“You tell him who he’s eating with?” the usher in the elevator whispered to the aide.
“Why you think he’s walking so fast?”
At the far end of the hallway, the President spotted the small antique Georgian serving table that every day would hold a silver tray filled with small place-cards, each one in the shape of a thin, pointed collar-stay that was made of fine thick paper. On each one would be a calligraphed name, and the way the place-cards were organized in two neat columns-that same order would be the seating assignment for the day’s presidential lunch.
Today, however, there were no place-cards.
No seating chart.
No calligraphed names.
“Okay, who’s ready for mac and cheese?” Wallace called out playfully, clapping his hands together as he made a final sharp right and entered the narrow Family Dining Room, with its pale yellow walls and long mahogany table.
On most days, there’d be two dozen people gathered here.
Today, the table was set for two. Him and Andrew.
“No mac and cheese,” announced a disappointed eight-year-old boy with a mess of brown hair and glowing gray eyes. Just like his father’s. “They said we can’t.”
“Who says we can’t?” the President challenged.
Just outside the dining room-and knowing better than to come inside-the nanny who was in charge of Wallace’s son shook her head. Wallace knew that look. Andrew had mac and cheese last night. And probably the night before that.
“He’ll live,” Wallace said. “Two mac and cheeses.”
As young Andrew’s gray eyes lit up, Wallace couldn’t even pretend to contain his own smile.
“Chocolate milk too?” the boy asked.
“Don’t push it,” Wallace teased.
It was tough being President. But it was even tougher being a father in the White House. So at least once a week-or at the very least every other week-there was an uninterrupted meal with no staff, no scheduling, no briefings, no press, no VIPs, and no Members of Congress who will vote your way if you invite them to have lunch with you at the White House.
Some days, the Family Dining Room had to be for just that. Family.
With a playful shoo of his hand, the President got rid of the nanny and the other staffers, closed the door to the dining room, and flicked off the lights.
“Dad, I got two new ones-and found the one where they’re plumbers.” Andrew beamed, flipping open his laptop and angling it so they could both see. With the push of a button, a black-and-white episode of The Three Stooges started playing onscreen.
As President, Wallace knew he could use the White House movie theater downstairs. But as a father, just as he’d done long before he won the election, there was nothing better than being hunched over some mac and cheese, watching the classics with his son.
Kuuk-kuuk-kuuk.
Someone knocked on the door.
Wallace turned, all set to unleash on his staff-until the door opened and he saw who was knocking.
“It’ll take only a second,” Dr. Palmiotti said.
The President shot him a look that would need ice later. Sliding inside, Palmiotti didn’t care.
“Sorry, Andrew-I’ll be fast,” the doctor added, trying to sound upbeat. “It’s about your haircut,” he told the President.
As Palmiotti leaned to whisper in his ear, Wallace knew lunch was over.
“I’m on this. I’m taking care of it. And I’m sorry,” Palmiotti whispered. “He’s gone. They found him dead. Slit wrists.”
Nodding as if he were hearing a baseball score, the President stared across the table at his eight-year-old son.
“Y’have to go now, don’t you?” the boy asked his father as Palmiotti left the room.
“You kidding?” the President asked, reaching for the laptop and hitting the play button himself. “What kinda dad misses mac and cheese with his boy?”
As the theme music began and Moe, Larry, and Curly jumped around onscreen, Wallace sat there in the semidark room, listening to his son laugh hysterically, while trying hard not to think about the dead friend he’d known since he was nearly the same age as his boy.
98
" You don’t have to come if you don’t want to,” Dallas says.
“I’m coming,” I tell him. “It’s just-The caves?” I ask from the passenger seat. “They’re far.”
“They’re in Pennsylvania,” Dallas says, gripping the steering wheel with both hands. “We just cut through Maryland and the facility’s right there.”
I know where he’s talking about. In our downtown building, we house nearly one billion documents. There’re another 3.2 billion out in College Park, Maryland. And there’s overflow storage in places like Suitland, Maryland, whose building is the size of more than twenty football fields and houses over 6.4 billion documents. But since the most important issue-and biggest cost-surrounding document storage is room temperature, the Archives saves millions of dollars each year by using the natural cold of underground caves all across the country, from Lee’s Summit, Missouri, to Lenexa, Kansas, to, in the case of documents coming in from Ohio, the caves in Boyers, Pennsylvania.
“Can I ask you one last question?” I say, my eyes catching my own reflection in the windshield. “When you were back at the office… why’d you pick up my phone?”
“What?”
“Before. After we left the cemetery. You went back to the office; I was going back to see Nico. You said they called. You said you spoke to Mr. Harmon yourself,” I add, referring to the guy from Presidential Records who I called from the cemetery. “You said that while they didn’t find anything in Wallace’s old college records-”
“Which I said they wouldn’t.”
“-I was still right about one thing: Our Archives staff collects every document from every place Wallace ever visited, including elementary school, junior high, and… even the records from the hospital he was born at.”
“But do you understand what happened, Beecher? That hospital-sure, it’s great that they have the President’s birth records. But when Mr. Harmon started digging, he also found another file with Wallace’s name on it: for a broken finger that Wallace had treated in the emergency room twenty-six years ago. That means that emergency room-”
“-is the same emergency room they took Eightball to that night. I know. The barber told me they were there. I know what happened.”
“I’m sure you do. But every word that barber said to you-from Minnie being the one to swing that bat, to Wallace covering it up to protect his sister, to transferring Eightball and keeping him hidden all these years, to however Clementine found out about it and started blackmailing them-y’know what that amounts to? Nothing. Not a single thing, Beecher. Every word that barber said is hearsay from a dead man. If you go and shout it in public, you’ll get about as far as any other Kennedy conspiracy nut who swears that Jack Ruby whispered all his secrets from his jail cell. But. If we get these hospital records, you have the one thing-the only thing-that works when you’re going up against a sitting President. Proof. That file is proof, Beecher. Proof that Wallace was there that night. That file in Pennsylvania will save your life.”
I know Dallas is right. And I know when it comes to the massive piles of incoming records, our office won’t fax them or scan them until they’re officially processed, which starts with the vital documents and takes years to work its way down to something as small as a childhood broken finger. Yet…“You’re not answering my question,” I say, still locked on our reflection in the windshield. “You said Mr. Harmon called. That you spoke to him yourself. But when we were at the cemetery, I didn’t give Mr. Harmon your number. I gave him mine.”
Dallas turns, cocky as ever.