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 failure. 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 theBaltimore Sun, then theWashington Post, and finally theNew York Times. She became a regular on the syndicated news journalThe 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. Americawasat 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.
