A. Homes - Things You Should Know

He looks at her blankly. “Are you plotting something? Is there something I’m supposed to know? Something I’m supposed to be doing? I’m always thinking there’s a paper that needs to be signed. What am I trying to remember?”

“You tell me,” she says, making herself a gin and tonic.

He wanders off, in search. She stands in the living room sipping, enjoying the feel of the heavy crystal glass in her hand, running her finger over the facets, taking a moment to herself before going after him.

He is in her dressing room. He has opened every drawer and rummaged through, leaving the floor littered with clothing. Her neatly folded cashmere sweaters are scattered around the room. He’s got a pair of panty hose tied around his neck like an ascot.

He has taken out a suitcase and started packing. “I’ve been called away,” he says, hurriedly going to and from the closet. He pulls out everything on a hanger, filling the suitcase with her dresses.

“No,” she screams, seeing her beloved gowns rolled into a ball and stuffed into the bag. She rushes towards him, swatting him, pulling a Galanos out of his hands.

“It’s all right,” he says, going into the closet for more. “I’ll be back.”

Soledad, having heard the scream, charges through the door.

The place is a mess, ransacked.

“Sundowning,” Philip says, arriving after the fact. “It’s a common phenomena.”

“Where the heck are all my clean shirts?” he asks. At the moment he is wearing four or five, like a fashion statement, piled one atop the other, buttoned so that part of each one is clearly visible. “I’m out of time.”

“It’s early,” she says, leading him out of the room. On one of the sites she read that distraction is good for this kind of disorientation. “It’s not time for you to go,” she says. “Shall we dance?”

She puts on an old Glenn Miller record and they glide around the living room. The box step is embedded in his genes, he has not forgotten. She looks up at him. His chest is still deep, his pompadour still high, though graying at the roots.

“Tomorrow, when Philip gives you your bath, we’ll have him dye your hair,” she says, leading him into the night.

“I don’t want to upset you,” he whispers in her ear. “But we’re being held hostage.”

“By whom?” she whispers back.

“It’s important that we stay calm, that we not give them any information. It’s good that I’m having a little trouble with my memory, Bill Casey told me so many things that I should never have known…Did I have some sort of an affair?”

She pulls away from him, unsettled. “Did you?”

“I keep remembering something about getting into a lot of trouble for an affair, everyone being very unhappy with me.”

“Iran Contra?”

“Who was she? A foreign girl, exotic, a beautiful dancer on a Polynesian island? Did my wife know?” he asks. “Did she forgive me? I should have known better, I should not have put us in that position, it almost cost us everything.”

She changes the record to something faster, happier, a mix tape someone made her — Gloria Gaynor, Donna Summer. She spins in circles around him.

He looks at her blankly. “Have we known each other very long?”

They have dinner in the bedroom on trays in front of the television set. This is the way they’ve done it for years. As early as six or seven o’clock they change into their night clothes: pajamas, bathrobe, and slippers for him; a zipped red housedress with a Nehru collar and gold braiding, like a queen’s robe, for her. They dress as though they are actors playing a scene — the quiet evening at home.

She slips into the closet to change. She always undresses in the closet.

“You know my mother used to do that,” he says while she’s gone.

Red. She has a dozen red housedresses, cocktail pajamas, leisure suits. The Hummingbird, the elf, the red pepper, cherry tomato, royal highness, power and blood.

“Why is the soup always cold?”

“So you won’t burn yourself,” she says.

He coughs during dinner, half-choking.

“Chew before you swallow,” she says.

After dinner she pops one of his movies into the VCR. A walk down memory lane is supposed to be good for him, it is supposed to be comforting to see things from his past.

“Do you recall my premiere in Washington?”

“Your inaugural? January 20, 1981?”

“Now that was something.” He stands up. “I’d like to thank each and every one of you for giving me this award.”

“Tonight it’s Kings Row ,” she says.

He gets a kick out of watching himself — the only hitch is that he thinks everything is real, it’s all one long home movie.

“My father-in-law-to-be was a surgeon, scared the hell out of me when he cut off my legs.”

“What are you talking about?” she asks, offended. “Dr. Loyal never wanted to hurt you,” she said. “He liked you very much.”

“Where’s the rest of me?” he screams. “Where’s the rest of me?” He’s been so many different people, in so many different roles, and now he doesn’t know where it stops or starts — he doesn’t know who he is.

“What movie are we in?”

“We’re not in a movie right now, this is real,” she says, moving his dinner tray out of the way, reaching out to hold his hand.

“What time does the flight get in?”

“You’re home,” she says. “This is your home.”

He looks around. “Oh yeah, when did we buy this place?”

At eight, Soledad comes in with her knitting, trailed by Philip with a plate of cookies, four glasses of milk.

Philip flips on the game and the four of them settle in on the king-sized bed, Philip, the President, she, and Soledad, lined up in a row, postmodern Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. When the game begins, the President puts his hand over his heart and starts to sing.

“Oh say can you see…”

“Did you see that?” Soledad asks him. “He had that one on the rebound.”

Philip, wanting to practice his reflexology, tries it on the President. He slips off the President’s bedroom slippers and socks.

“Hey, quit tickling me.” The President jerks his feet away.

Philip offers his services to her.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she says. “My feet aren’t in good shape. I haven’t had a pedicure in weeks.” She pauses. “What the hell,” she says, kicking her slippers off. He is on the floor at the bottom of the bed. “That feels fantastic,” she says after twenty minutes.

Soledad is crocheting a multicolored afghan to send to her mother for Christmas.

“What color next?” she asks the President. “Blue or orange?”

“Orange,” the President says.

At night she is happy to have them there; it is a comfort not to be alone with him, and he seems to enjoy the company.

He sits on his side of the bed, picking invisible lint off himself.

“What are you going for there?” Philip asks.

“Bugs,” he says. “I’m crawling with bugs.”

Philip uses an imaginary spray and makes the spraying sound. Philip sprays the President and then he sprays himself. “You’re all clean now,” Philip says. “I sprayed you with disinfectant.” The President stops picking.

At a certain point he gets up to go to the bathroom.

“He’s getting worse,” she says when he’s gone.

They nod. The slow fade is becoming a fast forward.

He is gone a long time. After a while they all look at each other. “Are you all right?” she calls out.

“Just give me a minute,” he says. He comes out of the bathroom with black shoe polish all over his face and red lipstick in a circle around his mouth. “My father used to do this one for me,” he says, launching into an old Amos ’n’ Andy routine.