Things You Should Know(74)

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.

“What did you use?” she asks, horrified.

“Kiwi,” he says.

“I’m sorry,” she says to Soledad, mortified that she is having to watch. Luckily, Soledad is from the islands and doesn’t quite understand how horrible it is.

At eleven, Philip puts the rail on his side of the bed up, turns on the motion detector pad on the floor, tucks him in, and they call down to the gatehouse and tell them that the package is down for the night.

“Good night,” she says.

“See you in the morning,” Soledad says.

She stays up for a while, sitting next to him reading while he sleeps. This is her favorite part of the night. He sleeps and she can pretend that everything isn’t as it is, she can pretend this is a dream, a nightmare, and in the morning it will all be fine.

She could remove herself, live in another part of the house and receive reports of his progress, but she remains in love with him, profoundly attached. She doesn’t know how to be without him, and without her, he is nothing.



The motion detector goes off, turning on the light by her side of the bed. It is six-thirty in the morning.

“Is this conversation being taped?” He speaks directly into the roses, tapping his finger on the open flower as if testing the microphone. Petals fall to the floor. “Who’s there? Is someone hiding over there?” He picks up the remote control and throws it into the billowing curtains.

“Hey, hey,” she says, pushing up her eye mask, blinking. “No throwing.”

“Go away, leave us alone,” he says.

She takes his hand and holds it over the vent.

“It’s the air,” she says, “the air is moving the curtains.”

He picks up the red toy telephone that he carries around everywhere—“just in case.”

“I can’t get a goddamned dial tone. How can I launch the missiles if I can’t get a dial tone?”

“It’s early,” she says. “Come back to bed.” She turns the television on to the morning cartoons, pulls her eye mask down, and crawls back into bed.

He is in the bathroom with the water running. “There’s someone around here who looks familiar.”

She pops her head in. “Are you talking to me?”

“Yes,” he whispers. “That man, I can’t remember that man’s name.” He points at the mirror.

“That’s you,” she says.

“Look, he waves and I’m waving back.”

“You’re the one waving.”

“I just said that.”

She notices an empty bottle of mouthwash on the sink.

“Did you spill your mouthwash?”

“I drank it,” he belches. Hot, minty-fresh air fills the bathroom.



In the morning, she has to locate him in time and space. To figure out when and where he is, she runs through a list of possible names.

“Honey, Sweetheart, Running Bear, Chief, Captain, Mr. President.”

He stands before her, empty, nonreactive. She sticks a finger first into one ear and then the other, feeling for his hearing aid, they’re both in, she plucks one out, cranks up the volume until it squeals.