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Unfortunately for them, I was never going to use that bathroom anyway, as the meeting room had a private, handicapped bathroom attached to it that is not on the building's architectural plans. Rumor has it that the special, sound-proof bathroom was built in the 1960s specifically for Frank Sinatra, who stayed there often and wanted a place to hide should any of his rabid fans try to infiltrate the hotel and track him down before a show (or in case he had a lady he wanted to share a quiet moment with where no one could find him). Slightly less than Presidential, but hey, it worked for me.
Both of the would-be assassins were caught and here I am, alive and well, but it's unsettling to know how close I came to danger there.
I would love to say that it's easy to leave work at the office for me, and that when I'm photographed vacationing with my wife and daughters, standing at the edge of the ocean with my hands on my hips and the wind in my hair, I'm truly just appreciating life and fatherhood and my own successes, but I'm not. That tiny crease you see between my brows isn't just me frowning in the afternoon sun, it's me watching my girls, wondering whether or not I've done anything to actually make the world a better place. Hoping that I'm leaving them a country that will do right by its citizens--all of its citizens--of every gender, race, religion, and origin.
But am I? Am I doing things that are moving us ahead? Am I making the right calls and serving the people who have trusted me enough to vote me into office? Will my children--all three of them--look back someday and see that I was a man who wanted nothing more than to make a difference? I hope so. I hope they know that, despite my imperfections, I was a man who wanted peace, prosperity, fairness, and equality. I was someone who loved big, loved hard, lived with his own imperfect human heart, and who made mistakes, just like anyother man. I understand I'm talking about myself in past-tense here, but there's something about midlife that makes a person pensive and wistful; there's a touch of mortality to life on a near-daily basis.
I know one day I won't be here, and I just want to feel that I've left the world a better place than I found it. I want to believe my children will understand that I tried.
"Ruby?" Banks is running across the small patch of sandy grass between her house and the guest house, holding the hood of a raincoat over his head against the onslaught of water.
She closes the journal and puts it beneath the blanket but does not move.
"Nice day to sit outside," Banks says. He shucks his raincoat off on the deck and tosses it aside. He swipes at the water on his face and notices her tears. "You okay?"
Ruby nods and sniffles, using the blanket on her lap to dry her cheeks. "Still reading Jack's diaries."
"Right." Banks puts his hands on his hips and stands there awkwardly. "Okay, I should let you get to it." He glances at the raincoat on the deck like he might pick it up and put it back on, but doesn't really want to.
"No, please," Ruby says. She pats the arm of the Adirondack chair next to her own. "If you aren't busy, sit."
Banks does as she requests. They watch the rain--which seems interminable--as it drives into the sand, leaving divots everywhere like little bullet holes.
"Can you tell me anything about Jack's last few months?" Ruby asks. "I mean, can you tell me what you noticed about his behavior and his health? I'm kicking myself for not being more observant, and reading his words in these books, I honestly have no idea how I didn't see that something was gravely wrong."
Banks nods. His jaw clenches and his eyes stay on the beach. "Right," he says carefully. "Well, let's see."
For a minute or two they sit there--not in silence; the rain is pounding the house and is streaming loudly from the eaves--but in contemplation.
"At the end of Jack's life," Banks starts gently. His large hands are resting on the arms of the wooden chair. "At the end, he seemed very confused. I won't lie to you, Ruby, I had a lot of concerns. At first I thought he might be drinking or on something--"
"Like drugs?" Ruby gasps, sitting up straighter in her chair and turning to Banks with an alarmed look.
"Well, it was worth considering. And he certainly wouldn't be the first human to collapse under the pressure of an intense job." Banks pauses, running a hand over his bare knee, which is still rain-slicked. "I realized pretty quickly that it wasn't that. He was slurring his words, but then he stopped speaking as much. There was a lot of nodding and he tried to look like he was busy thinking. Pondering. He let other people do the talking for him while he pretended to look at things on his phone or read paperwork."
Ruby's heart constricts. For as angry and as hurt as she's been by Jack, he was still the man she loved. The man she devoted her life to. It pains her to hear Banks's take on his last months, but she needs to.
"And could you tell that he understood something was happening to him?"
"Oh, definitely. In quiet moments, he looked...lost. Sometimes. He would sit there and look around, but instead of looking like he was waiting for people to deliver information to him, he looked like he was trying to remember where he was. I'm sorry if that sounds brutal."
"No, not at all. I need to hear this."
Banks sighs deeply. "I remember one day--we were in Pennsylvania for a meeting--he nearly fell in a stairwell. It was at the point where several of us thought maybe he was day-drinking on the sly, and I was walking up these metal stairs right behind him. He just lost his balance completely and fell backwards."
Ruby gasps and a hand flies to her mouth. “No!"
"Yeah. I caught him easily and the guy next to me reached over at the same time. It was totally fine, just scary. We sat him down on the stairs and got medical assistance, but that made him angry, which was out of character for him."
"That doesn't sound like Jack, getting angry. He certainly had his faults, but he was patient and even-tempered in almost every situation."
"Exactly. Seeing him there on the stairs, mad at the world, was alarming. He pushed someone away who tried to help him stand. He said he felt dizzy and he was really disoriented."
"Did you call for a doctor?"
"Of course." Banks frowns now, looking out at the gray-green ocean against a gray sky. "But he commanded us to stop."
"He commanded you?" Ruby is surprised by this. Jack was always one to take his position seriously, and he would have known that his health and safety were important not just to his own family, but to the nation.
