Madam President (12 page)

“Marguerite, come on, come on. What do we know? I have to get in the motorcade in five minutes now.”

“Here it is. It looks legit. I’m verifying with the Secret Service that this is actually her Facebook page.”

They both stood behind Marguerite’s desk and read from her computer screen.

“Everyone wants to know how it feels to be the president’s daughter and whether she’s inspired me like she’s inspired countless other young women and girls who will grow up thinking that they can be the president. The truth is that I never feel that way. But today she’ll take a stand on an issue that affects every woman in this country. My mom has always believed in a woman’s right to choose, but she never had the courage to speak up before. When she does so today, she’ll be doing something far more important than any other speech she’s given to date. Today, for the first time in my life, I’m proud to be Charlotte Kramer’s daughter.”

Dale read it a second time and then a third. She picked up a notepad and a pen. “Let’s go,” she ordered.

Marguerite followed. They went straight into the chief of staff’s office and flashed fake smiles at the CBS crew in his waiting area.

“We need to talk to Craig about something that’s still classified—it’s for a speech next week. We’ll be in there for less than two minutes,” Dale promised.

Craig was working at his standing desk in the corner of the room. He finished typing an e-mail on the MacBook Pro that Dale recognized as his personal computer before he looked up.

“Ladies?”

“We have a situation with Penelope Kramer,” Dale announced.

“And this arose between the time I spoke to you two minutes ago and now?”

“Yes,” Dale promised.

She handed Craig the page that Marguerite had printed in her office. He read it quickly and then glanced at his watch. He buzzed his assistant.

“Pick up, please. Ben, please tell Sam that Dale, Marguerite, and
I are coming down to see the president, and we need five minutes before we leave for the speech,” Craig instructed.

He slipped into his jacket as they walked the fifteen paces to the Oval Office.

The door was open, and Charlotte was skimming her speech when the three of them appeared in her doorway.

“Madam President, we have a situation. It’s something we need to discuss with you before we depart for the Women’s Museum.”

“What is it?” she asked.

“We’re getting press calls about this, and we wanted you to be aware.”

Craig handed her the printout, and Dale watched the color drain from the president’s face as she read Penny’s post.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Charlotte

C
harlotte finished reading Penny’s Facebook post and folded the paper in half and then in half again. She looked up at where Craig, Dale, and Marguerite hovered near the door.

“Madam President?” Craig offered.

“How much time until we leave for the Women’s Museum?” she asked.

“I can push the speech back half an hour, Madam President.”

“I think that’s a good idea. Can you all give me a minute, please?”

They exited her office.

She walked to her desk and dialed Peter’s extension in the residence. She forced herself to remain calm, but her teeth were clenched, and her overly caffeinated blood was starting to boil.

“Can you come down here?”

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“Just come down here, please.”

“I’m on my way.”

Charlotte was fuming. It was bad enough that she’d overheard her husband and college-age daughter trashing her earlier, but now Penny had made it clear that she didn’t have a drop of respect for her. Charlotte was beyond exasperated. She was also embarrassed that Penny had chosen to lash out in such a public way. She paced her
office and thought about all the different ways the press would put her on the couch and analyze her relationships with her kids. Penny had opened a Pandora’s box. In her petulant eighteen-year-old mind, she’d simply inserted herself into a debate about abortion while taking a jab at her mother. But the press would quickly forget the narrow context of her Facebook statement. Everything she posted on Facebook and said in public or to her friends would now be fair game for press scrutiny. Penny was a summer intern at Google, and Charlotte wondered if her supervisor would consider her a distraction from the rest of the intern class and dismiss her. It would serve her right, Charlotte decided.

“What’s going on?” Peter asked, stepping into the Oval Office. Charlotte handed him the folded-up piece of paper. Peter pulled out his phone and started to punch in Penny’s number as soon as he’d read it.

“Don’t,” Charlotte protested.

“Why not? She needs to fix this, Char.”

