“Thank you!” Betsy waves. The doors close.
Betsy is relieved to see bygone books in glass cases and DO NOT TOUCH signs on historical documents; there’s a not-great but better, more vague library smell. An old man who seems rather disconnected from reality shouts from the doorway to the back storage area, “Can I help you?”
“Oh, just looking for right now, thank you,” Betsy replies, clutching her new Gucci purse close to her side. When the man goes back to his desk to resume reading, Betsy takes a gander, trailing along bookshelves. She sees titles like Black Georgetown Remembered, which indicates she’s going the wrong way. She walks across the room to the other corner and reads titles like The Georgetown Set and The Georgetown Ladies’ Social Club and she knows she’s getting warmer. Finally she spots the little green book in between something boring and something else boring, a book the size of a hardcover elementary school telephone directory.
The Social List of Washington, DC is scrolled in gold letters on its cover. Betsy pulls out the two boring books next to it so as not to appear… lame, but more like a student doing her diligent research on Washington society. Betsy takes a seat at the mahogany table in the far corner below a portrait of George Peabody, the old “father of philanthropy” and financier who rose from humble beginnings to become a pioneer in American credit and banking.
The Green Book begins with a table of contents of Washington hierarchy: The White House, The Supreme Court, The Congress, The Diplomatic Corps, and Businessmen and Women (financiers, lawyers, lobbyists, etc.), which informs those worthy enough to obtain a copy of home addresses, in addition to the summer, winter, and retirement home addresses, and the occasional fourth home (usually somewhere in Europe). Betsy takes photographs with her iPhone of the addresses she finds in McLean, Virginia, so she can scope out her neighbors. Some of the WASP-y names also tickle her, reminding her of North Carolina: Tutty Fairbanks, Tibby Meriwether, Holly Dutton. Then she flips to the index to find the last names of classmates of her daughters, the Bartholomews of course, the Montgomerys and the Davidsons and the Cowans, which light a fire under her. She flips to the protocol section for entertaining, a fascinating reminder for cocktail and dinner parties in an ever-waning disintegration of etiquette and manners in this modern world, Betsy thinks. For example: We recommend that name tags not be used… they have no place whatever at social events. Or how one must formally address an envelope to a sultan or sultana—His Highness, Her Highness—or in speaking to them, “Your Highness,” always. This also includes princes and princesses. For a king and queen: His Majesty, Her Majesty, “Your Majesty,” and so on.…
* * *
Bunny sits in the center of the sofa surrounded by presents wrapped in pastel birthday balloon print. A portrait of her great-grandmother hangs in gold above the fireplace mantel. As she waits for her mother to bring out her eighteenth-birthday cake—flourless chocolate, her favorite—she notices the cobweb in the upper corner of the mahogany-framed windowpane above the seventieth anniversary poster for the Atomic Heritage Foundation leaning against it, and remembers what bratty Lily Anderson once told her in the seventh grade: “Did you know that cobwebs are formed from human skin?” Of course this was a lie, but for some reason in this moment, she remembers. She stares at the poster, wondering about all those innocent people bombed, and she has the fleeting thought: War crimes, fucking war crimes, and yet her genealogy passed down and down and down and onto her shoulders with pride, and she wonders if it’ll ever end, and if she was too hard on Billy. He was hurt that he wasn’t invited to her family gathering before her big party; she’d said it was because her mother had something private to discuss. It’s not so easy, is it, Bunny, he’d pushed back, calling out her hypocrisy again.… We’ll be out of the house soon, Billy.… Sure, he said, sure.
“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday, dear Bunny, happy birthday to you!”
Meredith sets the cake down in the middle of the coffee table, nearly setting the presents on fire. Bunny closes her eyes to make a wish, but she panics and her thoughts feel like jumbled blurs; she waits for one more moment but nothing comes to her. She fakes it and blows out the candles. “Yay!” Cate, Meredith, Phyllis, and Phyllis’s ninety-year-old husband clap their hands in lame unison.
“I wanted to give this to you before your party tonight, sweetheart.” Meredith hands her an envelope. “And I wanted it to be the first thing you opened.”
