Hidden Empire Read online

  And there Cecily stood with the suds drying on the mixing bowl, and with tears drying on her cheeks because she was no longer thinking about Reuben, she was thinking about what was wrong with the world.

  With other people's worlds. There was only one thing wrong with her world, and that was Reuben's absence.

  Mark was no longer mowing—the back lawn was done.

  In fact, he was standing in the kitchen, by the door to the laundry room. "You zoned out again, didn't you, Mom?"

  "I was having philosophical moments."

  He came up and, with the damp hand towel, wiped her cheek.

  She took the towel from his hand and wiped the other cheek. "Well, you caught me," she said. "Somewhere in there I thought of your father and the absolutely stupid reason why he isn't here with us now and I think I was conducting my side of an argument and the sad thing is the people I'm arguing with would never, ever listen to someone like me or ideas like the ones I believe in so it's a complete waste of time."

  "Dad is here, Mom," said Mark.

  "Well, in our memories, of course," said Cecily. "Except J.R, he was too young when your father died."

  "We tell him stories," said Mark.

  "I was watching you out the window," said Cecily, "and I was thinking that I'm just not going to be able to teach you how to be a man."

  To her surprise, Mark slammed his fist down on the thin part of the counter in front of the sink. Some water splashed. "I don't need you to teach me to be a man."

  "Oh, you already know it all?" she asked, more surprised than snippy.

  "Dad already taught us how to be a man before he died," said Mark.

  "Not everything."

  "You wouldn't know," said Mark.

  "Because I'm not a man?"

  "Because you weren't his child," said Mark. "So you didn't watch him the way we did."

  "Maybe you're right," said Cecily.

  "I'm right," said Mark.

  "So why are you angry with me?"

  "Because you think we weren't paying attention."

  "I don't think that, I think you were too young to learn the things you need to know now."

  "Well, you're wrong. I was too young to understand what it all meant, but it was like holography, Mom. Every day with Dad taught us everything about what a man's supposed to be, and all we have to do is remember and think and it's all clear. He taught us how to learn to be men. And what a man's supposed to learn to be."

  "So what does that mean? That you're going to be a soldier?" Because she feared that more than anything, and yet knew she should expect it, too.

  "I'm going to do my duty, whatever that turns out to be," said Mark.

  "Just your duty? You have no more ambition than that?"

  "See?" said Mark. "That's what I'm talking about. One of the things we learned from Dad. I don't care if I'm ever important or famous or even in charge. I'm just going to do what is necessary and right. That's a man's ambition."

  "Yes," said Cecily, realizing he was right. That he had truly understood at least that aspect of his father.

  "I don't want to be your boss," Mark added.

  "I don't want you to be," said Cecily. "And the President isn't my boss. It's not like I go in to the office every day."

  "Right, you're an independent contractor, but you only have one client, and you jump whenever he calls."

  "Not whenever," she said.

  "Right," said Mark. "Sometimes you make him wait until the cookies are out of the oven."

  "Speaking of which, the snickerdoodle dough is cold enough now, so get it out of the fridge and help me ball it and roll it in the cinnamon sugar."

  "I have to wash my hands."

  "I have to finish washing up the cooking dishes, so let's both get back to work."

  At that moment Lettie spoke up from the dining room doorway. "How come Mark gets to mow the lawn and roll the snickerdoodles?"

  "Because I don't snitch half the batter," said Mark on his way out of the room.

  "Well, I don't eat any grass clippings, but that doesn't mean I get to mow the lawn!" Lettie called after him.

  "You're ten, Lettie."

  "You let Mark mow the lawn when he was ten."

  "I did not."

  "I'll find the old calendar and show you."

  "Maybe I did, but because he's doing it I don't need you to do it, I need you to do other things."

  "You just think it's boys' work and all you want me to do is girls' work."

  "Whatever work you do becomes girls' work while you're doing it," said Cecily. "I consult with the President and I bake cookies. Both women's work, when I'm doing them."

