Fiction Friday #20

NaNoWriMo Part 3

By the time she got out of the school and into her car, they were running way more than an hour behind schedule and Cindy really had wanted to be at the air force base before her husband got there so they could get off the ground as soon as possible. She wanted to get back home and get to work. It was the only gift she wanted from Marc anymore.

Cindy knew it was odd for a president to leave the White House during Christmas. He was expected to be in Washington right up until Christmas Eve hosting functions and greeting important people from other nations and pardoning turkeys and meeting people who helped buy his way into the Oval Office and also meeting the people who failed to help get people of his party elected everywhere during the last election, and until Marc took office, that's what all the modern Presidents had done.

When Marc had first brought up the possibility of running for President, Cindy made him promise that at least twice each year, for two week stretches, they would spend time at home so she could work in her studio. When he was elected, he tried to talk her out of the promise saying that it was important for the two of them to be at the White House as much as possible because it would reassure the people, since the election had been so close, in the popular vote, at least. He also wanted her in Washington, near him, to show the traditionalists that, as crazy as some of his ideas may seem, being President may be his job, but being a husband and father was his real passion in life, so she couldn't spend most of the year 3000 miles away from him like she did when for the term he spent as a congressman. She stuck to her guns, though. It was bad enough that she'd be away from her studio for so long, but she wasn't going to be away from it all year long and she promised that if he didn't keep his word she would become an embarrassment to his entire administration and possibly for the first time make the American public want a divorced man as heir President. Together, they decided it would be best to take the time around Christmas and Easter since during their first eighteen months in Washington Gretchen would finishing her junior and senior years of high school and they figured since they had uprooted her three thousand miles already, they'd do their best to not disrupt her schooling any more.

A temporary studio was put together for her, complete with tools and a nice electric wheel in the White House because her having a real studio space out in Washington was out of the question, according to the Secret Service, but this temporary studio wasn't the same as the one she had at home or even one she would have set up for herself. The tools were all new and didn't have the same feel as the ones she'd been using at home, some ever since her first clay class her first year of college. The wheel was an electric one; in her studio, she used a kick wheel which gave her precise control over the speed she used to create with. The Secret Service didn't like her mixing glazes at all, let alone at the White House because they couldn't be sure that the powdered mineral and chemicals were actually what they were supposed to be and not something more dangerous, so there was no experiment for new, exciting colors, she could only used pre-mixed things that were shipped in from local colleges and she had to have faith that they wouldn't be awful. She also wasn't allowed to build a high fire kiln, which needed natural gas or propane to get hot enough, so everything she glazed had to be in the same little electric kiln she used to fire the green ware into bisque. What made even this worse was that she wasn't even allowed to Raku, where the potter took the still hot, low fired, glazed pieces and put it in a container full of pine needles or dry grass or paper shreddings (which the White House had plenty of) to create crackled glaze with deep, smoky black lines, or covered it to reduce the oxygen as much as possible to make wonderful iridescent colors, some looked gold, others copper, her favorite looked like oil on the surface of water. If she couldn't use the high fire to give the pottery great strength, she at least wanted to be able to use techniques that made her pottery more beautiful. On occasion, she could take her bisqued pieces to one of the colleges and use their high fire kiln or Raku with the students, but it was always a production that had to be made to look like she was there to teach the students or see what they were learning by sitting in on a class, with cameras around snapping pictures; worst of all, she was always expected to give some bullshit speech about how well the school was doing and how important the arts were for the students to get a well rounded education. And she was rarely allowed to handle anything deemed dangerous, which included hot pieces being moved from the kiln for Raku or even loading her pieces into or removing them from the high fire kiln.

Sometimes, to relieve tension or just to feel the clay between her fingers or to smell the fine dust left behind, she'd go to her White House studio and work. She was never left alone, though. People were always hanging around, watching her or coming in to see if she needed something. If she got up to go to the bathroom or answer a call from one of her kids, when she'd come back she'd often find her tools cleaned and put back in their "place" or if she was sculpting the bits and shavings that she left around her sculpture would be cleaned up and put in the bag with the rest of the clay block. All of this disrupted the whole flow of her ability to create. She needed the bits and shavings close at hand while she was sculpting because the clay had already been warmed and worked and had the same elasticity as the clay in the sculpture. With the tools on the wheel, she had to try and get things back nearly the way they were before she could start again because when she started she'd lay them out in the order she expected to use them as she coaxed the shape into the spinning clay.

