As Doug settles into his usual political cadence, and Cate stands erect following the script, making sure he hits every mark, the phone rings.
“Goddamn it.” Doug leans back in his tufted chair, breaking character like he’s onstage in a Stanislavski acting class.
A knock at the door; another young intern pops his head in. “Sir, it’s a producer for All the News with Chris Williams! on Fox, he wants to discuss some talking points before the show tonight.”
“Tell them you’re in a committee meeting and call back,” Walter says to Doug, who nods at the intern in agreement.
“Betsy and Linda are having dinner together at their country club,” Doug says, then buries his head back into the script. “Okay, now where were we?”
“Cate?” Walter says.
Cate fumbles with the script. “Start back with ‘Coercive control is not just low-level or high-level violence, it is insidious and calculated, causing emotional and psychological harm. Many victims are left with nonphysical scars, but emotional scars can also last a lifetime.’ ”
* * *
On display where Cate walks in the Capitol Rotunda are the carved marble heads of suffrage pioneers: Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony. A slightly unhinged tour guide of middle-schoolers describes the chunk of uncarved marble behind the suffragettes: “This chunk of marble has been abandoned while it awaits a female president. It’s been ninety-nine years and even you probably won’t see a female president in your lifetime.”
Cate maintains her focus and walks toward the back-door exit where black Suburbans wait for their designated senators when Walter calls after her.
“Cate! Cate!!!”
She pretends not to hear him, picking up speed heading for Doug’s car, ready and waiting to take them to All the News with Chris Williams! Cate’s cortisol levels rise as she ties her Burberry hand-me-down trench coat, turning around to see Walter stumbling toward her.
“Boy, you got quite a strut there,” Walter says, a crown of sweat on his forehead, wheezing from his walk. “Look, you’re doing a great job.” He puts his hand on Cate’s shoulder, his thumb touching her neck, grazing it as if reaching for her throat. “Doug has given me the reins to let you know when he thinks you’re ready to take on more as far as additional public interviews, you know, since his schedule is picking up before election season. We need to be sure you are absolutely ready and steady to take that on.”
Cate stumbles to pretend she’s not irritated, confused, enraged. They’ve been using her language ever since the bill was introduced.
“When did this discussion happen?”
“The senator does not have the time to think about delegating right now, Cate.” Walter asserts his condescension without answering the question, then swings his tone. Moving closer to her, he places his other hand on the bicep of her other arm. “As I said, keep up the great work, you’ll be running all things press in no time.” He steps away from her, pointing his finger at her as Doug walks toward the vehicle.
“You ready?” Doug asks Cate. “Let’s go win more hearts of American women!” He gives her that charming smile, the one she fell for when she first met him.
“Cate, you behave yourself now.” Walter points at her again, laughs to himself. “I’ll see you guys at the studio after I fire an intern.”
In the car Cate is next to Doug, whose head is buried in his phone, supposedly reviewing the bill’s amendments as well as various news articles responding to the domestic violence crisis. Cate sits with her hands clasped. She remembers when, a few months ago, he asked her to hold his phone during a vote, and GIFs of men receiving blow jobs popped up in his Safari window. Cate had accidentally hit the tab but clicked out of it, pretending it wasn’t even there. It was the first time she’d felt a piercing in her fantasy, a poke in her own denial, too painful to believe—so she didn’t. How could she be so tough and so naïve?
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Mom, do we really have to go?” Haley pleads as Betsy pulls up in their Jaguar behind a 1992 Jeep Grand Wagoneer in the valet line at the Washington Club. A woman steps out of the Wagoneer in a white tennis outfit and diamond studs. Her socks have fringed lace spilling over the tops of her ankles. Betsy’s stomach turns, and she fiddles with her twelve-carat diamond before the valet attendant, a Black man in a tuxedo, walks over to open her and Haley’s doors.
“Madam,” he says, and welcomes them both to the “club of clubs.”
Betsy tightens the knot in the center of the Gucci scarf that’s draped around her shoulders and motions for Haley to grab the fox coat that is resting in the backseat. Betsy steps out of the car and swings it around her shoulders. Haley wears Lilly Pulitzer as if she’s a walking roll of floral wrapping paper.
