Heavy is the Head that Wears the Crown

I will always describe my inauguration day as sunny. The Department of the Interior, in consultation with the Pentagon and Homeland Security, had erected a metal riser on the west front lawn of the Capitol building. It was shiny, and hot, and it reflected the sun like a mirror held up to a hill of ants. The ants, or rather, my constituents, spilled out across the National Mall like an endless, roiling sea. I kept glancing at them out of the corner of my eye. At the time, I thought record numbers of spectators had shown up to watch the first woman president say, “I do.” My vice president congratulated me on it. The calm, steady presence I’d needed to win the election flashed his TV anchor smile and told me that it was a proud day for America. His James Dean haircut, flecked with just enough gray to be dignified, told me he was probably right. I tried to believe him as the chief justice read me the oath, but my hand, placed delicately atop Lincoln’s Bible, kept twitching.

My late husband’s wedding band, reshaped to fit my hand, caught the light and flashed. The chief justice faltered in his resuscitation, momentarily blinded by the light from the ring. When I watched TV coverage of the ceremony a week later, the talking head on the news had crowed, “It’s sunny, folks!” so the people watching at home would know why a conservative pillar of the court was stumbling over his reading assignment. In most cases, I make a point not to agree with the press. Yet, when I remembered the ceremony, even years later, my first thought was always, “Oh man, it was sunny.”

In the days of milk and honey, popular culture would have had you believe that sunshine was a good thing. It was always sunny when Pamela Anderson ran down the beach to save another life. Even worse, not a single day went by when the sun wasn’t shining on the Brady Bunch. That show went on for five seasons, and as far as I could tell, every day was the summer solstice.

I could never exactly pinpoint the day when that began to change. As a kid, I could remember the weatherman telling us, “Buckle up, Dallas, today is going to be a scorcher.” But, that quippy comment was always followed with a reminder to, “Bring your sunscreen!” The assumption that people were going to go outside when it was hot came from a place of privilege that we as a nation had not yet begun to understand.

These days, when it was hot, flesh melted off the bone. The last time we had a heatwave the Secret Service locked me in the White House bunker until the riots were suppressed. The silver lining was that it hadn’t lasted very long. It was, after all, very sunny, and dehydration can sneak up on you in a crowd. They told me that Homeland Security was mainly involved in the cleanup. The sun herself put the riots down.

For the sake of public record keeping, it should be noted that it was cloudy on the day Congress debated the Water Reclamation and Preservation Act. We lost by two votes. Afterwards, I asked my vice president if the bill would have passed if it had been sunny. He shrugged, smiled his TV anchor smile, and reminded me that Congress had a short memory. As far as they were concerned, the problems of yesterday were in the past. It had been cloudy that day. I think it made them wonder if tomorrow might be cloudy as well. A few more days like that and our problems would have been solved. We just needed a little rain. We didn’t need to snub the farming lobby. We didn’t need to tell voters they could only shower on Wednesday.

I started thinking about my inauguration a lot in the aftermath of that vote. At the time, I thought the crowd that gathered to see me sworn in was hoping for me to succeed. These days, I’ve begun to think differently. As I await my next public appearance, I have wondered how we could have possibly gotten to this point. I am envious of Ms. Brady and the ease with which she sent her children out to play. I’m downright baffled by Pamela Anderson. How could she possibly expect to save someone caught out in the sun? She should have gone back to her watchtower and left the body to the crows.

Tomorrow, I expect, will be sunny too. My vice president is going to meet me at my door and escort me down to the metal riser that was erected by the Department of the Interior, in consultation with the Pentagon and New Homeland Security. He assured me he would bring me my heart-shaped locket. It’s gold and was given to me by my late husband when he promised me that it would be sunny all the days of our lives. I’ll slip it around my neck, right before my vice president does the same with the noose. My vice president, now the acting president, will smile his TV anchor smile, and then he’ll pull the lever. If there is a God, and if she cares about me at all, that’s when my neck will break.

I was angry for a while after they arrested me. I told them, myself, the American people, and anyone else who would listen that this wasn’t my fault. Hadn’t I been the one to propose the Water Reclamation and Preservation Act? I used up all my political capital and did a few things that weren’t strictly legal to get it signed. But it wasn't enough. I probably should have saved some of those favors for a rainy day. Like so many women before me, I hadn’t known there was a glass cliff until I was standing at the edge of it. It took a while, but I’ve made my peace. All that’s left to do now is hope that there is a God, and that my sacrifice will finally bring the rain.