The President's Palm Reader: A Washington Comedy

by Robert MacLean

  Of course Alberta had more or less willed me into being, I knew that. Making love to her for the first time had been like discovering America. Now, America was discovering me!

  I gazed at her gratefully. She looked back with the telepathy of the mutually devoted and flashed her blinkers.

  She had also been able to come in with advice of the you’re-not-going-to-wear-that-are-you sort. Now that I’d been hurled whirling onto the dance floor of upward mobility I should expand my basic pinstripe-and-teeshirt ensemble, she argued. We went shopping.

  My own preference was for something sassy but understated. Off-hand. Say a double-breasted khaki jacket with short pants and floppy socks. Get me a fat tie. My hand flat to my hip with the fingers in the pocket. I mean, we were going on a yacht!

  But she ruled in favor of an eggshell suit and quiet tie, and I oh-all-righted in the spirit of professionalism. All in good time.

  There had also been a few pointers on party behavior but here I was on safer ground. Smiling and nodding at the rich were foremost among my social skills. Besides, good manners are mostly just a matter of being able to interrupt a gesture at any point without hurting yourself, I find.

  So it was with a sense of entire ease that we hove to under The Arc—that’s what it said up on the nameplate—and bobbed around the bow. I figured they came out here when they wanted to smoke a joint or something. The driver worked a walkie-talkie and traded remarks with a man on the landing platform as we idled over.

  The boat was house-high and half a block long. Alberta gave me a glance. If the First Lady’s hairdresser had achieved this, what lay in store for the First Lady’s palmist? it said.

  We rode waves against the platform and the agent handed us out and led us up the fire escape. At the top was a blond guy in yachting whites holding a cat as if to burp it.

  “Welcome, welcome, welcome,” he said, offering his hand to be kissed. “I caught you on Haines, you were spectacular! Oh he looks good!” he congratulated Alberta. “And this gorgeous creature must be Mrs. Haines! You bitch.”

  “How do you do, Mr. Larain.”

  “Oh call me Keesh, I’ve learned to live with it. And this is Drusilla.” He retracted his chin and stroked the animal. “See’s mama’s pwessus tweetheart, isn’t see! And this is Capricorn, and that’s Laser, and that’s Fudgeface, and that’s—who’s that?”

  It was a cat. They were all cats. There were cats everywhere. Lounging on the floor, draped on the brass boat things, blinking down at us from the upper deck. Cats, man! Dude had a lot of cats!

  “Oh that’s right, that’s Bosolay, he’s one of the wetbacks. That’s why we’re out here. I was down in the Carribean cruising, if you follow me, and there were all these gorgeous hungry little puddies and nobody was feeding them! So I thought I’d just sneak them back home with me and who’d know. No, darling. They’ve got these radar things hanging from bal-loons around here! Nothing gets past! We didn’t even make it into the Bay and we were surrounded, and they came aboard with dogs! I mean, dogs! Drusilla almost scratched their eyes out, didn’t soo, Boosoops! So then I had to tell them if these were all American cats or if any of them came from funny countries and I don’t know I just broke down. You’d think with yank like mine I’d be able to get a few cats in for God’s sake! They were going to cage them all up in quarantine but at least I got them to let me keep them here on the boat for three months. And that’s only because these Secret Service hunks are the same people as the Coast Guard, they’re both out of Homeland Security. So they keep an eye on things and I keep the quarantine flag flying. I just live out here to be with everybody, but the waves are so rough! We have special anchors. Tell me if you want a Dramamine. So come on and meet the girls.”

  We went along the side towards the back, if those are the exact terms, stepping carefully among yawning cats. Sacred animals in this country, of course, I hadn’t been away that long.

  I threw my hair back in the wind and saw something jutting out above us that could only be a chopper blade.

  Alberta caught it too. “The First Lady flies out to the boat?” she asked.

  “She doesn’t like the launch,” confided Keesh. “The motor makes her jowls jiggle.”

  Alberta cocked an eyebrow at me. This boat is big enough for a helicopter, it said.

  Stop nagging, I smiled.

