Charlotte Kramer: Madam President Part 13

"OK."

"When?"

"Now. Family theater."

"I'm on my way."

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.

Charlotte Charlotte stood on the side of the stage during Maureen's lengthy introduction and laughed at her quips while silently willing her to wrap it up. When Maureen finally started to wind down, she moved closer to the microphone and spoke so loudly that Charlotte had to resist the urge to cover her ears.

"I give to all of you my boss, the best Republican friend of a woman's right to choose that any of us will ever know, President Charlotte Kramer."

Charlotte cringed inwardly while the vice president led a lengthy standing ovation for her. Once everyone stopped clapping and sat down, Charlotte started speaking quietly and without looking at the text in front of her or at either of the teleprompter panels.

"I am one of three women in my family, and what I'm about to tell you is something that I was not aware of until I was an adult. My sisters are beautiful and talented. They have always been creative and successful in ways that I could never compete with. But they haven't always had jobs that provided health care. My older sister is a writer. Until she was thirty-three, the only medical attention she received came from doctors and nurses and counselors at the Planned Parenthood Clinic in her Berkeley, California, neighborhood. My younger sister is a musician, and she, too, turned to Planned Parenthood for all of her health-care needs until she got married at the age of thirty-one and was able to join her husband's health insurance policy. When she was twenty-nine, she had an abnormal result from one of her routine exams. That test led to others that led to a diagnosis of precancerous conditions in her uterus. She had a lifesaving surgery, and she is cancer-free. If she hadn't been able to turn to Planned Parenthood, her story might have ended differently. We are here to discuss issues far broader than Planned Parenthood, but at its core, both of my sisters taught me that the debates in Was.h.i.+ngton, particularly around women's health, are so far detached from women's lives that they barely make sense to people living outside the ideological combat zone.

"I know that the following two things are true. Men and women who are committed to advancing a culture of life are good, decent, and honorable, and they deserve our respect.

"And this is also true: men and women who champion reproductive freedoms also value life, but they believe that the freedom to make decisions about a pregnancy should rest with a woman, her partner, and her doctor - not with politicians in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., or any state legislature."

The crowd rose in thunderous applause. Charlotte waited for it to end before she glanced down at her speech text and continued.

"This disagreement has gone on for decades, and it will continue after all of us have left the political arena. My wish for you is that you speak from your hearts and fight for your sisters and mothers and daughters. Remember that the debate is waged from the hearts of not just those who champion choice, but from the hearts of those who champion a culture of life."

Charlotte had really hit her groove. She wondered why she hadn't delivered this speech years ago. This was the kind of president she had wanted to be. Penny was right. She really wasn't worthy of her children being proud of her for much of her first term. But everything was different now. She had things mostly squared away at home; her new vice president was opinionated and demanding, but at least she knew how to govern; and as Lucy had just pointed out, Charlotte would never face election again, so she was finally free to speak her mind.

She was so caught up in the crowd's enthusiastic response that she didn't notice Craig and Monty huddled on the side of the stage. She didn't see Craig scribble something on a piece of paper and fold it in half. And she didn't notice when Monty approached the podium with the folded piece of paper in his hand.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.

Melanie Iunderstand someone back here is celebrating a birthday," Melanie said.

She walked toward the back of the press cabin on her plane, carrying a small chocolate cake to Sandy's seat. A dozen candles were quickly melting on top of it.

"Sandy, you'd better blow out those candles before we have to crash-land the plane," one of the other reporters teased.

Sandy looked pleased. She blew out the candles and sat through an off-key rendition of "Happy Birthday." Melanie couldn't think of a trip she'd taken as secretary of defense that Sandy hadn't covered. They made a practice of celebrating birthdays on the plane, one of the many ways Melanie had set out to tame the Pentagon press corps.

During more than a decade of service at the White House, Melanie had always appreciated the White House press corps, and she counted a few of them as good friends. But the Pentagon press corps was made up of an entirely different breed. While White House reporters were often on their way up the ladder to be network anchors or cable news hosts, the Pentagon reporters would rather die than trade in their flak jackets and satellite phones for a news-reading gig.

