The President's Angel by Sophy Burnham Page B

little life. So frail, he thought. So fragile that nothing is given us to keep, but only to lose, to lose, to lose.
    It seemed to him, lying there with the first pearl light creeping across the sky, that all of life is no more than that adjustment to loss: loss of pets, loss of parents, loss of children, loved ones, loss of homes and dreams. Whatever we value is taken from us. It was intolerable. But then it occurred to him how just this was, how right, how incorruptible, and how our task was merely to accept our loss, and grieve appropriately and give it away, because at some level there is no loss, he thought, hovering on the edge of insight and struggling to hold the idea that was already slipping from consciousness, another loss. For a moment he caught the concept that during our lives we must undergo loss again and again, loss of love, loss of people, loss of possessions, until we lose our possessiveness and see that only with loss is there possibility of … and he lost the words as he lost consciousness. It flashed across his mind—there is no loss—before he fell into sleep so sweet that Frank had to shake him awake in the daylight morning, where he lay in bed marveling at his serenity after such a stormy night.

    The next morning, he found Anne in the breakfast room, reading her mail through her half-specs and dictating answers to her secretary.
    â€œI saw the boys last night.”
    She looked up, disgusted. “Oh, Matt.”
    â€œGo away,” he said to her secretary, seating himself at the table, at which Anne quickly stood.
    â€œStay, Marie,” she ordered. But the secretary had more discretion than her boss.
    â€œI’ll wait outside.” She slipped away, hearing only Anne’s voice rising in annoyance to her husband:
    â€œReally, Matt. Must you?”
    â€œSit down,” he said quietly.
    â€œI don’t want to hear your recital.”
    â€œI think they came back to say that they’re all right.”
    â€œOh, for God’s sake!” She paced the room in agitation, pulling at her ring.
    â€œAnnie, it was all right. I saw them, I tell you. They stood in front me, both boys, looking at me so lovingly. They were happy.”
    â€œYou’re such an egoist, Matt. I cannot imagine why—”
    â€œAnnie, they came to tell us something.”
    â€œThen tell them to come to
me
,” she said. Then in a burst of frustration, “How could you do this to me? How dare you? I am sick of this charade. I will not put up with it anymore. You have your presidency. You have what you wanted. Glory. Power. So live with it. But don’t come to me with your guilty conscience.”
    â€œGoddamn it, Anne. I didn’t kill them.”
    â€œYou might as well have. And if not them, then all the other boys you’re killing in this war.”
    â€œGoddamn you!”
    â€œI do my business. Just don’t ask anything more of me, understand?” They faced each other eye to eye, before he turned on his heel and left, muttering about murder and wives.

8
    So the days passed into weeks as the planet raced ever faster toward the sun, picking up speed as it approached the finish line (the January ought-three perihelion, when, closest to the sun, it turned and began the long and slowing journey away from its focal star). Some people believed the days were growing shorter because Daylight Savings Time had ended, and others, more learned, because of the tilt of the autumn Earth; but time had no place in those later days. The President felt he only just got up in the morning and turned around once before it was time to fall back in bed. Time took no pause. He felt breathless as the year was running out, as if he were the figurehead of a ship on the soaring planet Earth, and it was running at 1,663,929 miles a day toward the sun, which was itself sweeping through space at some unimaginable velocity; and the solar winds were roaring through Matt’s hair,