She quickly set him straight. “That mole is part of my body. It stays.”
Dr. Steinberg swabbed alcohol on her left buttock, then pinched her flesh longer and harder than she thought necessary. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“I am going to pump you with FSH to cause your eggs to ripen and LH to trigger their release,” he wheezed into her ear. He stabbed in the needle. “And for good measure, Clomiphene citrate to block the effect of o-estrogen in your brain and trick your body into bumping up its natural levels of FSH and LH.” He slapped a bandage on Natalia’s throbbing sore spot. “Since you are a woman with overdeveloped female characteristics to begin with, this ought to do the trick.”
Natalia had tolerated Dr. Steinberg’s injections for ten days straight. She reviled the hormones’ effects on her: Her body swelled up until she felt like the goose that was fattened all year on her grandmother’s farm in Slovakia for Christmas dinner. Since her modeling days, she had weighed herself daily. If she gained even two pounds she went on a leek-juice fast to quickly shed them. Last week, she looked down at her bathroom scale in horror: She had put on seven pounds overnight. Not just from the estrogen bloating. Dr. Steinberg’s hormones gave her night cravings.
Natalia was in control during the day. She ate as if she were still a model: delicately skating the food around her plate with a fork but putting only one-fourth of it into her mouth. When she and Rex had lived in New York, she “did” lunch at chic restaurants three times a week with her ex-model friends. They all had the same “eating habit” and took their leftovers home in eco-friendly doggie bags. She guessed that the minute they were alone in their hedge-fund husbands’ (or lovers’) $20-million TriBeCa condos, they scarfed down the scraps. Natalia was proud that she had the willpower to hand over her doggie bag to her doorman.
At official White House dinners, she was under strict orders from Rex to speak politely to guests, but never to express a personal or political opinion. “Michelle Obama, Laura Bush, and other First Ladies may have had their ’causes,’” he said. “But you have only one: to make me look fucking great!” Natalia barely touched her food, but not thanks to her willpower. Being First Lady to Rex’s President had killed her appetite.
Until Dr. Steinberg began shooting hormones into her zadok. Now, in the middle of the night, she awoke ravenous. Her willpower morphed into an overwhelming compulsion to pig out. Last week, at 3:00 a.m., she had snuck down a back stairway in the White House to the staff-cafeteria kitchen in the basement. There she discovered a lanky young African-American baker mixing 50 pounds of batter in a bowl big enough to bathe a St. Bernard. “The folks that work at the White House can’t get enough of my buttermilk biscuits,” Stella Brown said. “They love down-home Southern cooking.” She explained that most of the ushers, butlers, and maids at the White House were African-American. “Generations of the same black families have been working here since before the Civil War, including mine.” Natalia knew that “before the Civil War” was code for “when they were slaves.” She adored Stella’s buttermilk biscuits, especially hot from the oven and smothered in butter. As the Escalade took a right on Eighty-Seventh Street, she wished she could stuff one into her mouth right now.
The SUV turned left on Park Avenue, continuing uptown. A few more blocks to go.
The reason Natalia had come to New York today was because of Dr. Steinberg’s hormone shots. The mega-doses of estrogen that made her hungry also had caused havoc with her emotions. Before getting the daily injections, she had been able to suppress the disgust she felt increasingly for her husband. Now, one look at Rex makes me want to slit my wrists, she thought, or his.
To shake the thought from her mind, she slid open the vanity mirror on the back of the front seat and checked her makeup. She could use a touch more mascara and some blusher, but she knew that the person she was visiting today wouldn’t care. She wiped a smudge of liner from the corner of her eye. Men had always found her long-lashed, emerald-green eyes, with their slight Asian slant, exotic. “The slant’s because some barbarian Tartar invader had his way with my beautiful Slovak great-great-grandmother,” her mother liked to say. Today, her eyes didn’t look exotic or beautiful. They’ve lost their sparkle, she thought.
She sank deeper into the soft leather. On TV, Ellen was handing out $100 bills to screaming members of the audience. Natalia realized that there was no point in making a wish to genie/Ellen. Even if her wish were granted, and even if she could wrench the 15-karat diamond engagement ring off her swollen finger, she couldn’t give it away. Thanks to the prenup, Rex owned all her jewelry.
