Free Top Down by Jim Lehrer

Singapore carries the Cowboys games,” said her dad, trying to fake another happy smile. “I had somebody at the service check to make sure.”
    “We’ll be at the retirement ceremony next week,” Rosemary Walters said, attempting to soothe by changing the subject.
    And Van and Marti Walters, father and daughter, waved farewell without touching.
    Singapore
?
    Only as she was leaving the room did Marti notice faint brownish bruises on the temples of her father’s head. Both were about the size of quarters.
    She didn’t need to even check a dictionary to tell her anythingthis time. Back at Longfellow one of the boys in Miss DeShirley’s class said he’d read in
The Kansas City Star
, Hemingway’s former newspaper, all about how the great writer had suffered from bad depression. “They gave him shock treatment at the famous Mayo Clinic using wires to his head for two months,” the kid had said, “and then he went home to Idaho and blew his brains out.”
    I T WAS HARDLY what anyone would call a ceremony.
    The special agent in charge of the Portland office, Agent Damon, stood next to his desk, a large flag of the United States on one side and, on the other, a matching one with the gold five-pointed star emblem of the Secret Service on a light blue background. Each point of the star had a word by it— DUTY, JUSTICE, COURAGE, HONESTY, LOYALTY .
    Van, Rosemary, and Marti Walters, three abreast, faced Agent Damon and the flags. The only other person present was an agent named Frank Landrum, who was off to one side. Landrum had known Van in DC and had also been with him that awful day in Dallas. He was taller and huskier than Van but about the same late-thirties age. Both were dressed in standard agent—dark blue suits, white shirts, and quiet ties.
    Marti felt it was a good sign to see her dad dressed normally again, although the dress shirt highlighted how much weight he had lost. The collar was two sizes looser, at least!
    “On behalf of the director,” said Damon, who was probably fifty years old, “I would like to read the following letter …
    “ ‘Dear Van: It gives me great pleasure to extend to you ourthanks for your dedication to the mission of the United States Secret Service. It is only through the exemplary performance of people like you that our organization rises to the performance level that makes us proud of what we do and the way we do it.
    “ ‘On behalf of my colleagues in the service, I thank and honor you for the twelve years you have done your duty as a special agent of the United States Secret Service in keeping with our motto, “Worthy of Trust and Confidence.”
    “ ‘The secretary of the Treasury joins me in paying this tribute to you. He notes, too, that a special order has been issued awarding you full retirement benefits and thus exempting you from the regular twenty-years-of-service requirement.
    “ ‘Sincerely yours …’ ”
    With his left hand Damon gave the letter to Van while he extended his right shaking hand to Van, and then to Rosemary and Marti.
    Landrum moved in for handshakes, congratulations—and farewells.
    And that was it. The whole thing, from the opening of Damon’s office door, to the Walters family’s exiting that same door, took no longer than five minutes.
    In the hallway afterward, Rosemary gave her daughter another piece of news.
    “Your dad’s new employer has offered to pay all the expenses for you to attend a boarding school here in the States,” she said to Marti. “That is, of course, if you decide against going to Singapore with us. I understand, believe me, I do. It’s your last year of high school. I understand.”
    Marti glanced quickly toward her father, whose frozen expressionless face seemed to be shrinking, vanishing even farther out of sight right before her.
    She had a horrifying feeling that she might never see him again.

Marti’s place in Philadelphia was a one-bedroom split-level apartment that was larger and better