“Did she say anything to her roommate?” Lee asks.
Jenny says no, Amy told her that Fanny was gone a few nights a week and so was obviously seeing someone but Amy didn’t know who.
“Well! I’ll put one of my staffers on it—”
“No, Lee,” says Jenny, “this isn’t working.” She gets up, takes her bag from the table. “I’m going to the police.”
Rogers does not need a bunch of police officers poking around looking for his lost intern right now. Or ever.
“No, Jenny. It’s premature,” he says.
“What are you talking about? My daughter is gone. The only reason I haven’t called the police already is that you said you would help.”
Rogers senses disaster. “I’m trying to help,” he says.
“How? Lee, we need a full investigation. Police. FBI. Whatever it takes. And we need it now.”
Rogers suggests that a little discretion might be a good idea.
“Discretion!” Jenny feels like she is having a terrible nightmare. “What are you talking about, Lee? I have nothing to hide. Fanny has nothing to hide. Do you, Lee? Do you have something to hide here?”
Jenny looks around the M Street house. At last, she thinks she gets it. “Look, Lee, I’m sure I’m not the first or last stewardess you bedded in this house. You can count on me not to blab about it on TV. And I’m sorry I can’t be worried about other women out there. If stories about your philandering come out in connection with an investigation into your intern, well that’s something you’ll have to deal with.”
“There aren’t other women,” Rogers tells Jenny. “And there never were.”
“Oh please, Lee, I know you,” Jenny says. She is impatient. This is an odd conversation to be having at this particular moment.
“No, Jenny, you don’t. You never gave me a chance. You just disappeared.”
“Disappeared? I was in love with you, Lee. I knew you weren’t going to leave your wife. Somebody was going to get hurt. It looked like it was going to be me. I had to break it off.”
“Hurt? You weren’t hurt too long. You were married within a month. That Canadian pilot. Sure happened fast.”
Jenny is drawn into an argument she can’t quite believe is taking place so many years after the fact.
“I wanted a husband. And a family. Something that was never going to happen with us. Gene was always there for me. He was a great dad to Fanny.”
Rogers stands up, crosses over to the couch, and sits down beside Jenny. He takes her hand and looks deep into her eyes.
“Jenny,” he says, “you were wrong about me. I would have left Connie. I loved you so…”
This is madness, Jenny thinks. She pulls away. “Will you stop it, Lee! You’re just sweet-talking me out of going to the police. Enough!”
Rogers repeats that it is too soon to involve police.
“Lee,” says Jenny as if she’s turned suddenly to stone, “do you know something I don’t know?”
Rogers shakes his head no.
“No idea who she was seeing?”
He glances away. “I don’t keep track of my interns and their social lives.”
A terrible realization takes shape in Jenny’s mind.
“Oh. My. God. Lee! You didn’t…”
Rogers knows what’s coming. He is prepared. He answers the question with a well-rehearsed, innocent expression. “Didn’t what?” he says.
“Have…Fanny…up here?” The words crawl out, slowly, forfending the answer.
Rogers breaks out laughing. “Oh god, no,” he says, bemused innocence on full blast. “How could you even ask that, Jen Jen. I gave the kid a job so I could have a connection to you. Now, please, will you stop with all this?”
Jenny welcomes the reassurance she was looking for. She forces herself back on track. “No, Lee, I won’t stop any of this. Until we find her.”
Rogers tells Jenny she is looking in the wrong place.
Jenny bursts into tears. “I don’t know where to look!”
Rogers reaches for her and takes her in his arms. He attempts to quiet her uncontrollable sobs and succeeds, only partially. The rapid back-and-forth between composure and tears and fury is enervating. Jenny is moving in twenty emotional directions at once. She steels herself now and says, “Lee, you have to know something. Fanny is not just my daughter…she’s our daughter.”
Rogers releases Jenny from his arms. He tries to process what she’s just said. “That can’t be,” he says. “That can’t be.”
It cannot be, he thinks. Jenny has gone over the edge. Madness.
