obama says, shaking her hand. “Glad to have you with us.”
It’s not where she expected to be, and yet the experience brings the last two months full circle, an induction, an immersion, an evolution.
“That is crazy,” Meghan says. “I just shook the president’s hand like ten minutes after he was made president.”
Tony smiles. “It’s addictive; I will tell you that.”
“Obama is a Lincoln man, sworn in on Lincoln’s Bible,” Meghan says. “My father is a Washington man. Did you know that when Washington was elected they didn’t know what to call him? During the war, they called him General or Your Excellency. One official suggested Your Most Benign Highness. A senator suggested His Elected Highness. Someone else offered Your Majesty the President. And then Vice President Adams suggested His Highness, the President of the United States, and Protector of the Rights of the Same.”
“Quite a mouthful,” Tony says.
“After more debate, things settled down and Washington became the first president of the United States.”
“Good story.”
“Another interesting fact,” Meghan says, as they make their way down more stairs and through the tunnels of the Capitol. “Washington was originally a British soldier. He fought for the British during the French and Indian War.”
“I knew that,” Tony says.
“He became disaffected when he didn’t receive a royal commission and it became clear that England valued the Virginia militia less than British soldiers. So after he was demoted, he resigned. He was what they’d call a disgruntled employee.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“It’s like what you were talking about earlier, a personal experience or relationship to the issue. Washington was disappointed by how he’d been treated by the British Army, so as anti-British sentiment began to grow after the French and Indian War, his own disappointment in England’s response to a decade of the colonies asking for representation in Parliament and an end to repressive taxation made it increasingly clear that things would not be peacefully resolved. There was the Stamp Act, then the Boston Tea Party, then Concord—”
“The shot heard round the world,” Tony says.
“Exactly. Washington, the former British soldier, became the first commander in chief of the Continental Army. The takeaway is that sometimes in order to be an agent of change one must recant, volte-face, leaving behind what one formerly held to be true, whether that is one’s politics or one’s family.”
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
L’Auberge Chez François
Great Falls, Virginia
1:30 p.m.
The Big Guy is holding Eisner’s phone, scrolling through the photos as they come in. “What a world we live in. It’s like having your own reporter right there in the mix—eyes on the prize. That is really something. Despite all the drama, I’m optimistic about Meghan—and Charlotte too. Meghan is a smart and resilient young woman who knows history better than I do. As we went through this episode—for lack of a better word—I saw in her a new depth that I was never really sure was there. Substance. One never knows what kind of impact you’re having on your kids, and given that my role modeling was less than ideal—maybe a little too self-involved—it’s impressive. She is forging her own path. For her, history is not yet written.”
Eisner nods. “Indeed, it is just the beginning. I gotta say that makes me happy and also a little jealous.”
“Let us not be distracted,” Kissick says. “We have secured office space at 1700 K Street. We are now also an LLC—or several LLCs. We are a 527 organization known as the Forever Athletic Association. The FAA.”
“That’s our name?” Bo asks. “It sounds just like the Federal Aviation Administration.”
“Intentional misdirection,” Metzger says.
“I wanted a benign moniker for now,” Kissick says. “I have also dealt with the questions around banking. All set there.”
“Strong work,” the Big Guy says. “I’m thinking I’ll get an apartment in town so I am closer to the epicenter and Meghan. Also, we need code names. I’ve taken Raymond Chandler for myself.”
Bo laughs. “And what am I? Pinot noir?”
“If you like,” the Big Guy says.
“I don’t like,” Bo says. “Call me Zenith.”
“I’ll stick with Colonel Mustard,” the General says.
“Frode,” Kissick says. “I have you down as Boner or Disco Queen.”
