“I’m checking the battery,” she yells. “Can you hear me?”
“Of course I can. I’m not deaf.” He takes the hearing aid from her and stuffs it back into his ear, putting it into the ear that already has one.
“Wrong ear,” she says, fishing it out. She starts again. “Mr. President, Sir, Rough Rider, Rick, Daddy, Dutch.” There is a flicker of recognition.
“Now that sounds familiar.”
“Do you know who you are?”
“Give me a clue.”
She continues. “Mr. P. Junior, Jelly Bean.”
“Rings a bell.”
“Jelly Bean?”
“That’s me.”
“Oh. Jelly Bean,” she says, relieved to have found him. “What’s new?” She hands him his clothing one piece at a time, in order, from under to outer.
Soledad rings a bell.
“Your breakfast is ready.” She urges him down the hall. “Send the gardener in when he gets here,” she instructs Soledad as she steps into a morning meeting with Philip and the agents.
“Don’t call him Mr. President anymore—it’s too confusing. It’s best not to use any particular name; he’s played so many roles, it’s hard to know where he is at any given moment. This morning he’s responding to Jelly Bean and talking about things from 1984.”
“We’re not always sure what to do,” the head agent says, “how far to go. Yesterday he cleaned the pool for a couple of hours, he kept taking the leaves out, and whenever he looked away we just kept dumping them back, the same leaves over and over.”
She nods.
“And then there were the holly berries. He was chewing on the bushes,” the agent says.
“Halle Berry? George and Barbara?” Philip asks.
“The shrubbery—like a giraffe he was going around eating—” The agent stops in mid-sentence.
Jorge, the gardener, is standing in the doorway. He has taken off his shoes and holds them in his hand. He curtsies when he enters.
“Thank you,” she says. She takes out a map and lays it on the table for everyone to see. “We need a safer garden; this is a list of the plants—they’re all nontoxic, edible.”
In the distance there is a heavy thump. The phone rings. She pushes the speakerphone button.
“Yes?”
“The President has banged into the sliding glass door.”
“Is he hurt?
“He’s all right—but he’s got a bump on his head.”
She sends Philip to check on him and she, Jorge, and the agents go into the yard and pace off where the wandering garden will be.
“Everything poisonous has to come out,” she says. “Azaleas, birds of paradise, calla lilies, and daffodils. No more holly berries, hydrangea, tulips, poppies. No wisteria. No star-of-Bethlehem.”
Jorge gets down on his knees, ready to begin.
She stops him. “Before you get dirty. I need you to put a lock on my dressing room door.”
He is in the sunroom with a bag of ice on his face.
“Are you in pain?” she asks. He doesn’t answer. “Did you have a nice breakfast?”
Again he belches, mint mouthwash.
“It won’t happen again,” Philip says, using masking tape to make a grid pattern on the sliding glass door, like a hurricane warning, like an Amish stencil in a cornfield, like the bars of a cattle crossing. “For some reason it works—they see it as a barrier and they don’t cross it.”
“Soledad, may I have a word?” She refrains from saying more until they are out of the room. “We need to make a few changes.”
“I will miss you very much,” Soledad says.
“It’s time to get the house ready,” she says, ignoring the comment, taking Soledad from room to room, pointing out what’s not needed, what has to go in order to make life simpler, less confusing, safer.
“Put it away, send it to storage, keep that for yourself, this goes and this goes and this goes. Up with the rug, out with the chair.”
They put safety plugs in every outlet, toddler latches on every cabinet. She moves quickly, as though time is limited, as though preparing for a disaster, a storm front of some sort.
“Send someone to one of the thrift shops and get a couple of Naugahyde sofas and some chairs.”
“But you have such nice furniture,” Soledad says.
“Exactly.”
“Are we expecting a hurricane?” he asks, passing through. “I saw the boy taping up the window.”
He knows and he doesn’t know.
Jorge is in the bedroom, putting a huge combination lock on the dressing room door.
“Do we have any white paint?” She asks Jorge.
“No, Señora.”