Oath of Office

by Michael Palmer

  “He teaches entomology at Temple University in Philly.”

  Darlene turned and beckoned Victor over. An exchange Lou could not hear followed, with Victor doing a lot of head nodding and Darlene a lot of talking. Victor ended the conversation with another quick nod, then retreated back to where he was. Darlene returned to Lou’s side.

  “So,” Lou said, “did you tell him I was delusional and needed to be closely watched?”

  Darlene smiled. “No, I don’t think you’re delusional at all. What I told Victor was to make arrangements.”

  “Arrangements for what?”

  “I’ve decided that we’re going to speak with your Dr. Humphries together.”

  CHAPTER 39

  Roberta Jennings was through being fat.

  For the third time this week, she had overeaten at Millie’s and vomited up much of her meal. It was her ninth or tenth unintentional purge for the month. Even that would not have been so bad if she had just dropped a pound. One lousy pound. Instead, though, she had gained three.

  It’s time for a change.

  Roberta had survived a lifetime of obesity by internalizing her struggles. She endured endless taunts during her school years and later had learned to ignore the snickering at the office and whispers at restaurants. Her self-esteem was all but gone by the time she finished middle school. She chose the persona of a giggly, cheery friend to all. But in truth, the horrible ache inside her never abated. If not for meeting and marrying Terry, there was no telling what she might have done.

  Now, with him gone, even the simple joys of life were lost to her. Magazines she’d once loved depressed her. She detested those emaciated waifs called models, so thin, they’d blow off the page in a strong wind. Still, though it sickened her even to inhale the aroma of fast food, or to gorge herself at Millie’s, she could not stop.

  This is it.

  If Terry were alive, perhaps he’d have been an inspiration to cut back. Even though it never seemed to be a big deal to him, he always told her to mind her weight, which she had failed to do to the tune of thirty new pounds since his passing. Several reassuring friends convinced her that she suffered from an addiction, like an alcohol or drug problem. She appreciated their opinions because addiction meant disease, and disease meant her weight problem was not entirely her fault. But her plunges into Weight Watchers and Overeaters Anonymous were utter failures, as was the drawer of half-empty pill bottles from various TV infomercials.

  And blaming her condition on bad genetics was like blaming her parents, whom she loved, and who weren’t even alive to defend themselves. Making matters even worse, John Meacham, that sorry excuse for a doctor, had blown his top over her failure to lose weight. People who once were supportive and sympathetic to her now eyed her with contempt. She had actually gotten several notes—anonymous, of course, and simply left in her mailbox—blaming her for his death.

  If you could have kept to your diet, those people would still have their lives, one had actually written.

  She simply could not stand being overweight another day.

  Liposuction was clearly the answer. Roberta had arrived at this decision after extensive research and before the insurance company arrived at theirs. By the time her request was denied by them, she wanted liposuction more than she wanted air. But fighting Terry’s illness had taken all their savings, and the price tag of twelve to twenty thousand dollars was more than she could handle. She could sell all her figurines and still cover only a fraction of the cost. Then what? Sell all her furniture, too? Take out a third mortgage on the house?

  Fortunately, there was another way.

  She could quite literally cut out the fat without incurring any of the expense. She had found the answer on the Internet during her hours of research. Terry would have been so proud of her resourcefulness. He would never have approved of such an expenditure.

  Never.

  But free was a different story.

  Roberta returned to the kitchen and the checklist she had meticulously put together. She then covered a portion of the linoleum floor with a faded bedsheet. She was not feeling the least bit nervous. The commitment to alter her life in dramatic fashion had replaced any fear and trepidation with euphoric waves of adrenaline.

  After meticulously centering the sheet, she crossed over to the granite-topped island—the home improvement she and Terry had scrimped and saved for over five years ago. There, carefully laid out on a freshly laundered white towel, were long and short carving blades from her butcher block holder, and a gleaming X-Acto knife she had bought expressly for this procedure. Beside them were three of Terry’s Percocets and a glass with three fingers of brandy. There was also a bottle of rubbing alcohol, a cigarette lighter, several ice packs, and a pile of gauze pads.

