THE PRESIDENT 2 Page 19

  But she showed him no mercy, either. He not only raped her, she declared, but she had the film footage to prove it.

  Then they cued up the camera, dimmed the lights and lit up the screen. On that screen was indeed the president’s bedroom. On that screen was Dutch in bed, with a naked Caroline, who didn’t even bother to obscure her nakedness, kissing Dutch and rubbing her bare backside against his midsection. And then suddenly a different video appeared of the Lincoln Monument, as if it had been accidentally recorded over. Then the tape returned to the bedroom scene, but by now Caroline was on the floor, backing up on her ass, with Dutch just standing there, as if she was terrified and trying to get away from him. Then, of course, the tape was interrupted again with more footage of sights around the National Mall.

  The tape itself would undoubtedly be lost completely by the time Dutch’s attorneys could get the necessary injunction so that their experts can check it for any doctoring, including any recording over, accidental or otherwise. But the damage was clearly already done.

  And the White House Counsel said it best:

  “One woman, two women, even three women, yes, we could have fought each and every one of their assertions,” he said, his eyes never leaving the television screen. “It would have been difficult to sway that court of public opinion, don’t get me wrong. Especially with your own mother leading the charge. But we could have at least made a valiant effort. But a tape showing the president actually kissing, actually in bed with a naked woman? And this woman skirting away from him as if he had just done something terrible to her? How in the world,” he asked, his own face now a mask of concern, “are we going to counter that?”

  Gina looked at her husband, tears already in her eyes. He walked away from the TV, rubbing his forehead, his once proud body now sagged by the weight of his own discontent. And he stood at the office window, his back to them all, as he tried with all he had to look beyond the clutter, the congestion, the pain of Washington DC, and see the long view.

  ***

  That press conference was so devastating that it tore through the roof in Washington and became the scandal of scandals, not just in the backyards and at the kitchen tables of middle America, but around the world, with that video providing the proof they all needed that Dutch Harber, the gorgeous, affable President of the United States, the well-respected leader of the free world, just might be a monster.

  Congress was the first to jump on the slay the monster bandwagon when, later the next day, the Democratic Speaker of the House and the Republican Senate Majority Leader issued a joint statement demanding that the president either resign, or face articles of impeachment.

  By the time their statement reached the White House press office, Allison Shearer was about ready to explode. Her office was packed with staffers, every one of them on their cell phones and BlackBerrys, but her voice carried over every one.

  “You know Dutch Harber!” she yelled into the phone, yelled even though she was talking to the Speaker of the House. “You know he could never rape anyone! That tape’s been doctored and you know it. Once we get a hold of it and expose the truth, Jed, you’re going to wish you never made that statement. Resign or face impeachment. Seriously? Impeachment based on the lies of desperate women? How could you betray the president like that?”

  But the Speaker held to his guns. That video speaks for itself, he said, and hung up the phone.

  Allison hung up too, but then got angrier just thinking about his arrogance. She then picked the phone back up, ready to remind that Speaker that all of those hefty donations he was relying on for his upcoming reelection campaign had to be approved for release by the DNC, which, she reminded him, was under the president’s control. But then Max entered her office. With a stack of newspapers of his own showing the headlines from around the world. And if she thought the Speaker was harsh, his face seemed to say, wait until you get a load of these.

  He dropped them on her desk.

  Allison, seeing that look on Max’s face, put the phone back down. And cleared her office.

  Max slouched down in the chair in front of her. “I can’t believe it, Ally,” he said. “This story just broke and already the president has become the joke of the world. Even the French government is insisting that he apologizes to Caroline Parker.”

  “The French?”

  “Because she lived in France for that decade she was in hiding.”

  Allison shook her head. “That is so bogus.”

  “I know. But they don’t even question that decade-old absence of hers. All they see is that video.”

  The door opened, and LaLa peered inside. “Hello, Ally,” she said. Allison motioned her to come in. She did, with Christian coming in with her.

  “What’s up, LaLa?” Allison asked.

  “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

  Allison shook her head. “Max was just telling me how that video reigns supreme around the world.”

  “Isn’t it awful?” Christian said. “The president and First Lady are still reeling from it all.”

  Max looked at him. “You’ve seen the president?”

  “No, sir. We haven’t seen either one of them. But I’m just saying. They have to be reeling.”