  "You know what I mean."

  "And you know what I mean. Full communication has happened. We are both so amazingly smart."

  Cecily made her big-eyed face at Lettie, and it worked—as it always did. That face had made Lettie laugh since she was a toddler, and even now at the ripe old age of ten it still had the same effect.

  "If you ever do that face in front of my friends, Mother—"

  Cecily made the face again. "Then they'll all pity you and think you're so brave to have survived being raised by a crazy mother."

  "They already do," said Lettie.

  "Then they can't have any of the snickerdoodles when they come over."

  "It's Saturday and none of my friends are coming over today."

  "See? My punishment of your rude friends will be complete. They will get nothing from me, speaking cookimentarily."

  Mark came back in. "Why do you bother arguing with her?" he asked. "She just does it to keep you talking."

  "I argue with her because I'm right and she's wrong," said Lettie.

  "She's right," said Cecily. "My children are all so much smarter than me."

  "Are you even watching, Mother?" asked Mark. "Look at her fingers—they're covered with cookie dough. She's been snitching right in front of you."

  "I was not snitching," said Lettie. She launched into her adult-intellectual imitation. "I was preemptively rescinding Mom's decision to deprive my friends of their share of the snickerdoodles."

  "So what are you going to do?" said Mark. "Wait till you pass the cookie dough out your butt, form it into little balls, cover them with cinnamon sugar, bake them, and take them to share at school?"

  "Mark," said Cecily. "That is a nauseating idea."

  "I was just interested in how snitching cookie dough now will somehow get her friends the cookies they were being denied."

  "I never said I was getting the cookies for them," said Lettie in her snootiest fake-professor voice. "I was merely removing from the common stock of cookie dough that portion which would have gone to my friends, so that the community does not profit from my friends' deprivation."

  "I wish you kids would occasionally speak at grade level."

  "We always do," said Mark. "Just not necessarily the grade we're in."

  They settled down to forming and rolling the snickerdoodle balls and laying them out on the cookie sheets. The phone rang.

  Mark said, with mock impatience, "It's probably the President again."

  It was. Or rather, the chief of staff, Nate Ogzewalla. "Can you come in?" he asked.

  "I'm baking cookies," said Cecily, sticking out her tongue at Mark and Lettie.

  "Go out to Langley," said Nate, "and we'll get you in by chopper. No reason for you to fight the traffic."

  "It's Saturday, and the traffic won't be that bad, and I want my car with me so I can leave whenever I want."

  "Have we ever held you prisoner in the White House?" asked Nate.

  "It's a waste of taxpayer money to send me in and out by chopper."

  "It saves the President an hour of waiting for you," said Nate. "That's what that particular budget is for. Just pretend that all the money paying for the trip comes from some corporation that you particularly hate."

  "I keep thinking it comes from the taxes paid by some small businessman who can't hire two employees he nee
ds because he's so grossly overtaxed."

  "That's stinkin' thinkin'," said Nate. "You need to get back in your twelve-step program."

  "But I already 'let go and let Nate.'"

  "That's blasphemous," said Nate. "Better make restitution. Now if you don't mind, I have six ambassadors waiting here in my office while I talk to a cookie-bakin' mama."

  "Such a lie," she said. "You never let ambassadors talk to you personally."

  "Bring me a cookie. I want proof that you baked them."

  "I'll burn one just for you!" She hung up.

  "So who's tending us tonight?" asked Lettie.

  "I'm thinking maybe I'll put Mark in charge."

  "No!" said Mark. "Don't do that to me! When I'm in charge, they take off all their clothes and run around the neighborhood naked and then I have to lie to you and pretend that they were good so you don't feel guilty about leaving them with me."

  "It's not true," said Lettie. "He just sits and plays computer games and orders us to do stuff."

  "She's confusing me with Nick."

  "I know the difference between you and Nick," said Lettie. "He wins his videogames. You just sit there swearing at the screen."