While Bunny rips open the envelope, Meredith walks behind the sofa and drapes an Hermès scarf over her shoulders, making Bunny the spitting image of her mother, Phyllis, and her mother’s mother.
“Mom, what are you dong?” Bunny asks, irritated.
“Just draping you in Mother’s vintage Hermès while you open.”
Bunny unfolds the document inside the envelope: it is her welcome initiation into the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) with printed photographs of women in white dresses adorned with white sashes and white gloves as if trapped in a 1950s beauty pageant. Bunny tries to hide her repulsion.
“Are you excited, honey? Now you can join me and Phyllis at functions.”
“They will just love you, dear,” Phyllis says.
“You’ve got lineage on both sides,” Meredith says. “Daddy is very proud.”
“So cool,” Cate says, genuinely interested.
“You know, Cate, hon, if you wanted to apply you could, you’ll just have to get the paperwork to prove the bloodline on yours and Chuck’s side of the family.”
“Maybe when I have more time…” Cate replies, her resentment almost noticeable but not quite.
“So… are you excited?” Meredith turns back to Bunny.
Bunny sits and stares at the envelope. “Thanks, Mom, can’t wait,” she says, flatlining. The significance irrelevant to all that she is learning, like spinning backward into a historical web she might not ever be able to escape from—her ancestors hanging on with their white claws.
“And before you open the rest, you know how disappointed Daddy is for not being able to come home for your birthday, so he wanted you to have this.”
Bunny opens a second “surprise” envelope.
Inside of it: a check for $100,000.
“Oh my God, Mom.” Bunny looks up.
“It’s time to learn how to spend responsibly. This was always going to be gifted to you from Daddy on your eighteenth birthday. It’s just a slice of your larger trust that will slowly start to be passed on to you. This also doesn’t leave this room, okay?”
“Money can be fickle, dear, and it’s no one else’s business,” Phyllis adds. She and Meredith shoot each other a look of both knowing and hiding what they know.
“Don’t ever forget that it’s distasteful to discuss money, okay?” Meredith says.
Cate feels a pang of jealousy in her stomach, of knowing that no matter how they may be connected by blood, she was born to the wrong brother. Though they have generously gifted her checks in the past, she did not receive an inheritance on her eighteenth birthday, nor will she on her twenty-fifth.
At the sight of the check, Bunny feels conflicted; she thinks about Anthony, she wants to know if this is normal, is this normal? She doesn’t feel gratitude, or excitement, or fulfillment. She wonders if Billy was right, hypocrite. She feels irritated with herself, her confusion, her mother and Billy, but she doesn’t want to show it, she doesn’t want to seem ungrateful on her birthday. Bunny tightens the scarf around her neck, a glorious performance for her mother, and says, “I’ll be right back—I’m going to go put it upstairs so nothing happens to it before I can take it to the bank tomorrow!” She leaps from her seat and runs up the stairs, hitting every creak in the floorboards. Bunny walks into her room, flings herself onto her bed, buries her face into her blue toile pillows, and screams. Her check floats like a feather to the floor.
* * *
Bunny sits at her vanity, leaning into the mirror as she dabs glitter around her eyes, the $100,0
00 check still on the floor next to her.
“Hello?” Cate cracks open her door.
“Hey, you can come in,” Bunny says. Making sure her glitter placement is symmetrical, she turns her head left then right.
“You excited for tonight?” Cate asks, trying to be friendly, trying to convince herself she can still be the older sister Bunny never had without resentment, until she notices her birthday check on the floor.
“Yeah, should be fun.” Bunny sets down the glitter stick and picks up her lip gloss, unscrewing the top.
Cate, refraining from lighting into her, walks over to pick up the check. “Bunny, your check,” she says, holding it out. “Be careful with this, you can’t just leave something like this out, let alone on the floor!”
Bunny turns and snatches the check out of her hands. “It’s fine,” she says, placing it across a few bottles of perfume in front of her.
