Big If Page 6

  The smell of her mother’s hair was making Gretchen hungry, which made her think of eating, sleep, energy, and weight. She was coming off a solid year of food-verb events on the campaign trail, corn-boils, fish-frys, wiener-roasts, bean-bakes, salad-tosses. She snacked at these events, ate McDonald’s in between, kept it going with black coffee, sixteen cups a day, and then there was the hassle and the worry and the stress, calls at three a.m. from Fundeberg, the hairy aging wunderkind, the VP’s freewheeling campaign genius. Fundeberg, who never slept or needed to, apparently, never wore a coat outdoors even in Storm Lake that time just after New Year’s when the mechanisms froze in the agents’ sidearms and they had to warm their guns before they worked the crowd. Fundeberg would call her hotel room with some new instance of his brilliance, a way to break the figurative wall between the VP and true contact with the people. He would call at three a.m. and say, “Gretchen, are you sleeping?” and often, surprisingly, she wasn’t. She would listen long enough to veto his latest proposed stunt (no, the VP can’t raid a crack house with the cops; no, he can’t spend a night homeless in Detroit to dramatize the plight of the homeless in Detroit; no, he can’t drive in the demolition derby; no, he can’t sponsor an elementary school essay contest, with the winner being “agent for a day”). Eating made her heavy, slow, and weak; coffee kept her up, which made her sleepy, slow, and weak, and over time she lost the will to veto, and Fundeberg began to take control of where they went.

  Gretchen’s year as chief-of-detail had been a success by the only measure that she cared about: the VP wasn’t dead. There had been some rough spots in her tenure to be sure, excessive-force complaints at Epcot that one time, a bungled hoedown in Ottumwa, several others. There had also been one bona fide disaster, a visit to a flooded town in May—a photo op, Fundeberg’s idea. Gretchen should have vetoed it, but she was too weak. The town was Hinman, Illinois. Gretchen lost an agent there. The agent was her deputy, Lloyd Felker, the father of the Certainties.

  After the disaster in the flood, Gretchen had resolved to bite the bullet, toughen up, to lose twenty pounds. She had always been good at resolutions, making them and keeping them, even as a kid. Her father left, she loved him and he left. She had resolved to be okay with this; eventually she was. Later, as a cop, she had resolved to be a college woman, going nights and weekends, writing papers on Tom Sawyer in a squad car (her professor said that Injun Joe represented sexuality, so Gretchen wrote this, fine), and it took eight years, but she graduated. She was dating in those days, mostly other cops, no men from the neighborhood, but she was bad at dating, bad at small talk after sex—she had no fling in her. She resolved to wait and find a special man, and she found the slick detective, who was very special to her (and pretty much divorced), and they dated for a long time, but then she missed two periods and he let her down, and she resolved to slam the door on Los Angeles and him, and she had done this too.

  When she resolved to lose the weight, Gretchen had expected to succeed, but she had a Dome to run, and she forgot her resolution, moving the behemoth. The Dome could be a mile wide, a hundred cops and agents on the air together, and Gretchen was usually somewhere near the core, working with the body team, a seven-agent cordon on the man himself, the last defense they had, the worried-looking suits familiar to the nation from TV. This was Gretchen’s specialty, the part she knew the best, close personal protection (as they called it up in Beltsville), a fancy name for scan the hands as the VP’s shaking them, scan the hands and never stop, and take a bullet if you must. There was a joke on Gretchen’s team, a joke among the macho lunkheads she was leading—Tashmo, O’Teen, Herc Mercado, all of them. The joke (as O’Teen told it) was that there were seven agents on the body team, seven and exactly seven, so that a shooter with a six-shot .32 could empty his weapon into agents, and there’d still be one agent left to tackle him. No, said Herc Mercado, it’s seven for the seven dwarves.

  Which made her Snow White. In a year of trying, Gretchen couldn’t lose the weight. Admitting failure, she went to see good Dr. Lee, who threatened to put Gretchen on one of several diets. They reviewed the options in the doctor’s office. The diets had names like important global summits, there was the Geneva diet, the Reykjavik diet, the Bretton Woods diet, and the names made Gretchen tired. Dr. Lee much preferred no diet, nothing drastic or disruptive. She asked Gretchen to exercise good common sense and nutrition habits, and exercise as well. Gretchen did her best, but she couldn’t lose the weight.