“Fix it? She can’t ‘fix’ this, Peter.
This
will be the news today. The fact that Penny is proud to be our daughter for the first time in her life—sorry,
my
daughter—will be the
only
story today. I’ve spent eighteen years protecting her from the prying eyes of the press, and now, in one bitchy post on Facebook, she has exposed herself to every critical, petty, and unforgiving reporter and pundit in the country, not to mention changing the topic from women’s rights to herself.”

“Maybe then she’ll have a better understanding of everything you put up with.”

Charlotte turned away from Peter so that he couldn’t see how undone she was. She took a deep breath and lowered her voice to a near whisper.

“I thought you had a conversation with her specifically about this.”

“I did, but I don’t control her. She’s her own person. She’s practically an adult.”

“She’s going to feel like one tonight when she leads the network news.”

“I’m sorry, Char. I told you I would handle her.”

“I thought she was smarter than this.”

“She made a mistake,” Peter insisted.

Charlotte spun around and faced him with all the fury that had been building since Craig had handed her Penny’s statement.

“Are you seriously defending this stunt? Because if you are, we have even bigger problems than I’d thought.”

“I’m not defending her at all. I think you should send her to Gitmo if you want. But when the press no longer gives a damn about anything you say or do, she will still be our daughter,” he said tightly.

“She is trying to punish me, and she knew that it would have the effect of driving us farther apart. You can let her know that she accomplished both missions.”

Peter was about to say something when Brooke and Mark barged into the Oval Office. Sam followed close behind and tried to redirect them into the Cabinet Room next door.

“It’s fine,” Charlotte assured Sam. Brooke and Mark wouldn’t have stayed out even if she’d asked them to.

“Char, it’s not that bad,” Brooke offered.

“You saw it?”

“It’s on the Internet,” Mark confirmed.

“Anyone who has ever had a teenage daughter will totally sympathize with you,” Brooke added.

Charlotte smiled ruefully at her friends and recognized that their arrival had guaranteed that the simmering tensions between her and Peter would have to be addressed another time.

“Sam?” she called.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Please ask Craig, Dale, and Marguerite to come back in here.”

They appeared instantly, and Charlotte wondered if they’d heard everything that had transpired.

“Madam President?”

“Craig, I think we should be as blasé as possible about Penny’s statement. Say that she’s a young adult with her own opinions about politics and policy and everything else. Maybe we wrap it into a larger statement about just how difficult it is to be the child of a president. We could touch on the fact that the debate around reproductive rights
can divide, and sometimes unite, families. Have the press office say something about how I appreciate Penny’s feelings about this issue and the other issues she raised on Facebook.”

Dale and Craig looked at each other.

“What’s wrong? That covers everything, doesn’t it?” Charlotte asked.

“Madam President, the first thing the press is going to want to know is whether you’ve spoken to Penny,” Dale said.

“Oh. Right.” She glared at Peter.

“We’ll call her now,” he said.

“I need to do this alone,” Charlotte told him.

She walked into her private dining room. The call went straight to voice mail, and Charlotte dialed again. This time, Penny picked up.

“Dad?”

“It’s your mom,” Charlotte said calmly.

“Before you say anything, I didn’t mean for this to happen. I thought the Secret Service would keep my page private. I didn’t think that anyone other than my friends would see it.”

Charlotte resisted the temptation to scold her for blaming the Secret Service. It was something a ten-year-old would say, not a college student.

“Are you ready for the media attention that’s about to come your way?”

“What? No. That’s not why I did it!”

“Well, you should turn on MSNBC or CNN in a few minutes, because it will be all over the news. You will be the big story today.”

“That’s not what I wanted.”

“Really?”

“No!”

She sounded panicked, and Charlotte was starting to feel sorry for her. She rubbed her forehead and listened to Penny’s pathetic excuses as her mind played through all the instances in which she’d ignored her responsibilities to the twins to do one more thing at the office. She felt a hundred years old all of a sudden.

“Listen, Penny, the press will move on to something else by tomorrow so let’s not lose perspective.”

