I’m thirty-two, he says.
Oh.
How old are you?
Twenty-four.
Ah.
So doesn’t your name get a little funny over the CB radio?
Yeah, people have some fun with it.
Yeah, like in Airplane!
What’s that?
You’ve never seen Airplane!? I think of how my dad used to say, And don’t call me Shirley, at least once a day, it seemed.
Sometimes they just call me Rog.
Rog , really?
Yeah.
Huh.
THE VIRGIN AND I drive down to Springfield. I’ve decided to see where this might go. He’s seemingly forgotten about the other night, now too geeked over all things Lincoln to worry about relationship definitions.
It’s twice the size of any other presidential library, he says.
Twice the size, huh?
And this is the only house that Lincoln ever owned.
Lincoln’s bedroom is on the second floor of the house. There’s a dark wooden rocking chair and matching four- poster bed. A tiny bedside table. We stand just outside the room with the other visitors behind a looped rope. Mary had a separate room, the tour guide tells us before leading the group downstairs to the sitting room. The virgin moves to follow, but I tug his hand.
Hey, I say.
He smiles.
I let go of him and step over the rope.
Cassie! he whispers.
Tiptoeing across the room, I wave my hands just above the surface of a dresser, as though an invisible force field protected it. I open an imaginary drawer, take out a hat, place it on my head, and admire myself in the mirror on the wall. I walk back to the doorway.
Don’t you want to get a little closer?
Well, he sighs. He’s not even looking at me.
Lincoln slept in this room.
He’s leaning in at his waist, peeking around the corner, getting in as far as he can without actually entering.
The lady said the carpets aren’t original. It doesn’t matter if you get them dirty.
Whoa-kay, he breathes. He steps over the rope as carefully as if the Great Emancipator were still there sleeping. With the pace and reverence of the grieving, he silently walks the room, finally stopping next to me beside the bed.
Is it everything you imagined? I ask.
It looks a little different up close, he says.
I take his hand and gingerly guide it over the white quilt. He sucks in his breath like he’s been shot.
I turn and sit down.
Cassie.
You can’t tell me you haven’t thought of this. He finally laughs, his face loosening, his eyes traveling to a place just beyond us—beyond this room and house, beyond school and work, beyond the Land of Lincoln and into the Land of Yes.
Mr. President! I exclaim and pull him down on top of me. I bury my head in his neck and put my arms around his skinny waist, but he wriggles, slides off me, falls to the carpet, then gets up quickly.
Jesus Christ, Cassie!
He’s out, stepping over the rope, creaking on the floor to join the rest of the history buffs downstairs. I fall back and let my head drop to the bed, wondering whether Lincoln traveled to Mary’s room at night or she came to his.
I GO TO THE MUSEUM. Sit on a bench in the great hall next to the life-sized replicas of the Lincoln family. Abe, Mary, the kids. I’m feeling a little Mary Todd–ish. A little buttoned-up and restricted, as though, like that famous first lady, I too have a head injury beneath my bon net. In college, I dated a Lincoln reenactor. Now, I’m not a tall person. Only a little over five feet. We got some jokes, no doubt, but you couldn’t blame them. That boy was a lot of limb. I think of the trucker and traversing the trunk of his body like a hardened landscape, like tundra. I spot the virgin at the other end of the museum. He’s walking down one of the branching hallways, getting smaller and smaller. The Lincoln reenactor had an amazing beard. It was dark and real. It had to be; they were serious about that shit. He played the Civil War Lincoln, memorized the Gettysburg Address, but even so, I would sneak up behind him when I caught him sitting, would push my finger to the back of his head.
The virgin comes back into the great hall and catches me staring at Lincoln’s crotch.
Let’s go, he sighs. He’s done with me. I’m over. And now he knows it too.
On the ride home, he does a good job of not talking to me, even when I turn up the radio so loud it hurts my ears. He lets me out, and I tell him to hang loose. His mouth moves, but I can’t hear anything he says because the Pixies are growling about ceasing to exist, about giving one’s goodbyes. He’s looking straight ahead, shrugging, moving his small, tight lips. I imagine him saying that I’m silly, loose, depraved, but the thought stays with me as long as Frank Black’s voice does after I close the door. I put up my hand and wave.
I mean, you can’t help but wonder. He was the tallest president.
IT DUMPS A FOOT of snow on us, resetting the landscape to something cleaner. The trucker texts me to say that he won’t be able to make it back to town until next week, but that he wants to have dinner when he returns.
I stay inside eating toast and drinking milky tea. I’m reading about the Bay of Pigs, but I keep taking breaks to masturbate. This has been going on all day, and by now I’ve lost count. My head feels like it’s bobbing a few rooms away from the rest of me. The rest of me moves slowly, and like a cat, I follow the sunlight coming through my windows, lying down in each bright, heated square. Once I’m warm, I get back into bed. I worry about how some smells never seem to leave the things that hold them. I’ll have to scrub and scrub. I think about first going to the virgin and giving him my hand. Here’s what’s missing , I want to say.
THE NEXT DAY I run out of jam. Wild grape and elderberry. My grandma makes it from scratch. It’s the only kind I’ll eat now. It’s dark and earthy, the deep purple of a gemstone.
From the porch, I see her inside shuffling to the door. I sometimes fear that they won’t hear the doorbell and I’ll forever be left standing there, waiting to be let in.
Hello, sugar!
I bend down to hug her. She’s as soft and lumpy as a pillow and smells like old wool.
Herb! she calls behind her. Herb, Cassie’s here! She pauses to listen for him, then looks back to me and shakes her head. We sit down in the living room—the couch, chair, and rug are all the same shade of country blue.
Did you have trouble driving with the snow?
No, they’ve plowed all the roads pretty well by now.
Well, you be careful out there. Don’t drive too fast. Her eyes are light blue and clear as glass. I’ve been thinking, she says, if we make it to our seventieth anniversary, you’ll have to have a party for us.
You’ll make it to seventy, Grandma. But I say it with as much certainty as anything. I don’t tell her how now I can’t stop imagining getting hit by a bus or falling down a set of stairs. How I sometimes try to decrease my chance of certain accidents by staying inside all day.
Well, we’ll just have some fun while we can, hm, sweetie? She turns to look behind the couch into the kitchen. That man, she sighs. Let’s go down there and bug him.
The walls leading to the basement are covered with pictures from old Life and MAD magazines my dad put up as a kid. The Beatles and Mia Farrow. Doris Day with a mustache drawn above her lips. We walk down into the cool air, and it’s like stepping into a pooclass="underline" one moment outside and the next within. The same old smell of damp and dust.