Tiny Little Thing (16 page)

I
t seems I’m in disgrace,” I tell the man seated beside me.

Mr. Hardcastle’s thumbs press into the steering wheel, until the nail beds turn white. “Of course not. We just think it might be best if you spent a little more time at the Cape before returning to the campaign.”

“But I’m perfectly fine.”

The radio, humming a pleasant background scenario of careless woodwinds, finds a patch of static. Mr. Hardcastle leans forward and fiddles with the knob, until at last he gives up and switches it off entirely. “Of course you are.”

“You’re speaking to me as if I’m a child. Or a lunatic.”

“We understand it’s been difficult—”

“But a Hardcastle wife is expected to keep her mouth shut, isn’t she? Not to discuss any uncomfortable truths.”

He strikes a fist against the steering wheel. “The
press
, Tiny! You should know better than to say things like that in front of a reporter. I don’t know what’s come over you.”

“I was upset. I just couldn’t take it anymore.”

“That’s no excuse. Your personal feelings are irrelevant.”

His anger blisters the air. I turn my head to the half-open window and attempt to relieve the sting in my eyeballs. To peel the frustration from the lining of my throat.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I spoke sharply just now. I understand you’re not yourself.”

The trees pass by, the long straight stretch of highway leading into the shore. A layer of clouds has spread overhead, sagging with heat. I can smell the impending shore, the grassy rot of the salt marsh. “It’s not the baby,” I say.

“We quite understand how desperately you wanted this child, Tiny . . .”

“It’s not the baby!” I shout out the window.

Mr. Hardcastle presses a button near his door handle, and the glass draws silently up, shutting off the salty draft in an instant. He leans forward and switches on the air-conditioning. “I see.”

“No, you don’t. I’ve
had
it, do you understand? I’ve
had
it with working so hard to get things right, not putting a foot wrong, smiling for the cameras and pretending to have the perfect marriage—oh the hypocrisy—while we all pretend Frank isn’t sleeping with other women—”

“You believe Frank is sleeping with other women?”

“You know it’s true. He always has.”

The car in front of us, a ten-year-old Buick sedan the color of new lichen, draws closer and closer, foot by foot, until we’re so close that the brilliant chrome of the rear bumper hurts my eyes. Until I can sketch the outline of the driver through the glass, and the pair of dice dangling from his rearview mirror. He glances into it, sees our looming reflection, and panics. The brake lights flash on, red and bright against the chrome. I shove my right foot against the floorboard and strangle the gasp in my chest.

At the last instant, Mr. Hardcastle pulls to the left and overtakes the Buick.

“Frank loves you,” he says.

“That has nothing to do with it.”

The thumbs are drumming now. The car’s accelerating, the engine droning heavily. “Tiny, the wife of a politician, of any great man, has to understand how the world works. A leader naturally attracts followers. It doesn’t mean he loves you any less. You’re the woman he comes home to, the bulwark, the virtuous center around which his life revolves. Actually”—he gathers strength from some inner reservoir of self-righteousness—“you should count yourself lucky he doesn’t do it more often. I’m sure you’ve heard the stories about Jack Kennedy. The psychology of leadership almost requires that—”

“That he gets into bed with his campaign staffers? That he’s habitually and cheerfully unfaithful to his wife?”

“It’s not
infidelity
, Tiny. Infidelity is when a wife strays from her husband.”

“
What?
”

He explains calmly: “Because a woman takes a lover when she’s in love. Her heart’s involved. Frank’s
heart
isn’t involved with this . . . this girl, or any other. It’s just physical release. A boost to the ego, every man needs that. His heart is all yours. You know that. He
needs
you, Tiny. He loves you.”

I lean forward and wrap my gloved hands around my knees, almost unable to breathe. The engine roars at the pace of my heart, hurtling down the highway toward the Atlantic, passing cars like an ocean liner passing a fleet of fishing smacks.

Mr. Hardcastle continues. “If
you
were to stray, now. That would present a more serious problem. Your loyalties divided, your emotions committed elsewhere, outside the family. To say nothing of the question of parentage, if you were to have a child. An unforgivable breach. I speak hypothetically, of course, to illustrate the point.”

“So Caesar’s wife must be beyond suspicion, while Caesar can sin all he likes?”