Chapter 2
New York City
December 1, 2:30 p.m.
“Hovno,” Natalia muttered as the Escalade pulled up to the brass-trimmed portico of a Park Avenue high-rise.
In the front seat, the African-American bodyguard asked, “Ma’am?”
“Hovno is Slovak for ‘shit,’ Ken. You should know that by now.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied. “I meant, should we abort?”
She dipped into the Gucci leather tote bag at her feet and pulled out a black wig. Fitting it over her ash-blonde hair, she tucked a few stray hairs underneath and slipped on oversized Dior sunglasses. “No, there’s only one clown on my zadok today, and it’s just Phil.”
She glanced out the window at the slight young man in a well-worn jacket who was wearing crooked eyeglasses and a dingy blue L.A. Dodgers baseball cap. He was hunched behind the potted mini-Christmas tree at the building entrance, shivering in the cold. She was both annoyed and amazed that Phil was here. Her visit in New York today had not been included on her official FLOTUS schedule. How could he have known that she was coming?
Last year, Natalia seemed to spot Phil’s face in the crowd of paparazzi at the perimeter fence every time she left the White House. Something about the disheveled young man with the blank stare had made her feel vulnerable. She asked Sally-Ann, her thirty-something social secretary, to have him checked out by White House security. Natalia hoped that he was in the country illegally and that they could deport him, or on probation or parole from prison and that they could slap an injunction on him to keep him away from her.
Sally-Ann had come back with a clean report. Phil Smith was as ordinary as his name. He grew up in Pasadena, dropped out of college, and delivered pizzas until he made enough money to buy his first camera. He joined the cadre of paparazzi who hung around outside Los Angeles restaurants, hotels, and hair salons favored by Hollywood celebrities. Apparently, Phil was good enough to snap photos of stars like Jennifer Aniston, George Clooney, and Beyoncé that sold for thousands of dollars to the tabloids. The report said that after Funck was elected President, Phil moved from L.A. to Washington, D.C., and switched his focus from superstars to the First Lady. Natalia hoped that Phil’s reason for moving was because there were fewer paparazzi in the nation’s capital than in Hollywood and therefore less competition, not because he was obsessed with her.
As Ken climbed out of the Escalade, she grabbed the mink coat on the seat and slipped into it, then pulled an ivory Bottega Veneta cashmere scarf from her tote. She wrapped the scarf around her neck and pulled it over her chin, all the way up to her nose. She relished its downy warmth—she had read that it was made with the soft undercoat of Mongolian goats—and the sense of security it gave her. She knew it would be fleeting.
Ken tapped on the window of the Escalade, indicating that he was ready to open her door at her signal. Ken had been her favorite Secret Service agent since Rex became President-elect. The day when the President referred to African nations as “shithole countries,” she had felt compelled to apologize to Ken for what her husband said. But within minutes Rex tweeted that he never uttered those words, that it was “fake news.” And as her husband and the First Daughter always reminded Natalia, FLOTUS was forbidden to comment on whatever POTUS deemed “fake news.”
She grabbed a pair of kidskin gloves from her tote and pulled them on. Then,
ever the high-fashion model checking for flaws before stepping onto the runway, she checked that the clasp on her Chanel clutch was secure, and glanced down at her black Louboutin stiletto boots. A faint blemish marred the left toe. She licked her finger and rubbed the spot to the count of ten, as she had learned in Paris, until it disappeared.
Outside the smoked window, she saw that Phil had emerged from behind the mini-Christmas tree. Hunched against the cold in his ragged jacket, the paparazzo was wearing threadbare sneakers that were drenched from the slush. For a moment, she felt sorry for him. But should she? Phil was a loser who devoted his life to trying to take a photo of her for the National Enquirer, a photo that could make her life more of a living hell than it already was.
She tapped on the window. Ken opened the back door of the SUV. Phil snapped a barrage of photos as the bodyguard blocked her cashmere-scarf-wrapped face with his burly body and swept her into the building. Sorry, Phil, she thought, no million-dollar shot for you today.
Chapter 3
New York City
December 1, 2:45 p.m.