  Smiling excitedly, she set the pills on her tongue and washed them down with the brandy.

  This is it.

  The knife she selected for starters had a thick and meaty blade. It was deeply curved. Her excited expression reflected off its shiny surface. She grabbed the sterilization kit, a lighter, and some rubbing alcohol.

  “I’m going to be thin!” she sang, testing the sharpness of the huge knife against the pad of her thumb. The tremor usually present in her hands actually seemed less than usual. Still, she applied only the slightest pressure and opened a thin sliver that promptly began oozing blood.

  “I’m gonna be the biggest loser. The biggest loser is what I’m gonna be.…”

  Roberta sucked the blood from her thumb.

  Li-po-suc-tion.

  She sang the word in her mind as she admired herself again in the knife’s gleaming blade.

  The brandy and Percocets were kicking in faster than she had anticipated, and she realized she was having trouble controlling her tongue. Best to hurry.

  She placed a kitchen chair on the bedsheet, grabbed a blue Rubbermaid bucket, and set it at the foot of the chair. “Be prepared for something of a mess,” one set of Internet instructions had warned. A few towels and some gauze, and she was all set. On the towel beside the X-Acto knife were several threaded needles.

  Ready.

  Oh, I wish Terry could see me, Roberta lamented as she set a bath towel across her lap, unbuttoned her blouse, and pressed an ice pack against her belly to numb up the skin and constrict the blood vessels.

  “Getting ready,” Roberta announced, though her speech now was quite thick and slurred.

  She sat down on the chair and picked up the knife.

  “I can do this,” she said, pressing the knife against her massive belly. “I can make it all go away.”

  The huge blade easily sliced through skin. It hurt—more than she expected it to, and she cried out at the pain. But then, just as quickly, it went away. Roberta pressed on.

  Her eyes rolled back. She cried out again as she forced the blade through half a foot of saffron-colored fat. Blood began to spray out onto the towel, the floor, and into the blue bucket.

  I’m getting thinner already, she thought.

  She dug the knife in deeper, and began slicing away huge chunks of fatty tissue and dropping them to the floor and into the bucket. Her hands and arms were slimy with a shimmering mix of blood and grease. The terrible hurt accompanying each jab gave way to a dreamy light-headedness.

  Barely looking down at what she was doing, Roberta widened the incision and continued carving away fistfuls of fat. Her dizziness intensified. The floor around her chair was awash in the slick mix of blood and adipose tissue.

  Terry Jennings, wait until you see me. I’m going to be so beautiful … so thin and so beautiful.

  Her vision began to blur. Still, she could make out the massive incision, and the intestines that had now slid out onto the blood-soaked towel. She felt confused—lost and uncertain what she had done or why. The large knife clattered to the floor. That was the problem, she realized. She had forgotten to sterilize the knife.

  Oh, Terry, what have I done? Roberta thought as the darkness enveloped her.
What have I done to myself?

  Moaning, she lost her strength and tipped over with her chair.

  Then, abruptly, her moaning stopped.

  CHAPTER 40

  Darlene instructed Victor to pull into a largely deserted area of Fairmount Park’s verdant Belmont Plateau and asked that he keep as far away from the other parked cars as possible. Another Secret Service transport vehicle, part of her usual escort group, parked on the opposite side of the lot to avoid attracting unwanted attention.

  Victor shut off the engine and opened the moonroof. “I’ll wait outside,” he said. “Keep an eye on things, check for photographers.”

  “Thank you, my friend,” Darlene replied. “We won’t be long.”

  It was the second time Victor had driven her and Lou Welcome to a park after peak hours. She knew it was the agent’s job to protect her with his life, but she also knew that ultimately his responsibility—everyone’s responsibility, for that matter, was to her husband. If he reported to the president on her growing friendship with Lou, and on their trip together outside of Washington, the tension that had been developing between her and Martin might well explode.

