The Pastor cut him off. “So what? The BIPOC-GND endorses a racial registry to allocate reparations payments. This is not an idea outside the mainstream, and we will have it soon in one form or another.”
The man got fed up and walked away, leaving The Pastor to quip, “Can’t get away from politics anywhere, can you?” His crowd laughed politely. The practiced self-deprecation was gone. He oozed wealth and confidence, fully grown into his role as the de facto leader of the Christian Right, surrounded by every Republican politician trying to chisel him for an endorsement in a primary race. He’d come a long way since finding his name trending beside a #Cancel for decrying “the ideology of wokeness infecting film like a plague.” No longer chasing Hollywood tinsel, no longer a happy warrior for his version of Jesus, now he generated prophecies. From what I understood, his “Bible” was a strange alchemy of the book of Revelation and climatic apocalypse. Watching him from afar all these years, I’d thought it impossible that he actually believed his own bullshit, that he was anything but a grifter, but now, watching him, I had to wonder. I never told Fred about my night with him.
I was standing behind two people, clutching my drink with an arm crossed over my breast, and as if he heard that thought, his head turned, and his eyes found mine. His gaze was an unnerving horizon. He stared at me for so long with those crystal-blue contacts, I felt I had to say something. Uncertain words formed in the back of my throat, and now I was the one who felt infected.
“Jackie, come meet my friend.” I flinched as Fred touched my elbow. He didn’t notice, and when I looked back, The Pastor had resumed inveighing about the election. Maybe I would have dwelled longer on this surreal encounter were it not for whom Fred was dragging me to on the other side of the room.
“How you doing?” said Barack Obama, as Fred guided me into the former president’s circle. “Good to see you.”
I made a dumb sound with my lips, laughed at myself, held up a finger, and said, “Hold on. Let me swallow my spit.”
The people gathered around us laughed, though their faces might as well have been blurred out. In a room of people who prided themselves on influencing the workings of the world, it was transparent how much each individual felt the need to effect a gravitational pull. Yet Obama displayed none of this need, and the way he simply tucked himself into a conversation with myself, Fred, and the small crowd around us, it was almost a more powerful display. As he shook my hand and I introduced myself, I studied the deepening wrinkles of his face. He looked old, his hair entirely white, and yet he still bounced within himself, as much energy and vigor as when I watched him, at seventeen, take to the podium of the Democratic National Convention to become a historic fixture in American life.
“You were the first vote I ever cast,” I told him. “When I was living in Chicago, my boyfriend at the time, we had tickets to election night and waited nearly two hours to get in.”
“To Grant Park?”
“No, it was 2012, so that convention center—um.”
“McCormick Place.”
“Yes!”
There was a small gap in the conversation as everyone stood around smiling, and I realized I’d begun a story without a conclusion.
“So how was it?” Obama teased.
“Not bad,” I said, my face as bright as the red of his tie. I pretended to look over his shoulder. “So is Michelle coming? I only voted for you to get more Michelle.”
Our little crowd roared at this, and Obama’s laugh seemed genuine. “We all know she’s the entire reason I became president twice. Actually, Michelle is in Texas working with a new voter turnout project, and I’m stuck wining and dining all the barnacles on the side of our democracy.”
Obama gave a playful slap to Fred’s shoulder, and even though I wasn’t sure the quip was entirely playful, Fred was beaming almost as hard as I was.
“No, no,” said Obama. “You’ve got a good one here. Fred’s an amazing businessman, and one of the few people left who can talk to both sides of the aisle. Although, having only just met you, Jackie, I can already tell you’re the brains behind the whole operation.”
Hearing my name come out of his mouth was undeniably sexual, and I knew I’d be shamelessly thinking about this moment for days. The way Obama’s tongue struck the consonants, that timbre in his voice, the unfathomably deep eye contact he made. If he asked me to go home with him, I would have entirely forgotten about how much I still loved Michelle.
I felt my phone buzzing relentlessly in my clutch, and one of the two people flanking Obama—his body man, perhaps—touched his shoulder and pointed him to another man standing in the group. As Obama reached for a new handshake, I saw the text. WHERE ARE YOU?! CALL ME BACK! EMERGENCY
Only my sister could summon so much dread and annoyance simultaneously. To my dismay, by the time I looked up, Obama had already been cocooned by the group. That I’d so quickly gained and lost this proximity pushed a flush into my face. I told Fred I needed to make a call. Furious, I slipped outside to escape the din, not that the rain was much quieter. Hugging myself in the cold air beneath the center of the tent and away from the splash of the rain, I dialed Allie.
“Where the hell are you?” My sister’s voice in middle age had the sonic quality of an aggrieved stork.
“I’m at an event. What happened?”
“You’re supposed to visit Mom.”
“What?”
“When are you visiting Mom? You were supposed to go see her?”
“Huh? I am. In three weeks. After I’m back from Venice.”
“Three weeks? Are you kidding me, Jackie? I’ve been driving up from Saint Louis every other weekend for a year. I’m exhausted. The kids have so much going on, and I don’t have time to be Mom’s only support—”
“What’s the emergency?”
“When we moved down here, I told you I was going to need you to help! Hell, even Erik’s been up to see her more than you, Jackie. And he’s a deadbeat!”
“Allie, what’s the emergency?” I repeated.
“That you haven’t seen Mom in nearly six months. That she’s a mess and you can’t be bothered—”
“So there’s no emergency? Mom’s still Mom, and this is not, in fact, an emergency?”
“After Venice?” she screeched, circling back to the point I knew had upset her the most.
“It’s for work. Stop stressing out.”
“I’m stressed out? I have three kids! What do you have to look after? Who do you have to take care of? Our mother, Jackie. Our goddamn mother!”
“Okay, Allie! Christ!” I said it too loudly, so that a man smoking a cigarette paused from contemplating the rain and glanced at me. “Jesus. Okay. I’ll get a plane and go see her next weekend.” I immediately regretted the phrase even as it was leaving my mouth.
“You’ll get a plane.” Allie snorted.
We hung up. Of course, what really bothered my sister was the fact that she’d married a doctor, and they still found themselves struggling to pay for all their kids’ cars as they came of driving age. That I lived in a penthouse overlooking Central Park, and they lived in a chintzy McMansion in a St. Louis suburb. Through the glass I saw that Obama and Fred had been swallowed by the crowd. Rubbing my arms in the cold, I turned back to the falling rain, the sound it made against the city like the breath of a massive beast at slumber.
The following weekend I flew on one of Tara Fund’s company jets to Chicago then had my assistant arrange a driverless to Amber. Though I lived in the penthouse with Fred, I’d kept my condo in Chicago. I could have flown to the Quad Cities Airport, but I preferred the flat, bare scenery of the drive, a route I’d been taking since I was in college and my friends and I would journey to Chicago for music festivals. With the driverless, I could nap and then have my phone wake me just before my favorite part of the trip: crossing the Mississippi River near Moline. The windshield wipers pushed the drizzle aside, but the sun was breaking through in the west, and its light beamed across the river valley. A low cloud cast a shadow across the water and streaks of sunlight shot through as the car rumbled over the bridge that spanned Iowa and Illinois. The river was high, pushing right up to the yards of the dollhouse homes that dotted the banks. Allie was right that I didn’t make this trip too often, but each time I did, I’d feel melancholy nick at my heart.