  Mark pressed a cinnamon-covered dough ball onto the base of her nose.

  "Gross!" said Lettie. "You got some of my snot on the cookie dough!"

  "The germs will all be killed in the baking," said Mark.

  "I'm not allowing that cookie into my oven," said Cecily.

  "Not even to become the cookie you make for Nate?" asked Mark.

  "Mister Ogzewalla to you, buster," said Cecily.

  "Sorry," said Mark. Then he reached over, took the slightly snotty dough out of Lettie's fingers and stuck it into his mouth, licking the residue off his fingers.

  "I'm going to throw up," said Lettie.

  "No, I'm going to throw up," said Mark. "But I couldn't bear to see any of Mom's precious, hard-earned cookie dough going to waste."

  "It was bad enough being nauseated the entire time I was pregnant with the two of you," said Cecily. "Nobody told me the nausea would continue as long as you lived in my house."

  "How did I get included in the morning sickness?" said Lettie.

  "It was your snot," said Mark.

  "It's not like I put it up my nose myself," said Lettie.

  "I'm going upstairs to change clothes. Put the first batch in the oven and set the time."

  "How long?" asked Mark.

  "Oh, can't you read a recipe?" asked Cecily.

  "Oh, it's a research project!" cried Mark joyfully. "Lettie, Mom has decided to homeschool us!"

  Cecily smiled all the way up the stairs. She looked into the room Nick shared with Mark and saw her second son actually doing homework—though there was a save screen for a game on the computer, so he had probably been playing until he heard her footsteps on the stairs. But Cecily didn't mind—Nick's grades were excellent and he had played games obsessively before his father died, so she didn't have to worry about it as a concealed grief response. Unless it was after all, in which case she could think of a lot of worse things he could do in order to help him deal with his father's death.

  She changed into her serious clothes. She had developed her policy-wonk wardrobe years before and, because policy-wonk clothing never, never changed styles, and because she hadn't gained any weight since then—a God-given gift for which she did penance to all her thickening friends ("Five children and you haven't gained an ounce!")—it all still fit.

  Midway through changing she picked up her cellphone and called Stevie Popadopolos, a friend from church who had no kids and was usually glad to come sit with the kids at the drop of a hat. The kids liked her fine—perhaps because she spent all her time playing with Annie and John Paul, the eight- and six-year-olds, and left the older kids alone.

  "Should I bring Ticket to Ride or have you finally bought the game?" asked Stevie.

  "Europe, America, Germany, Switzerland, Nordic countries, I think we have them all," said Cecily.

  "And nobody's lost any train cars or destination cards or anything?"

  "Lettie removed every destination card that leads to Duluth," said Cecily. "But if you bring your own set, she'll just remove them from yours during the game."

  "Thanks for the warning. And … do I smell cookies in the oven?"

  "Am I that predictable?" asked Cecily.

  "Saturday is cookie-baking day at the Malich house," said Stevie. "Who doesn't know that!"

  "The President," sighed Cecily.

  "Oh, he knows, he just doesn't think cookies are important."

  "And his political maneuverings are? I don't think so."

  "I'll be there in half an hour," said Stevie. "Tell the President that he should send a chopper for the babysitter, too."

  "He only sent the chopper for me the one time," said Cecily.

  "And you're saying he's not sending one this time?"

  "Well, no, he actually is, but this is only the second time."

  "Seeya!" sang Stevie triumphantly, in her church-soprano voice.

  Cecily sighed and finished dressing in time to limit the kids to one hot cookie each as they slid the first batch off the sheets.

  The chopper had taken her above the traffic and the bridges and the river, Nate had his little bag of cookies, and of course Cecily spent an hour and a half in a conference room waiting for the President. Nobody even bothered to apologize for things like this—it was part of the President's life.