  But she felt a connection with Lou, and wanted to get to know him better, and that was that. It said a lot for the status of her marriage that she had given precious little thought to asking Martin’s permission for the trip. After all, he had made the decision to start his reelection campaign without discussing it with her.

  With Victor gone, she and Lou spent a quiet couple of minutes gazing out the town car’s bulletproof front windshield at the twinkling skyline of downtown Philadelphia, in the distance. She sighed deeply.

  “Are you all right?” Lou asked.

  Darlene nodded emphatically, but sensed she wasn’t convincing. Good doctors, and Lou certainly seemed to be one of those, often possessed the ability to get more out of a facial expression than they could out of lab tests. Martin, though a lawyer, had a knack for reading faces as well. Lately, though, his concerns seemed more global than with any individual, including her and Lisa. Darlene knew she was enjoying Lou too much to try to be an enigma.

  “I used to come here with Martin whenever we had a campaign stop in Philadelphia,” she said. “I fell in the love with the view. I think the Philadelphia skyline is one of the most beautiful anywhere.”

  “I’m glad you brought me to see it,” Lou said. “You’re right. It’s spectacular.”

  “I probably shouldn’t have done this,” she said.

  “Nonsense. We’ve got an hour to kill before our meeting with Humphries.”

  That’s not what I meant, and you know it, she thought.

  “It’s silly, really,” she said, “but I’ve never come to Philadelphia without stopping here. Martin and I would look out at the skyline and each make a wish.”

  “So it’s a tradition.”

  “It started off as that, but it’s morphed into more of a superstition—like a chain letter that warns you of a curse unless you continue it. If you don’t wish upon the Philadelphia skyline, something bad is going to happen. Pass it on.”

  Lou laughed. What surprised her was not the warmth of his laugh so much as how much she enjoyed hearing it. She could barely believe it, but Dr. Darlene Mallory, caretaker of thousands of children over the years, First Lady of the United States, woman of the year in countless magazines around the globe, was feeling giddy—schoolgirl giddy.

  “Well,” he said, “I see this as a hell of a lot healthier superstition than coming up here to eat a Philly cheesesteak sandwich.”

  “Mmmmm, now me want cheesesteak sandwich,” she said in the imitation of Grover from Sesame Street that her patients loved to hear her use.

  She added Lou’s grin to the things she liked about him, and tried to remember the last time she and Martin had sat alone together laughing at anything.

  “So what did you wish for?” Lou asked.

  “I can’t tell you that,” she said with indignation. “Have you not ever studied anything about the art of wishing?”

  “The farthest I’ve gone was when I was in my second month of rehab, writing four pages of Wishing for Dummies. I must have learned something from it, because after the third month, I got out.”

  “From what I have learned, a lot of people have benefited because you did.”

  She wondered what Lou would say if he knew she had wished that Martin could have his warmth and connection to people. There was something about him, a serenity and sense of place, that put her instantly at ease. If she were injured or ill in an ER, she decided, the best thing that could happen would be lying on a gurney and having him show up at her bedside. Maybe it was just the way a good doc made people feel. Whatever the explanation, spending time with Lou Welcome was reminding her of things that she and Martin had lost on their nonstop path to the White House.

  “I keep promising Emily that I’ll take her to see the Liberty Bell one of these days,” Lou said.

  Darlene smiled, grateful to be distracted from her thoughts. “Your daughter’s never been?”

  “No,” he admitted, folding his lower lip down. “She’s also got her heart set on running up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and doing the Rocky dance.”

  “Thirteen is such a great age,” Darlene said wistfully.

  She had been warned by friends early on that after Lisa hit first grade, the years would fly by instead of crawl. Now her baby was a busy college sophomore, moving ahead with her own life, and all Darlene had of those early years were photographs and memories.

  “The divorce has made me miss time with Em,” Lou said. “That’s the hardest thing in my life.”

