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The Schuyler Fortune V: Rose Down, Rose Home-4
Jack's routine for his own kid's bedtime was carved in stone. Each of the children had their own room and their own nanny and Secret Service agent. The routine never lasted less than an hour, started at the same time each evening unless a State dinner interfered.
He began with the youngest, Hailey. Just a baby yet, she sat in a rocker with him in his arms, sang folk songs, patted her hands together, hummed to her and bounced her on his knee gently. There followed the tucking-in' and touching her forehead as he said the now I lay me down to sleep' prayer.
He loved to watch her go to sleep but was trying to see if she would go to sleep by herself and sometimes would tiptoe out of the nursery and leave her to her nanny's care.
Jack Jr. in his pajamas would usually be sitting up with feet under the covers, hair still damp from the bath, yawning and waiting for his dad. He might make a silly face or in some imitation of one of his dad's traditional facial expressions consisting of lifted eyebrows and a closed-mouth tight smile showing teeth indicating the `let's all be cheerful now' signal; sometimes he just gave a quick, exaggerated pout with his whole face squinting and uplifted followed by a relaxed smile.
Jack Jr. was a powerhouse. Busy, focused, energetic, happy except when he wasn't, open, his feelings displayed on his face for all to see, he loved easily and was in turn loved by all.
His father was convinced he would never be a politician. The routine in his case currently consisted of a verbal synopsis of `Jack and the Beanstalk' which both of them enjoyed, the one telling and the one listening.
His son folded his hands, screwed his eyes shut and said an evening prayer consisting of `God bless mommy and daddy and Hannah and Hailey and grandma Carol and uncle Michael and uncle Marcus and aunt Blossom and uncle John and my nanny...' and forty dozen other things or people before running out of steam.
He would then stand up on the bed at the end and fall straight down backward on to his pillow, tuck himself in just so and lay on his side toward his dad, who was required then to give him a brief kiss on his temple, `but don't breathe on me, dad.'
Jack left the room at that point, having said `goodnight son, sleep tight'.
Hannah's routine was rather more complicated and varied a bit depending on her set mood. She, as was fitting for the oldest child, awaited her father in a small rocking chair in her nighty and cotton nightcap, an affectation she had picked up from an old White House portrait of someone. She had pre-selected the story she wanted read and her current favorite had to do with the life story of a girl growing up on Prince Edward Island.
"We're on Chapter 11 tonight, dad, starting with the third paragraph." She rarely let him remember where they had left off and was pretty sure he couldn't remember, a game they played every day. Dad is too old to think like kids, she would say to anyone who would listen.
"Old dads need lots of rest," she would say. "He's just too tired to think today." She enjoyed the game and he loved the intimate silliness. A graceful girl with long brown hair, she had a smile and a sly way of peering up and sideways above her glasses with her head slightly down and once in a while he would catch the glance when she left it on her face too long.
She would kneel beside him by her bed and pray for their mom, the President, their country and their world. She would pray for him, her little brother and sister, her relatives and any other situation on her mind.
Jack had no idea where that came from. Hannah would dismiss him with a small kiss on his cheek then and would pop into bed after he left. He would close the door asking himself who she was and where she came from.
Jack didn't pray with his kids. Praying to some `Father' in heaven didn't ring any bells for him, in fact it made him very uncomfortable so he just, well, didn't.
Early on in Barbara's Presidency, Jack had been informed that he must choose a program for the country's kids of some kind, following a pattern established years ago by First Ladies to give direction to the kid's perceived needs and probably to fill some of their own calendars. He had thought that one to death and decided that his campaign for the country's children should be Preservation of Native American Flowers' and Time to Exercise', the latter already hated by millions of school kids.
The former was his pride and joy. One small problem had risen since he announced that campaign. There was confusion whether the program was about Cherokee flowers or species of flowers `native' to this country. If the latter, which part of the country and did that include Hawaii, Alaska, Guam and Puerto Rico? This hiccup had been resolved eventually after a rough start. There were plenty of people who pointed to the confusion as one that would have never come from a First Lady's office.
He had found that most kids knew about and respected ecology and were quite willing up through some grade in high school to pay some real attention to it. By the time kids entered high school, they began to pay serious attention to each other, frequently ignoring ecology in favor of applied reproductive biology and the chemistry of human hormones.
Jack knew this day would come for his own children someday when they, in the early throes of pubescence, would eschew hugging and touching. He could not remember the last day he hugged his mother and father. He also remembered he had not seen them for many decades and didn't miss them. He gritted his teeth a little.