This was something that Melanie knew all too well. She'd met Brian while he was transitioning from covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to a job stateside. He'd been given the White House beat on a temporary basis, and he'd hated it. He and Melanie had begun to date during this period - a situation that presented both of them with more conflicts of interest than anyone could enumerate. She'd ultimately quit as White House chief of staff. Four years in the job was enough to burn anyone out. But Melanie had also had Brian's career in mind when she'd done so. Fortunately for both of them, she'd returned to government as the secretary of defense, allowing his bosses to promote him to the permanent White House correspondent position, which he ultimately made peace with. He still complained about the beat and worried that he was simply "drinking the sand," as he liked to say - a reference to his favorite scene in The American President. They'd watched the movie together one night, and he'd stopped the "drink the sand" scene and played it for Melanie a second time after announcing, "This is what you do, right? You make people drink the sand?"

Melanie had nodded and laughed until she watched it a second time. It had led to one of their first fights.

In the scene, Michael J. Fox's character, an idealistic political staffer, was urging the president to get into the ring and defend himself against character attacks. Fox's character, Lewis, explained: "People want leaders.h.i.+p. They are so thirsty for it they will crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand."

It had set Melanie off that night. She'd stood up and started gathering her things. "You know what? You're an a.s.shole," she'd said to Brian.

"What?"

"And you should insist that they don't ram the White House beat down your throat. You should demand that they send you back to Iraq, where you can do real journalism," she'd added angrily.

"Are you seriously mad at me because I like this movie? It's from 1995, and it's just a corny movie about a president who falls in love with a lobbyist."

"Don't try to make me feel stupid for being insulted. You suggested that my entire existence is about selling people a pile of bulls.h.i.+t. You said that it's my job to make people drink the sand, right?"

"I was mostly trying to figure out which character you would be in this movie."

"Don't make a joke of it now."

"Come on, Mel, please don't be like this. Don't be this person who is so sensitive about her job that she freaks out at some offhand comment her idiotic boyfriend makes at eleven-thirty at night when we should both be going to bed."

"Unfortunately for you, I am that person. I'm also the person who makes people drink sand for a living. I'm sorry it doesn't rise to your high-minded standards. Maybe you'll meet a nice girl in Baghdad."

She'd stormed out that night. Now the memory made her laugh out loud.

"What?" The Was.h.i.+ngton Post reporter wanted to know why she was laughing.

She handed him a piece of cake that was covered with wax from the candles.

"I a.s.sume this is nontoxic wax?"

"I'd call that a known unknown," Melanie joked, quoting one of her predecessors.

He smiled. "Is that why you're laughing? You finally found a way to get rid of us?"

"I was remembering a fight I'd had with Brian when we first started dating. He accused me of making people drink the sand, a reference to-"

"The American President," Sandy and the Was.h.i.+ngton Post reporter said in unison before Melanie could finish her sentence.

"Exactly. Anyway, he accused me of being the person on the White House staff in charge of making people drink the sand, and I flew off the handle. I was laughing just now because that was exactly what I did, and on days like today, I'm so d.a.m.n relieved not to have those responsibilities anymore."

"It's ironic that he's the one drinking the sand these days," Sandy said.

"It's funny how things turn out," Melanie agreed.

Melanie always rewarded her press corps for traveling to the far-away locations that summon a secretary of defense with off-the-record candor on long flights. In her eighteen months as secretary of defense, no one had ever violated the off-the-record ground rules of these conversations. It was not in either side's interests to see these exchanges chilled or cut off by a leak.

