From her desk in the White House, Maria Protsenko phoned home to tell her husband to vacuum and wash the floors of the apartment and make sure that when their fifteen-year-old daughter returned home from school she changed her clothes and showered. Yet when she called back two hours later, she found them both unflustered by her warnings. They were watching a movie together on TV, and her daughter hadn’t even bothered to wash: “When the movie finishes, I’ll go,” she said.