“You look fat!” said Ingrid in her gravelly smoker’s voice. “Like a Slovak pig.”
“Thanks, Mamina!” Natalia tossed her mink coat and purse onto the bed, where her mother was propped up against a heap of pillows watching The Ellen DeGeneres Show on a TV hanging from the ceiling. Natalia glanced at the room’s peach walls, gossamer peach curtains, and softly lit crystal chandelier. They created a warm, even luxurious, ambience in what was essentially a hospital room at this recovery center for women who had plastic surgery more often than their teeth cleaned. She remembered the day in Paris when she had modeled for a fashion shoot in a similarly peach-hued suite at the Paris Ritz Hotel. The photographer explained that hotel founder Caesar Ritz once said that even the ugliest woman looks better against the color peach. That certainly didn’t hold true today for her mother. “Mamina, you look like hovno,” she said.
As if incensed by the insult, the toy Pomeranian on her mother’s lap yipped.
“Vladimir, shush!” Ingrid shoved the tiny dog under the peach-colored covers, aimed the remote at the TV screen, and zapped it off. She tossed the remote onto the nightstand, beside her iPhone. “Better to look like shit than fat. What will Rex say?”
“Do I care?” Natalia yanked off her scarf, sunglasses, and black wig, and tossed them onto the heap of fur. She sat down on the bed and examined the bruises around her mother’s eyes, the stitches tracing a pink zigzag along her hairline and throat. “Seriously? You needed a third facelift?”
“My daughter is FLOTUS, First Lady of the United States,” said Ingrid, exaggerating her thick Slovak accent. “I deserve it.”
Natalia touched a surgical thread poking out of the swollen flesh under her mother’s right ear. “You look like a scarecrow on Babika’s farm.”
Ingrid slapped Natalia’s hand away. “Why aren’t you at the White House? I watch CNN. There is a state dinner tonight with the Prime Minister of Cambodia.” She primped her thinning reddish hair, as if offended that she hadn’t been invited.
“Not Cambodia, Malaysia.” Natalia stood up, walked over to the window, and cautiously pulled aside an inch of the gossamer peach curtains. As she had feared, Phil was stationed on the sidewalk below, tapping on his iPhone. Was he tweeting? The tweet flashed before her eyes: “FLOTUS gets plastic surgery!” She scrambled for a plan: “Mamina, you’ve got to see this,” she said. “A lady is walking a dog on the street that looks like Vladimir. Oh my God, the dog could be Vladimir’s twin!”
At the sound of its name, Ingrid’s toy Pomeranian struggled out from under the covers. Yipping plaintively, it pawed at Ingrid’s chest, its tiny nails snagging her peach silk nightgown. She melted. “You want to see your twin?” She cradled the dog in her arms and carefully swung her legs over the side of the bed. Natalia helped her over to the window. Standing behind her, she yanked open the curtains.
Ingrid held her Pomeranian up to the window. “Do you see your twin?” The dog whimpered, trembling, its nails pattering on the window like raindrops. She scanned the sidewalk. “I don’t see a dog, just a homeless man with a camera.”
“Look closer.” Natalia gently pushed her mother nearer to the window. From below, she heard the barrage of clicks from Phil’s camera. Vladimir jumped out of Ingrid’s arms, yipping.
“Suka!” Ingrid hissed at Natalia.
“I’m not a bitch! People in America cannot think FLOTUS is getting work done!”
“So now they will know I did.” Unsteady on her feet, Ingrid started back toward her bed.
“Let me help you.”
Ingrid reluctantly took her daughter’s arm. “Suka,” she grumbled.
Natalia jiggled her arm, the musical clink drawing attention to the three gold Cartier LOVE bracelets on her wrist, each studded with tiny screws and precious jewels. Natalia’s mother studied the bracelets and tapped one glittering with diamonds and sapphires. “How much?”
She knew where this was leading. “$20,000?”
Ingrid tapped another Cartier LOVE bracelet, this one encrusted with mini rubies. “And?”
It was an exaggeration, but why not? “$27,000,” Natalia said.
Her mother tapped the bracelet twice.