Besides, Melanie understood how powerful the relations.h.i.+ps could be. She had worked in government long enough to understand not just how to work with the press instead of against them but also how to co-opt some of their most explosive reports to further her own policy objectives. She'd harnessed the momentum created by a five-part newspaper series on the staggering suicide rates of former service members by hosting town hall meetings across the country on the topic. With Warren's a.s.sistance, she mobilized Congress, the business community, and mental health professionals to fund a ma.s.sive public awareness campaign about the early warning signs of PTSD and depression. Melanie had also hijacked an investigative report on conditions at the schools on military bases by announcing the creation of a blue-ribbon panel made up of civilian and military leaders to develop a set of recommendations for on-base education reform the day before the report was published. She appointed the journalist who'd done the reporting to the panel. She understood that without them, her work and, more important, the wars themselves would go unnoticed.

"My kids would be in deep s.h.i.+t if they pulled a stunt like what Penelope Kramer pulled today," Sandy remarked.

"Penny and Charlotte have always had a love-hate relations.h.i.+p," Melanie said.

Her press was obsessed with the behind-the-curtain details about the Kramer family. Despite Melanie's best attempts to redirect the conversation to the trip to Iraq, her reporters wanted to gossip about the president.

"Why did she take her husband back after he carried on for years with a White House reporter?" another reporter asked.

"And why the h.e.l.l did she hire his former mistress as her spokesperson?"

Melanie shook her head. "Come on, guys. We've beaten these issues to death. And it's not as if President Kramer is the first politician to experience challenges in her personal life. There are more power couples in marriage counseling in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., than anywhere else in the world. It's unavoidable when people work in jobs that force them to spend so much time with their colleagues and on the road with the likes of you guys."

"Madam Secretary, we're off the record here, right?"

"I hope so."

"You're a high-profile woman working at the highest levels of government."

"Why, thank you."

"I know we've discussed it before, but I'm curious what you think it says to other women that she takes her husband back, acts like a doormat when her teenage daughter rebels against her, and invites her husband's former girlfriend onto the White House staff?"

Melanie shook her head with mock exasperation. She knew they would never tire of asking these sorts of questions, but she refused to divulge any information about the inner workings of Charlotte's tortured soul.

"It says that she is a glutton for punishment," Sandy remarked.

Melanie's theory wasn't too far off from Sandy's observation. Melanie believed that Charlotte felt she deserved to be treated badly by Peter and Penny as punishment for having a job that took her away from them when she felt that they'd needed her most. The truth was more complicated than that. Charlotte had a right to pursue her career. Melanie wished that she'd stop accepting responsibility for everything that went wrong in the lives of her husband and children.

"One thing I observed that makes Kramer unique is that she doesn't blame anyone else for the things that transpire in her life. She sees herself as the only person who determines the outcome of her relations.h.i.+ps. I'm certain that she didn't call Penny and yell at her this morning. In fact, she probably called Penny and had a pretty adult conversation with her."

"I don't get it. It doesn't say anything good about female leaders.h.i.+p if they have to put up with this kind of c.r.a.p," Sandy added.

"Charlotte doesn't offer herself up as an example for anyone. To her credit, she's honest about her shortcomings and doesn't spend a lot of time thinking about how her decisions about her personal life are viewed by others."

"I bet she thinks about it more than she lets on. I've heard that her closest staffer these days is Warren. Politico ran a story last week saying that he does focus groups for everything. Did you guys do that when you were chief of staff?"

"In the interest of disclosure, Warren is my husband's best friend, and I am quite fond of him myself."

"Do you accept these new polls that show the president and vice president hovering above sixty-percent job approval, or do you think those are honeymoon numbers?" Sandy asked.

Before Melanie could answer, the three-star general who served as her senior military a.s.sistant entered the press cabin.

"Madam Secretary, there's a call for you up front."

"I'll be right there."

"I'm sorry, Madam Secretary, it's urgent."

Melanie stood up and excused herself. As she left the press cabin, she heard one of the radio reporters make a mock announcement.

"This is CNN Breaking News. The White House announced today that it has shut down the Internet indefinitely, or at least until the first children are out of college."