They enter the club. Behind the whiffs of the grand display of dying lilies is a very specific lingering odor whirling from scratchy old sofas that should have been replaced forty years ago. The floral drapes remind Betsy of her dead mother-in-law’s living room in Durham. The place is a dump. And yet the legacy lives on in the sons and daughters of its founding members, proudly bipartisan—and by bipartisan they mean wealthy, the oldest dynasties mingling in an attempt to keep control of their inner hierarchy and outer legacy, for all at the club of clubs are wobbling on the tippy-tops of golden ladders built by their ancestors who climbed to the top for them.
Like living in an ugly heirloom, Betsy thinks. Dangling her alligator Birkin bag at her side, she walks up to a woman who’s let her natural gray grow out, sitting at a secretary desk with a sign-in book and fountain pen. There are no computers.
“May I help you?” the old woman asks.
“Yes, hello, I’m Betsy Wallace, I’m here to meet Linda Williams for dinner.”
The butler, or secretary, or whatever she is, leads Betsy and Haley past the bowling alley and cardroom, through the cocktail room to the entrance of the dining room. When they arrive at the still-empty table, Betsy pulls out a comb to quickly brush the ends of Haley’s hair.
“Mom, stop.” Haley winces and sways her body away from her anxious mother.
As Betsy puts the comb back and snaps her bag closed, a knock at the glass window behind them causes her to jump and spin around. It’s Linda, standing in a red St. John knit with an Hermes scarf tied around her shoulders. Becca trails behind her clad in a clashing Lily Pulitzer dress.
Hi, Betsy mouths, and waves. Linda motions that she will be right there.
Five minutes later, Linda trails along the dining hall as if she is the hostess in her own home, exuding effervescent power.
“Bonjour!” Linda leans in to give Betsy a double cheek kiss, “Muah, muah!” She nudges her daughter forward. “Becca, say hi to Haley.”
Becca is small for her age, mousy brown hair and an unfortunate mustache forming above her upper lip. “Hi,” she musters, having trouble making eye contact.
“Hey,” Haley replies, resentment in her tone for this so-called playdate.
“How are we doing this evening, Mrs. Williams?” the server asks.
“Juste merveilleux, parlez-vous français?” (“Just marvelous, do you speak French?”) Linda winks at the server, then giggles at Betsy.
“Bonjour! Tu es heureux!” (Betsy means to say, “Hello, I’m happy to be here.” Instead she says, “Hello, you are happy!”)
“I’m sorry, uh…” The server laughs awkwardly to ease his uncertainty and asks to take their order.
“The whitefish is divine,” Linda says, peeking over her menu, then orders the chicken piccata, and chicken fingers for Becca.
“I’ll have the whitefish then, and chicken fingers for this one,” Betsy says, smiling, then hands him her menu.
“Oh, there’s Meredith Bartholomew,” Linda says, waving like the queen of England as she finishes the “mew,” giving a wide fake smile as Meredith does the same while walking to her designated table. The two of them performing like players in a Norman Rockwell painting except everyone is l
ying to each other.
“Becca, sweetie, why don’t you go show Haley the bowling alley.”
The girls trail off to “explore” the club—“but not too far, club rules!”
“Do you know the Bartholomews?” Linda asks Betsy.
“Chuck has been a wonderful supporter of Doug’s. Meredith, however…” Betsy leans over and whispers, “not so much.…”
“Oh well, you know why that is,” Linda says, implying that Betsy must know the answer.
“How do you mean?” Betsy knows gossip is the most dangerous neighborhood in Washington, given how small this town is, but she can’t help but dip her toe in.
Linda leans into Betsy, a game of seesaw. “They’re having money problems.”
“Oh, really.… God, I wonder if Doug knows,” Betsy says, concerned.
“Well, you didn’t hear it from me.”
