The Unfolding, page 4
“Welcome, we’re so glad to see you,” a woman says, as they enter the room.
“ ‘We’ is a very wealthy old Arizona family,” her father says.
A lot of the women in the room and a few of the men look like they’ve had repair work done; that’s what her mother calls it, “repair work.”
“You see that man over there?” her father says, nodding toward a distinguished-looking man holding court in the corner. “His son would be a good boy for you to meet. One day he’s going to own most of the shopping malls in this country.”
“Are you trying to sell me off?” Meghan asks.
“No. Just highlighting some of the options. He’d be a nice addition.”
“And your children would always have hair,” her mother adds. “Not many older men have such a thick head of hair.”
“Ew,” Meghan says.
“John’s here,” someone says.
“At the party?”
“No, he’s upstairs. He’s arrived at the hotel.”
“I’ve heard people talk about the Keating affair. I feel terrible for Cindy,” one of the women whispers to another.
“It wasn’t that kind of affair,” the other woman whispers back.
“Oh?”
“It was a political corruption case.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“A bunch of men were convicted, nothing romantic about it.”
“I still feel sorry for Cindy,” the woman says. “It’s hard to be the wife.”
“The Jewel of the Desert,” Meghan hears her father say. “This is the same hotel where John and Cindy got married, May 17, 1980. It’s their happy place.”
“God willing,” someone says.
An old man starts choking on a pig in a blanket and the room falls silent except for the televisions. Someone finally starts asking, “Is there a doctor?” while others pound on him and prepare to do the Heimlich. Just as a burly man gets behind him and is about to do the big squeeze, the old man coughs it up on his own. A chunk of baby hot dog flies out of his mouth and lands like a small turd on the carpet.
“Come with me.” Her mother grabs Meghan’s hand, pulling her into the bathroom. She closes the door quickly, locks it, then turns, sets her glass down, flips the toilet seat up, and vomits yellow bile. Twice. “I just don’t have the stomach for it anymore.”
“It’s okay, Mama,” Meghan says, patting her mother on the back.
Her mother looks at herself in the mirror, washes her hands, runs some tap water into her hand, and rinses her mouth. “Between us,” she says, and doesn’t need to say more.
“Pinkie swear,” Meghan says. And they go back into the room.
At the fourth and final stop, Meghan sees people she has seen before, friends of her father’s, maybe acquaintances is the better word; they are men he feels comfortable with.
Extra televisions are brought in for the occasion—there are at least two in every room. In one of the bedrooms a man is talking on his cell phone while frantically waving others away. “I’m on with the committee,” he hisses.
“We all know where this is heading.”
“It’s like watching an accident.”
“Are you sure?”
“Something is very wrong.”
“A lot of things are wrong, very wrong.”
“It’s on us—we took our eye off the ball.”
“It’s her. He never should have picked her. She’s an idiot.”
“Don’t you think he talked to her before he picked her?”
“Well, if he didn’t, he’s an idiot.”
“Somebody talked to her, but they forgot to ask the important questions—like do you own your own clothes? Or what’s the view from your kitchen window?”
“I can see Russia from here,” someone says.
“Do you remember when Cindy had the drug problem?”
“She handled it so gracefully.”
“I hear John is a gambler.”
“A superstitious guy, my friend knew him in the navy, said he had a lucky charm he carried with him, a rock.”
“He got out alive.”
“I heard it was a compass; he had a compass.”
“Feather,” someone chimes in. “He keeps a feather. The staff went mental when he lost it on the campaign trail.”
“Really, he lost his lucky feather? Did they find it?”
“No fuckin’ idea.”
Her father trades her mother’s vodka and soda for just soda with a whisper of vodka on top. He hands her mother the glass. She smiles slowly and sips. She can’t tell if her mother notices. All she can tell is that her mother is quieter. That’s what happens when her mother drinks; she gets quieter and quieter and then goes to sleep.
Waiting for news. It’s as though they were all at a hospital waiting for the surgeon to come out and tell them how it went. The suspense is rising, the air charged with contagious anxiety.
“John is going to stop by to say hello,” someone announces. “A quick hello.”
Her godfather, Tony, calls her father. Her father talks to Tony and then passes his phone to Meghan. “What’s it like?” Tony wants to know.
“Weird,” she says. “It’s all weird. During the voting, I felt like I was in the short story ‘The Lottery.’ They check your name off in a big book like something Santa would have at the North Pole, then you duck behind a privacy screen, make an X mark on a piece of paper. You do that at seven a.m., and by the end of the day, all the Xs are counted up and we know who the president is. Is it just me or is it weird?”
Tony is quiet for a minute. “It’s been that way for the last two-hundred-plus years.”
“My point exactly.”
“How’s your mother holding up?”
“She doesn’t like parties.”
“Smart woman. Neither do I,” Tony says.
“Where are you?”
“Home. I’m too old for this shit.”