The worst thing that ever happened when she had finished for the day, but hadn't finished the pot she was making on the wheel, so she covered it with a garbage bag to keep it moist. When she came back the next morning, she found it accidentally smashed because someone had tried to move it to clean up the wheel for her. She didn't enter the studio for more than a month after that and, for a while, tried to convince her husband to resign and go back to California forever. It didn't happen though and eventually she had to get back to her work because of all the inane photo-ops that were organized for her by the party’s staff.

The best thing about having a studio in Washington, though, was the easy access to a huge variety of different clays she had. All up and down those hills that Easterners called mountains there were clay pits all eager to serve the First Lady. There were several varieties dug up in California, but it was nothing compared to what was dug up from the Mississippi down south to the forests of Vermont and Maine in the north. Wonderful robust clays with a bit a grit perfect for throwing plates, mugs, and bowls that were meant to be used daily by a family or to lend its strength to larger sculptures that stood, dangerously, on thin legs. Fine grained clays that slipped through her fingers like a soap film for making delicate vases and other more artsy pieces, some so thin that she sometimes thought if she held one up to the light she could see though it. Some of the colors were amazing, too. She had one clay sent to her that, when fired into stoneware, was such a deep brown it nearly looked black. She'd had several different clays, coming to several hundred pounds, shipped back to her studio at home, in California, weeks ago so it would be waiting for her to experiment with it. True, she usually preferred to let the clay age for a few years, believing that the micro organisms that grew there helped to break down some of the more rocky components left, but experimenting with the glazes she created couldn't wait. She had to know as soon as possible how well they worked, or didn't work, with the new clays she bought.

The car jostled and they were through the gate. They drove across the tarmac toward Air Force One. Cindy had mixed feelings about this kind of luxury. She liked that she didn't have to deal with commercial airports -- the crowds, the noise, the security -- just to get home, but she didn't like the pomp that the Air Force seemed to think it had to put on when ever her husband used the base. She liked that she could be driven right up to the plane, but she missed having a warm walk from the car to the plane; even when it rained or snowed she had to walk and get wet and an umbrella could only do so much to protect a person when the wind gusted right into his or her face. She liked having a private plane with an amazing kitchen, chef, and staff there to serve her and help her to be more comfortable, but she could help but think that it was an extravagance that wasted tax money, an opinion she'd held since long before her husband seriously thought of running for President. Still, the one thing that had no negative side was not having to deal with other passengers who thought they were better than her. On Air Force One, only her husband was more important than she was, and if she didn't want to deal with the other people on the plane, she could walk away and there was nothing they could do to stop her. That was a luxury she would have paid thousands for on a commercial flight.

The door to the plane was closed, but the stairs were still there, waiting for her. Jan stepped out of the car, first, and took a quick look around to make sure it was safe for the First Lady. Cindy rolled her eyes; she figured that if someone was going to attack her on an air force base it was going to the Air force itself, or one of the other armed forces working with the Air force, and as soon as she was on the base it would be too late and there wouldn't be anything Jan, or any other Secret Service Agent, could do about it. So far, every Air force base had been perfectly safe.

Jan poked her head back into the door way and said, "It looks clear ma'am. You can come out now."

Cindy scooted from her seat to the one that Jan had been sitting on, put her feet out the opened door, grabbed onto the door frame, and pulled herself out of the limo. She straightened and smoothed her suit and took a deep breath to settle herself so she wouldn't try to screw with the young men and women "guarding" the stairs up to the plane. She wanted too, though. She wanted to be like Lucy in England with the tower guards, or whoever those guys with the pipe cleaner hats were called. Sometimes, she thought about stumbling in front of one of them to see if they'd try and catch her, or would they just let her fall like Gerald Ford. It could be fun; painful, but fun.