“No way,” he tells her. “We were careful when we were together. I was.”
Jenny shakes her head. Her blood thumps madly in her chest. “Not always,” she says.
“Jenny—”
“I never told you, Lee. I thought about it, I almost did, I came here…but you were so awful to me that day, and I realized you would want me to end the pregnancy, which…I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. So I did what had to be done. I broke things off with you and married Gene.”
Maybe now that Rogers knows the truth, he’ll actually help.
Rogers glances at a photograph of Deron and Tippy, the retriever pup he got for his twelfth birthday.
“Fanny isn’t my child,” says Rogers. “It isn’t true.”
He thinks, It can’t be. Because that would be too awful.
“Yes,” says Jenny, “she is. It is true. I married Gene to protect my baby. He never knew who Fanny’s real father was. And neither did Fanny.”
On hearing herself say her daughter’s name, Jenny bursts again into tears. “None of it matters now,” she says and she drops to the floor sobbing. The emotional storm and remaining questions about Fanny—where is she?—are too much.
Lee kneels on the floor beside her. “We are going to find her,” he says. “But falling apart isn’t going to help. Have you gotten any sleep?”
Jenny shakes her head. Rogers is in control again. Or he is trying hard to look that way.
“I want you to go upstairs and lie down. I’m going to make some calls. Then we’ll go to the police together.” He kisses her softly on the forehead.
Jenny is relieved—and also exhausted and exploding with worry about her daughter. She gets up, smiles gratefully at Rogers, and walks towards the stairs.
CHAPTER 31
Not much has changed in the guest room during the twenty years since Jenny was last here. The big bed still faces an antique English bureau. And hanging above the headboard is the same gilt-framed mirror that reflected Jenny’s tear-stained face so many years ago.
Jenny is not the only woman who vividly remembers what she was wearing during important events in her life. A blue-and-white seersucker shirtdress, white seed pearls, sandals.
The dress had a little red belt that tied in the front. Jenny remembers the precise feeling of pulling the belt around her, around the slight swelling in her belly, and being flush with excitement thinking that Lee’s baby was there underneath the belt, underneath her skin, inside her.
Would Lee notice? Probably not.
Women worry endlessly about bulges and minor weight gain. Men never notice. It’s not cluelessness exactly and certainly not disinterest.
The animal center: the point where lost and found are the same general idea. That’s what men think about. And it’s usually a couple of worlds apart from little bumps or bulges on the periphery.
Jenny rang Lee’s bell on an August Sunday, all those years ago, fresh from the flight in from the coast. Connie was away, at some dressage meet or something with Deron or Willa. Or was she in Maryland arranging a re-election tea?
Jenny had never registered Connie’s whereabouts precisely. Rather she’d kept track in the same way men regard the barely detectable bumps and swells on a woman’s form—dressage, tea, whatever, the important thing was Connie was not around today. And if all went well, as Jenny thought it would, Connie would remain far away.
“Jen
Jen! My love. You’re looking gorgeous.”
“Hello, darling.” Jenny melted into Rogers’ embrace.
“I didn’t think you were coming back,” he said. “The last time you left… It felt so final.”
“Things change,” she said.
He pulled her inside. Washington was hardly squeamish about adulterous liaisons. But it was not something Rogers wanted to parade around on his front doorstep.
He picked her up in his arms and walked towards the bedroom.
Jenny held the Congressman’s face in her hands, tasted him gently. It was as if no time had passed since the dinner with the napkin and the regretful kiss goodbye. “God, I missed you, Lee.”
“Me too.”
“I’m hardly alive when we’re so far apart.”
“Yes, my love. It’s the same for me.”
They fell onto the bed together. Rogers smothered her with kisses.
They were flush in love. But there was something on Jenny’s mind. Should she tell him in bed? Or afterwards, in the kitchen, maybe.
Jenny had thought about this a lot, imagined the scene many times. “Lee, I’m going to have your baby.” She would look him in the eye and say the words softly.