Cate’s tone shifts. “It’s actually not fine, you can’t just nonchalantly leave a check on the floor for a hundred thousand dollars.”
“It just blew over onto the floor, relax,” Bunny lies, swiping gloss across her lips, not wanting to think about it.
“Why are you being so cavalier about this? Most people don’t get a hundred thousand dollars on their eighteenth birthday. Actually, most people won’t ever see a check for a hundred thousand dollars in their lifetime—”
“Okay, I’m sorry!” Bunny says, “It’s right here.”
“I know it’s your birthday, but it’s not an excuse to act like you’re entitled. You’re entitled to none of it.”
“No, you don’t understand—”
Cate cuts her off. “You’re lucky your father isn’t the one in prison. I would encourage you to start showing some gratitude.”
Cate walks out of her room and closes the door behind her. As the door shuts, the light breeze sweeps the check up into the air again. Bunny watches as it lands swiftly at her feet.
A moment of shame and confusion before she reaches for her cell phone and impulsively texts Stan via their Signal app, an encrypted messaging service her parents don’t know exists. Baby cave dwellers know that at any time their parents can get access to their text messaging via a request if they want to, but this is the loophole, the way to communicate drug deals, secret recordings, after-party locations, and endless sexting.
I need 200 pills of molly.
Lizbet going down rabbit hole tonight? Stan replies.
Yes, and I’m taking everyone down with me . My treat for everyone. I’ll Venmo you.
An unconscious part of her wants to get rid of all her money and rid of it fast, the balance in her bank account—thinking maybe it can release her from her family’s past.
Done. Vodka?
Obvi. Daddy gave me money for my birthday so I’m emptying my account for my birthday. I’m an adult I can do what I want.
Stan replies with two pill emojis x 100.
You with Billy? Bunny texts. Three dots appear and then disappear and then appear again.
Yes.
Is he coming? The three dots appear and disappear and appear again.
Yes.
Bunny waits a whole minute to reply: Good . Trying to play it cool, still feeling guilty but ready to get obliterated.
The Society of the Cincinnati and the Anderson House
The Society of the Cincinnati was the first private patriotic society, founded in 1783 on the patriarchal legacy of the white men who fought to establish American independence during the Revolutionary War. With a chapter in each of the thirteen states (former colonies), its original purpose was to maintain the embodiment of and bond over civic virtue. Membership was limited to direct male descendants of officers of the Continental Army and Navy (including French military service members).I George Washington was the first president general of the society.
The society maintains its headquarters at the Anderson House, a gilded mansion on Embassy Row, formerly the home of diplomat Larz Anderson and his wife, Isabel, an author. The Andersons were known for being entertainers, often opening their home to presidents—Taft and Coolidge—as well as major generals, and members of the Vanderbilt and Dupont families. After Larz’s death in 1937, with no children to inherit the home, it was donated to the Society of the Cincinnati, of which Larz had been a proud member.II
I. Society of the Cincinnati website, https://www.societyofthecincinnati.org/
II. https://www.societyofthecincinnati.org/anderson_house/history
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Called the “Florentine villa in the midst of American independence,” a gilded mansion resides on Embassy Row dedicated to the memory of white heroes who secured America’s independence. Once home to a diplomat who’d served in Europe and Japan, it is filled with carved wooden walls, gilded papier-mâché ceilings, marble floors, iron staircases, and eleven bedrooms reserved for those who belong to the exclusive Society of the Cincinnati, the oldest private patriotic organization of the United States. And the Bartholomews have paid a hefty rental price for Bunny’s eighteenth birthday party.
Each drawing room of the mansion has been roped off. Portraits of Civil War heroes trapped in gold hang on every wall. The DJ sets himself up in front of the original nineteenth-century grand piano while Bunny stands shivering at the front entrance between ancient Corinthian columns two stories high. She’s wearing a pale-pink pleated suede miniskirt and white cashmere turtleneck, and her vegan Doc Martens. Her hair is wavy and long down her back; a matching white cashmere turban headband pulls it away from her face.