Melanie turned and waved as she headed toward the front of the plane. "Happy birthday, Sandy. I hope you always remember celebrating it at thirty thousand feet with your closest friends." Melanie winked.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.

Dale Before she even hung up the phone, Dale knew exactly what she wanted to happen once she was alone with Peter. It had been almost two years since they'd stood face-to-face, and all of the feelings that she'd worked overtime to squash had rushed to the surface when they'd been together earlier. The timing was terrible. She had CBS trailing her, and the first daughter's Facebook crisis had added to her already nearly unmanageable workload. But she'd replayed the fantasy in her mind too many times to pa.s.s up an opportunity to make it come true. She'd imagined that they would simply run into each other and that they'd both realize that there was much left unsaid between them. The knowledge that this emotional reunion could never take place while Peter was with Charlotte, and Dale was with Warren, never dimmed Dale's hopes that a chance meeting would bring them back together. She'd long hoped that he had as many unresolved feelings about her as she had about him, but he'd regarded her with such indifference in the Oval Office that she'd been convinced he had finally moved on. It had been surprising and satisfying that he'd been the one to call her after their awkward conversation in the Oval Office and that he'd agreed to meet her in the place they'd once rendezvoused during a state dinner years earlier.

That encounter had taken place during the first state dinner Dale had ever attended. She would have done anything not to be at the dinner that night, since she was secretly sleeping with the husband of the woman she covered for the network. Dale had come through the photo line, and Peter had asked her to meet him in the theater. Against all of her better instincts, she'd traveled down the flight of stairs from the grand rooms of the White House residence to the ground level. She'd looked around to make sure that no one was looking, and then she'd pushed the door to the theater open to find Peter waiting inside. He'd had to convince her that they wouldn't get caught. Dale's date had been waiting for her upstairs; Peter's Secret Service agent had been right outside the door; and ultimately, Charlotte had ended up in the hallway outside the theater speaking to her cabinet member. They hadn't been caught, but it had revealed to Dale just how reckless Peter had become. In hindsight, it was clear that he'd wanted Charlotte to find out about the affair. Dale wondered sometimes if their entire relations.h.i.+p had been an elaborate scheme to get Charlotte's attention.

This time, she entered the family theater determined to explain her reaction on the day nearly two years earlier when Peter had surprised her by purchasing and refurbis.h.i.+ng the house in Stinson Beach. When he'd proudly shown her around, pointing out all the little details of the house that he'd hoped would please her, she could barely muster any enthusiasm. Instead of seeing the house as their haven, she'd felt too disconnected from the round-the-clock demands of her job, and she'd lashed out at him for buying it without consulting her. Now she had an opportunity to tell him how much she regretted everything that had happened that day. Even if he couldn't forgive her, he'd know that she was sorry and that she still had feelings for him.

"I should have been appreciative of the effort you put into making such a beautiful home for us. I'm still so sorry," she blurted as soon as she saw him.

He was leaning against the back of one of the oversized theater chairs. Dale's eyes were still adjusting to the dim light. She couldn't make out the look on his face. When he spoke, she could tell that he wasn't interested in her apologies.

"I don't care anymore, Dale. It was just a house."

"It was supposed to be our house. A place for us to spend time together when I visited," she said.

"The house was a bad idea. You were getting pulled in too many different directions. I shouldn't have added another one."

"No, the house would have been perfect. I was there, you know. When you and Charlotte went there after the impeachment stuff. I was down on the beach in the staff trailer, and I looked up, and all I could think of was that Charlotte was in my house."

Peter moved closer to her. "It was just a house," he said again.

"Stop saying that."

"Dale, we don't have to do this."

"Yes, we do. It was my house, and I want my house back."

There. She'd said it. Dale was certain that the little smile on his face was an invitation. Their physical attraction to each other had always been the central pillar of their relations.h.i.+p. While it hadn't proven sufficient to keep their relations.h.i.+p together, Dale was sure that it was too strong to keep them apart. She moved closer to him and waited for the familiar feel of his lips on hers.