May We Be Forgiven Part 32

As I'm cooking, the phone rings, I grab it, thinking it's her-Julie Nixon Eisenhower.

"Hi," Nate says. "I tried you earlier and you weren't home."

"Teaching day," I say.

"Might want to change that outgoing message," Nate says, his voice tight. "It's still Mom."

I haven't been able to bring myself to change it-I can't erase Jane, but I can imagine how hard it is for him to hear.

"I'll get a new machine tomorrow," I say, though I've secretly liked hearing Jane's occasional "h.e.l.lo, we're not home right now...."

"I keep thinking about the boy from the car accident," he says. "We have to take care of the boy."

"I know you're concerned about him," I say. "I'll talk with your father's lawyer about what's being done."

Meanwhile, as glad as I am to hear his voice, I'm also wondering, does George have call waiting? What if Julie Nixon Eisenhower phones and gets a busy signal? As he's talking, I simply blurt, "Does this phone have call waiting?"

"Why?" Nate asks. "Are you beeping?"

"I'm not sure," I say.

"Well, there's beeping that's call waiting, and then there's beeping if someone is recording the call."

"Are you recording the call?" I ask.

"No," he says, "I know about it because we studied wiretaps in my Twentieth-Century Political Scandal course-it's a history elective. If you want to tape a call you must first ask permission, record the granting of permission, and acknowledge that the call is being taped."

"Interesting. In what context did that come up?"

"We were studying Watergate. I wrote a paper on Aunt Rose."

"Who?"

"Rose Mary Woods, she was Nixon's secretary."

"Of course," I say, proudly. "You do know that Nixon is my area."

"I know," Nate says. "The Nixon children called her 'Aunt Rose.' She was fiercely loyal," Nate says. "I'm very interested in loyalty, even if the person to whom one is loyal is flawed, criminal, or otherwise in the wrong. I'm also studying the evolution of the Dictabelt, which came out in 1947, preceded by the Ediphone, and followed, of course, by the reel-to-reel, and on and on to some pretty fantastic items, including the eight-track tape, which my father still has-he kept his copy of Iron b.u.t.terfly Live-it's red, and he keeps it in his sock drawer...." Nate stops himself, having perhaps revealed more than he intended to. "How's Tessie?"

"Good, except she has diarrhea. She got into the garbage."

"She loves garbage," Nate says. "Well, I better go, lots more homework to do."

"All right," I say. "I'll ask about the boy, but my bet is there's nothing we can do before the trial-it would seem like we were trying to influence the outcome."

"I hadn't thought of that," Nate says. "I was just thinking about the boy."

The next morning, bright and early-the phone rings.

"Sorry it took so long, busy day here," Julie Nixon Eisenhower says.

"I saw your father once at a distance," I blurt, so excited that I start sweating. "I was in junior high, and they took the cla.s.s to Washington. We went to the White House; your dad was welcoming a foreign dignitary-I saw him far across the lawn. And then we went to the Smithsonian, we saw Foucault's Pendulum and the flag made for Fort Henry by Mary Young Pickersgill, that's the flag that Francis Scott Key spotted and which prompted him to write 'The Star-Spangled Banner.' We went to the U.S. Mint, the Bureau of Engraving, and the National Archive to visit the Declaration of Independence." It's all coming back to me, spilling out of me; I didn't even remember any of this until the phone rang, and then it was like a door in some old part of my brain opened and stuff came tumbling out. "I love Washington. When I was younger, all I wanted to do was grow up and live in Washington and drive to work down Independence Avenue, past the Smithsonian, to the United States Capitol...."

"My," she says when I pause for breath, "you are a true patriot."

"Thank you," I say. "It's a thrill to be speaking with you."

"I'm not sure how up-to-date you are," she says, "so forgive me if I'm telling you what you already know. As of 2007, the library became part of the federal system of presidential libraries; prior to that it was a private library housing my father's pre- and post-presidential material."

"If I remember correctly," I say, putting my foot in my mouth, "there was some family tension."

She says nothing for a moment and then goes on. "The move into the U.S. Archives and Records Administration prompted us to do some reorganizing. Long story short, we came across a few boxes, materials that had been kept apart."

"What kind of materials?"

"My sense is that they were somewhat personal to my father, writings that the rest of us aren't familiar with, previously unknown doc.u.ments. What I'm trying to say is, we discovered something...."

"Really?" I say, rather surprised. "Something like what?"

She pauses. The line is silent, almost dead.

"I'm listening."

"Writing that we didn't know about," she says in a clipped voice.

"Journals?"

"Perhaps. Or something else."

"Love letters?"

She says nothing.

"Memoir?"

Again silence and then, finally, "Stories," she says, "short stories."

"Like the kind of thing you'd see in The New Yorker?" I offer.

"Darker," she says.

"Fascinating."

"In looking for someone to work with the material, we wanted to go outside the box, away from the usual suspects, well-known scholars whose opinions with regard to my father are perhaps a bit too codified, and Cheryl thought you might be interested."

