Curtis Sittenfeld - American Wife

When the abortion story comes out, Dena and perhaps Pete will be the only people who can confirm its veracity. But I don’t hope to silence them. Rather, I see a visit as an opportunity to clear the air after far too long. In theory, I could go to Riley another day, I drop in every six weeks to check on my mother, but if I wait, won’t the moment have passed? Won’t I lose my nerve if I don’t do it now?

“Let’s find a substitute for the tour,” I say, and then, inspired, “Ella! Children love Ella!”

“Will she be offended if I get a docent to accompany her?”

“She’ll be relieved. Oh, if she’ll agree to it, this could be perfect.” It occurs to me that this could be the last favor I ask Ella for a long while. Once she learns of my abortion, I expect she might distance herself from me. As Jessica types on her BlackBerry, I say, “I think Hank’s office at least started tracking Dena down this morning, but her surname could also be Cimino and maybe Imhof, although I don’t know if they stayed together. If she’s gotten married to someone else, then I have no idea. But her date of birth is 6/16/46.” This, I suppose, is a sign of childhood friends, that you never forget their birthdays, whereas for the friends you make in adulthood, you never quite remember; I like to send birthday cards, but if I didn’t mark my personal calendar, I’d miss them.

Jessica says, “Are you envisioning that Dena comes to the plane, you go to her house, or you meet at a public place?” The airfield we land on in Riley is tiny, used only by private planes and the fleet for White River Dairy.

“I’ll go to her house,” I say. I experience a vestigial impulse to add that I don’t want to inconvenience Dena, that we should find out first if she’s free today, but inconveniencing people is beside the point. From one perspective, I have for the last six years been nothing but an inconvenience, causing traffic to be stopped and streets closed, buildings locked, manhole covers sealed; from another perspective, many Americans and many people in the world, even now, wouldn’t mind having their day turned upside down for the “privilege” of meeting me.

Jessica says, “While the office finds Dena, would you like to ask Ella or shall I?”

“I’ll do it.”

Jessica reaches into her pocketbook for a second cell phone, opens it, and dials. “It’s Jessica. Hold for your mother?” Jessica is silent, then says, “In how long?” Again, a pause. “Perfect. We’ll look forward to it.” When she hangs up, she says, “Ella will call back in five minutes.” Oh, thank heavens for Ella Blackwell, the only person who habitually rebuffs the president and first lady of the United States. I mean it not facetiously but sincerely when I say, what would we do without her to keep us humble?

Using her first cell phone, the one she was on earlier, Jessica presses a single button and, after a few seconds, says, “Belinda, I’ve sent messages to you and Ashley, but I need a home address and phone number for an individual in Riley. This is high priority.” Jessica relays the information about Dena that I’ve provided then suggests Belinda try Lori in Hank’s office, and when she hangs up again, she says to me, “So that I know when to schedule wheels up from Riley, how long do you anticipate meeting with Dena?”

“Half an hour? But let’s not leave Chicago until we confirm that she’s available. For all I know, she doesn’t live in Riley anymore—I can imagine her having moved to someplace like New Mexico.”

“If it’s impossible to arrange the visit in time to be back for the gala, I’m certain we can find her phone number and you can still talk to her tonight. But we’ll see if we can’t set up an in-person meeting. You want to listen to the radio while I hop back on the phone?” Jessica’s tone and expression are sympathetic; I haven’t told her the details of my conversation with Gladys Wycomb, only the end result, but I think she can tell I feel fragile.

“Sure,” I say. As it happens, we left on such short notice that I didn’t bring a book.

Jessica says, “Cal, will you turn on NPR?”

I recognize the show that becomes audible as

Day to Day

before I recognize the subject of the current interview: It is Edgar Franklin, the man camped out on Capitol Hill, the father of the dead soldier. Jessica realizes who it is at the same time I do, even though she’s already talking to someone else on the phone. To that person, she says, “Hang on,” holds her palm over the mouth area of her cell, and says to me, “Want him to change it?”

I shake my head.

On the radio, the interviewer, who is male, says, “It seems you plan to stay here indefinitely—is that correct?”

“I plan to stay here until the president will see me,” Edgar Franklin says.

“And if that doesn’t happen?”

“I plan to stay here until the president will see me,” Edgar Franklin repeats. His voice is firm but not belligerent—he speaks more quietly than the reporter, and he has a mild southern accent.

“Do you really believe you can convince President Blackwell to start bringing home the troops, or would you view a conversation as a symbolic act?”

“Too many young men and women have lost their lives, and I don’t believe the president has ever been able to justify our presence there,” Edgar Franklin says. “My impression is he hears selective intelligence, and it makes it hard for him to understand the personal toll this is taking.”

“Although you yourself haven’t had the opportunity to meet with the president, the White House has made a point in the last several days of mentioning his frequent visits with family members of the fallen, including two weeks ago in southern California. What do you hope to tell him that he wouldn’t have heard from others whose situations are painfully similar to yours?”

“After your son dies this way, you look for a reason his death meant something. You hope he made a sacrifice he believed in, and that’s why it’s tempting to accept”—Edgar Franklin hesitates—“the rhetoric of war, is I guess how to put it. If I thought Nate’s death was a waste, wouldn’t that be disloyal to my son and my country? It would mean I wasn’t patriotic, is what I thought at first, but I’ve come to see it that bringing our troops home would be the patriotic thing. A lot of families just now going through what I experienced two years ago, just starting to grieve, maybe they’re not thinking about the political side yet.”

“What do you make of the outpouring of support you’ve received since your arrival in Washington last Wednesday?”

“The tide has turned. Americans know it’s time for an honest conversation.”

“Colonel Edgar Franklin, thank you for speaking with me.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“You’re listening to member-supported WBEZ,” a female voice says as our police-escorted Town Car is waved through the gates leading to the private section of the airport. We cross the tarmac, and in the overcast heat of the Midwest, a glare bounces off the Gulfstream parked two hundred feet away; the steps are already pulled down, awaiting us.

CHARLIE USED TO

have a line he’d tease me with before dinners on the rubber-chicken circuit; he’d say, “Don’t forget that

fund-raiser

starts with

fun.

” He said this because he knew I loathed them—the repetition, the forced greetings and stilted conversations, the endless photo ops, and above all, the uncomfortably transactional feeling that people were literally buying us. I’ve always found the thousand-dollar dinners more unsettling than the twenty-five-thousand-dollar ones—if someone pays the Republican National Committee twenty-five thousand dollars (or, more likely, fifty per couple) to breathe the same air as Charlie for an hour or two, then it’s clear the person has money to spare. What breaks my heart is when it’s apparent through their accent or attire that a person isn’t well off but has scrimped to attend an event with us.