It was possible that one of these plain-looking little brown sparrows had sat outside the President’s window yesterday, been seen by him, maybe even eaten out of his hand, and then flown straight up here to alight in her garden. It might even have brought a molecule of dirt on its claw from one garden to the other. Something to link the two gardens. Wouldn’t it be amazing if, one day, she and the President met and talked about gardens and birds? And he might mention a one-eyed sparrow, or a bird with one yellow leg and one orange one who came to his garden for two or three seasons, and she might suddenly recognize the description of a bird she had watched in her own garden.
The American President’s picture sat in a simple brass frame in a froth of doily lace on the buffet. Beside it, brass bookends pressed a volume of the poetry of Robert Frost. After observing the birds and re-imagining all the possibilities concerning their migrations between various gardens, Adele reached back, picked the picture up, and brought it to the table with her. She held it out at arm’s length, turning it this way and that, examining the different effects of the light upon the President’s expression. The photo was a close-up of him sitting at his desk. She had clipped it out of a magazine the year he was elected. His eyes were uplifted, and he held his chin in his left hand. In her head, Adele heard, with crystal clarity, his peculiarly accented speaking voice.
“How are you today, Adele?”
His office was on the ground floor of the White House, his desk beside French windows that opened out onto the famous Rose Garden. Adele looked through those windows during the afternoons, loving the details—the wicker-backed rocking chair, the blue rug, the naval pictures, him.
She knew the Rose Garden well; it was where she went most often to meet him. It was easy for her to approach from the White House lawns; the security guards knew who she was and left her alone. She was able to slip through the hedge and stroll up one of the paths to sit on a stone bench where she could look in through the double French doors and watch him work. Sometimes the room was crowded with aides, and other times he sat in solitude, sifting through a sheaf of white paper with curled corners. Occasionally he looked out through the small windowpanes; sometimes, if he saw her, he waved. If he was too busy, she went upstairs to have tea with his wife. The First Lady dwelt beneath the snowy white linen tablecloths in a drawer of Adele’s dining room buffet. Every afternoon, Adele reverently lifted out the several glossy magazines that contained her and arranged them in a semicircle on the dining room table. As soon as the magazines were opened to the accustomed spots, the exquisitely beautiful young wife of the President rose up from the pages, filling the room with her presence.
Young, glamorous, wealthy, well educated, fluent in several languages, beautiful, a mother, a wife, a former career woman; she set fashion trends with her hair, her simple sleeveless dresses and her little pillbox hats; she was devout, refined, self-possessed. When interviewed, she spoke intelligently about art, music, history, and literature. The press even published a list of her most recently read books.
Adele greedily turned the pages of the magazines, devouring details, willing the First Lady into existence right beside her. Sometimes, Adele spoke aloud to her; sometimes the two women communicated only through their thoughts.
“Where should we go today? What do you feel like?”
Often, they strolled together, barefoot, on a New England beach, clad alike in pedal-pushers and loose, long-sleeved cotton shirts. Adele’s stout limbs grew long and tapered beneath these clothes; her large bust shrank, her plump upper arms became slim. She listened to the surf crashing at their feet and filled her lungs with salted air, thinking that it was good to get away to this type of life once in a while, to experience a bit of it, at least.
Other times, she and the first lady stood poised together at a reception in the White House, elegantly attired in white designer gowns and elbow-length gloves. Adele wandered through the crowd, recognizing faces of presidential aides, television journalists, and Hollywood stars, enjoying her anonymity, her privileged position as the mysterious family friend who had not been explained to anyone. The puzzled whispers about her identity thrilled her; she wandered the room gorged on her own importance.
One magazine photo showed the First Lady poised for an interview in a fireside wingback chair in one of the elegant sitting rooms of the White House. Honey-coloured sunlight poured into the room through tall windows, spilling over antique American furniture and thick, hand-wrought carpets. She told the American people the story of their own heritage, the details of the carpets and the cherrywood tables and the scenes in the paintings adorning the White House walls. On another page, the cameras even roved over the dark wood furniture of Abraham Lincoln’s bedroom. Adele hovered behind the cameras and the interviewer’s chair, a notebook and pencil in hand, pacing, listening to the interviewer’s questions, ready to prompt her friend with details about White House treasures.
Sometimes, the two women met earlier. Adele witnessed the beautiful young debutante floating down the staircase of her parents’ mansion for her coming-out party; at her private girls’ school the future first lady wore a simple strand of pearls and a pageboy haircut for the yearbook photo. Still another picture took Adele someplace unfamiliar, where she watched the President’s future wife, now wearing short-cropped, wind-blown hair, clinging to the rigging of her then senator-fiancé’s sailboat; and of course, again and again, Adele attended the wedding.
The bride wore her grandmother’s train-length rose point veil, which the wind picked up and tossed into the air behind her, like a mist. The groom wore a morning suit. The two stood on grass, on a sprawling mansion lawn with a simple, split-rail fence in the background. The wind had momentarily pushed the thick hair of the president-to-be down onto his forehead.
Adele was not the maid of honour, she was not a bridesmaid, she was not even a member of the wedding party. None of the family members knew her or even seemed to notice her. She slipped through the crowd like a ghost, finding a spot to stand where her friend’s eyes could find her. When the photographer called for someone to spread the bride’s train out across the grass, a flock of bridesmaids knelt down around the dress and pulled the yards of satin into a wide white fan over the grass. Someone tugged too heartily on the dress, momentarily tipping the bride backwards. The groom reached out and steadied her by the elbow. The bride looked directly, meaningfully at her ghost-friend in the crowd—if she had spread the train, it would never have happened.
An hour after learning of Linda Thompson’s pregnancy, Adele finished the dishes, made a pot of tea, and went into the dining room earlier than usual. She set a place with a teacup and saucer for herself and then brought the pictures out of the buffet drawers and laid them out in their usual semicircle on the mahogany table. She found that she liked a picture of the First Lady standing in the White House dining room above all others at that moment, and so she drew back her own chair, picked up her teacup, sat back, and slipped herself effortlessly into the room.
“I saw your little girl this morning. She’s the sweetest little thing, isn’t she? All those angelic blonde curls. You’re so lucky. It’s such a tragedy, the kind of trouble that young girls can get themselves into these days, isn’t it?”
The light from the elegant White House dining room window poured onto Adele’s dining room table and carpet, enveloping both women. Adele offered cream for their tea, eagerly telling her news, pausing to listen intently to the quiet, mellifluous voice of her companion.
There she sat, statue-still, all afternoon, gazing into the centre of a magazine picture, her eyes bright with emotion, her cheeks flushed pink with excitement. Every so often she would stir, her head would lean to one side, a smile would cross her face, and she would speak into the empty air before her.
