THE PRESIDENT 2 (16 page)

“Oh, nothing, except that Marcus Rance’s sentence has just been commuted to life by Mrs. Feingold’s husband.
 
Thanks, according to the press, to your intervention.”

Gina couldn’t believe it.
 
She just stood there staring at Dutch.
 

Dutch exhaled.
 
“Damn,” he said.

“But it was nothing!” Gina insisted.
 
“It was just an offhand comment.”

“Gina, how many times do I have to tell you to watch what you say around here, offhand or not?”
 
Dutch exhaled, ran his hand through his thick mop of black hair.
 
“It was no issue, you know it and I know it.
 
But the press, they don’t know that.
 
Little offhand comments like this are their bread and butter, and don’t you forget that!”

Gina stared at Dutch.
 
Her
fed-up with this town
meter was slowly moving off the charts.
 
“What can I do?” she asked in a deflated tone, because she knew there was always some sick, political, pandering way to make it up.

“Max suggests you go to one of those victims of violent crime centers here in DC and meet with some of the victims.
 
That way you’ll look more sympathetic to the victims rather than the perps.”

“I am sympathetic to the victims.”

“You know it, I know it.
 
We need to make sure the public still knows it.”

Gina shook her head.
 
“But to have me going to a victim center after the commutation, like the American people are stupid or something.
 
That is so bogus, Dutch.”

“I know it is.
 
But do it,” he ordered, looking her dead in the eye.

Gina nodded, still reluctant.
 
“Yes, sir,” she said.
 

Dutch kissed her lightly on the lips, and left.

“Shoes,” Gina said aloud, and went back to her rack of gowns.

***

Two days later, after visiting two of those victim centers in the DC area and actually learning something she thought was rather profound, she made a decision.
 
That night, alone in the residence with Dutch, she tried to figure out a way to tell him about it.

“How did it go today?” she asked him.
 
They were in the residence dining hall eating dinner.
 
Dutch at the head of the table, Gina sitting to the right of him.
 

“It was the usual unusual, you know how it goes.
 
Plans are being drawn and redrawn, the economy is beginning to pick up some steam, and we’re finally having some private communications with the hostage takers.”

“The media would broadcast it live if they found out.”

“Some already know.
 
The big three networks know, but for the safety of the hostages they have agreed to keep it under wraps.”

“Really?
 
And you expect them to keep their word?”

“It’s happened before.
 
As long as they know the hostages’ lives are at stake, they’ll remain silent.”

“I pray you’re right.”

“Also,” Dutch said a little less enthusiastically.
 
“My mother phoned.”

Gina bit into a biscuit and looked at him.
 
“What did she want?”

“To see me.”

Not us, Gina thought.
 
“Where?”

“Nantucket.”

“Are you going?”

Dutch hesitated, staring down at his bowl of soup.
 
“Yes,” he said.
 
“I’m still upset with her for opposing our marriage, and doing so publicly, but she’s still my mother.”
 
Gina nodded.
 
“And she says it’s very important that she sees me.”

“What could be so important?”

“I don’t know.
 
But I’m assuming it’s personal.”

“You mean she could be ill or something?”

“She’s sixty-four years old.
 
It’s possible.”

Gina nodded.
 
Then she told him about her day at those victim centers and what happened during her last few minutes at one of them.
 

“I was just giving my usual spiel, you know,” she said, “about how things will get better and how to look on the bright side and I stayed away from all controversy and focused only on sunshine and happiness.
 
Max would have been proud.
 
I even told a group of teenage victims to forgive their perpetrators, saying that not forgiving only hurts them.”

“You told them right,” Dutch said, reaching for another biscuit to dip into the wonderful pea soup the Chef had prepared.
 

“I know it was the right thing to say,” Gina replied.
 
“But then one of them, a real skinny kid with little squinty eyes, asked if I had forgiven my brother.”
 

Dutch looked at her.
 
“Forgiven him?”

“Yeah.
 
For being a drug dealer.
 
For that drive-by he committed and those people died.
 
For disgracing my father’s name.
 
He wanted to know if I forgave him for that.”

“What did you say?”

“I told the truth.
 
I said no.
 
I mean, I haven’t even thought about Marcus Rance, at least not like that.
 
But then the kid says, ‘how can you ask us to forgive, when you can’t even do it?’
 
That just stunned me, Dutch.
 
Not only was I a fake for even agreeing to go to that center to begin with, just to appease some press that won’t give us credit anyway, but I was being a hypocrite about it too.”

“You’re being too hard on yourself.”

Gina hesitated.
 
Then stared at her husband.
 
“I want to see him, Dutch.”

Dutch could hardly believe his ears. “See him?
 
Why?”

“Because he’s my father’s son.
 
Because I need to look him in the eye and I don’t know why.
 
But I want to go and see him.
 
I just think I should see him.
 
He is my brother.”

“He’s your half-brother.”

“He’s my father’s whole son, Dutch.
 
And I loved my father.
 
I feel I should do this.”

Dutch was shaking his head before she finished her sentence.
 
“That’s out of the question, Regina,” he said.

“But why?”

“What do you mean why?
 
The mid-terms are coming up.”

“Not for another two years.”

“But people don’t forget.
 
We’ve got to elect more Democrats.
 
I don’t need a Republican House that I’ll have to fight tooth and nail in the last years of my term.
 
But that’s exactly what will happen if I keep making a mess of things for our party.
 
And if I let you go to some prison in Texas to see that man, it’ll be the very definition of making a mess of things.”

“But I need to see him, Dutch.”

“Because some kid asked you a question?
 
Come on, Gina!”

“Because I need to see him.
 
He’s my flesh and blood.”

“He’s a murderer.”

“He’s my brother who happens to be a murderer. I understand he’s a terrible, despicable human being.
 
But that doesn’t change the fact that he’s my flesh and blood and I think I should go and see him.”

“No.”

“Oh, so you can go and see your racist mother but I can’t go and see my brother?”

“Half-brother.
 
And it’s not the same thing.”

“Why isn’t it?”

“Because my mother didn’t kill anyone!
 
My mother wasn’t on death row!”

“And your mother,” Gina said, “isn’t always at the center of political controversies that hurts the Democratic Party.”

Dutch looked at Gina, threw his napkin onto the table, and stood and left.

Gina threw her napkin onto the table too.
 
But she just sat there.

A day later, Dutch took Air Force One out of Andrews Air Force Base and then Marine One to his mother’s estate on Nantucket Island, leaving from the guest room before Gina woke up.
  
And Gina, once awake, took a Boeing 757 out of Andrews and then a convoy of SUVs to the Alan B. Polunsky Unit of the Texas State Penitentiary in West Livingston, Texas.

EIGHT

Dutch sat in the parlor of his mother’s home, his muscular body leaned forward, his arms resting on his thighs as he read a series of text messages on his customized, Secret Service-issued Blackberry.
 
Although he was reading the messages, he couldn’t stop thinking about Gina and that awful argument they had had last night.
 
Then to get word from a member of his staff, while he was en route here to Nantucket, that she had decided to go to Livingston anyway, concerned him.
 

Just after their marriage, when parts of America was stunned, other parts elated, the Secret Service chief had asked if Dutch wanted to have final approval over all of the First Lady’s travel itinerary.
 
Dutch had thought it rather condescending for him to even ask it, as if he expected Gina to hop a plane to rendezvous with one of her lovers or something, and he had said no without hesitation.
 
And even now he stood by his decision.
 
Gina was too smart and savvy a lady for him to dream of keeping tabs on her, and he told that chief, who seemed to be among those more stunned than elated by the marriage, that his wife was more than capable of approving her own schedules.