Fly Away Home (12 page)

“You gonna stop this time?”

She rattled her fingers on top of the table without answering. She’d promised him—promised them both—that she’d stop prior to both of her previous trips to rehab.

He sounded gentle as he asked, “Do you know why you started?”

She looked away. She knew what he was thinking, what anyone would think: how a girl who’d had every advantage, money and private schools and parents who loved her, should have ever been tempted by drugs, let alone hooked. What did she need to escape from? What pain did she need to dull? She could never explain, especially not to him, what it felt like knowing she was a disappointment. She wasn’t smart like her sister or helpful like her mother or a leader like he was. She was just Lizzie, unremarkable, unexceptional Lizzie; a C student who couldn’t make varsity and couldn’t carry a tune, Lizzie, who’d never amount to much, Lizzie, whose eyes were shut and mouth was open in every portrait of the family at her father’s inaugurations and victory celebrations. It was easier to hide in plain sight, which was what the Percocet and Vicodin (and, she supposed, her camera) let her do. She’d never answered, and her dad hadn’t pushed.

He’d walked her to the bathroom, stood outside the door as she threw up, doled out the Valium and bought her celebrity magazines at the gas station where he’d filled the car’s double tank. “Brief me,” he’d call from the front seat, sounding as interested as he did in tort reform or Israel. “What’s happening with Spencer and Heidi?” She kept waiting for him to try to bring up the drugs again, to try to get to the bottom of why she was using, or maybe even to offer some pained and halting admission of how he and her mother had failed her, but he didn’t try, and Lizzie was grateful. As the sky got dark, she imagined that the two of them were in a space capsule, traveling through a vast, empty world, sole survivors of some planet-ending disaster, a father and daughter, out on their own. It sounded weird—so weird that she didn’t even try to explain it to Jeff—but those eighteen hours, when she had commanded her father’s complete and undivided attention, were among the happiest she’d had.

“Hey.” Jeff was looking down at her, smiling. Lizzie blinked. The end credits of
Airplane!
were rolling, and Milo was snoring on the floor. “You getting sleepy, too?”

She nodded. “A little bit.” She hadn’t expected to sleep at all that night, not with her mind churning, regurgitating the pictures she’d seen of her father and that Joelle, wondering how to square the man who’d lied and cheated with the father who’d driven her all the way to Minnesota and made himself fluent in the storylines of
The Hills
and, once, held her hair back when she’d puked.

Jeff took Milo up to his bedroom, then scooped Lizzie in his arms and carried her to the third floor. “My hero,” she murmured as he settled her onto the bed, pulling the light cotton comforter up to her chin and sliding her sandals off her feet. He kissed her lightly, first her lips, then her forehead. She slipped his glasses off his face, folded them, set them on the little bedside table and stretched out her arms.

“Come here,” she whispered. Diana and Gary would be gone for at least another hour, and Milo slept like the dead. She drew Jeff down onto the high, narrow bed, feeling none of the doubt and the hesitation that usually accompanied intimacy. The first time she’d been with a boy, it hadn’t ended well, and ever since then, there was a fear that the guy would suddenly turn on her, grab her wrists, and force his mouth down on hers, too hard. But Jeff would never hurt her. Jeff liked her.

“Lizzie,” he breathed. She ran her hands across his shoulders, then down the length of his back, delighting in the feel of him, the heat and the solidity, and his stillness, the way he kept himself perfectly immobile, holding her in his arms as if he could stay that way forever. Eagerly she worked at the buttons of his shirt, tossing her own tank top to the floor, until they were skin to skin.

She ran her fingertips over the muscles of his chest, the ridges of his abs, until he’d pressed himself against her, kissing her until she was dizzy. He pressed his erection against her belly. She spread her legs, pushing her hips toward him.

“Is it safe?” he murmured. Lizzie nodded without giving the question careful consideration—her periods had never been regular, and she couldn’t exactly remember when she’d last had one—but this felt too good to stop.

“Sweetheart,” Jeff murmured, sliding inside of her. “Beautiful Lizzie.” She held him, burying her face in his neck, rocking against him, letting the terrible day slip away from her, thinking that maybe she didn’t need drugs as long as she had this.