  Gretchen’s mother was pulling at the curlers in her hair. “I’ll be seeing Gullickson at church. Why don’t you come too? Church is just the thing for Tev. And you can to talk to Gullickson about the banister.”

  Gretchen burrowed in the blankets. Her house in Maryland had a narrow, bump-your-head staircase to the bedrooms on the second floor, wear marks up the wallpaper coming up the stairs, and a shaky banister. Her mother had been after her to fix the banister for months. Mildred Williams even got the business card of a man named Gullickson, a warden in her church, who was some kind of painter-handyman, but Gretchen had never called him. Gretchen’s mother was a member of the Hope Road Christian Bible Pentecostal Tabernacle, which had once been in a good stone church—Lutheran, abandoned—on Hope Road in Seat Pleasant, but then the bishop, as they called their preacher at Hope Road, ran off to Alabama with a sister from the choir and the money from the car wash, and the little congregation, bankrupt, lost its lease, and had to move to a former carpet warehouse store on Rhode Island Avenue, a rougher neighborhood inside the District. Of course, they didn’t change the name to Rhode Island Avenue Christian Bible Pentecostal Tabernacle, and of course they didn’t prosecute the bishop. Gretchen made some phone calls down to Alabama, found the man in Anniston living with a woman, not the sister from the choir. Gretchen knew the U.S. Attorneys and could’ve had the guy indicted in a minute, but her mother said it wouldn’t do, indicting a man of God like that. Gretchen said, “A man of God? He stole your money, Mother. He’s the reason you worship in a carpet store.” Mildred Williams said, “He always preached the flesh is weak. Now he’s living it.” Everyone at Hope Road was a fool in Gretchen’s mind, her mother too, and if this Gullickson was a leader of the place, Gretchen didn’t trust him with her banister. He’d probably tear the old one out and disappear, or put in something even worse, shoddy and incompetent, or fuck it up somehow, and he’d be such a white-haired country bumpkin you wouldn’t even be able to demand your money back or call the man a fool. Her mother had carped about the banister all summer, then Tev went back to school and the trouble started up again, the sulking and locked doors, giving Gretchen’s mother something new to carp about.

  “Oh well,” said Mildred Williams. “Guess I better finish getting ready. It’s a long bus down to Hope Road.”

  It sounded like a song, but in fact it was a hint. There was a pause.

  “I’ll take you,” Gretchen said, pushing out of bed. She wore baggy sweats, her lingerie. She went across the hall to Tevon’s room. She tried the knob.

  “It’s locked,” said Mildred Williams.

  Part of Gretchen wanted to kick the door in (Gullickson could fix it), part of her knew this was a bad idea, part of her wanted to go back to bed and do some burrowing, part of her found her fanny pack where she kept her laminated cardkey ID—Gretchen’s name and rank (one word, Lead), Gretchen’s headshot (posed against blue wall, looking somewhat leaden in the eyes), the holographic eagle (rising, tilted in the light), the five-point marshal’s star of the Secret Service, filigreed and westernate, the bar code on the bottom, God knows what it said about her (weak and sleepy, lives in fear, lost an agent in the field). She slid the card between the lock plate and the tongue, popped the door, and slipped into the gloom and sour smell of Tevon’s room.

  He was on the bed, bellied out in a wild, semaphoric splay. His jockey shorts were white and clean—he was so finicky these days.

  The TV had been on all night again. She sat on Tevon’s bed, watched it for
a while, the cable headline news. She saw a clip from caucus night in Iowa, the VP leaving town, sandwiched between bodyguards, Gretchen on one flank, Vi Asplund on the other. The clip was a stock vid bite, backing up the story of the Iowa results. Gretchen shut the TV off.

  Tevon stirred. He saw her and rolled over, saying, “Shit.”

  “What’s that, Tevon?”

  He pulled the pillow over his ears.

  “You say ship? Is that what I heard? Were you dreaming of a ship? Was it beautiful, a big old thing with sails? Tell your moms about it. She needs to hear a pretty thing this morning.”