Blossom had told him that he would see them again in heaven. He doubted that sincerely since there wasn't room enough there for the three of them as he remembered the situation.
His dad tied one on regularly and his mother had multiple men-friends over who patted him on the head and gave him a dollar after their hour-long visits.
Nope, he didn't expect to spend eternity with them.
On the other hand, Barbara and the kids, at least so far, were prime candidates for heavenly bliss. His kids were nicer than he had ever been.
A trip to Morocco had been scheduled to help celebrate the Alaouite dynasty celebration. The current royal line there dated back to 1666, years before our founding in 1776. The Sultan of Morocco had been among our first royal friends. Royal Air Maroc service to New York was the first Arab airline granted permission to serve New York City, which it began from Casablanca, a route granted April of 1975 during the Ford administration.
Both Barbara and Jack were scheduled to attend the opening ceremony at the King's reception, a dynasty proceeding, to which many world leaders were also invited. They were to lay a wreath, visit with human rights leaders, visit with a few other friendly leaders and if time permitted, take a helicopter tour of the Atlas Mountains and shop in an Arab souk. Jack wanted to ride a camel. Barbara wouldn't be caught dead on one.
There was a travel office that coordinated Presidential trips, planning wardrobes, making detailed lists and checking them off, preparing background papers for the First couple to read before arrival about the country and people they were to meet. The office coordinated with the Secret Service about personnel, transportation issues, and what equipment to send on ahead. Usually the helicopters used to transport the President and her party were sent on ahead in giant Air Force lifters along with limousines and communication equipment.
They had already visited Great Britain, Japan, France, Germany, and Italy. Upcoming were trips to Mexico City, Toronto, and New Delhi.
She tried to prepare some remarks for the occasion in Morocco, decided to let the speechwriter have a go at it and turned to the two-foot high stack of documents to read and be signed or initialed, all in folders by agency or Department. The work was the most exciting thing she had ever done and the most important. She wondered what the previous Presidents had thought as they sat here in the room and shivered.
She didn't believe in ghosts. She did believe in history and knew that better people than she had sat right here and made difficult decisions with the resources they had.
Jack was upstairs putting the kids to bed, supper had been great, broiled salmon filets, Harvard beets, corn on the cob, roasted potato bake and chocolate ice cream with vanilla-marshmallow sauce, a great chilled Napa white wine for the adults. Chef had earned his keep today.
She had to get this done. They were leaving tomorrow evening for Morocco.
"Well," Carol thought to herself in Oregon, "I've been thinking all morning and not working. Time to go out and smell the roses." She had traveled back home the day before to the pleasant cool Pacific Northwest.
She gathered her gardening gloves, put her boots on, picked up her raincoat and hood and then she marched out to see her troops of glorious roses.
Her 'troops', as she called them, were a large collection of well-tended, well-fed and watered hybrid tea roses, a group larger by far, but younger and less diverse than the International Rose Garden in Portland, Oregon just a few short miles away. She had stolen a few of their experts and gardeners at better pay and benefits.
Now after ten years, she had a steady stream of visitors to her blog and photographers to her garden. Graduate students in botany visited on occasion to study some plant or process in the garden. The occasional perfumer visited, nose on high alert, to personally sample new rose fragrances and beg a cutting. Neighbors came over for tea and conversation in the garden gazebo.
She had experimented with cross-pollination the very first year and had several new hybrids coming along. She bred for hardiness in Oregon where little hard freeze was encountered in winter, but many nights of frost some seasons. She also loved fragrant roses and crossed two fragrant species whenever she could. Carol was impatient with miniatures. She hired an expert in pollination and fired him after about three weeks when it became apparent that alcohol was more important a friend to him than showing up for his work. She sighed.
The next expert was a workaholic and taught everyone on the estate except the cook to pollinate blooms and since everyone liked something new, any employee that wanted was given a corner of the garden to make new varieties. The process began in April and careful records were kept of the parent roses and the characteristics of the hybrid. Many factors were logged including fragrance, hardiness, disease resistance, size and color of the blossoms and length of bloom. One had to choose stable parents to be successful at cross-pollination. Oddly enough, the Peace rose was a great parent. Another case where art imitates life, she thought.
She had one friend who loved to knit as much as she did from California, a friend who came up regularly on her way to Tillamook to see her own children and grandchildren. Laverne loved roses and quiet conversation, was generous with her time, a good listener and couldn't have cared less about Carol's millions.
