The President's Angel (10 page)

The publicity annoyed the President as much as the part he'd played in the little drama—sending an innocent man to jail. But he had little attention to give the situation. The world was breaking over him, and he had no time to waste. He tried to remind himself that everything is relative, and all he had was time and the choice of how to use it best.

Around him, strange things were happening. Abroad, the Premier of the Eastern Empire was rumored to be ill, though no one knew with what. Rumors flew:

Dissidents jailed;

Ordinary people killed, their brains blown out with guns, and their blood splattering, spattering on the beautiful earth;

And cries of mourning everywhere.

At home, the homeless lived like animals in Rock Creek Park, in caves, in boxes, in the hollows of fallen trees, and some of them formed robber bands, kicked ass, frightened the homeful who avoided the savagery in their midst.

On the border, the Barbarians were said to be massing. More war news. Only it was nothing new. The news would be if no one were fighting either there or in the other sixty-three locations on the globe.

At the center of the universe, out in the silence of utter space, scientists discovered a Black Hole, hundreds of thousands of light-years wide. Now, that was something to fear. It sucked with its enormous gravity at the rest of the universe. Meanwhile the physicists were watching irrational and playful subatomic particles jump like circus fleas. Here was the question for the scientists: Was all this, too, an expression of the love that moves the sun and stars?

Back at home it was Christmas. Then, for the third time, the angel appeared.

At Christmas the presidential family traditionally held a large gathering for the politicians, White House staff, and the Press. One of those invited was Scotty, who brought his little daughter, Lily, to view the Christmas tree.

Scotty was divorced and saw Lily only on weekends, and sometimes not even then if he had work to do. Since he loved her more than anyone on earth, he was pleased to show off to her at Christmas the Palace where he worked.

Fifty other children were there too, dressed in party clothes and eyeing on tiptoe the platters of sweets and cakes and candied orange peel as the grown-ups bellowed at each other from three feet above. In one corner stood a group of carolers dressed in red velvet, and in another stood the tree with false packages all gaily wrapped and heaped around its foot. The smells of ginger and nutmeg hung in the air; the crowd was thick enough to make it hard for the waiters to push through with their trays of hot wine or platters of oysters and cheese canapés; and when the double doors opened to show the banquet table laden with hams and turkeys and nuts and cheeses and fish and fruits and cakes and chocolates, you could hear the sigh of pleasure; and then the moving feet, the crush, as the assembled guests shouldered through the doorway to descend on the table like the locusts on Egypt and clean off every tray. In no time the platters were reduced to ragged tails and scraps, limp parsley and sagging sculptured Santas of vegetables and candied fruit, as if the crowd had never eaten before. Waiters replenished the platters, running in and out with trays.

In the midst of this happy throng, several hundred strong, the President, quite his old self now—recovered from his madness, it seemed, or stroke or hallucinations—mingled, first with his wife on his arm doing her duty as First Lady, then separately, each working the crowd like well-trained bird dogs, and whenever possible dropping first-name benisons on their friends.

The President shook hands with the Episcopal bishop and made a point of greeting the tall, bald, Fundamentalist minister who had been invited to counterbalance the bishop, and of course in honor of the season; and he spoke to a black Baptist minister and a white rightist, and a Supreme Court justice, and many other important personages who were celebrating the idea of tolerance and mercy on that holiday.

Matt was also pleased to see that Jim Sierra had brought his wife Susan and their two girls. Christmas—Hanukkah—this darkest period of the northern year—is a time of reconciliation, when fighting couples vow once more to make their marriages work. The President greeted Susan warmly, strangely grateful that she had taken her husband back, even if it was for the children's sake; and he laughed with her about the phone call he had made, and listened to her awkward stuttered apologies with a certain prideful satisfaction. Around him the voices rose in a deafening din, and the musicians played, and the carolers sang, and the Christmas tree lights winked among gaudy velvet-ribboned balls.

The President could not possibly have noticed Lily, elbow-high to the guests and twisting past their hips, drawn for reasons she could not ascertain to the edge of the room, where she stopped short; for there stood an angel, and in all that crowd no one brushed against its radiance.

She stood, rapt, watching it shimmer and glow. It was formed of a wonderful whiteness, more brilliant than any whiteness of this earth, and yet it flared with colors too; it had no wings, and yet it gave an impression of pinions, for the light of which it was composed flowed up and down, in and out, like breathing, leaving an impression like the waving of wings.

The angel stood alone, smiling at the crowd, and Lily held her breath. Then it turned and smiled at her. She waved one tentative hand. “Hello,” she whispered. But her voice was lost in the singing, which flooded everything. It was like nothing she had ever heard before (though later Scotty disputed this: The noise was only the musicians playing on the far side of the room). So they stood a moment, the angel and the little child of wondrous innocence, and then Lily moved closer to the figure, which bent toward her, responding to her silent question. At which she threw herself at its feet.

Matt saw a surging of the guests, a shifting like sand toward one corner of the room. A child had fainted.

“What's happened?”

The child had dropped to the floor, feet under her, and was staring idiotically at the wall, crying uncontrollably. Scotty, frightened, embarrassed, pushed through to her side.

“Get up, Lily. Don't crumple on the floor.” He pulled her arm.

“Yes,” she murmured.

“Well, do it! What's wrong?” Her legs were noodles.

“Do you see it, Daddy?” she said, making no effort to stand. “Look.”

“Lily, get up.” The angel faded at this moment and a wail rose from Lily's throat.

“Lily! Stop it.”

“It's gone. Did you see it? Daddy, did you look?”

“See what?”

“It was an angel.”