  Punishment. Point taken, he said nothing.

  “Get dressed, Mr. Man. We’re taking Grams to church.”

  The pillow said, “Batting cage—you promised—”

  She remembered calling home from Iowa, saying she was sorry to have missed his soccer game. He played indoor soccer, the worst and slowest player on the field or court or whatever you call it when there is no field. She did not remember promising a trip to the batting cage (she despised the batting cage—the crack of bats made her jumpy). Tevon knew she didn’t and was probably lying, not that she could prove it.

  “We don’t lock our doors,” she said as she left the room.

  Mildred Williams was already dressed, coat and hat and bag. “He’s mad at you,” she said.

  “I think I know that,” Gretchen said.

  “You missed his soccer game.”

  Gretchen brushed her teeth at the bathroom sink.

  “He saw you on TV, out in Idaho somewheres. He’s been broody ever since.”

  Gretchen rinsed and spat. “Iowa,” she said.

  “Huh?” Grams was getting deaf.

  “Iowa. No one goes to Idaho. They don’t even have a caucus, Mother. It would be a total comic waste of time.”

  “Well, it wasn’t here and that’s all a child knows. A child needs a parent every day.”

  “He has you,” Gretchen said. “He’s lucky to have you.”

  “That’s what your father used to say.”

  Gretchen, wounded at the sink, said, “Mother,” weakly, then said nothing.

  Gretchen and her mother waited in the car. Tevon came out of the house and down the front steps dressed in his full replica Oriole uniform, hose and spikes and the black turtleneck, the orange bird-and-bat logo at his Adam’s apple. The steps were steep concrete, tricky on the spikes.

  “Uniform is foolishness,” Mildred Williams commented. “What’d you pay for that?”

  Gretchen said, “Too much.”

  “You spoil him.”

  “Do I spoil or neglect him, Mother? Please make up your mind.”

  Tevon dragged the bat bag from the garage (also Oriole, also grossly over-priced), dumped it in the backseat, and got in. They started for the church, driving through the quiet streets of suburban Maryland.

  Gretchen wasn’t clear on the name of the town she lived in. She said it was Seat Pleasant when people asked. She thought it probably was, though others on the street called it Capitol Highlands, which made a little sense. They were on the heights, northeast of the District, and from the pocket park near Gretchen’s house you could look across the smoky riverbottom ghettoes to the tourist part of Washington. Others called the town Cap Heights, but this was confusing (Capitol Heights was a town, but not this town) and probably also wrong. By whatever name, it was the poor end of the ’burbs, the first town past the District going out East Capitol. Gretchen figured they were in some kind of quasi-independent borough of Seat Pleasant, and she figured that this was because her end of town was largely black, cops and postal supervisors, and it suited everyone, both sets of politicians, white and black, to have a line of some kind down the Prince Georges Highway. Hope Road ran east from the P.G. into Seat Pleasant proper, which was getting somewhat black these days, more your upscale buppie types, government attorneys and congressional staffers from safe seats in Chicago. The whites were slowly drifting to the Beltway farther out, except for the liberal Jews, who had just built that jazzy synagogue, looks like a spacecraft with a lawn. In the summer, someone had spray-painted a swastika on the synagogue. They caught the man, ran his name in the newspaper—it was something plain, Smith or Jones or Williams. The town was edgy until the paper ran his picture as a public service. Gretchen, like everyone, was relieved to see that he was cracker white, not black. She could almost feel the place relax the day the picture ran.

  She took P.G. to the lights and went up Hope Road. Tev was looking out his window at the fast food joints and gas station minimarts. Gretchen wondered what he thought of this, his world—the safe world she had made for him.

  “Where you going?” asked her mother.

  Only then did Gretchen remember the bishop and the sister and the money he embezzled and the move to the carpet warehouse in the District.

  She turned around, started back. “Why didn’t you say something, Mother?”

  “I did. I said, ‘Where you going?’”

  “But you waited until I was almost there.”

  “Don’t bark at me, baby,” Mildred Williams said. “I’m not the one that’s all screwed up.”

