Author: Jed Mercurio
Category: Other
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“You’re right. It would be a problem.”
“I’d give it up, for you, Jack.”
“But wouldn’t you miss it too very badly?”
“I wouldn’t miss too very badly being treated like a piece of meat every goddamn day.”
As he soaks in the hot water, reflections of the overhead lights twinkle on the surface, reminding him of the shimmering beads she wore that night in New York. He hopes Marilyn will recognize his low regard for her, yet the next day Mrs. Lincoln logs two calls (unreturned) and three more the next day (also unreturned). The President has assumed she has become so accustomed to fawning attention that his nonchalance would work, but he has reckoned without the psychological damage of her upbringing, which has conditioned her to expect rejection from everyone. He imagines his own daughter being bumped from one loveless relative to another, and it brings him so close to a sense of guilt that the next day he returns her second call.
He tells her, “I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to see each other any more.”
“I know—we’ve got to keep things quiet till after the election. Then we can be together.”
“No. We won’t be together.”
“You are angry. I’m sorry, Jack—”
“This has to stop. I hope you understand why. And, please, no more disclosures about our relationship.”
He has been feeling nauseated for days, and, after the call to Marilyn, it peaks. He squats in the head suffering pain that pulsates through his gut as he struggles to let the bats out of the cave.
The next morning, he undergoes a regular consultation at which he has ordered all his official physicians to attend and asks them, “Are you quite convinced of the need for testosterone injections?”
“Quite convinced, Mr. President,” says Adm. B.
“Quite convinced,” says Dr. T.
“Definitely the most effective therapeutic option,” says Dr. C.
“I concur completely,” says Dr. K.
The President says, “I’m nauseous a lot of the time.”
“That’s a common side effect,” says Adm. B.
“We can prescribe something to control it,” says Dr. T.
And all four nod in synchrony.
The President spends the next three days in meetings and on the phone dealing with economic matters, and formulating an executive order to ban discrimination in housing projects, which for years has been used as an unofficial method of preventing integration of black families into white neighborhoods.
Meanwhile in a Cabinet meeting, some of the Joint Chiefs start banging the drum about South Vietnam. The Chief of Staff of the Air Force says, “We’ve got to show them we’ve got balls.”
“Show whom, General LeMay?”
“The communists. The godless world. Show them we won’t take any of their shit, Mr. President. Bomb the jungles back to the Stone Age and keep the Reds out. Hell, invade North Vietnam while we’re there, take the whole country.”
“We’d lose a lot of men in those jungles,” says the President. “And what would we be fighting for exactly, General?”
“Our balls,” he says.
At their regular consultation the following week Adm. B. reports that the President’s blood tests haven’t demonstrated the desired improvement, and therefore all the physicians agree the testosterone dose must be increased.
Government aides are concerned that the President’s support for civil rights has led to a drop in his popularity, a perverse indication of the sensibilities of the electorate, who rejoiced in the imperialist fiasco across the Gulf, who enjoyed the rhetoric at the Berlin Wall, but disapprove of showing common humanity toward their fellow citizens.
“We’re worried this is a vote loser,” the aides say.
The President’s closest circle suggests easing up on civil rights programs until his popularity has bounced back.
The President says, “I refuse to abandon the principle of equal rights for all citizens—” but sudden nausea grips his stomach. He turns pale and glistens with a glaze of sweat.
Later that day, his physicians confirm that the testosterone is responsible for his nausea. “It comes in waves,” he says. “I can’t control it.”
“We can,” they answer. “If the pills aren’t strong enough, we’ll start injections.”
Adm. B. asks the President to drop his pants and, as the President lies facedown on the sofa by the fireplace, the Admiral jabs in a needle. Once he’s decent again, Mrs. Lincoln informs the President that Marilyn has called half a dozen times in the last couple of days. She didn’t pass on the messages at first in the hope the calls would stop. The President sighs and says, “Let’s just change the God-damned phone number.”
“Very well, Mr. President,” says Mrs. Lincoln.
The next day, in between the afternoon meetings and early evening swim, she enters somberly to say, “There were two more calls today, Mr. President. She’s been calling the main switchboard number and asking the operator to put her through to your office.”
“Advise the operators not to put her through.”
“Very well, Mr. President,” says Mrs. L., but the next day she enters at the customary time, the flexible window between the last postmeridian meeting and the therapeutic swim, and reports, “I’m afraid she’s created rather a fuss, Mr. President. Raised her voice to the operator. Threatened to cost her her job. The operator didn’t like to say, but she sounded drunk.”