  “He won’t see me,” Max said.

  Allison looked at him. “Why not?”

  Max hunched his shoulders, although he had a pretty good idea why. Dutch had been treating him differently ever since he had to reveal he was secretly planning a run for office. Max wouldn’t put it past him if he suspected he was in cahoots with his mother. Which he was, but not to bring Dutch down, he’d never do that. But to bring that wife of his down. She was Dutch’s problem and the sooner he realized it, Max thought, the better.

  “What’s the deal with that video tape anyway?” LaLa asked. “Was the Counsel’s office able to get an injunction?”

  “They got it,” Allison said, “but the video has mysteriously disappeared. Nobody knows what’s happened to it.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Oh, yes, I’m very serious,” Allison said, looking down at the newspapers. “When you’re rich and powerful like Victoria Harber you can get away with craziness like that.” When Allison saw some of the headlines, her disgust with the media tripled. “Oh my goodness, these people!” she yelled.

  “What?” Christian asked.

  Allison began to read the headlines: “‘President Harber: The Can’t Get Enough of Your Love President.’ Then this: ‘Could This President Be Your Baby’s daddy?’”

  LaLa shook her head.

  “And get a load of this: ‘She said it was long, thick, and juicy.’”

  “How can they write this dribble?” Christian wanted to know.

  “And this,” Allison said, still reading headlines: “‘Dutch Harber: President Ding Dong. The President who did black, and went back.’”

  “It’s outrageous,” Christian said.

  “You think that’s bad,” Max said. “There’s no less than seven investigations looking into their ridiculous allegations, including the FBI, the Secret Service, the Capitol Police because Kate Marris claims one of the rapes occurred while Dutch was a member of the Senate, the DC Police, and even the French Police in case some of the assaults occurred on French soil while Caroline was living there.”

  “Oh, so he supposedly hopped a plane to France and raped her there too?” LaLa asked.

  “They all want in on the freak show, La, what can I say?” Max said.

  “And don’t forget all of those Congressional Hearings their scheduling as we speak,” Allison said. “Every subcommittee known to man wants to drag the president’s cabinet before them to find out what did they know and when did they know it. They’re treating this crap like some gotdamn Watergate!”

  “This is so unfair!”

  “You’re telling me?” Allison said. “I have to call them out on their unfairness and they just laugh in my face. They have this president exactly where they want him and they
are not about to let him up because of anything as foreign to them as fairness.”

  LaLa exhaled, she could just imagine what Dutch and Gina were going through. “What can we do to stop the hemorrhaging?” she asked Allison.

  “Absolutely nothing,” Allison replied. “That’s the scary part. It will take Divine intervention to turn this disaster around.”

  LaLa, a true believer in Divine intervention, silently began to pray for exactly that.

  ***

  Gina found Dutch out on the Truman Balcony later that next day. He had spent half of the night huddling with his staff and legal advisors and when he ultimately retired to bed he opted to sleep, as Gina had expected, in the guest bedroom. She started to give him his space, to allow him a chance to decompress without her having to see him worried to death over the burdens a president bore. But she just couldn’t do it this time. Because this was not a burden outside of himself. This wasn’t about hostages or economic downturns or natural disasters. This was about him and his character. And that burden belonged to her.

  That was why, last night, she went to the guest bedroom. To her surprise, he was not even in bed, but was crotched down in a corner leaned against the wall, a drink in his hand, his head dropped down. He was so spooked by the turn of events that he was not even aware that someone had entered the room.

  Gina just stood there watching him. Why do they always seek to destroy the good guys, she wondered, when the crooks and selfish pigs were allowed to operate with reckless abandon and nobody cared? But a man like Dutch Harber, a man good to his core, gets raked over the coals like it was nobody’s business. Day in and day out. From one craziness to another craziness. All in the name of challenging the government, of making sure the leaders did not get ahead of themselves and drunk with power. And once they have him cowering in a corner, they’re happy. Their work has been done. And they can crawl back under the rocks they crawled out of and leave that broken man for her to put back together.

  When they knew, like she knew, that a vessel forced to be glued back together was never the same.

  She crotched down in front of him, her eyes now narrowed and showing that look of earnestness that he knew so well. At this point she knew he knew she was there, but it took him a while to acknowledge that presence. And when he did look up, the pain in his bewildered green eyes was palpable.