“I’m really sorry, Mom.”

“I am, too, for whatever I did to deserve this.”

“It’s been building up,” Penny confessed.

“Obviously.”

They were both quiet for a moment, and it sounded like Penny had started to cry. Charlotte felt herself soften a bit.

“Do me a favor, and stay off Facebook today.”

“I will.”

Charlotte felt her heart twist into a different shape inside her chest. She desperately wanted to rewind the last ten years and get a do-over with Penny. Charlotte would change everything. She’d be there each day when Penny got home from school to hear about her day. She’d be the mom who drove the carpools so she could listen to Penny and her friends talk. She’d be the mom who took all of the kids skiing or to the beach. She’d be the mom who all the other kids knew they could talk to. She wondered which mom had been there for her daughter when she wasn’t. Despite her anger at Penny for taking her hostilities public, she felt a dam break inside her chest.

“Mom?”

“I’m here.”

“Don’t blame Dad. He asked me not to write anything.”

“I know.”

“It’s not his fault.”

“I’m not mad at Dad. I’m still mad at you.”

“I’m really sorry,” Penny said.

“You’re not a little kid anymore. You can’t just say sorry and move on.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“For starters, a lot of reporters are going to write stories about what you wrote, and they are going to want to talk to you about it. They will find your e-mail address, and they will figure out how to reach you through your friends. Some might even show up at Google or outside your apartment. I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t talk to any of them.”

“I won’t.”

“I’m going to have someone from the press office call you in a few minutes. I’d like for you to do exactly what they tell you to do.”

As she uttered the words, Charlotte realized that Penny must have suspected that it was possible her post would receive attention from the press. Most likely, it was also why she’d overheard Peter explaining to Penny earlier that morning that Dale’s e-mail address was the same as it had been. It made Charlotte wonder: Had Dale had an e-mail relationship with her daughter while she’d been romantically involved with Peter?” The thought had never entered her mind, but upon reflection, it was possible. Charlotte felt nauseated by the thought, but she did her best to sound the perfect combination of disappointed and forgiving as she hung up with Penny. Even though she was already late for her speech, she allowed herself to wallow for an extra moment about the fact that Penny had become so distant. She wondered exactly when and how it had happened.

Charlotte was racked with guilt about the huge chunks of her children’s lives that she’d missed. Where had all the years gone? It felt like just yesterday that she’d brought the twins home from the hospital. They’d been so tiny, but even as a newborn, Penny had demanded so much of Charlotte’s attention. She would use her teeny fingers to grab onto Charlotte’s hand, and she’d cry whenever Charlotte put her down to take care of Harry. Penny did everything before Harry. She walked first. She talked first. She was the first to join in with other kids at the playground. Harry liked to watch his sister. He watched Penelope walk around their small Pacific Heights apartment for weeks before he took his first steps. And he let her do all of his talking for months before he opened his mouth to say “Mama.”

Where in God’s name had eighteen and a half years gone? Charlotte wondered
.

She was already late for her speech at the Women’s Museum, but she wanted to make one more call. She dialed Harry’s cell phone. He was probably still asleep.

“Hi, sweetie,” she said.

“Hi, Mom,” he said groggily.

“Can you call your sister today?”

“What did she do?”

“Go online when you wake up.”

“OK.” He yawned.

“I’m going to be out there in a few weeks. We’ll have lots of time to visit, if you can make time for your boring old mom.”

“Of course.”

“Go back to sleep. I love you.”

“You, too.”

He was still sweet. He didn’t get straight As like his sister, and he didn’t do a dozen extracurricular activities like Penny did, but everyone loved him.

Charlotte retouched her lipstick and smoothed her hair with her fingers before she returned to the Oval Office. Peter was sitting on the sofa with Brooke and Mark, and Craig, Dale, and Marguerite were huddled near her desk.

“How’d it go?” Peter asked.

“Fine.” She didn’t want to rehash the conversation in front of her staff.