Mark Costello - Big If

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.