The President's Angel by Sophy Burnham

of warmth and light. Then he turned to the window and saw the dawning of the new day, the cloud formations piling up beyond the trees, and felt his heart pulled out of his body by the rush of gratitude.
    He wondered if anyone could see his rapture. Sometimes at work he pushed the papers aside, or cut the conversation short, unable to bear one more word of distrust, or to play “put-down,” a game he had always enjoyed, though he’d called it “competition” then, or “playing to win.” Why had he wanted to smash and shame the other fellow? To win a point? For what? To triumph over another, only to discover he was alienated from humanity.
    He was too crafty to say all this out loud. He would push aside the papers and rise to his feet. “Gentlemen, we need more information. Write me a memo, Bob.” (Or Jim, or John, or Jeffrey, or Jed.)
    Neither could he bear the mystery novels any longer. He wanted something with more meat, though he could not have said what that meant. Or he wanted nothing to read at all. He wanted to dissolve into radiant light.

    Here is another reason he knew things were awry: His feelings toward his wife began to change. He looked across the dining room table at this woman with whom he had lived for thirty-eight years, mother of his sons, and there was the fresh-faced college girl now hidden behind a matron’s face, cheeks going heavy, and the skin of her eyelids wrinkling over her brown eyes.
    When you live with a person for many years, you think you’ve learned their ways. You set them in a frame and see that portrait even though it may not represent that person anymore at all, but merely the image that she (or he) has become accustomed to holding up to you.
    They had not shared their lives in years. Except in public. Political pretense, at which they both excelled. They held hands and smiled at each other’s grins on camera and waved triumphantly from platforms. He could put an arm around her shoulder and hug her to him, and she would wind her arm around his waist as the cameras ground. But as soon as they moved out of the crowds, she shifted almost imperceptibly under his arm, which he dropped; she moved away, her face composing itself into its normal wary look. Now the President found himself observing the heavy stance of her plump body, set foursquare against her anger and pain, the tension in her neck, or the looks she gave him these days when she said good night, a piercing, questioning glance. She knew something had happened to him. She assumed it concerned another of his easy ladies, affairs thrown in her face.
    One night he woke up at the usual four A.M. He opened his eyes to the dim light of the empty room. “Not here,” he said aloud, remarking on the absence of that one angelic image that now tugged always at his mind. Behind his eyes rose memories. It is impossible to get to the monarchy without having performed Aztec sacrifices, and lying there, alone and unprotected, he was assailed by his own betrayals.
    How many deaths had he dealt out? Most frequently it is the human heart we kill—ambitions or love or the creative instinct. But he was head of state, and the blood of living men and women lay on him as well. His policies, his acts, affected everyone.
    Nursing homes and nursery schools, food, transportation, business opportunities—all the stuff of living and dying lay in his hands.
    â€œI never meant to harm,” he cried aloud, and suddenly he was walking with Anne, hand in hand, across a college campus under the falling red maple leaves. “You watch. I‘m going to be President,” he announced. Her head was thrown back, eyes sparkling as she looked at him. He’d not thought of that in years. Or of their first two-room apartment, when he was still in law school and held a night job on the side, while Anne, then pregnant, worked at the university. They hardly had time to meet, against opposing schedules,