“Men are different, Tiny.”

“
People
are different, Mr. Hardcastle.”

The pistons call out as Mr. Hardcastle pulls around another car, eighty miles an hour at least. I grip the door handle. The pavement rushes by, the blurred and bony trees, like a movie reel run through the projector at high speed.

“I think you’re a little overwrought, Tiny,” says Mr. Hardcastle in a very low voice.

“I don’t think I’m overwrought at all. I don’t think my husband is constitutionally helpless to keep himself from cheating on me. Look at Caspian. Your nephew. I don’t think he’d cheat on his wife.”

“He doesn’t have a wife.”

“But if he did, he’d be loyal.”

Mr. Hardcastle releases a giant sigh, the kind you spend on children and lunatics. “Caspian is not a great man, Tiny. He’s not a mover of events. He’s a soldier. A good one, but a soldier. The history books won’t be written about him.”

“He’s a better man than any of you, I suspect. At least you can trust him.”

Mr. Hardcastle switches back into the right lane, which is temporarily clear of opponents, but he doesn’t slow down. “That’s true. Cap’s a loyal man. You’re right about that.”

“You see? It’s possible. And I absolutely
refuse
to put up with . . .”

I hear the screech almost before I feel the pressure of deceleration against my chest. The heavy black car swerves to the side of the road in a series of fishtails, drowning out the sound of my scream. We stop in a lurch, and the sudden quiet turns me weightless with fear.

“Is that an ultimatum, Tiny?” Mr. Hardcastle asks softly.

“No. Not exactly.”

“Then what is it? What do you mean,
refuse to put up with it
?”

I release the door handle and smooth my skirt about my legs. My hands flicker a little too quickly. “I mean Frank needs to understand that this behavior isn’t acceptable. That I can’t just go on being a . . . a good wife, a picture-perfect wife, if he keeps on humiliating me like this.”

“Humiliating you? Surely he’s been discreet.”

“The campaign staffer. Josephine. He was with her last night, before he came to bed.”

“
Josephine?
You’re sure?”

“It’s too obvious for words. The way she
looks
at me.”

Mr. Hardcastle stares at my mouth. “Very well. Then she’s gone.”

The cold delivery of the words—
she’s gone
—dissolves my last nerve.

“You don’t need to fire her,” I whisper. “I’m sure she’s good at her job. The campaign part of it. It’s Frank who needs to . . . to . . .”

He turns his head to gaze through the windshield. “I’ll speak to him.”

“But he’s not going to change. He promised me, right before the wedding, that there wouldn’t be any more women. He said marriage would change him. But it hasn’t. It won’t. It will only get worse, the more successful he gets, because that’s what happens when you think you’re invincible. You think you have a right to women.”

The cars whoosh and rattle past us, making Mr. Hardcastle’s black Lincoln sway ever so slightly as we sit there on the shoulder, staring together at the dark asphalt, the clean white stripe, the heavy gray sky above the treetops. The air conditioner whirs in the spaces between them.

“What about financial compensation?” says Mr. Hardcastle.

“I beg your pardon?”

“A settlement of some kind. In ten years, fifteen years, when we’ve gotten where we want to go—”

“You must be joking.”

Mr. Hardcastle reaches across the bench seat and covers my fisted hands with his own. “I assure you, Tiny, I’m not. I will not allow my son’s career to be derailed by some harebrained impulsive move on your part, made at a time when your emotions are running amok. Surely you’ve always understood that you’ll be rewarded handsomely if you behave yourself. The sky’s the limit, Tiny. Dream as big as you want. You could be the most famous, the most envied, the most photographed woman in the world. I mean that literally. In the entire
world,
Tiny.”

“Maybe I don’t want that anymore. Maybe I only thought I did.”

“Every woman wants that, if she dares to admit it.”

“I’m quite sure I don’t. In fact, I dislike it intensely. Being photographed.”

“You like having money.”

“Money’s lovely, I won’t deny it, but there are more important things.”

“I’m sure we can find them for you. But the reverse is also true, you know.” He puts the car back into gear and checks the mirror. “The stick, as opposed to the carrot.”