“If I remember correctly, you’re younger than my father.”
“I’m precociously aged. And I prefer to take in bad news alone.”
While she’s talking with Tony, Meghan spots Eisner, the historian, across the room. He catches her eye. He makes a gesture as if to say, Look around the room, then mouths the word termites.
“Have you ever noticed that people are weird?” she asks Tony.
“Daily.”
“And for the most part, they don’t have minds of their own?”
“The ‘bystander effect,’ ” Tony says. “When you grow up, make sure you play an active role.”
“Tell that to my father.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mom and I are the bystanders. She knows him so well that she can read his body language and intuit what will happen next. ‘Let’s stop for a bite to eat. Let’s use the bathroom.’ Between the two of us, we have a joke—his nickname is Let’s.”
Tony laughs.
“But seriously, right now Let’s looks worried. So now Mom is worried. I can tell by looking at both of them, all of them really. Is it definitely bad?”
But before Tony can answer, there’s a lot of commotion in the room. “I have to go,” she says. “The McCains are coming.”
“TTYL,” Tony says.
There’s a palpable rush of excitement. Meghan notices the men pulling themselves together, giving their pants a tug up over their bellies while the women check their hair and lipstick. The effort to look good is so obvious, it’s almost funny—almost.
And then there is a pregnant pause, waiting, waiting, longer than you would think. Across the room the speechwriter mimes blowing on a trumpet, as if announcing the arrival of the king. The sound of radios comes from down the hall, and the two men by the door are focused, transparent coiled earbuds go up the back of their necks into their ears.
A cloud of Secret Service agents sweep into the room, just their physical volume pushes the crowd back toward the wall.
As Cindy and John enter, the crowd breaks into applause and there’s a forward surge—the desire for physical contact.
Someone offers John a microphone; he turns it down.
“I’m so glad to see all of you,” John McCain says. More applause. “Cindy and I just wanted to stop by and thank you for the work you’ve done to make this campaign a strong one and for sticking with me through the unexpected ups and downs of the last few months.”
There’s a brief pause. “How’s it looking?” someone shouts.
McCain shakes his head. “Well, right now, I wouldn’t want to be me.” He chuckles painfully. “But seriously, we all worked hard and I just wanted to come by and thank you.”
Someone is hissing, like a low rattlesnake. The hissing builds; it’s more than one person. Meghan’s shocked. Then the hissing is overpowered by booing and she can’t tell if they’re booing McCain or the people hissing. “Don’t be a pussy,” the man next to her says loudly. His wife smacks him hard. “Shut up, you’re drunk.”
“We love you, John,” someone shouts. “Don’t quit now.”
“We won’t know anything official for a while,” McCain says.
With nothing left to say, John McCain raises his arm as far as he can and makes a gesture somewhere between a salute and a send-off and gives Cindy a little nudge, and they are quickly out of the room, enveloped by the Secret Service.
“Hopefully, no one will remember you,” the wife of the drunk man says.
“I’m the least of his problems,” the man says.
“I’m surprised he can come in here and seem normal enough.”
“What should he do, start crying? He’s got to put a good face on it. Who knows what he’s doing upstairs.”
“Smashing shit, that’s what I’d be doing. I’d be fucking throwing the sofa through the window.”
“That’s it,” the wife of the drunk man says. “I warned you. We’re leaving now. Say nighty night to your friends.”
“Good timing,” he says, as they shuffle out of the room. “The shit’s about to hit the fan anyway.”
Meghan is surprised by how angry people are, like poor sports at a ball game.
“What happens if we don’t win?” she asks.
“We have lost control,” her father says, shaking his head.
A few women have started crying; one is weeping uncontrollably. “It’s like when the Challenger blew; we all stood in front of our televisions sets, helpless,” someone says.
“I wish they would call it,” a woman says. “Put us out of our misery.”
“Too early. They don’t call it while polls are still open.”
The rumbling continues.
Her mother asks for another drink and Meghan offers to go get it. On the way to the bar, she looks for the historian but doesn’t find him. She orders the drink for her mother and the same for herself. It’s the first time she’s ordered a drink for herself.
As she’s crossing the room back toward her parents, someone says loudly, “Oh my god.” The room falls silent and all eyes focus on the television. “A Black man just got elected president of the United States. Oh my fucking god.”
“Really?”
“It’s over?”
“That’s it?”
“Who called it?”
“I can hear my parents rolling in their graves.”
“Wow,” her mother says when Meghan reaches her with the drink.
“Is it true?” she asks her parents.
Her father looks pale. His eyes are darting back and forth.
“Dad?”
The news has hit the room like death. Waiters stop serving. Men, looking as if they might be sick, quickly steer their wives toward the door.
On the television screens the reporters are talking. “A truly historic moment, Barack Hussein Obama will be the next president of the United States; he is the first African American to be elected to the nation’s highest office.”