I almost ask, "Who's Cheryl?" but catch myself and cough. "I'm interested," I say, "very interested. Did you know your father wrote fiction?"

"No one knew," she says. "I'd like you to take a look, and then perhaps we can talk further. Where are you?" she asks.

"In the kitchen," I say.

She waits.

"In Westchester."

"David and I are near Philadelphia. I could arrange to have the materials available at an attorney's office in Manhattan."

"I'm available," I say. "Mondays and Wednesdays I teach, and this Friday I've got a meeting scheduled, but other than that-wide open."

"Let me see what I can arrange, and I'll call you back," she says.

"Looking forward to it," I say. I hang up so excited, it's like being given the key to a kingdom. I throw Milk Bones to Tessie and litter the floor with cat treats. I open the fridge, which remains empty and sour-smelling, and remind myself to go to the grocery store for food and something to clean the fridge.

I owe Cheryl big-time and start thinking of what I can do to thank her. I can't exactly send flowers; maybe a box of steaks? What can you send that remains a secret? I could have supplies sent to Nateville. "In your honor a hundred, make it two hundred, jars of fortified peanut b.u.t.ter for starving children have been sent to Nateville, South Africa." Maybe I should buy her spa certificates-women love having their feet rubbed without the football game on in the background.

Meanwhile, I go back to the hardware store, hoping that I might run into the woman who needed new batteries again, and buy a new answering machine for the house. "I love this hardware store, it has everything you need and even things you didn't realize that you need," I announce to the old guy at the cash register, who looks at me blankly.

I put the old answering machine in Jane's closet and set up the new one-I let it speak for itself with a mechanical voice, "Hel-lo we are un-able to take your call, please leave a message."

In the late afternoon, the phone rings; I let the machine pick up as a test. It's Ashley, in tears. "Is this my house? Did I call the wrong number? I need Mom," she sobs.

"What happened?" I say, picking up. The machine automatically turns off.

"I just need my mom," she says.

"Tell me."

She sniffles. "I need to talk to Mom."

"I know, but she's not here," I say as tactfully as possible. "What happened?"

"I'm going through some, um, changes, and I need her advice."

"Changes?"

"You know, like, growing up."

"Did you get your period?"

She sniffles and doesn't say anything.

"Is there a school nurse or someone there you could talk to?"

"I tried. She gave me a big biology lecture and some pads and Tampax and said if I was religious I should discuss with my priest before using them, and then said, 'Actually, I take that back-use whatever you feel most comfortable with.' I found it all very confusing."

"What do your friends do?"

"They talk to their moms or their older sisters." She sobs. "I don't know anything about this stuff. The only thing Mom ever told me was some story about when she was in junior high and the school nurse gave her a giant sanitary pad. She said it was like a diaper, and she put it between her legs and waddled down the hall, sure that everyone knew she had her period. She was so embarra.s.sed, she asked to be excused from gym, took a scissors into the bathroom, cut the pad into four pieces, and used masking tape to attach it to her underwear."

"Your mom was always right out there on the cutting edge," I say, finding myself not exactly excited about the story but happy to be talking about Jane. "I tried to use the Tampax," Ashley says, bursting into tears again. "I put it in the wrong hole."

I am trying to imagine what she's talking about. I say nothing. "You know how there are two holes down there?"

"I think so," I say.

"I put it in the wrong one."

"How do you know?"

"It doesn't feel right."

"You put it in your tush?" I don't know what else to call it-I don't want to say "behind" because everything we're talking about is behind, and I don't want to say "a.s.s" or "b.u.t.t" or "bung hole" because it's all too crude when talking to an eleven-year-old.

"Yes. It hurts a lot. It was really hard to feel what was going on down there, and the first hole seemed too small, and so I kept going."

"Does it have a string?" I only know about the string because once I was trying to have s.e.x with a girl and she said, I have my period, and I said, I don't mind, and she said, But I'm plugged-and I looked confused. Pull the string, she said, and I did, and out popped a clotted wad of cotton and blood, and, thinking I was going to drop it on the floor, I kind of let go and sent it flying harder than I thought-it slapped against the wall, slid down, and landed at the molding, leaving a b.l.o.o.d.y trail.

"It had a string," Ashley says.

"Can you get a mirror and take a look?"

I feel like someone trying to land a plane who's only ever ridden on one.

"It's so gross down there," she says.

"I'll stay on the phone with you," I say. "Where are you now?"

"In my room."

"Do you have phones in the room?"

"No, I talked someone into loaning me her secret cell, we're not allowed to have them."

"Turn on the radio so no one can overhear you," I suggest.

She turns on some music in the background.

"Okay, now take a look with the mirror and tell me what you see," I say, thinking I could get arrested for this.

"I don't know."

"Can you put your finger in the place where you think you put the Tampax in-can you feel it in there?"

"I can feel it, but I can't reach it."

"Which hole is it in?"

"The back hole," she says.