  Some politicians would make her wait as part of some power game. Lyndon Johnson used to put people in their place by holding their meeting in the bathroom while he took a noisy, smelly dump. But Torrent didn't play games like that—though Cecily suspected it was only because he was so absolutely convinced of his own superiority that he didn't need to put other people down in order to prove it to himself.

  When her wait ended, though, Torrent didn't send a flunky to get her. He came striding into the room himself and said, "Come on into the Oval, Cecily, we've got us a top-secret situation."

  "Meaning the conservative wing of the Republican Party has discovered you're a socialist? Or the dove wing of the Democratic Party has discovered you're an imperialist?"

  "For once it isn't politics," he said.

  "Well, since that's the only thing I know anything about, I don't know why I'm here."

  "So Nate could get your cookies, of course."

  "Did he save any for you?"

  "No, but I saw the cinnamon on his face."

  Which was his way of making sure she knew that he knew what kind of cookies they were. Torrent was good at having enough details to fake sincerity really well. Everyone had assumed when he first took office that since he had been a Princeton history prof and then National Security Adviser, he'd be good at foreign policy and a babe in the woods when it came to politics.

  Instead, he turned out to be a superb politician. Partly because he didn't have the stupid idea that his political instincts were enough. He did nothing, politically, without getting advice and learning all he could from the people who knew. Which is what he usually called Cecily in for—her outside-the-beltway perspective. Not that she lived in Arkansas or anything, but she had never lost touch with people who were outside politics. She had a good sense of what people were thinking in every region of the country. Of course she worked hard to stay current, analyzing all the polls and staying in touch with correspondents all over the country. That was what kept her valuable to the President—valuable enough that she was paid six figures a year for a few consultations a month.

  And her consulting fees came equally from the budgets of both parties—no way was her salary going to come out of tax money. For her it was an ethical issue. For Torrent, it was a matter of not wanting to have to appoint her to a position that would make their conversations part of the public record.

  "Political consultants don't have any kind of privilege," she had reminded him once.

  "They do in my White House," he
said. And so far she had remained out of the media gossip and invisible to the blogs, so maybe he was right. Or maybe nobody was going to say anything remotely critical of a war hero's widow. Maybe Reuben was still protecting her.

  When they were inside the Oval Office with the door closed, he said, "Just so you know, Cole got the idea planted with Bohdanovich and he's already talked to his Estonian counterpart, so who knows, maybe something will come of it."

  "Just remember that I'm not an expert on Russian and Baltic politics," said Cecily.

  "Hey, your ancestors came from Serbia."

  "Croatia. And that has absolutely nothing to do with the Baltic states. Or Russia, for that matter. Croatians are Catholic."

  "It's still eastern Europe," said Torrent. "And it's a good idea, if they really do it."

  "It might be politically impossible in Estonia."

  "I don't know. The Estonians have a very ironic sense of humor. I think they'll get the joke without anybody having to do anything so inflammatory as explain it publicly."

  "Why did you call me in?" asked Cecily.

  "Oh, was I off topic?" Torrent said, with only a little snideness.

  "I have a babysitter with the meter running," said Cecily.

  "Are you hinting we should pick up her tab?"

  "No," said Cecily. "But she did ask for a chopper ride."

  Torrent looked at her for a moment to see if she was joking.

  "Yes, she did ask, but no, of course I don't want you to do it."

  "What I brought you in for," said Torrent, "was because of an outbreak of a new disease in Nigeria."

  "Ebola doesn't happen in Nigeria."

  "Then it's a good thing it isn't ebola," said Torrent. "I don't think they've even named it yet, though it'll probably be called Ilorin, after the city where it first showed up."

  "How cute," said Cecily. "The name even starts with 'ill.'"

  "Right, you're not a medical expert. What I need you for is to vet our response to it."

  "Is it an epidemic?"

  "No, not at all. Just a couple of cases. It kills too quickly for it to be an epidemic. I mean, nobody who was infected lived as long as twenty-four hours. And it takes blood contact to spread it."