Taft 2012 - Jason Heller [21]
“Sit down, please,” said Irene, indicating a chair next to her bed piled high with newspapers. Taft picked up the heavy stack and grunted as he placed it on the floor next to an even larger stack.
“I never had much use for the newspapers while I was in office,” he grumbled as he eased his bulk into the seat. He looked at Irene, whose eyes sparkled deeply in their nests of pink wrinkles. Still, her skin almost glowed. She seemed preternaturally hale, healthy, and alert for one so old. Taft wondered briefly at the status of medicine in America. These days, it must be a veritable marvel of equity and efficiency.
“Thank you for writing me, Mrs. Kaye,” he began.
“Oh, call me Irene,” she said. “Just Irene. That’s who I was the first time I wrote to you. When I was six.”
“I wish I had answered you at the time,” Taft said. “What good is a president if he can’t take the time out to reply to a child, to help inspire the future?”
Irene shrugged extravagantly. “Well, the future is here. I survived regardless. And I must say, you now look young enough to be my grandson.”
“What has your life been like, Irene? That is, if you don’t mind my asking. These people who are watching over me now, they … they don’t understand. They weren’t alive back then. It seems like such a different world in so many ways. How did you make it to the twenty-first century without going mad?”
“Well, I suppose I did it the same way you made it from the nineteenth to the twentieth. It was gradual. You go along with things. And when you can’t, you let things flow on past you and try not to obstruct them.”
“That’s a sensible way of looking at it.”
“Sensibility may be the only good quality I have left.” She chuckled. “Half my eyesight is gone. My youngest son passed away over ten years ago. I still have my mind, though. And my memories.”
“Tell me of them, please. What was the rest of the twentieth century like? What have I missed?”
She seemed taken aback. “Haven’t your government people been telling you?”
He sighed. “Even if they were my age, they should be a century too young to offer the perspective I need.”
“Well,” said Irene, “I’d be happy to tell you what I know. But it would take a while, and you have friends waiting.”
“I know the perfect solution. Irene, would you like to have Thanksgiving dinner with me and my family? I could have a car sent tomorrow.”
“Oh, I couldn’t impose. There’s also this small matter.” She lifted her arm, displaying a tangled trail of tubes that led from a machine next to her bed and into her body. “They’ve got me all trussed up here. But I tell you what: If you happen to have any leftovers you’d like to bring me, I’d be happy to take care of them for you.”
He took her hand. “Of course. But only if you promise me that you’ll tell me more about yourself. I thirst for conversation with someone who remembers ragtime and Bob Bescher and the day the Titanic didn’t come home.”
“Bob Bescher! Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in ages.”
He laughed. “How are the Reds doing in this day and age, by the by?”
“Oh, dear. You don’t want to know.”
Taft looked away, lost abruptly in thought. “Baseball! I know, in the grand scheme of things, it’s a trivial pastime. But for some reason the notion that baseball is still an institution in this nation … it makes me think things haven’t changed all that much, despite everything I’ve learned to the contrary.” He put down her hand and picked up his hat and coat. “Did you know, Irene, that I’m the only president to have ever thrown the first pitch of the baseball season? In 1910, Senators versus Athletics. It was a big to-do! And my pitching arm isn’t half bad, if I do say so myself. Ah, what a grand day.”
She smiled. “Pretty much every president since