“I think I’m forming quite the vivid picture,” says the President. Drunk and high, she is berating the White House switchboard with the question: “Do you realize who I am?” before furnishing the answer: “I’m the movie goddess the President’s been screwing the past two years.” It’s the same line she’s been reciting around Hollywood, until now a tantalizing show-business morsel of gossip served on the same dish as egregious facelifts, clandestine abortions and lubricious all-male pool parties, but, should she maintain the disclosure, the material might become fissionable. Her fallacy has aggrandized the anemic anecdote of the showgirl used and discarded by the prince into a full-blooded melodrama in which she claims the President and the Blonde are promised to each other after the next election, casting him as the scoundrel who goes to the polls as a family man but intends to govern as a playboy. Ordinarily the President would have no concerns, but she is no ordinary woman, instead being one of a profession that respires the oxygen of publicity, so ultimately the denouement may balance on the frank economics of the plot, whether presidential mistresshood commands more bountiful box-office lucre than that wind-assisted flash of legs and panties, the iconic cinematic moment serving as proof she valued her career beyond her union with the prudish former baseball legend, this being the singular demonstration that her pursuit of the bigger, better deal might surpass the dissolution of an inconvenient celebrity marriage with the downfall of a president.
The President’s brother-in-law breaks his sulk to call. “She’s telling everybody out here she’s your mistress,” he warns. “Unless we do something, it’s going to find its way into a gossip column.”
“I appreciate your concern, Peter,” the President says evenly.
“I can talk to her, Jack, make her see sense.”
“It’s very kind of you to go to the trouble, Peter,” the President says in the same even tone.
“I’m only thinking of the election.”
The President knows he’s only thinking of Frank, of course, and of the quid pro quo incumbent upon this little favor. So he says, “Let me give it some thought, Peter.”
The President stands some way short of the midpoint in his first term in office, yet his staff’s concern over his popularity together with Marilyn’s belief that his disaffection relates to fears for the election rather than sexual ennui prompt him to appraise the limited time remaining to pursue his life’s work. The prospect of losing the election terrifies him. He fears vacuum more than death. He calls his brother-in-law right back.
Next
morning, Peter calls the President’s private line in the Residence. He spoke to Marilyn the night before as planned, and she seemed to understand what was required. “Say goodbye to Jack,” she said. “Say goodbye to yourself.” Early this morning her housekeeper found her in the apartment, naked on the bed, pill bottles broken open and the contents scattered everywhere about the place.
The suicide does not imbue the subject with guilt, nor should it. That particular weakness proves utterly destructive to the philanderer. He decides to regard this tragedy as a test of his womanizing prowess, a test not in the traditional sense that would come to the mind of the fornicating ingénu or the conventionally monogamous male, both of whom would imagine that challenges only take the form of difficult conquests or intricate concealments, whereas the subject appreciates from experience that periodically one is penetrated at the most interior shell of one’s compassion, and the womanizer who has thus far complacently deflected the suffering of a scorned lover or jealous wife comes to realize the ultimate demand of his chosen path. He must play the sociopath, unless he has the good or ill fortune, depending upon your viewpoint, of being one already.
The philanderer faces regular tests of nerve, taking forms as mundane as his willingness to lie to people who trust him or his willingness to proposition the wife of a colleague, and a man who succeeds in these small endeavors comes to regard himself as a guiltless engine of seduction. But he deludes himself. The true examination arrives when the man understands the limits of his capacity for inhumanity, or, more properly, understands that it must be limitless. Not a night goes by that the subject doesn’t reflect on the appalling suffering of the Cuban Brigade, with no compulsion to disregard this feeling; in fact, he persists in harassing the State Department and the Justice Department to secure the men’s release. But however reluctant he is to shed more blood, he must still, as Commander-in-Chief, be prepared to do so in defense of this country he has sworn to serve. And as a womanizer, guilty misgivings must never be allowed to stop him from satisfying his urges. The conquest of guilt is the foundation of the subject’s success as a fornicator.
On his wedding day, he experienced transcendence before the totems of continence. The vows acquired some sudden seductive power, and he floated in the serenity of guiltless sex, the advertisement of monogamy having temporarily brainwashed him, precipitating the moral struggle of a month or so later, upon their return from the honeymoon, when his inevitable itch for sex with other women became quite maddening. He chose to scratch, with an old girlfriend whose discretion was assured, after which he found it straightforward to overcome the guilt from breaking his marital vows.
When his hedonistic cruise around the Mediterranean coincided with his wife’s confinement abruptly producing a stillborn infant girl, he urged himself to seize upon the situation as an examination of his capacity to endure guilt. To survive its limit was the key to conquest. His companions were adamant the subject should return at once to the United States, whereas he exhibited a determination to continue the vacation, with its regular parties on deck hosting various nubile young women who were delightfully amenable to being escorted below. After all, he urged himself to think, what difference would it make?
His heartlessness appeared shocking, puzzling his shipmates with what they interpreted as an utter lack of sympathy for his wife’s condition, but his true intention was to demonstrate an impermeability to the emotional distractions that attend the career of any moderately successful philanderer. Once one admits those confounding spirits, they will gather thick and fast, in guises far less haunting than the death of a child. Soon he would become hostage to his wife’s jealousy, or her embarrassment, or her loneliness.
