The Devil's Bed

  Stephanie was seven, and Dixon loved her deeply. She had her mother’s long, blonde hair and pale complexion. She was smart and funny and loved to laugh, all very like her mother. From her father, she’d inherited athletic ability, a willful way, and a love of football. They often spent a Sunday afternoon together watching the Broncos or the Redskins on television.

  Stephanie’s eyes drifted down from the ceiling and found him. She smiled and said happily, “Hi, Daddy.”

  Kathleen Jorgenson Dixon looked up from the book she held. She didn’t smile.

  Dixon came to the bed, leaned down, and kissed his daughter’s forehead. Her skin smelled faintly of Noxema. “What did you think of Ms. Walters?”

  “I thought she was nice.”

  “Me, too.”

  “I got her autograph.”

  “You can add it to your collection.” His daughter had practically grown up in the White House, surrounded by celebrities and the great people of the day. She collected autographs that she kept in an album. Her favorite was J. K Rowling, creator of Harry Potter, whom she’d met at a charity reading her mother had sponsored.

  “I think that’s enough about Hogwarts for us Muggles tonight,” her mother said. She closed the book, set it on the stand, and rose from her chair. She kissed her daughter’s cheek. “Sleep tight.”

  “Can I read a little more? I’m not very sleepy.”

  “A little more,” her mother agreed.

  “Night, Pumpkin,” Dixon said.

  As they left the room, Kate closed the door behind them.

  “I was going to have a glass of sherry,” Dixon said. “Care to join me?”

  “I don’t think so.” She walked past him.

  “You were great this evening,” he said behind her. “I know it wasn’t easy.”

  “I did what I had to do.”

  He accompanied her down the hall to the master bedroom of the presidential suite. Inside, she continued toward the dressing room. Dixon followed but hung back at the doorway, watching as she opened a bureau drawer and began to gather a few things.

  “Do we need to talk some more?” he asked.

  “I don’t know what else there is to say.”

  “That you understand would be good. You haven’t said that yet.”

  She bowed her head, thought, then turned to him. “Do you remember the night Alan Carpathian came down to the ranch and asked you to run for governor?”

  “Of course.”

  “We sat on the porch until midnight, the three of us, drinking scotch.”

  “We talked until sunup. You were on Alan’s side. You encouraged me to run, Kate.”

  “I couldn’t stand watching you mope. When you retired from football you were lost.”

  “That night on the porch you said I could do great things.”

  “And you said we could do great things. That you wouldn’t do anything unless we did it together, remember?”

  “I remember.”

  “Four years ago when Alan finally convinced you to run for the White House, I thought we made the same deal.”

  “Things have changed. Alan’s gone. I have other advisers now. Rooms full of them.”

  “Your father’s people.”

  “They know what they’re doing.”

  “Do they? It was on their advice you ambushed Wayne White.”

  “It wasn’t an ambush. It was a political maneuver.”

  “Dredging up an allegation twenty years old? Anybody who knows Wayne White’s history knows that his wife was an alcoholic then. What the truth of the incident really was, God only knows. The woman has passed away and can’t help her husband refute the sordid aspects of the story. And Wayne White, God bless him, is too fine a man to defend himself by sullying her memory. All very convenient for you. And I love how the information just happened into the hands of a tabloid. And that awful picture of her with the bruises. My God, where did that come from?”

  “Nothing that came out wasn’t the truth. And it’s not as if Wayne White isn’t above a little slander himself. I quote, ‘It’s hard to believe this nation has chosen as its leader a gridiron gorilla who barely made it through college.’”

  “There was a time when you thought ‘gridiron gorilla’ was a compliment. And it’s true that you were no scholar. Besides, Wayne White said those things long before he put his hat in the ring. He’s been quite civil since.” She turned back to the bureau. Her hands moved quickly, selecting then discarding with an angry motion. “Your father was the architect of all this duplicity. But you, you’re worse because you pretend you’re not like him. I think you even believe it.”

  Dixon quit the dressing room and walked to a small rosewood table near the window where he kept a decanter of sherry. He poured himself a glass.

  “Tell me something,” she said, her voice coming disembodied from the dressing room.

  “Anything.”

  “During the primaries, when opponents in his own party questioned Wayne White’s war record, did the senator have a hand in that? Did he feed the information?”

  “That’s a crazy question.”

  “Is it? After what’s happened, I don’t think so. The senator seems to know anything bad about anybody. Was he already at work trying to torpedo the man’s campaign, even then?”

  “There was good reason to doubt the congressman’s claims about his military service.”

  She stepped into the bedroom, looking stunned. “You knew.”

  “The questions that were raised were reasonable questions.”

  “They were inflammatory. My God, Clay.”

  “What would you have me do?”

  “A public confession would be good for starters.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Maybe I’ll leave you instead.” She vanished into the dressing room again.

  “Walk out on me? Because we disagree on tactics?”

  “Because I don’t like who you’ve become. And because I hate being used.”

  “Used?”

  She came back out, clutching a handful of clothing. “Do you have any idea how hard it was for me sitting there tonight, keeping my mouth shut while you postured and looked so full of integrity. The perfect First Family.”