Billy walks up the cobblestone driveway clad in a blue collared shirt and unzipped black parka, clenching his jaw and carrying a dozen pink roses. Stan skips up to Bunny first in a red peacoat and fedora. He pretends to flash her but reveals two hundred pills of molly in a bag instead of his penis, then shoves the bag down his pants.
“Happy Birthday, Lizbet.” He taps her on the ass and steps inside the mansion with his head held high. She spins back around to face Billy. They lock eyes in silence as he hands her the bouquet of roses.
“These don’t include the gift I got you,” he says.
“They’re beautiful, thank you.” Bunny places them on the marble and gold-plated table in the foyer. “Go get a drink, I’ll see you in a minute,” she says, the tension between them palpable.
An Ariana Grande song blasts through the grand ballroom once danced upon in buckled shoes. Adults drink brandy in the roped-off red library filled with velvet chairs and leather-bound books about legacy and war, while about two hundred students from the surrounding private schools smuggle in bottles of liquor and dance in dresses and shoes bought on Net-a-Porter.
Bunny immediately turns her attention to Mackenzie, kissing her on the cheek as she enters. Bunny says, “Someone is over by the staircase waiting for you,” sliding her eyes over to Marty, looking dapper in a red bow tie and suspenders. When Mackenzie walks over to him, Bunny sees that her hair is parted to the other side of her head, her hair extension clips much more visible to hide the back of her head.
“I got my early acceptance letter from Harvard,” Marty says, pushing his new round spectacles up his nose.
“Stop it!” Mackenzie swings her arms around his neck and kisses him, then quickly retreats into her shy self.
Chase catches them in the act of sweet embrace; he stumbles over taking swigs from his clear water bottle filled with the finest Russian vodka. “What’s this I hear?”
Marty sees that Chase’s khakis are falling below his waist. “No belt? Headed for public school next year, eh?”
“I’m no commoner like you, compadre, I’m headed to the place where the tits and ass are part of the state, where the sun shines”—he opens his arms as if he’s won a state championship and dry-humps the air—“and everyone gets a taste of Chase!”
“Oh, you’re headed to UDC, that’s right,” Marty teases.
“Come on! Rollins College, baby! No shame in the game.” Chase takes anoth
er swig of vodka.
Bunny approaches this cluster of imbalanced entitlement. “Did you all get your little treat from Stan yet?”
“You mean dessert?” Marty smiles and takes two pills from his pocket. He hands one to Mackenzie. “One for you, my darling.”
“Where are Billy and Stan, by the way?” Bunny looks over her shoulder and sees Stan sliding down the gold banister like a twelve-year-old. Billy, standing at the bottom, catches him, and they double over with laughter. Others are grinding on the dance floor. Insecure teenagers pop their pills and open the double French doors out into the garden inspired by the Italian Renaissance. They dance around statues of family war heroes and roll around in the snowy grass in their faux fur coats and parkas, watching their breath swirl into the cold air.
“Looks like we’re behind,” Bunny says. “What? Did everyone pregame without me?”
“Stan had a few people over before and bused some of us here,” Chase says.
“Fucking dicks,” Bunny says.
“Well, I wasn’t invited either,” Mackenzie says. “I would have told you, you know that.”
“It’s fine.” Bunny turns to Chase, feeling irritated. “Give me one. I know you took more than your fair share, you greedy bastard, gimme. It’s my birthday.”
Chase rolls his eyes, guilty; he hands Bunny a pill with a smiley face.
“Come on, Mack, I’m taking you to Alice in Wonderland.” Bunny pulls Mackenzie away from Marty.
Mackenzie mouths sorry and waves. Marty smiles, acknowledging that he’ll see her in a bit. She turns to Bunny. “He just told me he got into Harvard!”
“Great, I’m probably going to get into Yale, now swallow this,” Bunny demands, unfazed by Marty’s acceptance letter. Unexcited for any kind of future she knows and feels has already been carved out for her.
Mackenzie holds the pill in her hand. “Well, I didn’t apply early anywhere, I only applied to UNC Chapel Hill, since that’s where my parents want me to go and where my dad went.”
The Cave Dwellers Page 17