  “Here we are!”

  We came up onto the cocktail deck. Two ladies sat watching us. Behind them stood a professionally anonymous bodyguard in shades, his hands behind his back.

  “Mrs. President, here’s Mr. Wallace, the palmistry expert, and this is his, uh, friend. Mrs. Haines.” As court fool he got to stick it to people.

  Alberta was unfazed. “Manager,” she corrected.

  This is Mrs. President,” went on Keesh, “and Mrs. Rawlins. And now we’re all here!”

  I was prepared for the Mrs. President routine. Her husband had let it be known that he conferred with her over thorny issues of state, some newsperson had hung the title on her as a joke and it had stuck. It had become an agreeable habit even among her intimates to call her Mrs. President.

  “How do you do,” she said. “Please sit down.”

  She certainly looked the part. Tall, even sitting, and gray. Opera-singer fat but with angles in her face that conveyed command. Big Beauty print dress, corrective sandals, little gleam of threat in her eye. Sort of your second-favorite grandmother.

  We sat down.

  “You were very self-possessed during your interview, Mr. Wallace. I congratulate you. Mr. Haines is not an easy person to deal with.”

  She gave Alberta an acid glance.

  Alberta crossed her legs. “Belton can be tahsome,” she said. “He had such promise when I met him, I don’t know what went wrong. His mind is a Cuisinart, everything comes out green puree. Of course he beat me. I think we’ve gone as far as we can together.”

  “I hate it when they don’t respect you,” said Keesh. “Drusilla! Are you scratching me? If you’re going to scratch me you can get down right now!”

  Mrs. President was visibly gratified. She neutralized her gaze without precisely smiling. Stood back from her cannons. “How did you come to marry Mr. Haines?”

  “I don’t know, I keep backing into things. It was like that at Smith. I never see where I’m going until I’m there.”

  “Were you at Smith? Did you know Enid Thurgarten’s daughter Gwynnfryd? “

  “Yes! We used to trade bracelets! She married someone with pimples.”

  “They’re at the Embassy in Madrid now.”

  “Oh, she was lucky!”

  “We wanted to help. His family lost everything when the market hiccupped.”

  “Oh how wonderful! You saved her life!”

  The exchange of signals proceeded while a steward wheeled in a tray and Mrs. President poured tea. Alberta played altar boy, handling the sacred vessels so automatically that Mrs. President scarcely had to glance down from the conversation. I accepted my little cup and saucer and spoon with the comfortable sensation that everything was jake.

  Indeed, as I watched Alberta work I was aware as never before of the gulf that divided us. She had a languorous, stretching-in-bed voice, a little petulant but so pleased with itself I felt sure we were being short-listed for the entourage. She was at home here!

  Of course I had my own credentials and everything. I was of the Wallaces, was I not?—a but-for-myself extinct and latterly impoverished New England line. In fact a formerly impoverished New England line, but going back to the last century!

  I sat by, pretending I didn’t want a vodka-tonic. You’re not supposed to ask. The bouncer stared off over our heads. Keesh, irrepressible arriviste-cum-social animator, hovered on the edge of the inner circle waiting for a thread to pick up. My gaze went to the Vice-President’s wife, who openly returned it.

  Long, boney, middle forties. Bottle blonde, inch-thick tan and brazenly sun-damaged, take it or leave it. Club Med shark-tooth necklace,
a cleavage drawn with rulers and an air about her of being on top of the world and fed up with it. Looked me up and down.

  “And you met Mr. Wallace in Goa?” Mrs. President was saying.

  “He was wasting himself there.”

  “No doubt devoted to his own leisure.”

  Alberta lifted her chin for me to step up to the plate.

  “Nothing that strenuous,” I smiled. “I wouldn’t want to make it a burden.”

  “What’s Goa like?” wondered the V.P.’s wife.

  “Hot,” I said. “Slow. Sort of place they say good morning until three in the afternoon.”

  “It’s a sunny place full of shady people,” said Alberta. “It’s good to be back in America, isn’t it Wordy.”