She had found perhaps twenty varieties of hybrid tea roses that grew well in the hot summer of southern California east of Los Angeles and with enough water and careful pruning, they did well every year.
Carol and Laverne had met on the only cruise that Carol ever took. A cruise from London to Athens with ports between, she had, perhaps for the first time, an opportunity to interface with new people who were unaware of her wealth. Those passengers on the trip had the safest trip of their lives, thanks to the extra security and the fact that Carol had traveled under another name.
Although her security interfered a little bit with one of the best things about cruises, anonymity when you want it, she had wandered up to a top deck one day and discovered a group of knitters. In short order, Carol had new friends. She and Laverne, a retired health care tech, had clicked from the start.
Laverne enjoyed teaching her new knitting moves. Carol enjoyed learning them and watching the men walk past. Then it was on to roses, health care, men, politics, food, then back to knitting, a topic of which they never tired. Each topic was punctuated with grandchild comparisons in a generic way.
Laverne didn't find out that Carol had a famous daughter for some time after meeting her.
Laverne had Skyped with Carol earlier in the week and talked about her upcoming birthday in a year.
In any event, Barbara and Jack had left the kids in Washington, D.C. on Air Force One and were headed to Morocco to lead the American delegation for the royal festivities.
The conversation was brief and cheerful.
In a souk in Casablanca, not far from the city center, two men spoke in a pounded brass shop, behind a carpet shop, itself behind a vegetable stall.
The incessant pounding of the brass being hammered into decorative pitchers and other objects masked their conversation.
A final payment for services rendered passed hands, a question or two about arrangements, a final blessing Allah Akbar' and a command to be strong evoked the curiously flat voice of the bomber, Insha'Allah' and they quickly turned away from each other and out into the carpet shop, through the vegetable stand, into the streets, out of the souk, never to meet again.
The bomber had finished his work weeks before, cleared the design and final equipment with the man from Yemen and now only had to finish the plan. He ate his supper of flat bread and hummus with cool cucumbers and tomatoes with sea salt. He would eat no breakfast tomorrow, nothing after midnight. He carried a train ticket, one way, to Marrakesh in one pocket and under a light cotton outer jacket, the device.
He finished reciting his evening prayers, hoping to wound the `Great Satan' and achieve comfort and notice in the hereafter.
Carol finished her garden work, ate supper, some cold chicken, potato salad, baked beans and a glass of white wine and later that evening turned to the evening news. She had felt uneasy that evening, a vague sense of impending trouble that she could not shake. She felt cold inside, checked the temperature inside the house and found it normal.
She found the remote and turned a TV on just in time to hear a CNN anchor saying "Breaking news from Morocco now..." and Carol, horrified now, saw a television banner in red announcing an attempted Presidential assassination, then a video as if taken by someone running in a building, yelling, jerking crazily up to the ceiling and down to the floor and sometimes then to a huge fireball, black smoke inside the airport, breaking away to another snippet of video of a Secret Service agent shouting into a microphone, "Where's Rose?" then to another video played over and over showing the giant Boeing 747, Air Force One, taking off from Casablanca starting with a rapid spinning up of engines, a lightning-fast taxi for a huge airplane, immense unbelievable power, an emergency roll, fast, steep, then high and hot to be away.
Blown away and suddenly weak-kneed, Carol sat down and watched the visibly distressed and upset anchorman, looking at his monitor then back to the camera and listening into his headpiece, assuring the world that live coverage would continue through the newly named CNN crisis.
As millions around the globe tuned in at their house or in front of a café or bar TV or at Wal-Mart looking at multiple new TV screens on the wall, little information was available.
The networks had the audience but little content to feed them. Lots of words kept bombarding the TV watchers as the anchor promised continuing coverage of the attempted assassination and broke to another reporter at the Landstuhl Medical Center Army, Germany who reported that sources at the Army post hospital there had unconfirmed reports that Air Force One was inbound with a fighter escort to Ramstein Air Base and to the Trauma Center at Landstuhl.
The CNN broadcast cut back to Morocco where a reporter was showing a background of ambulances and many injured and screaming victims. "The President is apparently unharmed, but the First Gentleman has been injured, found dazed in a hallway nearby."
He had been just a few feet in front of the President and had just passed a wall before the President did. "The wall may have saved... We will continue our coverage of..."