So he refused to fly home. He partied. The next morning, his closest friend among the party advised him he would almost certainly face a divorce if he did not go to his wife’s side, and at this prospect he relented, but returning in the knowledge that he had achieved what few men have, the certainty of the depth of his will.
“She’s dead,” Peter relays over the telephone, repeating the details of Marilyn’s naked body and the scattered pills. “Suicide,” he says, after which the President thanks him and advises him not to call directly about the matter again.
Tales of mutilating cruelty to blacks can sometimes bring the President close to tears, but, after the report from his brother-in-law, the President takes a meeting with the chairman of House Ways and Means to discuss a tax cut, and then, after his swim, he reads Caroline’s bedtime story, kisses John Jr. good night, before dining in the Residence with the First Lady, an ordinary evening except that perhaps he takes an extra minute over choosing the wine.
The next day, the President learns that a black student has been denied enrollment in the University of Mississippi despite being academically qualified, his exclusion deriving from an illegal local policy of segregation sanctioned by the state governor himself, who took it upon himself to visit the university, flanked by armed police officers, and personally turn the student away on his third successive day of seeking registration.
Once again, his aides remind the President of the divisive effects of involving himself in civil rights issues. He would be entitled to regard these events as a matter internal to the State of Mississippi. Instead he asks his secretary to call the governor’s office.
Down the line, the President says, “Governor, there is no legal reason to obstruct this student’s entitlement to enroll.”
“Well, Mr. President, there’s never been a Negro admitted to Ole Miss before, and I see no reason for that arrangement to change.”
“It must change, Governor,” the President says.
“The State of Mississippi will not surrender to the evil and illegal forces of tyranny.”
The President takes a calming breath before saying, “I understand this young man served nine years in the United States Air Force and now he wants to better himself through a college education.”
“He can have college, but not Ole Miss.”
“I’m afraid, Governor, it appears we’re in a hole, you and I, as I’m given to understand he’s rather stuck on the idea.”
“Mr. President, this is an intolerable intrusion into the affairs of the State of Mississippi.”
“Then at least we agree about one thing, Governor. This is intolerable.”
The President’s aides show him newspaper photographs of the mobs in Mississippi, armed police officers interspersed among citizens expressing their civic concern by wielding baseball bats and metal pipes and baying vile insults at the small peaceful crowd gathered in support of the importunate student. A sickening photograph of a police dog lunging at a black woman is wired around the world. For the first time in the President’s life, he is ashamed to be an American. One of his advisors remarks, “It’s just one student. Pretty soon he’ll give up and go home. Then we’re off the hook.”
The President’s expression sets hard. Part of him wants to get on a plane down to Mississippi and walk that young man into the enrollment booth himself. He wants to call him up and hear him express incredulity that someone from the President’s office is phoning him, and for the President to say, “Actually, Mr. Meredith, this isn’t someone from my office, this is the President,” and then explain how much he admires his guts, and how the bigots must be defeated, but the President knows there’ll be a pause at the end of his rhetoric in which the student will want to hear a promise, and the President can’t make one, because he can’t guarantee not losing, and that’s why he can’t make the call.
But the President orders his aides to quit worrying about popularity. He says, “We face a moral question and we must answer it morally.”
In the Oval Office, the television cameras point toward his desk as the President takes a final sip of water before easing into his chair. An assistant brings a mirror so he can confirm the magnificence of his hair, then he broadcasts to the nation:
“This nation was founded by men of many nations and background
s. It was founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened. It ought to be possible, therefore, for American students of any color to attend any public institution they select. It ought to be possible for American consumers of any color to receive equal service and it ought to be possible for American citizens of any color to register to vote. It ought to be possible for every American to enjoy the privileges of being American without regard to his race or his color. Every American ought to have the right to be treated as he would wish to be treated, as one would wish his children to be treated. But this is not the case. The Negro baby born in America today has about one-half as much chance of completing high school as a white baby born in the same place on the same day, one-third as much chance of completing college, one-third as much chance of becoming a professional, twice as much chance of becoming unemployed, a life expectancy which is seven years shorter, and the prospects of earning only half as much.”
The President tunes out the insidious whir of the camera. In the lens, he sees reflected a tiny motion of the curtain behind him, caused by a draft from a window open to keep the room cool despite the TV lights, and in the gaps between the film crew he glimpses aides shifting silently.
He glances at his notes, swallows and continues:
“Difficulties over segregation and discrimination exist in every city, and it is better to settle these matters in the courts than on the streets, but law alone cannot make men see right. We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution. The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated. If an American, because his skin is dark, cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public, if he cannot send his children to the best public school available, if he cannot vote for the public officials who will represent him, if, in short, he cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place? Who among us would then be content with the counsels of patience and delay?