Before she took her first step on the tarmac, someone put a vice grip on her right arm. She turned and saw that it was her chief of staff, Joclynn Kernel, which had to have been an unfortunate name to grow up with. The name wasn't enough to explain Lynn, though.

Joclynn Kernel was hired simply because she was the youngest and least experienced person who Cindy had interviewed for the job. Lynn came for the interview and she still hadn't finished her Master's Degree, which had been a ballsey move. She also came in as a pretty blank slate. Yes, she'd helped to work on some campaigns and been a Senate page, but she didn't come in to push an agenda on the First Lady. Lynn had wanted to deal with some Take Back the Night things, but she was too young to be very forceful, so whenever she brought an idea or an even to Cindy, it was really easy to knock down with a distraction. Lynn didn't date much, if at all, so Cindy would just change the subject and talk about how well admired Gretchen, her daughter, was at school, always trying to wear some extra cover-up to hide the hickeys on her neck that she got from the boy, or maybe girls, or maybe both, there, then Cindy would ask Lynn how her boyfriend was and act like she forgot that Lynn's ex had dropped out of school and run off to Jamaica with some big titted ditz the summer before their last year in school together, nine months before they were supposed to get married. There were some days that Cindy was afraid that the evasion wouldn't work and she'd have to find another way to crush the younger woman's spirit, but so far, each time, Lynn's face would crunch up and she'd pull her long, dark hair in front of her face, to hide the tears, and start to sob. Cindy would, of course, apologize for the faux pas and hug Lynn back to a tearless state and then offer to leave her for some alone time, to get her thoughts together, and Cindy would leave.

One of Cindy's biggest fears, at least where Lynn was concerned, was that she'd finally go and discover the calming and centering powers of an orgasm, with or without another person's help, and come back to work a driven woman full of the righteous purpose too many of the young people in Washington had before they discovered how the soul sucking system really worked. So far, Lynn hadn't discovered the wonders of meaningless sex or a nice, warm vibrator, so Cindy was still in control.

"Mrs. Gandbuth, we have to talk," said Lynn, pulling on Cindy's arm.

"Cindy, Lynn," said Cindy, trying to free herself from the younger woman’s grip. "You can call me Cindy."

Lynn shook her head and said, "Fine, fine, but we have to talk."

"It can wait, Lynn. I'm getting on a plane. I'm going home. No more bullshit."

"Not bullshit," said Lynn. Cindy looked at the woman because Lynn never cursed. In Lynn's dark eyes was the usual look of uncertainty, but also some fear. "We need to talk. It's about him."

Cindy sighed. "What's the fuck up done today?"

"He... Well, he made an unscheduled speech to the press probably around the time you were getting into the car at the school. He, uh." Her eyes darted around like she was making sure no one was listening.

"Heeeeee, what?"

"He, uh... Well, he blamed the public for everything."

"What the hell does that mean?" Cindy asked, finally shaking Lynn's hand off of her arm.

"It means he stood in the press room and told them that everything that's gone wrong or going wrong with the country is the fault of the regular people out there."

"Shit!"

"And he ended his speech by flipping off the cameras and telling the people to," Lynn's voice dropped to a whisper, "fuck off." Her brown cheeks got even darker when she blushed.

"Okay. Okay." Cindy started to pace along the side of the limo, Lynn following along beside her.

"What are we going to do?"

"So, he ruined his presidency."

"Yeah."

"He's alienated every fucking voter in this nation."

"Yeah."

"He told the truth to the public."

"He did?"

"He's going to have his own party up in arms."

"Yeah."

"People will want to do to him what the French did to Louis the sixteenth."

"Damn."

Cindy stopped her pacing. "It's over," she said, "isn't it?"

"What are we going to do?"

Cindy turned to face Lynn and grabbed the younger woman by her shoulders. "I'd recommend getting your resume all up to date. I mean, even if Marc and I get lynched being the First Lady's Chief of Staff has to mean something, right?" Cindy let go and smiled. "Besides, if we're not killed, I'll see you in about two weeks. I promise."

