They were in the garden having a Labor Day barbecue when the President stepped on the baby. He heard a cracking sound, looked down—he was wearing his new boots—and saw the baby's bloodied head under his right foot. The security detail rushed forward and hustled him away. Fortunately, there were no reporters present. An ambulance was called, however, so it was only a matter of minutes before the media, eavesdropping on the police radio channels, was alerted to an incident at the White House. Sirens wailed, satellite dishes hummed, a press conference was called.
"Ladies and Gentlemen there is absolutely no truth to the allegation..."
And so on and so on.
That night the president lay in bed with his Brazilian masseuse. The woman, who was about twenty-five years old at the time, had chocolat au lait skin and amber eyes. She had smuggled herself into the country in a basket filled with non- poisonous tropical snakes and had required plastic surgery to remove the scars. The woman, a refugee from poverty and travail, had been rescued from incarceration at the detention center by the President himself in a public relations display.
"The president has rescued ... "
And so on and so on.
The president had paid for the surgery out of his private account. During her recuperation, the Brazilian masseuse was given a room with bath at the White House and she was still there many months later. Every morning at breakfast, the president's wife ignored her husband. Her manner was haughty and she hardly opened her mouth when she spoke. A conversation through clenched teeth, shall we say. She was studying Buddhism and practicing compassion. This was her mantra: "I am not angry. I understand your needs." She articulated this subliminally, but sometimes it burst forth unwittingly into the chasm between them.
The president laughed. He had always found his wife amusing.
The First Lady suppressed a scream. She had no privacy, there were eyes and ears in every crevice of the newly gilded edifice, the center of American government and the Western Industrialized World, and if she hollered everyone would hear her, record her remarks, the inflection of her voice, the scowl on her face, and these would all be reported assiduously within hours.
"The president's wife is sidelined," began every report since she had entered the hallowed portal. This was a reference to her marital status and also to her life thus far.
Of late, she had found aroma therapy helpful, an antidote to the Brazilian masseuse. The scent of the candles, bath oils, and creamy potions obscured the odor of sex from the other end of the hall.
She had been at the barbecue the afternoon of what came to be known as "the incident," but was in the far west corner conversing with the Ambassador of Koomar and his elegant wife. They were discussing the latest fashion, well above the knee according to the current Vogue, when the First Lady heard the cracking sound. She thought, as did everyone else, that someone had snapped the bone of a chicken. Perhaps someone was eating in proximity to the small stage that had been set up for the over amplified country western band. They had not yet started to sing and the stage was empty, though the mikes were operative and had been fully tested.
But it was not a bone, it was a baby. The First Lady witnessed the kerfuffle as the security detail whisked her husband away, and then the paramedics arriving, and the mother of the child, one of the housekeepers who had brought her small son to work that day due to a baby sitter problem, crudely and forcefully shoved herself into the ambulance as the wind swept up her skirt and revealed her tattered undergarments.
"There is no truth to the allegation..."
The next morning, in a scheduled breakfast audience, the president's press envoy repeated this assertion to the assembled reporters. And in the afternoon, the First Lady perused the headlines with alarm:
BABY KILLED AT WHITE HOUSE BARBECUE (The Examiner)
UNEXPLAINED DEATH OF BABY AT WHITE HOUSE BARBECUE (The Post)
BABY DEAD IN WHITE HOUSE GARDEN (The Gazette)
PRESIDENT IMPLICATED IN BABY'S DEATH ( The Star)
Another press conference was called:
Reporter: Is there any truth to the allegation about the baby?
Another reporter (interrupting): We have heard that the Brazilian masseuse...
"There is absolutely no truth to these allegations..."
And so on and so on.
BRAZILIAN MASSEUSE HAS BABY IN WHITE HOUSE (The Star)
THE FIRST LADY IS CRUSHED (The Post)
One week later, as the President was hosting a foreign dignitary in the Green Room, the First Lady went out into the garden with a magnifying glass. It was already crisp autumn and a skim of vibrant leaves covered the hardened ground. Still supple in middle age, the First Lady lowered her body to the ground in one graceless movement, sat back on her haunches like a peasant in India had once shown her long ago, and sighed. It was true, she discovered, that the position was comfortable and she could rest for several hours and search the ground for clues with her magnifying glass. It was an illusion that she was alone, of course; she was never alone. The security camera followed her into the garden and within minutes an officer was at her side helping her to her feet. But she already had the evidence in her pocket. She returned to her quarters and placed it under the potpourri on her dressing table. Then she called the detective in charge of the investigation. "The President killed the baby," she told him.
When the detective arrived, she handed him the plastic bag with the evidence. This consisted of a clump of mulched dirt from the garden, a few strands of long reddish brown hair, one or two hydrangea petals, a bright red leaf, and a small tab-like label from the back of the President's boot.
The next day, with great fanfare, the President of the United States was arrested and released on bail.
"He is not a threat to the nation," the judge said.
That night there was a contretemps in the private quarters of the White House which has, unfortunately, not been recorded for posterity. By all accounts, the President had a towel around his neck when he emerged from his bedroom, stomped to the other side of the hallway, and pounded on the First Lady's door. She emerged, laughed at the President as he had laughed at her, and retreated to her chambers. On his way back to his apartment, he took the towel and flicked the security cameras off their metal brackets.
At breakfast the next morning, the First Lady and the President did not speak. She was reading The Post, he was reading The Gazette. Both headlines were the same:
LADIES AND GENTLEMAN, THE PRESIDENT HAS STEPPED ON THE BABY
This post is dedicated to the White House Press Corps. To be absolutely clear, it is a figment of the author's imagination.