SYLVIE

The door to Richard’s office swung open. Sylvie recognized everything there, every piece of furniture, Richard’s diplomas, the painted cup that Diana had made him in kindergarten, where he kept his pens; everything down to the framed photograph of Lizzie’s fifth birthday party, and the shot of the two of them dancing beside the president and first lady at the Inaugural Ball.

Her husband was on the couch, still in the blue suit she’d watched him put on in their hotel room that morning. (“All clear?” he’d asked, and she’d run a lint brush over his shoulders and lapels before sending him on his way.) He sat slumped, with his tie loosened, his hands hanging at his sides, and Joe Eido, his chief of staff, an unpleasant little rabbity man, bald and bitesized with pale, red-rimmed eyes, beside him. Joe turned off the television set. Richard looked up at Sylvie, then wordlessly looked down at his lap.

Sylvie stared at him with that strange numbness still suffusing her. How did this go, she wondered, for husbands and wives who didn’t have a chief of staff to act as witness and referee? What did they say when they knew there was no chance of the fallout happening in public, when it was just a man and a woman alone in a room? How did the conversation start? Was she supposed to yell at him, or throw something, or just wait?

She stared at her husband until finally Joe spoke up. “Let me leave you two alone,” he said.

“No,” said Sylvie. “Stay.” She laughed, a strange, choked sound. “If the entire country gets to see me being humiliated, we might as well start with you.”

At that, Richard opened his mouth. “Sylvie.” His voice, normally full, almost booming, a voice for addressing an unruly crowd or a pack of reporters, was barely a whisper. She didn’t respond. She just stood in the doorway, looking. Every part of him was so familiar to her—his big hands, his fingernails, the bald spot that, to his dismay, had gradually taken over the back of his head. She knew how he sounded, how he tasted, how his cheek felt when he’d just shaved it first thing in the morning, or the whiskery rasp of it against her own when he kissed her before they fell asleep. “I am sorry,” he said. “I am so, so sorry.”

After a long, squirmy silence, Joe got off the couch and stepped forward with his fingers interlaced. “We’re planning a press conference for Monday morning,” he announced in his wispy voice.

Sylvie ignored him. “How could you?” she asked her husband. There it was—her first line. She’d expected her voice to crack or wobble. After all, this was her life falling apart, the life she’d believed was a happy one, this was sadness mixed with visceral shame at not being enough of a woman for her man, because wasn’t that, ultimately, what cheating meant? A man went looking for another woman when his own wife couldn’t keep him happy. But the numbness kept her voice steady: she sounded as calm as she had when she’d addressed the ladies-who-lunch of Philadelphia in her two-thousand-dollar suit, her lips lined, her brow smooth, her hair just so, everything about her as perfect as if she’d been ordered from a catalog for politicians’ wives.

Richard on the other hand, looked gratifyingly wretched, as bad as he did when he got the flu, which he did every spring. He would take to his bed in the townhouse in Georgetown, moaning and clutching his head, complaining about the aches and the fever. She’d take the train down and spend a week bringing him tea and chicken soup and the tissues with lotion that he liked. She’d turn off the telephone ringer and handle any pressing business that came up until he was better again.

“How could you?” she asked again, and again, he gave no sign of answering. Three quick steps brought her inches from him, his face at eye level with her belly. She lifted her hand, then brought it down hard, palm open, whapping him against the ear—
boxing
him, she thought, that was probably the proper term for what she was doing. She was boxing his ear.

“Hey, hey,” said Joe Eido, who sounded alarmed but made no move to stop her. “Not the face, okay?”

She ignored Joe and hit Richard twice more, once on the left side, once on the right. There was no satisfaction in it other than the sound, the meaty slap of her palm against his ear and cheek, the cheek she’d cupped, the ear into which she’d whispered
I love you
and
deeper
and the names of their daughters, just after they were born. “You bastard!” she cried, and let her hands drop to her sides. She’d spoken her lines, she’d hit him. What now? Screaming? Throwing things? Telling him that she’d sue the socks off him, that she’d go first to a divorce lawyer and then to
60 Minutes
, that he was disgusting and a disgrace and a cliché, no better than the other cheating politicians, or that golfer, that fine upstanding young man she’d met at a White House luncheon for the Leaders of Tomorrow who’d turned out to have a dozen different girlfriends, porn stars and pancake-house waitresses and club promoters, whatever they were?