In one scene Jenny had imagined, Lee did a quick double take and then burst into a big smile, and took her in his arms and kissed her passionately and rubbed his hands across her belly and told her what deep down she’d always known: that he had never loved anyone like her, he’d never thought he could have everything—brains and beauty and sexy and sweet and light and hot—in one package. And now there would be three!
And in her imagination he picked her up and carried her to the bed and called out to Capitol Liquor to order Dom Perignon— no, on a Sunday Capitol wouldn’t be open, so let’s say he skipped downstairs and returned with a bottle and poured two glasses and raised a toast, “To my love and my baby love. I love her, and him or her, to death and forever.”
Jenny sometimes got carried away.
She’d also imagined cooler, more sober versions of the scene. “My love,” Lee murmured, overcome. “My love.” He shook his head, wrestling with the pain it would cause Connie when he told her the truth, when he told her he was leaving. But painful as it would be, it had to be done—their baby was paramount and if his marriage and his career had to be sacrificed, so be it.
But that was all imagination, and now Jenny was jolted out of her reverie.
“Honey, are you there? I’m having a little trouble with this belt.” Rogers was fumbling at her midsection, utterly oblivious to anything he might have felt beneath the fabric.
“Sorry, darling.” Jenny unhooked the red belt and Rogers slipped his hand between her legs.
Jenny sighed. “Oh, darling. We’re so perfect together and now…”
Rogers pushed her legs apart and moved on top of her.
Before she could finish her sentence, he’d pulled her panties to one side and pushed himself inside her.
As she remembers it, he came almost immediately, giving out a satisfied gasp of pleasure.
“That was great, honey,” he said. He rolled off her and sat up.
“For me too,” Jenny lied.
Rogers apologized for being so distracted. He said he was worried about the primary. He needed to raise more money for ads he wanted to air before the showdown. “Connie has done a hell of a job organizing fundraisers but the money’s not coming in fast enough. I’m sorry to bring all this up, it’s just…I just can’t get it out of my mind. And now I’ve spoiled our special Sunday.”
“I guess it’s not the right time…” Jenny said.
“The right time for what?”
“Nothing. You have so much on your mind.”
“I always have time for you,” he said, glancing at his watch and then adjusting the knot of his necktie.
“Time to fuck me!” Jenny jumped out of bed and started rebuttoning the shirtdress, which had come undone under his groping hand.
“Honey, what’s the matter? That’s a terrible thing to say.”
“Is it, Lee? Have I ever been more to you than a good quick lay?” Jenny felt prompted by something hard, insistent, something good manners couldn’t quiet.
“That’s not fair, Jen Jen. You know how I feel about you.”
“I know how you feel about me in bed. But you know, Lee, that may not be enough for me.”
“What’s got you so mad?” Rogers asked. “I thought you wanted to…”
“I guess I pictured it going differently.” Jenny had her dress buttoned. Her pearls hung crooked.
“How?”
“I don’t know, maybe you’d take your time—”
“I was excited,” Rogers said.
“Clearly,” Jenny said. Then, surprising herself, “You didn’t even use a condom. Suppose I got pregnant? Then what?” This is not what she wanted to say. Or at least this is not how she wanted to say it.
Rogers went cold. “That’s impossible. I’ve had a vasectomy.”
Jenny was looking for reassurance, not medical updates.
And she had read something about how vasectomies don’t always work. But this was not the conversation she’d wanted to have with Lee. Not at all. She felt possessed. Mad. Maybe it was hormonal, baby-driven fury.
“You don’t want a woman, you just want a pet to play with.” Jenny knelt down on the floor before Rogers and put her hands up in a bizarre mime, pretended to be a dog begging for a treat. “Woof. Woof.”
“Get up,” said Lee. “Stop that.”
Rogers pulled Jenny to her feet. He looked like was poised to slap her on the face. But he restrained himself. He balled his rage into a fist and smashed it not into Jenny as he would have liked but into the wall behind her. Jenny burst into tears and raced into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.