The Fundamentalist minister stopped to overhear. He was a tall thin man, an Ichabod Crane, the President thought, a Giacometti, a setter dog on point. Then everything happened at once, a flurry of activity. Matt, approaching, thought the child was sick. He saw Scott standing over her, as well as the tall, lean, balding and black-coated minister, and each was tugging on one arm. Scotty was ordering his daughter to stand up, and the minister to describe what she had seen.

“Let go,” she cried to both.

“What is it?” said the guests, and, “What's happening?”

“A miracle!” cried the minister. His voice could fill a cathedral without a microphone, and he liked to try. “It's an angel! This innocent child has seen an angel! There's an angel here.”

The President felt sick. He put one hand against the wall, while the room revolved.

“Take your hands off her,” said Scotty, pushing at the strange minister in black, who fought back angrily. It was the preacher's territory, after all, and Scotty, though father to the child, was trespassing.

“‘And a little child shall lead them,'” he boomed in his carrying voice. “Tell us what you see, girl.”

Lily's voice wailed above them all, a treble siren.

“Great balls of fire!” said the Episcopal bishop at the President's elbow. His mouth curled with contempt.

“Out of the mouths of babes!” cried the Fundamentalist. “On your knees, O ye faithless,” he continued, following his own direction in his enthusiasm. “There's an angel in our midst!”

“Stop that maniac,” ordered the President through gritted teeth to no one in particular.

“Jesus said, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto—'” But the rest of his words were lost in the babble of the crowd. Such is the fate of a prophet in his own land.

Scotty was pulling on his daughter, folding his child into his protective embrace. “Let go!” he snarled at the minister, who, still kneeling, folded his long body, legs of a heron, down toward Lily; and she lay curled in a ball on the floor—an armadillo, a hedgehog—covering her head with the fluttering hands and arms that the two men tried to pry apart.

The President pushed forward. “Let me through,” he ordered, and the people fell back respectfully, so that he managed to put one hand on Scotty's arm just as he was drawing back to slug the minister.

“Hey, Scott.” As if addressing a horse, calmingly, soothingly. He held the father's shoulder momentarily, then leaned down to pick up Lily, and, because he was President, the other two relinquished their ambitious holds.

“You get this bastard away from my daughter.” Scotty's eyes burned with rage.

“It's a miracle!” cried the minister again, still carried away by the event, though dampened by uneasiness, for perhaps she had seen nothing and was fooling everyone. If so, it was too late: He had placed his bets when he first opened his mouth; he could not renege. “She saw an angel, Mr. President. An angel in this very room, right at Christmastime.”

“Shut up,” said the President in annoyance. Then, “Did you?” he asked softly, lifting the child in his arms.

I wish I could say that for one moment he was face-to-face with this enchanting child. She was five, almost six, with an air of such innocent, clear wonder, lips parted, that he could not prevent a smile. But that's not what happened. It was awful. He took her in his arms—all elbows, knees, and joints. A President, an Oriental satrap, is accustomed to respect, not a squirming, slippery, twisting five-year-old slithering out of his arms! He grinned valiantly at the surrounding guests, and almost slung her into her father's grip, where she buried her face in his rough woolen jacket and wept.

Humiliated, Matt patted her gently on the back and turned to laugh at the assembled guests, and was now struck by the silence in the place, for the musicians had stopped playing too, and the crowd had hushed.

“Well, it's good news.” He laughed lightly, including the Fundamentalist in his banter. “Any angel's welcome. We could use a host of angels here, protecting us in these times. I‘ve seen lots of angels myself,” he said with a mad, deceitful grin that devastated his admirers and broke them into little puffs of laughter. “That's what Christmas is about—Good Tidings, Peace among us all. So lift your glasses and join me in a toast.” He paused to look around and ascertain the mood had broken. “To Peace,” he said, with his drink lifted toward the ceiling so all could see. “To the end of the wars. To our collected friends, to Christmas, and to winning the next election.”

It was the last phrase that caused the outburst of applause. A shout of approval filled the room and fists were raised high and closed palms with the two-finger V, and voices too, as the musicians struck up the election song.

The President leaned over to Scotty. “Take her to my office,” he said, “I'll meet you there. I‘ll get Jim Sierra to show you.”

“I'm taking her home, Mr. President,” said the reporter. “Come on, honey. We're going home.”

“Don't leave, don't leave,” cried the Fundamentalist preacher, rising on tiptoe, a flamingo now as his face flushed red with emotion. “Who are you? What's your name?” he asked the child, who turned her face again, sheltering in her father's lapels.

“Take her to my office,” the President ordered, waving Jim up to his side. He didn't want to let her out of his sight any more than the minister did. And now a curious thing occurred. Scotty, who would have cut off his fingertip for five minutes alone in the President's office, entirely forgot his work.

“No. We're going home.” Brusquely, angrily, he picked her up and pushed through to the hallway, where he snatched their coats from the checkroom and, holding coats as well as Lily in his arms, strode off.

There was nothing the President could do.

Outside the snow fell on an empty Ellipse. Inside, the First Lady smiled at constituents and wished her headache would go away, or that she had time to dream of her lover in California. She had not been in the room when the little girl had fainted, had not understood what the ruckus was about. The Fundamentalist minister attached himself to Jim Sierra, demanding to know the name of the father and child, and then, distracted by reporters, repeated and elaborated on the vision he envisioned she had seen. His deep voice resonated with the words of God. Jim went to the bar to down another drink, and wondered if his wife was sleeping with Scotty Bauer, whom he'd seen talking with her, the bitch, in easy intimacy, or if, as she pretended, they'd never met before that night.