Those who haven’t left the party stand dumbfounded in front of the television.
The network cuts to another reporter. “All over the country people are coming out into the streets; they’re hugging one another, dancing, setting off firecrackers. We are here at a nursing home with Clarice Jones, one of the oldest Americans who voted today. She is 101 years young. Clarice, how are you feeling tonight?”
“I feel fine,” Clarice says. “I got up this morning and cast my vote. And now look what we have, our first Black president. My relations were owned by White men and now look. Can you believe that in my lifetime this has happened? It’s amazing and it reminds us to keep the dream alive when the night is dark.”
“Thank you, Clarice, and back over to you, Tom,” the reporter says.
“Let’s go downstairs,” her father says.
As they’re leaving the room, Meghan overhears a man saying, “Just think, on Inauguration Day that man is going to be fucking his wife in the White House.”
“Don’t be crude,” his wife says.
“I’m just telling it like it is,” the man says.
“Downstairs,” her father repeats. “It’s time for Mother to go to bed.”
When they get back to the room, Meghan understands why the hotel thought they’d need a crib. Her father has hired a babysitter—for her mother. He introduces her mother to Mrs. Stevens, who will keep her company while the rest of the family returns to the fray.
In the background the television set drones. “Shortly after eleven p.m. in the East, nine p.m. in Phoenix, Senator John McCain called President-elect Obama . . .”
“Is Mom drunk?” she asks, as they ride the elevator down to hear McCain’s speech.
“I just don’t like for her to be alone,” her father says.
They have special passes that let them get up close. There’s a singer on-stage and thousands of people are in the area she saw them setting up earlier. The crowd looks tired, baffled by what they perhaps already know but haven’t fully processed. After a few minutes, the singer takes a bow and canned music begins to play. Stagehands come and go, moving things around.
The volume on the music goes up; the crowd recognizes the song “Raisin’ McCain” by John Rich and begins cheering. Out from the edges of the stage come Sarah and Todd Palin and Cindy and John McCain. The crowd applauds wildly.
“Drill, baby, drill!”
“Go Maverick.”
“The Mac is back!”
Meghan feels herself start to cry.
McCain holds up his hand to quiet the crowd. “The American people have spoken and they have spoken clearly,” he says. The crowd boos. He continues, “I had the honor of calling Senator Barack Obama to congratulate him on being elected the next president of the country that we both love.”
As McCain is speaking, Meghan is overwhelmed with the feeling that something enormous has happened. She is a witness to history.
“I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him but offering our next president our goodwill and earnest effort . . . to bridge our differences . . . defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited.”
“What a load of crap,” someone says.
McCain continues. “It is natural tonight to feel some disappointment, but tomorrow we must move beyond it and work together to get our country moving again. We fought—we fought as hard as we could. And though we fell short, the failure is mine, not yours . . . the road was a difficult one from the outset. You know, campaigns are often harder on a candidate’s family than on the candidate, and that’s been true in this campaign. I am so lucky to have such a wonderful family. A big thank-you for Cindy!” Applause and another pause. “Every candidate makes mistakes, and I’m sure I made my share of them. But I won’t spend a moment of the future regretting what might have been.”
A man next to Meghan picks a McCain/Palin hat off the floor and asks his friend, “Is this shit worth anything?”
The friend takes the hat, drops it on the floor, and stomps on it. “That’s how I feel tonight, fucking crushed, fucking fucked,” the guy says.
McCain carries on. “I call on all Americans, as I have often in this campaign, to not despair of our present difficulties but to believe always in the promise and greatness of America, because nothing is inevitable here. Americans never quit. We never surrender. We never hide from history. We make history.”
And then he is done. He waves to the crowd.
“Thank you, and God bless you, and God bless America.”
“I’m going to the bar,” her father says.
“I think I’ll take a walk,” Meghan says.
“Fresh air is called for,” her father says. “You need money?”
“There’s nothing to buy. Air is free.”
“You’d be surprised. Helium is five dollars a liter, that’s up fifty percent from last year.”
“You would know,” Meghan says. It’s a family joke given that one of her father’s companies recovers helium from natural gas. “World’s largest supplier.”
“I’ll be in the bar.”
Outside, despite the fact that there are lots of cops around, people are smoking pot. The smell is heavy in the air. A grown woman in a ball gown is throwing up by the side of a car while a man holds her hair back. “I’m telling you it was the crab,” she says, and vomits again.
People are standing around, doing nothing, while others start taking things apart. It feels like a failed mission, a rocket launch that didn’t happen.
Meghan walks a little more and ends up by the pool. All is still. The underwater lights are on. The clear blue water looks like a morning sky. The umbrellas are down, the chairs tucked in. It’s been neatly put to bed.
She sits, thinking without even knowing what she’s thinking. There is no clear line, no logical order. Time passes. No idea how long. She’s lost in thought as if thought is outer space.