She stared at her husband. Had he really used his influence or done something improper to get her a job? Were there more Joelles? Would she and her daughters be subject to an endless stream of revelations, one surgically enhanced bimbo after another? Or was it worse than that? Was there just one other woman, not some beautiful bimbo but a lawyer, spunky and smart rather than sexy, a woman Richard was serious about? Would he leave her and their girls? And where would she be without him? She’d given herself to Richard as completely as any nun had ever pledged herself to God; she’d devoted her life to him, his wants, his needs. Everything she’d done, every piece of clothing she’d worn, every diet she’d undertaken and exercise class she’d endured, every time she’d sacrificed her own desires, and her daughters’, it had all been for him, for his career, his future (and, of course, her certainty that she’d have a part in that future). What would she do if he replaced her? Where would she live, what would she do all day? Who would she be if she wasn’t Mrs. Richard Woodruff, the senator’s wife?

She stared at the shot of Hillary and Bill waltzing, looking perfectly in love. She felt herself trembling: her skin, her flesh, even her bones, echoing with the force of the slap, and the silence that filled the room Sylvie had vacuumed and dusted and straightened hundreds, maybe even thousands of times during their long life together.

Joe Eido shot a quick glance at his boss, then slipped out the door. Richard raised his head. “I’m sorry,” he repeated.

“Why?” she asked, her voice raw.

He dropped his eyes. “I liked her.”

“I figured that,” Sylvie snapped.

“She was …” She waited for him to say
beautiful
, or
smart
, or
funny
, or
quick
, the endorsements he’d given her all those years ago. But Richard said none of those words. Instead, he said, “Helpful.”

“Helpful?” Sylvie said. “Helpful?” She was no longer talking, she was shrieking.
Helpful
was the most terrible word she could imagine, far worse than
beautiful
or
sexy
or
smart
or
quick
, because
helpful
meant that this woman, this Joelle, had made herself valuable to Richard. Maybe she was the younger, D.C. version of Sylvie who would listen to his speeches and smooth out his schedules, confirm his Town Car pickups and his dry-cleaning drop-offs and make sure he knew the names of all his biggest donors’ children, and even their dogs.

“You know what you give someone who’s helpful? You give her a raise. You give her a job recommendation. You don’t fucking fuck her, you stupid motherfucker!”

Richard dropped his head. “Sylvie.”

“Fuck you,” she said. Sylvie didn’t curse. The Honorable Selma cursed like a longshoreman, Ceil had cursed plenty in college, when it was unusual and still titillating for a woman to have a dirty mouth. Her daughters sprinkled their conversations with the occasional dirty word, but Sylvie did not curse. She was badly out of practice, but maybe it was like riding a bike. Maybe you never really forgot how. “Fuck you, you stupid shit son of a bitch.” Okay, maybe she needed some practice. She had a feeling she’d get plenty of chances to work on her new, old vocabulary in the days and weeks ahead.

She stood in front of her husband, his ears bright red and his eyes on his lap. “Listen,” he finally said, scrubbing his fingers against his scalp. “We need to figure out what to do next.”

She knew what he was talking about—after all their years together, how could she not? The official business of being a congressman or a senator might have been making laws, but the truth was, the real job was to raise money. You stockpiled cash to run for office, and, almost as soon as the election was over, you started gathering funds for the next round. A wife was an asset for such endeavors—a wife who could be counted on to organize the parties, to show up at the picnics and parades, to manage the guest list and cosset the big donors. A wife could deliver speeches and appear at your side or in your stead (and do all these things, of course, without benefit of job title or paycheck). If Sylvie wasn’t going to be with Richard on the campaign trail, he and his handlers needed to know.

“We need to decide—”

Sylvie cut him off. “There is no ‘we’ here,” she said. “Not anymore.”

“I, then,” said Richard. “I need to figure it out.” He pulled in a breath, and his voice took on its familiar speechifying timbre. “The way I see it, it’s a personal failing. A terrible transgression. I don’t intend to minimize that, not for a minute, but this was not a public matter. It was a betrayal that has nothing to do with my service to the people of—”

“You got her a job,” Sylvie said, each word bitten off, hard and distinct.

