has arrived. I wish it hadn’t. My husband is to be sworn in as President of the country today. But I don’t want to be First Lady. My breathing is tense because I’m dreading the commitment, the responsibility. I’ve locked myself into the bathroom off our bedroom, as if I could stall the day, the ceremony, the stupid festivities that I was forced to plan, or at least help plan, with my husband and his staff, which I’m told is also my staff. I have no desire for a household of servers, a team of assistants. All I crave is the simplicity of being left out of the spotlight. Don’t follow my every move. Don’t report on my clothing, my opinions. Keep your eyes off of my flubs, my pratfalls with facts, dates and the names of world leaders.
The bathroom exudes moist coolness. Good. My anxiety about today is making me hot; I need a bit of frosty air to steady me. The floor’s black-and-white tiles, in their neutrality, are just the right background my psyche needs. I close my eyes. If only I were relaxed enough to let the soothing warmth of my eyelids close over and tranquilize my eyes. But no: I tremble with agitation.
At least I’m safely alone. Our bathroom becomes my bathroom when he’s having one of his heavy-duty days, as he is today, off somewhere rehearsing his acceptance speech. His “I’m so eager to be your commander-in-chief I could…squeal. I could fling myself into the air.”
Oh, but I’m not alone. I hear someone outside the door, stepping around the bedroom. Of course, it’s the maid. She must be busy putting away my stuff, my stray stockings draped over the bed’s edge, the marriage bed for a wedded couple who would be supremely happy if both parties were content to live a public life.
She knocks on the bathroom door. “I know you’re in there. I see the light under the door. Are you alright in there?” she calls to me.
Pause. If I remain quiet, will she leave me in blessed peace?
“People are askin’ for you, wondering where you are?” A reproach tinges her voice, subtle enough to pass for respectful, but distinct enough not to be missed.
“I’m fine. I’ll be out in a second,” I answer, in a tone not trying for pleasantness.
With a grunt I lift myself from the see-through plastic seat I’ve been stationed on just outside the shower stall. I pitch forward to examine my face in the medicine-cabinet mirror, as if I have to act out my excuse for being in the bathroom. Crazy of me. I’d like to stop worrying about how people examine my every move. Their judgements shouldn’t dictate my actions. Oh, I’m a strong woman, except when I’m weak.
I stroll out of the bathroom. Take in the housekeeper in her sandals showing off her tattooed feet. “People should stop asking for me,” I say to her. “We have several hours before the ceremony.”
The housekeeper nods her noncommittal nod.
“I’m going to work out in the gym for about fifteen minutes,” I say, already ambling toward the room my husband and I call the gymnasium when we’re in our mock-formal, playful mood. That’s the mode we adopt when we’re trying to paper over the tensions in our relationship.
In the work-out room, I head straight for the treadmills, choose the one equidistant between the exercise bikes on the left and the wall of slender, vertical mirrors on the right. Oh, so many mirrors: they are the prison bars of my life.
Wearing my red-and-white ankle socks (or socklets, as my husband and I call them) and my stretchy off-white slacks, I click on the treadmill’s power button. Its rubbery mat vibrates through my body as it rolls, rotates forward—or is it backward?–propelling my feet into a steady jog. I press a number on the treadmill screen to accelerate the speed and soon I’m running on the machine, faster than I’ve ever sprinted in my life. The rhythm of my feet is too quick to calculate. The air around my head becomes a gust. Soon I’m floating up, upward. Sailing. Somehow, before I know how it’s happened, I discover myself flying in the sky. I’m over the city, leaving the city. The skyscape becomes a new shade of blue, unfamiliar, bizarre in a good way. Tiny white clouds touched with nuanced flecks of red attend me like cherubs. I don’t care what I look like, up here in the stratosphere. I smile the grin of the brave. Gazing down at the Earth, the shiny seas, I say “Farewell” as a shout, not a whisper.