I want to tell him I’m not a donkey, and, in any case, I don’t particularly like carrots. But the urge is smothered by an instinct, a poker player’s instinct, to hide my cards from the dealer. You don’t try to beat the house, do you? You keep your head down and your cards close to your chest until you’ve gathered enough chips to cash in and walk out the door to a waiting automobile, packed and rumbling by the curb.

Mr. Hardcastle merges smoothly back into traffic. “Don’t think I’m insensitive to your plight, my dear. I like you very much. We all do. We’re here to make you happy, if you let us.”

I say yes, of course I understand, and neither of us utters another word down the length of the highway, through the village and down the lane to the Hardcastle property. When we pull up before the entrance to the Big House, right between the stone urns of bright yellow marigolds, I take off my pointy shoes and tell Mr. Hardcastle that I think I’ll take a little walk before lunch, to clear my head.

•   •   •

P
epper props her legs up on the dashboard and chews her sandwich. “And what brought about this sudden change of heart?”

“Frank’s having an affair.”

She swallows and tears away another bite. Peanut butter, no jelly, just like she used to eat when we were kids. The smell tweaks my nose like an old friend. She reaches for the bottle of Coke on the floorboards. “I’d say more than one.”

“Why would you say that?”

“Just a hunch. Put it this way: you find out a lot about a man when you go out for the evening in his company.” She waves the Coke bottle. “He wasn’t turning them away at the door, if you take my meaning.”

“Funny. He pretty much said the same thing about Caspian.”

“Caspian?” She laughs. “No, the good major just sat there with a beer or two, fending them off with one arm. Frank was the one collecting votes.”

“Yes. Yes, of course he was. How stupid of me.”

“At least he had the decency not to make a move on
me
. Now that’s a gentleman for you.”

“Pepper, you’ve really got to raise your standards.”

“As the kettle said to the pot.” She sets the bottle back down. “He’s
your
husband, after all.”

“Yes, he is, isn’t he?” I raise my stockinged feet to the dashboard, to the right of the steering wheel. The nylon slips against the liquid smoothness of the wood. “You don’t happen to have a cigarette, do you?”

“Back at the house. Sorry. I suppose a good sister would be offering you a vodka and a smoke at a time like this. All I’ve got is peanut butter and a Coke.”

“Well, it isn’t as if I haven’t always known. There were always other girls. I never saw them, he was decent enough for that, but I knew they were there.”

“Then why did you marry him? Assuming you cared.”

“
Because,
my dear Pepper, I didn’t just want to be any old housewife. I wanted a life with purpose. I didn’t want to be Mums, running around, drinking and sleeping around, doing absolutely nothing at all when I could have done so much. And—well, this is the stupid part. I thought he would stop when he got married. I really did. He sat me down and promised me, a week before the wedding, and I was so . . . so jangled up and just sick inside, at that particular moment, I decided to believe him.”

“You’re right. That was about as stupid as it gets.”

“Yes, I realized that pretty quickly.”

“So why didn’t you divorce him then? At the first instance? Admit you were stupid?”

“What, admit I
failed
, Pepper?”

“Yes. Why not? Everyone makes mistakes.”

I sigh. “Look, I know it’s hard for you fearless and rambunctious girls to understand this, you and Vivian, but I’m very good at turning my head and pretending unpleasant things don’t exist. It’s how I survive. You survive by striking your own trail and climbing the mountain, I survive by finding the road around it.” I pause. “I know you both sneer at me for it. I know you think it’s a weakness. Trying to be good, trying to make the best of things.”

She leans her head back and stares at the roof. Somewhere up there, tucked into a nook where one beam meets another, lodges a discreet nest of baby starlings, fed at intervals by an anxious mother starling. We noticed them last week. It’s transfixing, the sight of those desperate little beaks. You can’t help thinking, God, how fragile. I wonder if they make it.

Pepper says softly: “Maybe I understand that a little better than you think.”

I wiggle my toes on the dashboard. “Do you mind if I finish your Coke?”

“Be my guest.”

I pick up the bottle from the floorboard and lift it to my lips. The air in the shed brims pleasantly with grease and warm grass, with the faint whiff of the nearby ocean. Behind my back, the old leather seat is as comforting as ever. Pepper doesn’t seem to have made much progress. The hood stands open, and the floor is littered with random bits of machinery, pretty much the way I left it yesterday.