Jenny remembers all this now, remembers it as clearly as if it had happened moments rather than two decades ago. The face she sees reflected in the guest-room mirror looks exhausted. She turns from her reflection and walks, crying, into the bathroom.
Downstairs, Senator Rogers, visibly shaken, dials the phone.
A few seconds pass, the time it takes a phone to ring twice. Then Rogers says into the phone, “Brock, we’ve got a problem.”
CHAPTER 32
For Jenny, the problem is just beginning. Her face is wet with tears. She sees her reflection in the glass. She is a mess, a sad mess. And Fanny is gone.
Jenny rinses her face with cold water and pats her face dry. She mops back the fresh tears and suddenly she’s overtaken by something familiar, very familiar, scary familiar, perfume— Déjà Vu! Fanny’s perfume!
Jenny drops the towel like it is on fire. She throws her head back and shrieks.
It’s a glass-shattering shriek, the audible sound of a human heart cracking into pieces.
NO NO NO
Fanny has been in this bathroom, dashed her wetness on a towel right here.
NO NO NO
Jenny tries to shout the irrefutable fact out of existence: NO NO NO NO NO—
There is nowhere to go but down. And that’s where Jenny falls, straight to the bathroom floor, smashing her head on the porcelain sink basin as she drops.
CHAPTER 33
Fanny is enjoying her Paris adventure but she’s not quite sure when it should end. Shouldn’t she be getting back to work? What work? After that disastrous scene with Rogers, does she still have a job?
Nick’s been a doll. Let her crash on his couch, hang out on the movie set. She’s watched him take pictures of the actors— and of her. Is she the girl in his book? Fanny told him she’s in a relationship, sort of, but Nick keeps shooting pictures of her anyway.
“Why?” she asks while they share a late-night bottle of wine.
Nick scratches his chin. “I don’t know. I like the way you look,” he replies.
“But I thought your book was about a relationship. We don’t have a relationship.”
Nick smiles, lifts the
camera he always has around, snaps a picture of her looking dubious.
“What are you talking about? We have the best kind of relationship. No sex. No romance. We just enjoy each other’s company. Do you have a problem with that?”
Fanny has no problem with that. If Rogers weren’t in the picture who knows what might have developed between her and Nick.
“So what are you doing in Paris anyway?” Nick asks.
She’s explained about the internship, the webisodes. “The campaign trail got pretty intense. I decided I needed a break.”
Nick cocks his head. “Really?”
Fanny nods.
“Wasn’t because your webisodes got you into trouble.”
“Why do you say that?”
“The camera is a come-on. People instinctively flirt with it.”
“Really? That never occurred to me.”
But of course it did. Fanny isn’t about to tell Nick everything. Mum’s the word on her relationship with Rogers. For now.
“He got a hell of a lot more traffic because of me,” Fanny says. “That didn’t make his campaign manager any happier. What a jerk! I was only there to help.”
Nick snaps another picture.
“What was that one for?”
“You’re pretty when you’re jealous. You get this look in your eye.”
“Jealous? Jealous of what?” Fanny protests.
“You and the campaign manager. Fighting for the attention of the sainted candidate. I guess you won—and got the boot.”
“I guess.”
Nick sees that Fanny is clamming up and shifts gears.
“Look, I’ve got the same problem on the set. Hildy wants to crawl all over me. But I resist. Not that I would mind a little roll in the hay for old time’s sake. But I don’t need the jealousy. Both the director and her costar want to fuck her. But she only has eyes for me. God knows why. Scratch that. I know why. She’s remembering all that hot sex we had in college. Somehow those first sexual experiences trump all. But what she doesn’t remember is what a self-involved bitch she was. One night we decided to go to a motel. We couldn’t get any privacy in the dorm. I was on top of her, fucking her brains out, I thought, when she kept on yelling more, more, more. I open my eyes and saw she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at her reflection in the mirror over the bed. She was basically fucking herself.”
Are Snakes Necessary? Page 11