  “You said the divorce wasn’t your idea. I would imagine there’s some guilt roiling around that.”

  “Her mother’s a really good egg, who just ran out of gas after a couple of self-destructive years on my part. She’s married to a decent-enough guy now, and is as happy for my recovery as I am. Whatever guilt I still feel toward Em I make up for by allowing her to drink Diet Coke when we’re together.”

  “The beverage industry loves my husband, but they sure don’t like what I have to say about their products.”

  “Is it hard for you?” Lou asked, “the spotlight?… The constant scrutiny?”

  Darlene tried to shrug off the question. “It’s gets tiring,” she confessed.

  “I’ll bet.”

  “We can’t be normal. For starters, most couples can have a slight argument without making the front page of the tabloids. We can’t risk a cross word or look outside of our bedroom. When we began this journey, Martin made me a promise. He said the responsibilities of the country wouldn’t eclipse his responsibilities as a father and husband. I never questioned his resolve. But now, I’ve realized my own naivety.”

  “In what way?”

  Darlene found herself liking the way Lou was looking at her—steady but relaxed eye contact, with no hidden agenda or preoccupying thoughts. She tried reminding herself that he had the advantage of not having to compartmentalize his life the way Martin did. But in the end, she felt unwilling to fight her attraction to the man.

  “Before Martin took the oath of office,” she said, “I read everything I could about being a First Lady. There’s no provision in the Constitution for the president’s wife. No formal job description, either.”

  “You were a doctor. It must have been hard for you to go from having a very clear set of guidelines to none at all. Maybe you could start doing some version of medical practice.”

  “Believe it or not, I never even considered that.”

  “Well, like you said, there’s no job description for what you do.”

  A pleasant silence followed, which became prolonged enough to begin to feel edgy.

  “Well, it’s time,” she said, clearing her throat and checking her Movado—a wedding present from Martin. “How about we go visit Dr. Humphries and see what he has to offer to untangle this conundrum.”

  “Great idea.�
� Lou paused a beat. “Can you make another wish on the Philadelphia skyline?” he asked, eyes fixed ahead.

  “Sure,” Darlene said. “Nothing in the rules of wishing says I can’t.”

  “Then how about just wishing that everything becomes clear … on every level.”

  CHAPTER 41

  Lou had imagined Dr. Oliver Humphries would be a small-framed, skittish fellow with oversized glasses—something akin to some of the arthropod phylum he studied. To his great surprise, Humphries looked nothing like a bug, but rather, possessed an uncanny resemblance to the rock star Sting. The entomologist’s two-toned hairdo was cut short on top, with dyed-blond spikes held straight by a vigorous application of gel. One of Humphries’s ears was pierced, a silver dragonfly dangling from a small chain, and a silver stud could be seen depressed into the side of his left nostril. Even more distinctive were his muscular arms, which featured an array of brilliantly drawn tattoos incorporating insects of all types—flying, crawling, stinging, and praying.

  They were in Humphries’s modest office on the second floor of the Bio-Life Building. Photographs of the scientist on expedition to every conceivable climate adorned the walls, along with half a dozen framed degrees and testimonials, including a doctorate from UC Davis.

  “Well,” Humphries said, “I guess your friends from the Secret Service found me no threat.”

  “Actually, they were quite interested in you and wanted to stay and hear what you had to say,” Darlene replied.

  Humphries pushed aside a stack of papers and several magnifying lenses, and slid a spiral-bound notebook in front of him. Lou’s immediate sense of the man was completely positive.

  “So, then, let’s talk termites,” Humphries said as he studied what Lou assumed to be notes taken from their phone conversation.

  “Were you able to find any documented examples of flesh-eating termites since we spoke last?” Lou began.

  Humphries drummed his fingers on the desk and pursed his lips. Despite the gold band on the professor’s wedding finger, Lou imagined his offbeat good looks acting like pheromones on the coeds in his classes.