  He sipped his sherry. “Why didn’t you say something? You certainly had the chance.”

  “Because despite everything, I still love you. I keep hoping there’s a way to salvage something of who you used to be.”

  “I am who I’ve always been.”

  She stared at him, her face pallid and disappointed. “This is just another game to you, isn’t it? You have to win no matter what. You know, I’m beginning to wonder if you’ve sold your soul, maybe the soul of this nation, just because you never got a Super Bowl ring.” She looked at the clothing crumpled in her hand and shook her head. “I’m tired. I’m going to bed.”

  “Lorna Channing’s finishing her report. Would you like to see it?”

  She hesitated, almost taking the bait. Then she said, “I don’t care anymore.”

  Dixon moved to the bedroom doorway and stood, barring her way for a moment. “Sleeping in the Lincoln Bedroom again?”

  “I used to sleep in a great man’s bed. I want to remember what that was like.” She glared at him until he stepped aside. Then she walked down the center hall and never looked back.

  Dixon went into the bathroom. He splashed water on his face and looked at himself in the mirror. He was forty-eight years old, a handsome man. And big at six foot four inches, 238 pounds. He worked out almost every morning to keep the flab at bay. There were two scars on his face from his years on the football field, one across the bridge of his nose, from high school when he played for St. Regis, and the other a long gash above his right eye opened by a collision with a Chiefs linebacker in a division playoff game. He bore them proudly.

  What Kate had said was, in part, true. Politics was a kind of game to him, one he played to win. If a man gave his best and still lost, that was no fai
lure. Failure was going into a fight with half a heart. Failure was giving in before you’d given all. And Clay Dixon was damned if he was giving in.

  The phone rang.

  “Mr. President, this is Lorna. You wanted to know as soon as the report was ready. It is. Shall I bring it to you first thing in the morning?”

  “No. No, I’d rather see it tonight. Where are you?”

  “My office at OEOB.”

  “Could you bring a copy up to the Residence?”

  “Certainly.”

  “I’ll be in my study.”

  Dixon checked on Stephanie. She was asleep. The Harry Potter book lay on her chest. He crept in, put the book on the nightstand, kissed his daughter gently. He turned off the lamp, and slipped out of the room. In the center hall, he paused in front of a painting by Mary Cassatt, Young Mother and Two Children. In it, a woman sat with her arms protectively about her children. The painting was one of Kate’s favorite things in the Residence. She said the woman was portrayed as strong and caring and there was nothing sentimental about the depiction. Dixon didn’t know art, but he liked the painting, too, because the woman in it reminded him of Kate.

  He entered the Treaty Room, which served as his private study. It had been called the Treaty Room since the Kennedy era and had been used for a variety of purposes under various administrations. Dixon had decorated it with mementos of his football days, gold and silver trophies, photographs, the football with which he’d thrown the winning pass in the Rose Bowl game. He was just finishing his sherry when Lorna Channing knocked on the opened door.

  When he’d first entered the White House, the president had chosen most of his advisers in consultation with Alan Carpathian, his chief of staff. But Lorna Channing and Bobby Lee were entirely Clay Dixon’s choices. Lorna Channing, who served as his domestic affairs adviser, he’d known all his life. Her father’s spread bordered the Dixon ranch on the Purgatoire River in Colorado. Their families had expected them to marry someday, and until he went to Stanford, Clay Dixon had expected it, too. Lorna, when she graduated from high school the following year, chose to attend Yale. Eventually and inevitably, more than just a continent separated them. After college, Lorna had worked as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun, then the Washington Post, and finally the New York Times. She became a regular on the syndicated news journal The American Chronicle, where her articulate and astute observations on the condition of the nation (and the fact that the camera loved her) won her a large following. Somehow, she’d also found time to teach at Columbia University, to marry twice, and to divorce both times. At forty, she’d been offered the opportunity to create and then head the School of Contemporary American Studies at the University of Colorado, and she’d finally gone home. She was one of Clay Dixon’s closest advisers when he was governor. When he won the presidency and asked for her continued help, she’d agreed.

  “I hope I’m not disturbing you and Kate,” Channing said as she entered.

  “Kate’s gone to bed.”

  Lorna Channing had long chestnut hair and eyes the color of steamy green tea. She wore a green dress that matched her eyes and dark stockings that made her legs look like two slender shadows. She handed him the report. It was a hefty document. Dixon held it with both hands.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “Bottom line? It’ll be a tough sell to Congress, but it’s good. Bold, different. Kate’s right on the money. It’s the kind of initiative that would mark a great presidency.”