“Sylvie. Look. I know you don’t want to hear this, but it isn’t really that bad. This is going to be a one-day story, if that.”

She gave a strange, hollow laugh. “And what a joyous day it’s going to be for all of us.”

“She was qualified,” he said. “She’s a Georgetown law grad. She volunteered in the D.C. office last year, and then she worked as a legislative aide.”

“How civic-minded,” Sylvie snapped. “Did you two have pillow talk about the single-payer plan?”

Richard winced. Health care reform was one of his passions. One of the ones she knew about, anyhow. “Stupid dumb fucker,” she said, because she could, and because it felt good to say it, even though what should have been a shout was muted by the thick plaster walls of the apartment, and the heavy silk drapes and the rug that covered the office floor. The rug was the first nice thing she and Richard had bought together. They’d picked it out after he’d gotten his first annual bonus, back in 1983. Five hundred dollars. “We’re rich!” he’d crowed, running up the three flights of stairs to their Brooklyn apartment, pulling the check out of his pocket and waving it over his head.

“How long has this been going on?”

Richard’s face was crumpling. It was like watching one of those apple-head dolls in time-lapse photography, watching it shrink and shrivel and cave in on itself. “Sylvie … I swear I never wanted to hurt you or the girls. It’s killing me that I’m hurting you.”

“How long?” she yelled.

He dropped his head. “Six months. Maybe seven. It was never serious. It was just a fling.” He stood, then, and took her elbow. He meant to guide her toward the armchair in the corner. This was where she sat during their strategy sessions, when they were discussing ad buys or campaign travel or, that one terrible night, trying to keep the news of Lizzie’s arrest for possession with intent to distribute out of the papers. Except this time Sylvie refused to be guided and refused to be moved. She stood still, the pumps she’d slipped back on her bare feet planted on the rug, glaring at him. After a minute, Richard started to speak again, but haltingly.
Preliminary focus groups indicate … the mood of the electorate … crucial initiatives … that disabled-Americans rights bill in committee … work left undone …

She stared at him, unable to believe what she was seeing. Her husband—her husband!—the man she’d promised to love and to cherish, the man who’d seen her pushing their daughters out into the world and defecating on the hospital bed in the process (and maybe that had been the problem? Maybe her mother’s generation had had it right, leaving the men in the waiting room, never letting them see the blood and the shit and the tearing? Maybe then they wouldn’t fuck young lawyers who’d never been torn?); her husband, a man of endless, boundless confidence, was stretching out one trembling hand, reaching for her like a dying man from his sickbed. “Sylvie,” he said. She slapped his hand away. She wished that she could hit him again, could break his nose, could claw his eyes and blind him so that he’d never notice another woman again.

Do you love her?
The words piled up in her mouth and stayed tangled there, a choking weight, because she couldn’t ask him that.

“Don’t touch me,” she said instead. “Don’t you ever touch me again.” She walked away from him, toward the door, then turned with her hand on the knob.

“I will do that press conference, for our daughters’ sake, not yours,” she said. “Just me. Not the girls.” She gave him a hard look, a look he’d never seen from her before. “Do not think of involving them in any way. Do not imagine for a minute that they’ll stand onstage and endorse”—she sliced her hand through the air—“any of this.” She would keep her daughters safe. That should have been her focus all along—her girls. Not this faithless, gutless man. Diana, she knew, would refuse to be part of such a show, but Lizzie would do it, out of loyalty and her eternal hunger for her father’s love and his approval, her desperation to make things up to him, to blot out years of bad behavior and be his good girl again. Lizzie would do it, and Lizzie would not survive the pundits, the news anchors with their fake sweet smiles, the bloggers, the gossips, the twits with their Twitter accounts, every odious one of them just waiting to pounce and pass judgment. They’d stir up Lizzie’s past (
Druggie Daughter Stands by Her Dad!
). They’d write that her hair was stringy and her skin was bad; they’d publish and post the least-flattering photographs; they’d embroider the truth, disgusting as it was, with smutty innuendo, and Lizzie, being Lizzie, would probably read every hateful, sickening word. And Lizzie wasn’t strong.