The server arrives with their wine. Linda takes a sip like a southern belle. Checkmate. She knows Doug counts on the Bartholomew donation dollars. “They’re tied up in over a dozen lawsuits in different counties across the country for their chemical dumping. But the press hasn’t caught on yet, not in the social political sense, if you know what I mean.… And here’s a little twist: the Bankses—you know, the family that was murdered—they were their biggest competitors.… You wouldn’t know it because they socialized together and I think Chuck and David were in the same class at Harvard. Anyway, the stocks are tumbling.” She shakes out her napkin and drapes it across her lap. “I’m sure Doug knows all about it—besides, look at all this wonderful attention Doug is getting!”
* * *
Becca and Haley stand on the upper level of the bowling alley near the dark and empty popcorn stand. Haley plays a game on her cell phone.
“You can’t have cell phones in here,” Becca says, “it’s club rules.”
Haley ignores her, enthusiastically tapping the screen on her phone.
“You’re not going to get into the club if you keep playing on your cell phone,” Becca says.
Haley keeps her eyes steady on the game. “We already belong to the club.”
“No, you don’t. You’re lying,” Becca says.
Haley finishes the game, clicking out of the app and into her camera, then lifts her phone to Becca’s face and snaps a photo.
“Stop! You’re going to get us kicked out!”
“What are you gonna do, tell Mommy about it?” Haley opens up her Finsta account and creates a meme of Becca. It is a split photograph, on the right the unflattering close-up of Becca, on the other side a Google image of her mother. The caption reads: “Mom, am I ugly? Honey, I told you not to call me Mom in public.” Click. Haley uploads and posts.
* * *
Betsy chews her whitefish despite its funky smell. Fishy and overcooked, it’s hard to tell whether it’s gone bad.
“We could do it at the St. Regis during teatime. The girls can get dressed up, maybe we can start with—personally one of my favorites—Nancy Drew.” Linda is talking about forming a mother-daughter book club.
As she chatters on, Betsy’s stomach starts to gurgle. She burps a little bit, “Excuse me,” dabbing the cloth napkin over her lips, a wretched fishy taste swirling around in her mouth.
“Where’s the powder room? Nature’s calling.” Betsy’s face turns as pale as a golf ball; she doesn’t realize she’s still holding her napkin to her mouth when she gets up.
“Down there through the dining room to the right.”
Betsy knocks over a young girl in her best attempt to run gracefully for the powder room, her large intestine about to explode. Sweat forms below her perfect hairline; the lingering taste of fish and the image of an oozing slab of mayonnaise cause her to fall to her knees inside the stall of the handicapped toilet to expel the whitefish, and it is violent. After about twenty seconds, she comes up for air. Spitting a small chunk back out in the toilet, Betsy hears “Ew!” and the closing of the bathroom door from a young club member who bore witness to the sound and smell of her explosion.
After Betsy flushes the toilet, she falls from her knees to her back against the side of the stall, mucus running down her nose. She gasps as her stomach begins to gurgle, the feeling of a leaf blower in her lower abdomen, a new wave of panic. She attempts to stand, gripping the white tiled wall—“no, no, no”—when she loses all control, a warm oozing sensation flooding her underwear, please, God. Then, the mortifying smell… “Oh God, oh my God.” Betsy shimmies out of her leather YSL pencil skirt and throws it to the side of the stall. She stands in her control-top pantyhose, which are squeezing her bum closer to her bones, making the mess all the more slathered and unbearable.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” She peels down her stockings while kind of scooting her buttocks over the toilet. She burps and breathes. Then she hears the door to the bathroom open. It’s club housekeeping.
“Everything okay, miss?” the voice asks in a thick Spanish accent, indicating to Betsy that whoever bore witness to her explosion has tattled.
“Fine! Thank you, no need to be in here!” The woman withdraws. Betsy wipes herself again, and again, and again, and flushes. She pulls her skirt back on, then takes the pantyhose covered in feces and debates whether to flush them down the toilet or wrap them up and shove them in the trash can. The clock is ticking, Linda is going to begin to worry. Betsy stands within these milliseconds wanting to cry like a high school girl who’s just gotten her period at a boy’s house with no pads, tampons, or toilet paper—humiliation in its highest form, except that this moment is worse. Betsy must act fast. Pull it together for the sake of your husband’s—your family’s—Washington reputation.