  They wouldn’t let Tevon wear his spikes at the amusement center because the indoor surfaces were rubberized, so they went to Foot Locker in the next mall down, where Gretchen bought her son a new pair of pumpable high-tops and three sports energy bars so that he would have the energy to inflate his shoes.

  Back at the amusement center, she fed a bill to the token machine and they dragged the bat bag to the bleachers. There were sixteen batting cages in the place. Four were softball only, two were out of order. The rest were being used, dads and sons, white and black. Tevon ate the energy bars as they waited for a cage. Gretchen had a pretzel from the concession stand, the big kind with the mustard and the road salt.

  Tevon stretched his hamstrings like the pros and then it was his turn. He stepped into the cage. She dropped a token in the slot. His face looked puny in the helmet and it made her sad, the way he wore his uniform not to a game, but to a cage of hanging nets, one boy in a row of boys, up against these blind machines. Tevon found his stance. A red light at the other end turned green, a pitch was shoveled up. He swung and missed. Gretchen heard the big thump in the pads.

  She clapped for him. “Here we go now, Tevon, keep that bathead flat.”

  Another pitch. He cut and missed.

  The slick detective, Tevon’s father in L.A., had played junior college shortstop and once had a try-out with the Padres, so he said. They were looking for the next Ozzie Smith, big range and the sweet release, so he said. Watching Tevon in the cage, it was hard to see the father in the son. Tevon was big and slow, as she was. He was often lost in soccer games, way off on the left flank when the ball was being kicked around the goal, and yet he was so serious this morning. He swung at the last ball, stepped back to stretch some more, bending at the waist, the bat across his shoulders like a yoke. He took some practice swings. He was sweating, loose. He was happy, focused on his swing.

  Her pager sounded, the oscillating chirp. Tevon tightened up.

  “It’s nothing,” she said quickly. She bought another twenty balls and walked behind the bleachers. The message was a number in the Threat Assessment Center.

  “Gretchen, hey,” said Debbie Escobedo-Waas. “We’re sorry to bother you.”

  Gretchen thought, who’s we? She didn’t like the conversation so far.

  Debbie said, “You’re going out tonight—New Hampshire, I’m afraid. I’m wondering, we’re wondering, could you shoot up to the campus on your way to Andrews? I’m here with the Director and Boone Saxon. We’d like to have a word with you before the jumping-off.”

  They set a time and Gretchen walked back to the cage. Tevon was finished with his twenty balls. She dropped a token in the slot and bought him twenty more.

  She said, “I’m sorry, Tev, I have to go. This afternoon, not now. We’ve got lots of time.”

  A pitch was
shoveled up. Tevon didn’t swing. It thumped into the pads.

  “Don’t be angry, son. We’ve got lots of time.”

  Tevon said, “My father’s name is Carlton Imbry.”

  Considering everything—the pain the name had caused, and how foolish she had felt when she realized that she wasn’t even smart enough to know whether someone loved her, and the other things she’d felt, the years of pointless feeling, and the sacrifices she had made to raise the boy alone—considering all of this, Gretchen, standing by the cage, was relatively steady, or so it probably seemed to the dads in the other cages.

  She said, “Who told you that?”

  Tevon didn’t swing or drop his stance. The bat was cocked, his elbow out. His eyes were on the green light and the pitches flashing past. “There’s a database on the Web,” he said. “Enter name and query-field, it pulls up public records in that name.”

  “But who told you the name?”

  “I wasn’t looking for him. I was looking for me.”

  Boom of pads. Gretchen whispered, “No.”

  “You told me I was born in Maryland. I wasn’t born in Maryland. I found my birth certificate, L.A. County. It said Carlton Imbry under father. I always thought my father was a bum, and that’s why you protected me and never said his name. But I found him on Nexis. He’s not a bum. He’s a homicide detective, worked on all the famous cases in L.A. He’s the one who solved the O.J. murder—he found the dog hair in the lint screen of the dryer, which matched the dog that wasn’t barking. Would’ve blown the case wide open, if the lab techs hadn’t bungled it. So I got his number, left a message. I said, ‘I am your son.’ I left a few messages and he finally called me back—he’s been swamped lately. We’ve been talking ever since. He says I can live with him if I promise not to cramp his style.”

  The last pitch hit the pads. The cage was quiet.