Timothy Culver - Power Play

Anything becomes normal, if it goes on long enough, and the guards and reporters had existed in the periphery of Bradford’s life almost as long as Evelyn could remember. She thought nothing now of the fact that Uncle Joe was out talking to reporters, and she would think nothing of it when their limousine was trailed all the way out to the airport by a Pontiac containing two anonymous men in black raincoats. It was simply the way life was.

Uncle Joe came in about five minutes after Evelyn arrived. “That’s that,” he said. “I didn’t want those fellows draped all over Brad’s neck when he came down, so I gave them all they wanted and now they’re gone. Excuse me while I give Brad the all-clear.”

Evelyn waited till he was done on the phone, and then said, “Is he really all right now?”

He looked up at her in some surprise. “Well, of course,” he said. “If I’m half as healthy as Brad at his age I’ll consider myself lucky.”

“Was it a stroke he had?”

“From the evidence, it seems to have been,” he said. “A little stroke, a temporary thing. No permanent blockage, no apparent damage.”

“And it’s all over.”

“Well, there are diet things he should think about now, and we’ll want to keep an eye on his blood pressure. Brad has sense enough to do what he’s told, though, so he should be home free.”

“It’s awful to be old,” Evelyn said, and the door opened.

It was a nurse, in crisp white. “Excuse me,” she said, not sure whether she should enter or not.

Uncle Joe looked over at her. “Yes? What is it?”

“Dr. Holt, Mr. Lockridge is going out the back way, through the emergency entrance. His car has been sent around, they wanted me to tell you.”

“What was the problem?”

“I believe there’s a television truck out front,” she said. “Mr. Lockridge didn’t want to be filmed leaving the hospital.”

“I don’t blame him,” Uncle Joe said. “He’s on his way down now?”

“Yes, Doctor. He may be there already.”

“Thank you.” He got up from his desk as the nurse left. “Come along, Evelyn. I thought I’d satisfied those boys, but apparently not.”

They took an elevator down one flight and then walked through endless green halls until they abruptly arrived at a busy little white tile corner with half a dozen worried people sitting in the corridor on wooden benches and quick glimpses of muddled hurried movement taking place in the open-doored rooms to either side. The waiting people looked at Evelyn and Uncle Joe in open curiosity, and Evelyn wasn’t surprised when a gray-uniformed guard approached and said in a stage whisper, “He’s already in the car, Doctor.” The people on the benches had recognized Bradford, of course, so now they would be speculating about who she might be. Her face had appeared hundreds of times in the corners of photos of Bradford, but no one ever recognized her, and every time there was a situation like this Evelyn felt again the same inadequacy at having nothing to offer the world but a blood relationship with a famous man.

The limousine was just outside the wide double doors, under a sign reading AMBULANCE PARKING ONLY. Uncle Joe held the rear door open for Evelyn to get in, and she saw Bradford already seated in there, looking slightly irritable, a black attaché case like a Cubist lap rope on his lap. She got in and sat beside him and he said, “Did you want to be on television?”

“Not at all,” she said, unconsciously touching her hair. The limousine was under a roof, but there was still the rainy dampness all around, and she could feel her hairdo eroding away like a sand castle.

Uncle Joe stuck his head in. “You’ve got my little list of do’s and don’ts,” he said to Bradford.

“Yes, and I suppose Evelyn has a carbon copy.” He was being very surly.

“As a matter of fact,” Uncle Joe said, “she doesn’t. But it might be a good idea for me to send her one.” He grinned at Evelyn and patted her knee and said, “Don’t let him get you down.”

“Bradford couldn’t,” she said, smiling, nervous as usual to be made the center of attention when Bradford was around. He was supposed to be the center of attention.

The spotlight didn’t last long. Uncle Joe said, “See you in a few weeks,” and backed out of the car again, shutting the door.

“Won’t he, though?” Bradford grumbled, and called to the chauffeur to drive on.

The last leg of the trip always seemed the longest, and with Bradford still in the bad mood it seemed this time even longer than usual.

The first leg had been driving through the rain to LaGuardia Airport, which meant over the East River via the Triborough Bridge and out Grand Central Parkway to the airport. Bradford had been immersed in the contents of the attaché case all the way, it turning out to contain sections of Howard’s re-write of The Temporary Peace, which Howard had flatly insisted Bradford approve by next Monday, threatening to have the book published without Bradford’s final corrections if he didn’t get to work at once. Evelyn didn’t mind being left to her own devices. New York is an ugly but fascinating city, and it was enough to simply look out at it, to see how its appearance changed in the rain, becoming both softer and more bedraggled and somehow two or three centuries older.

The second leg had been the flight to Hagerstown, in the plane the government made available to Bradford as required. Bradford was still grumpily involved in his work, but there were magazines aboard the plane, and the stewardess prepared a meal for them all, mostly out of frozen food packages. Also, one of the security men, a new one, tried to flirt with her slightly, which was both pleasing and displeasing, the former because being flirted with was always good for a woman’s ego and the latter because there were unspoken distinctions between the Lockridge family and the government employees around them, and in ignoring those distinctions the security man was in a way insulting her. Bradford looked up from his work long enough to scowl at the security man, after a while, and that was the end of that. In a way it was too bad (trying not to remember the feeling that had passed through her in George and Marie’s apartment the other morning), but in another way it was just as well. Without regret, Evelyn returned to her magazine.

They ran out of the rainstorm over mid-Pennsylvania, about twenty minutes before landing at Hagerstown. It had been raining there, but had stopped about half an hour before. It was very cold after the rain, a wet cold that cut right through to the bone, and Evelyn shivered as she walked across the tarmac beside Bradford from the plane to the car, another black Cadillac limousine, twin to the one they’d left at LaGuardia except that this one had a Pennsylvania license plate. The same number: BL-1. (During Bradford’s Presidency, the press had habitually referred to him by his three initials, BGL, Bradford Gregory Lockridge, but that was only a journalistic tradition, suffered by every President since Roosevelt with the sole exception of Eisenhower, who had a handy three letter nickname instead. Bradford himself never used his middle name nor its initial.)

From Hagerstown it was a short thirty miles to Eustace, most of it north on Interstate 81, out of Maryland and into Pennsylvania. Then off 81 to Chambersburg and seven miles west on county 992 to Eustace. It was done and over in twenty-five minutes.

And yet to Evelyn it seemed the longest part of the trip. The day was gloomy, Bradford continued silent and grouchy, and there was nothing to occupy her mind. She’d traveled this road a hundred times, and though much of the scenery was green and pleasant even at this time of the year, she had seen it too often to be intrigued any more. She was also impatient to see Dinah again, and to be home.