Lynn took a deep, quavering breath, looked at Cindy with the glassy eyes of a person trying to hold back tears, and nodded.

"Good," said Cindy before she turned toward the plane. "Let's go, Jan. I've got an ass to kick."

Jan walked toward the staircase in her usual long stride, Cindy followed close behind. There was no press to speak of at Andrews today. They were supposed to get dramatic shots of her husband boarding Marine One on the South Lawn surrounded by Christmas decorations that had been around for a long time, some more than a hundred years. Marc had convinced her to go to the stupid school thing because the press on the lawn would be a huge ordeal that she didn't want to go through, and she didn't; she hated dealing with the press. If Lynn was right about the sorts of things her husband had said in the press room, it was probably even worse than usual.

At the stairs, Jan stopped, moved to the side to let Cindy pass, and asked, "You want me to find him for you?"

"Yes," said Cindy, patting her stomach. "I have to make my usual pre-flight pit stop."

"You want us to stay, or take off?"

"Fuck. I want us in the air right away. I'm going home. I'm going to my studio. And no stupid move on my husband’s part is going to stop me. Nothing, short of some sort of rocket could stop me from making this trip."

Jan pulled her sun glasses low on her nose and said, "Don't joke that that, ma'am. It's not funny."

"You're right," said Cindy, stepping up the first stair, "it's not funny. You know where to find me when you find him?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Good."

As she climbed the stairs, Cindy tried to figure out what she was going to say to her husband. She was angry at him in a way she hadn't been angry at him in a long time. Waves of heat worked their way through her body from her feet up and it felt like all the heat was collecting in her throbbing head. She tried hard not the clench and grind her teeth, she did enough of that in her sleep, but it wasn't an easy thing to do. How was she going to deal with this? She wondered if she should just walk up to him and start yelling, or was there a better way to handle it. She figured, though, that no matter how she started, the talk was going to disintegrate into a screaming match for all of Air Force One to hear. She was so happy that this was just a trip home, so there was no press flying with them. She could just imagine her muffled screams being psychoanalyzed on one of those pompous NPR shows by some quack who had never met her.

At the top of the stairs, someone greeted her. She wasn't sure if it was a staff member of someone from the Air Force. She didn't care. She wanted to get out of the cold Virginia December weather and into the warmth of the plane and then get off the ground and in the air heading to her home.

The first thing she did when she stepped through the door was take off her shoes. Her pain in the leg, barely heels. Of all the things she disliked about being a politician's wife, the shoes she had to wear were what she hated the most. When she was a kid, she never wanted to wear heels of any sort. They made it hard to run around and they made walking too much hurt after a little while and they all seemed to pinch in places regular shoes couldn't. The only thing she liked about them was trying to balance herself just on the heel parts when she got bored out of her mind by the wedding or funeral or whatever pointless family event they were at; she'd wobble like a Weeble trying not to fall down. Her mom and aunts and grandma had insisted that she'd get used to them with practice, but Cindy didn't want to practice, so she only wore them when she was forced to. When she finally left home to go to college, she'd stopped wearing them to any sort of function. If people couldn't accept her in decent, clean shoes with soles that totally touched the ground, that was their problem, not hers. When Marc had first gotten into politics, at the city and county level, no one cared about her shoes, but when he got into the state assembly and started getting invited to swanky parties that included lots of important people, her husband's people started hinting to her that it'd be better if she started to wear something that was a bit more appropriate for a woman who was with a man of his rank. So she started wearing them to fancy occasions, again. And as the list of occasions they had to attend started to grow, so did her time out of flats. Now she reveled in those moments that she could put on a worn comfortable pair of Keds and not feel any pain in her calfs. She thought that if there was a heaven, it must feel like a worn comfortable pair of shoes.

Hell, on the other hand, was what her pre-flight pit stop was supposed to take care of. She got air sick. Not the simple air sick of the movies where a person vomits once into a bag and goes on with the flight, no, she got air sick like most people got sea sick. She started getting queasy when she felt the engines start up. By the time they were barely off the ground, she'd thrown up at least once.