Betting against the plumbing of the building, Betsy dumps the stool-covered pantyhose in the trash can. After washing her hands and spraying half a bottle of air freshener in the stall, she manages to make a sly exit sans underwear without another soul from the dining hall noticing.
* * *
“Everything all right?” Linda asks, shifting her attention away from her conversation with Becca and Haley, who refuse to make eye contact with each other at the table, picking at their chicken fingers.
“Just a little bit of a wait in the powder room.” Betsy takes a seat.
“How bizarre, there’s never been a wait in all my years coming here,” Linda replies.
Betsy smiles and shrugs, and places the new napkin in her lap covering her bare knees, hoping Linda won’t notice her stockings are missing.
“Mom, Daddy’s show is on,” Becca says.
“Oh my goodness, let’s get the check.” She calls for the server, then says, “Guess who’s on Daddy’s show tonight?”
“Who?” Becca asks.
“My dad.” Haley smirks.
Becca squints at Haley, then asks, “Mom, are Haley and her mom members of the club too? Haley said they were.”
“Haley, that’s not true, why would you say that?” Betsy says, horrified.
Linda, embarrassed for Betsy and her daughter, tries to save the awkward moment. “Oh, that’s okay,” she says, then turns to Haley. “Would you like to be a member here, Haley? It’s awfully fun; you can go swimming, and ice skating, and have a bowling birthday party! There’s even a high-dive at the swimming pool for big kids.”
Betsy smiles, mortified.
“Just make sure you’re on your best behavior so that Mommy and Daddy can become members. You wouldn’t want to ruin it for them would you?” Linda finishes.
“No,” Haley says, feeling ashamed.
The server places the check in the center of the table.
Betsy grabs it. “Let me—it’s the least I can do, you were so sweet to invite us here for dinner.”
“Oh no, no, they actually won’t let you since you’re not a member… yet.” Linda winks and lifts the bill out of Betsy’s hands.
Outside in the valet line, Linda examines Betsy in a more sober light.
The girls stand in the fall chill under the large green awni
ng, a large bouquet of orange chrysanthemums behind them. As Betsy’s Jaguar pulls up and Haley hops into the passenger side, Linda pulls her in. “Betsy, hon, before you go… listen, the club really appreciates an understated look. I would come without the diamonds and alligator next time—you know how fuddy-duddy they can be.” She tries to make light of the social divide. “See you at French class this week?”
Betsy smiles. “Of course. See you then.”
“Oh, and don’t mention you were a practicing Catholic either.” Linda makes a slashing gesture with her hand. “You know those crazy Catholics!!” She throws her head back and laughs.
“Never!” Betsy jokes back. “You’re the best.”
“Can’t wait to go home and watch our hubbies debate, how fun!”
It’s ironic how comfortable Linda feels shaming Betsy for her wealth when the Williamses’ net worth is three times the amount of the Wallaces’. But a real cave dweller never reveals such information.
Part Two
The Mayflower
The Mayflower, carrying English Protestants fleeing religious persecution by King James of England, anchored at what was to become Plymouth, Massachusetts, on December 18, 1620. It has been documented that the ship was meant to dock in Virginia, which at the time included land up to the Hudson River in what is now New York, but was unable to do so due to severe winter weather.I As well as 30 crewmembers, there were 102 passengers, known today as the Pilgrims, of whom 41 wrote and signed the Mayflower Compact, providing the framework for the creation of a civil government—the first government of and by “the people” (white men) in the history of the New World.
During their first winter, many of the settlers died from disease and hardships, leaving only fifty-three in the New World. Given how many had died, it was evident they needed help. A Native American by the name of Squanto from the Patuxet tribe taught them how to harvest corn, among other things.II Though peace initially existed, it was temporary. As the settlements expanded more and more, threatening the ten-thousand-year history of the Native American people and their land, bloody battles were soon waged against the Native Americans in a ruthless attempt at attaining power and control. Until the year 1880, it is estimated between 2 million and 5.5 million Native Americans were enslaved in America.III
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