  “Sure is,” I said.

  “Europe’s neat,” said Mrs. Rawlins. “It’s like Disneyland except for no rides. Except Venice, but they’re pretty slow. But it’s neat.”

  “Travelling’s so great,” came in Keesh. “I got this vahz down there, it’s just completely je-ne-sais-quoi. Wait. I’ll show you.”

  “And Mr. Wallace read your palm there?” said Mrs. President, covering Keesh’s exit.

  “I had to do something! Really, I felt so dropped on! Wordy has a gift.”

  “The East sucks out loud. They got this bathroom tile on everything. Blue bathroom tile. It looks like this big, I don’t know, bathroom.”

  “You must tell me everything, Mrs. Rawlins. All I know is that little part of India.”

  “Recky,” she said, still looking at me. “Just call me Recky.”

  Mrs. President retracted herself a centimeter or so. First nameism might be okay before the yokels but not here. The Vice-President, her look said, had been essential for the farm vote.

  Recky sank into a slouch and crossed her knees at me, desire visible in her feet.

  I was carefully neutral.

  “Look!” said Keesh. He stepped into our midst holding a big onion-shaped pot decorated with black and yellow diamonds in a sort of swirling pattern that made me reconsider the Dramamine. “Doesn’t it move?”

  Mrs. President looked at her fingernails. I don’t know how she could trust her hair to somebody with taste like that. The power elite get into this Royal Family thing where they just don’t care. Maybe she thought it was avant garde.

  “It’s such a vivid piece,” he said, handing it to me.

  Open-mouthed, calculating, Recky watched him.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Alberta. “Where did you find it?”

  “I don’t know, one of those little countries where they shoot everybody. They had no idea what it was worth!”

  I examined it full-length, rotated it, looked inside. “It’s a nice vahz,” I said. I checked the bottom. “It’s really a nice vahz.”

  Recky’s smile hovered unrealized.

  I handed it back.

  “I still don’t know where to put it,” he said.

  Her eyes cut to him again.

  Mine to Alberta. So much for encounter-group, they said. Time to slope into a little one-on-one. Women are like elephants; you love them but you don’t need too many around at once.

  “It’s so private here,” she said.

  “It is convenient,” said Mrs. President. “Of course the press would love to catch us with an occultist. Mr. Haines in particular.”

  “Oh, please don’t worry!” Alberta touched her hand. “We couldn’t betray you, not for anything. Could we, Wordy!”

  “I never discuss a case,” I said.

  “We count on your discretion,” said Mrs. President, fixing me with a look. I was being sworn in. God help me that look said, if I should misuse my office.

  “Everything is perfectly confidential,” Alberta assured her. “Wordy doesn’t even tell me.”

  “If it’s anything bad,” said Keesh, “don’t tell me either. I’m so nervous!”

  And yes, there he put his finger on something. Your penitent is anxious. Insecure. His whole life is about to pass before his eyes and he knows you can tell him anything—anything—and he’ll probably have to believe it.

  Which is handy because Step One in any consultation is: Establish Authority. Project a Clear Aura of Authority. Without it you will be taken for a rogue and a cutpurse. Warn him about the break in his lifeline and he’s apt to smile and cancel the contract. Tip you for your time and tell you to go friggypoo. Get that Authority down!

  And of course Authority is easier to Establish if the citizen is already trembling.

  But what, you will say, of Mrs. President? Would she be intimidated? Was her husband not The Leader of the Free World? And surely she had considerable presence of her own? How was one to Establish Authority with her?

  Easy.

  It’s all in the approach. Take here. Before we could get down to the actual reading Keesh had to lead us off to a stateroom where we could be alone together, and this was accomplished with as much anticipation and embarrassment as if we were going to the kitchen to neck.

  “Good luck,” said Alberta, who knew the game.

  Then we had to dissuade the security guard from sitting in there with us. Only place he wasn’t supposed to accompany Mrs. President was to the bathroom, and on those occasions he stood close to the door. Serious guy. Built like a refridgerator.

  “It’s all right, Fes,” she said.