“It’s yours!” Natalia grabbed her purse and pulled out a black-velvet drawstring jewelry bag. Inside it was a delicate rose-gold screwdriver. She twisted the tiny screwdriver into a screw on the selected Cartier bracelet and turned it gently, until the bracelet unlatched. She slipped the bracelet off her own arm and onto her mother’s, and clamped it shut. She placed the screwdriver back into the velvet bag and handed it to her. “In case you ever want to take it off.”
“Ďakujem, thank you.” Ingrid smiled, satisfied, just as she did the last time Natalia bestowed one of her Cartier LOVE Bracelets on her, the perfect remedy for a mother-daughter tiff. Ingrid placed the jewelry bag next to her iPhone on the nightstand and climbed back into bed.
Rex had given Natalia dozens of Cartier LOVE bracelets, so many that she didn’t worry he would notice some were missing. She suspected that he gave them to her whenever he felt a twinge of what passed for guilt after cheating on her. How ironic that Rex’s usual “guilt gift” smacks of “enslavement,” she thought. The Cartier LOVE bracelet is the only bracelet in the world that requires a screwdriver to remove it.
Ingrid’s toy Pomeranian yipped at her feet. She gently picked it up and settled it onto her mother’s lap. Ingrid kissed the dog on its tiny wet nose and turned to her daughter. “Why are you here?”
“News update,” she said, testing the waters.
“Real or fake news?”
“Both.”
Ingrid slid over on the bed and she sat down beside her. She took a deep breath and then let it out slowly, as if she were in yoga class.
Her mother squirmed, impatient. “So?”
“Rex wants me to have a baby.”
Ingrid’s jaw dropped. “But ‘no children’ is part of your prenup!”
“Correct.”
“He didn’t want more deti because he hates the children he has.”
“Except the First Daughter.”
“And his deti get worse each time he has one, like prime ministers in Slovakia! Why did Rex change his mind so now he wants more children?”
Natalia blurted it out: “The Presidential election is less than a year away, Mamina. Rex will be seventy-five years old. He says if he gets me pregnant and I have a baby bump at the Republican Convention, the American people will think he’s a macho stud. They will elect him to a second term.”
Ingrid applauded joyfully. “Brilliant!” She stopped clapping. A frown pinched her bruised forehead. “Natalia, you’re almost fifty—”
“If I’m almost fifty, you’re almost seventy.”
“I’m still sixty-eight for another month! But forty-nine, forty-eight, the chances of your getting pregnant are hovno.” Moving only her eyes so as not to disturb her stitche
s, she looked Natalia up and down. “Aha!”
“What?”
“I know why you’re fat. You’re getting hormone shots to stimulate eggs to make a baby!”
She nodded. Ingrid gripped her hand, caressing the 15-karat diamond with her thumb as she spoke. “Natalia, my darling daughter, my darling FLOTUS daughter, this is big news! Wonderful news! You always wanted a baby. It broke your heart when Rex made ‘no dieťa’ a condition of your marriage.”
Natalia paused, knowing that her mother would not be happy with her decision. “I do not want to have Rex’s baby.”
“What? Why? You did fourteen years ago!”
“I don’t now!”
“But you will get four more years in the White House!”
“I hate the White House!
“You will get four more years of hot-stone massages and collagen facials at Beau Rivage in Palm Beach, near me and Papa…” Her eyes suddenly brimmed with tears. She touched her iPhone on the nightstand. “I wish I could call Papa right now with the good news.”
Natalia took Ingrid’s hand, knowing that she missed her husband, who had died of a heart attack a year ago—even though he was in bed with his Slovak mistress at the time. Ingrid had made it through forty-nine years of marriage to Natalia’s handsome, but womanizing, father by adhering to an old Slovak saying that she tried to instill in her: “What eyes don’t see, heart doesn’t hurt.”
“Mamina, I know it’s hard for you without Papa.”
“A baby would give me something to do! I could move into the White House and help with the baby!”
How typical of my mother to make this about herself, she thought. If she did have a baby, the last thing she wanted was her mother in her face. But that was beside the point right now. “I do not want a baby with Rex,” she said. “I hate Rex!”
“No, darling, you love Rex. It’s only the hormones talking.”
The First Lady Escapes Page 2