  And when tears began to drain from those eyes, all of the words Gina had planned to speak, all of the reassurances she had planned to make, became caught in her throat. And suddenly there was nothing, nothing at all, that she could say.

  She, instead, moved over to him and pulled him into her arms.

  That was last night. But now, in the light of day, when she found him seated in a chair on the Truman Balcony, staring out across the peaceful South Lawn, he still had the look of a person in the throes of trauma.

  She sat next to him in a flanking chair.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  He smiled at her, and it was a smile laced with pain, but she knew, under the circumstances, it was the best that he could do. “Good morning.”

  “I see your staff canceled all of your appearances too.”

  “Yes, they did,” he said. “I was supposed to address a local elementary school about our educational initiatives. It was supposed to be the launch of our counter to the No Child Left Behind bill. But given the circumstances, they didn’t think it would be appropriate.”

  Dutch seemed to wince with pain after he said that, and he looked back out over the lawn. The idea that they would think he was such a moral deviant that he couldn’t be around kids angered Gina. But he didn’t need her negative energy too.

  So they just sat there, quietly, for what seemed like hours, but was actually a matter of minutes.

  “I had planned to take you to lunch today,” he finally said. “Over at that new restaurant on Capitol Hill, but under the circumstances . . .”

  “Is that the new normal for us, Dutch? Our life will have to cease because everything we planned to do will fall within that under the circumstances or because of the circumstances or given the circumstances qualifier?”

  “It does seem rather confining, doesn’t it?”

  “It seems downright wrong,” Gina couldn’t help but say.

  Dutch snorted. “We have measured out our lives,” Dutch said, quoting T.S. Eliot, “in coffee spoons.”

  “And in short,” Gina added, quoting Eliot too, “I was afraid.”

  Dutch’s heart rammed against his chest and he looked at his wife. He was so sorry that she had to go through this; so sorry that he didn’t drop out of that reelection race when he had the chance, and had let the hounds of hell have this.

  Now she was afraid.

  And so was he.

  He took her hand.

  “You know the one thing that perhaps hurt more than anything else?” he said.

  There’s one thing, Gina thought, when there was so much to choose from? “What?” she asked.

  “The fact that my own mother orchestrated this whole thing because she wanted to break up my marriage. And she played to the peanut gallery. Played to the haters and doubters. What self-respecting woman, was her logic, would remain with a man like me, an accused monster on videotape? And she didn’t want our marriage to end because she didn’t think you were good enough for me. That train of thought would have been too much like normal. But no, she wanted to break us up because she didn’t think you were good enough for her. And her precious, lily white-or so she chooses to believe, bloodline. She wants our marriage to end before we give to her, before we put in her bloodline, a grandchild that could possibly be closer to your skin color than mine.”

  “And she assumed you would wait, that you wouldn’t want to raise a child in this environment.”

  “Right.”

  Gina, however, wrinkled her brow. “But I still don’t understand,” she said. “If it’s all about race, why would she want you to be with Caroline? I thought you said Caroline was rumored to be half-black herself.”

  “Oh, she is half-black. It was more than just rumor. But that’s the madness of racism. Because it isn’t about real truth. It’s about perceived truth. And my mother doesn’t believe for a second that a woman who looks as white as Caroline and carries herself the way she carries herself could possibly be anything but white. She knows better, but she’s pretended so long that she doesn’t, until she really doesn’t.”

  Dutch hesitated. He used to idolize his mother for all of her wonderful, charitable work. Now he had to fight not to hate her. “My mother has spent her entire privileged life around poor, destitute blacks and black servants, and she felt good about herself because she was always the one on top, always the one in position to help the less fortunate among us. When she runs into a smart, savvy, sharp African-American, she’s certain there’s something wrong with them too. Because they don’t fit into the box. Because they upset her manufactured truth. Because her sense of superiority is challenged when she sees superior blacks too. That’s why the least little thing you do, she pounces. You wear an African-style outfit, or calls a reporter a fool, it all plays into her nice little narrative that says you aren’t one of us, you’re different, you’re that other.”

  Dutch shook his head, disgusted. “Thank God people like my mother are fast becoming a dying breed.”

  Gina nodded, although they weren’t dying fast enough for her liking. “So she champions a half-black woman like Caroline in order to stop an all-black woman like me?”