  He looked behind the pictures and went sarcastically through my briefcase, gave me a look like he was measuring me for the trash compactor and backed out closing the door.

  So that put a frame around things.

  Then when we were finally a deux there was the unpacking of the palmistry kit, the setting forth of the ink pad, the graph paper, the geometry set. And then the handling of the hands and all the little stresses that go with that. The effect is something between having a blood test and being booked.

  By the time she’d wiped her hands with the towelette and watched and waited while I browsed over the X-rays she was no longer an aloof First Lady on a lark. She was an anxiously ahemming soul awaiting judgment, eyes desperate in an otherwise disciplined face.

  I slid the protractor around, measured a few angles, scratched figures in the margin. Got out the dividers and compared line lengths, made some notes. Drew arcs with the compass, meditated.

  With my information more or less marshaled I turned on the tape and fixed my eyes on the subject. “You are alone,” I said.

  Pretty safe there.

  “Alone. You have always been alone.”

  I looked down at the prints.

  “There have been times people have come in close. Your parents. Your children. Your husband.” I indicated the markings. “There have been times. But no one has ever really seen you. Seen your struggle. No one understands what you’re up against.”

  I mean, right?

  “They all think you’re somebody else. And you’ve had to be somebody else for them. You’ve constructed a whole personality here, little by little. Parts of it you don’t know if you like, you haven’t always made the right choices. Parts you want to change when you get the chance, but you never get the chance, you’ve got the world to deal with and what does it matter anyway, you’ve fallen into this configuration, it has the elegance of chance at least and mostly, mostly, you’re content to wear it off the rack.”

  I don’t know where I get this stuff. I used to watch a lot of television.

  “But you’re involved, Mrs. President, you’re involved. You’re so involved you’ve forgotten why you were holding this puppet together in the first place, to protect yourself, wasn’t it, to keep them from trampling you down, the you they don’t see, don’t, thank God, even suspect, what would they do if they did; or was it because they needed you, needed you to lead them, Mrs. President, even the kids you played with! You had to lead or be left out, show them or be ignored even though you were as scared and stupified as they were. And now you’ve lost track. You’re always losing track, you become their daughter, th
eir mother, their, their First Lady and you forget the secret you, it gets all compromised, it gets lost, Mrs. President, you don’t even know it any more, you have to get along without your own you!”

  I was almost in tears.

  She chewed a thumbnail and gazed at her girlhood.

  I don’t know, are people really like that?

  “You’re engaged,” I said softly, “in a kind of shuttle diplomacy, Mrs. President, between the world and your lost you. And Mrs. President”—I leaned in and lowered my voice—”you’ll always be on that mission, I’m sorry. You husband; he’s no help. Forgive me, Mrs. President, can I speak bluntly? No help. You’re the help. This is a marriage of abilities and it looks like you have to accept that. From the beginning you sensed a destiny there, twinned with your own, you responded to that, you knew you’d have to serve it and it’s been a trap for you. A prison. Men find you compellingly attractive, almost overwhelmingly attractive, that’s all here, but you’ve had to keep all that in the background and live unrealized. It’s been tough.”

  Now, all right, she wasn’t in fact all that gripping, visually. Probably felt nice and everything but she looked like the Duchess in Alice. Not someone you thought about before going to sleep.

  But nobody really knows what they look like in the mirror, you know what I mean? There’s a wide margin of hope in there and things can change in either direction. Not that I was optimistic in this case, but when you’re on a roll you go with it, and one thing I’ve found, you can’t lay it on too thick.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “There are, though—I don’t want to be too personal Mrs. President but there are indications that you are the center of more than one man’s life.”

  She lowered her eyes.

  “N’S,” I said, “I’m getting N’S.”

  “That would be my sister,” she said, coming to. “Naomi.”

  “Your older sister.” I circled something. I don’t usually do research, it rings flat when you use it, but Alberta with that go-the-extra-mileism of hers had checked out the immediate family. “You’re not too fond of her. She got all the attention and inflicted some pretty deep wounds on you and she got away with it just because she was older.”