  The report was an analysis of a program that for years Kate had advocated establishing—compulsory youth service, a requirement that all young women and men in the United States give a year of service to the nation upon graduation from high school. It wasn’t at all a new idea, and Clay Dixon knew it had never enjoyed great popularity in the United States. However, Kate had grown up with the concept of service to the nation as a basic tenet of her life, and she’d lived her belief. She’d helped to organize a number of international conferences on youth service, had spoken across the country, written dozens of articles. She argued that too many Americans grew up without any sense of national responsibility or even a sense of belonging. They grew up separated by economic status, by religion, by race, by creed, by color. Only in times of war did Americans seem to unite, to feel the sense of oneness that came with common sacrifice. America was at war, she insisted. The enemy was poverty, ignorance, neglect. America needed its young women and men to bolster the ranks of understaffed hospitals, nursing homes, day care centers. They were needed in the fields and in the inner city, in the parks and in the streets, in programs of national importance where the money was too little and the personnel too few. And they were needed abroad in the same way. She saw it not only as a pragmatic way of dealing with labor shortages in areas of social need, but also as a way of instilling a sense of stewardship in youth and an allegiance to the nation and its people. She’d stumped for the idea long before she married Clay Dixon.

  Upon entering the White House, however, she’d been strongly advised by Alan Carpathian to discontinue her public crusade. It was, he pointed out, an issue without popular support, and it risked putting the president in a politically awkward position. She’d acquiesced, but only after extracting a promise from her husband and the chief of staff that they would undertake a study of the feasibility of such a program. After Carpathian’s death, John Llewellyn advocated scrapping the whole project, but Lorna Channing had championed the idea, and Dixon had listened. Although it had taken nearly four years to keep his promise to Kate, he now held the study in his hand.

  “What will you do with it?” Lorna asked.

  “Sit on it for a while.”

  She looked unhappy. “A lot of effort just to have it end up buried.”

  “Just until the election is over.”

  “Don’t rock the boat, huh? That’s your father talking.”

  “Llewellyn, too.”

  “If you’re not careful, Clay, they’ll keep it buried. I think that would be a mistake. Besides, Kate would shoot you.”

  “She’s already got her finger on the trigger,” he said.

  She crossed her arms and relaxed against the door. “I watched your interview this evening. You were stellar.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Kate seemed a little…reserved.”

  “You’re a great diplomat, Lorna.”

  “Anything you want to talk about?”

  “No. But thanks.”

  He was standing very near her. “Nice perfume. What is it?”

  She laughed, a brief but enticing utterance. If chocolate had a sound, Dixon thought, that would be it.

  “You don’t recognize it? Chanel. You gave it to me for Christmas. I was impressed that you remembered my favorite scent.”

  Dixon decided not to tell her that it was Kate who’d chosen the gifts, who’d noticed her preference for the perfume.

  “You know,” he said, “just before you came I was thinking about that night on the Purgatoire the summer before Stanford.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “But you remember?”

  “Of course.”

  “Christ, everything seemed so simple then.”

  “It wasn’t. We just didn’t realize it.”

  He saw her face change, saw something sad creep into her expression.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Talking about the Purgatoire. I got a call from my father yesterday. He had to put Sultan down.”

  “Oh, Lorna, I’m so sorry.”

  Tears glistened suddenly in her green eyes, and he put his arms around her.

  “I knew it would happen,” she said. “He was so old. But it still feels awful.”

  “He was a magnificent horse,” Dixon said.

  “Thanks.” She wiped her eyes with her hand. “I should be going. It’s late.” She started to leave, but seemed to think better of it, and turned back to him. “Listen, Clay, if you need someone to talk to, about any
thing, think of me, okay?”

  “Of course.”

  After she left, he thumbed the thick report, but he made no move to read it. For a long time, he simply stared at the open door where Lorna Channing had been, and he savored the ghost of her presence.

  Ghosts. There were too many of them in his life now. He lifted his glass, and with the last swallow of his sherry, he toasted the dead.

  “To Alan Carpathian, and all the dreams that died with him.”

  chapter

  three

  Tom Jorgenson left his house and headed to the barn. Although the night air was warm, he took with him a Thermos of hot coffee laced with Bushmills Irish Whiskey. He paused a moment in the yard and looked west where he could see the waning moon descending in the sky above his apple trees. To Tom Jorgenson, there was nothing quite so lovely. Myrna had believed there was special power in the moon. As she lay dying in the room at Bethesda Naval Hospital, the last request she ever made of her husband was that he open the curtains so she could see the moon.

  All his life, Jorgenson had been a man up at first light and about his business until well after dark. “Slow down, Tom,” Myrna had always advised at the end of the day when he tottered near exhaustion. “Come and look at the moon with me.” He hadn’t accepted her offer often enough. After she died, he created a ritual of watching the moon. New, crescent, gibbous, full, he’d learned to observe and appreciate the phases and, in doing so, had learned to better observe and appreciate himself. That, of course, had been Myrna’s purpose all along. How a man could be offered such wisdom and so consistently ignore it was a question that, in the twenty-three years since his wife’s death, he asked himself a thousand times. It had been easy to believe that the political concerns that occupied his life were so vastly important. But Myrna only smiled patiently at his too-full agenda, and whenever he’d felt so pressed he could barely breathe, she would take his hand and say, “Time to look at the moon.”

  She died near the end of his second term as vice president. When his obligation to the electorate was complete, he retired from politics and returned to Minnesota, intending to spend his time finishing the raising of his teenage children, caring for his apple trees, and practicing the nightly ritual that was part of his wife’s legacy.