He leaned against the door frame, working the tie free from its knot. “There are fifteen messages from your mother on our answering machine.”
“See? I told you we should get rid of that thing.”
He wrapped his arms around my shoulders, creating a little cocoon in which I relaxed, supported by his frame. The broccoli sizzled and popped, and Brady took the spoon from my hands, giving the meat and vegetables a few expert flips. The chicken was beginning to look dry and overdone.
“She’s been texting me all day, too. I haven’t been able to call her. What am I supposed to say?”
“I’m sorry,” Brady said, fiddling with the knob to turn off the heat. “Would you rather talk in person? I could come with you.”
I looked up at him. “In the middle of your hearing?”
“We may get a ruling before noon.” His voice didn’t ring with optimism.
“No—thanks, though. I have some thinking to do first.”
“We’ve got this,” he said, his chin resting on my head. “We can figure it out.”
We stood that way for a long time, the distant sounds of Animal Planet filtering into the room.
“It could be nothing,” Brady said into my ear. “This could all blow over tomorrow.”
I nodded, but it felt like a tornado was brewing inside me, gaining power, sweeping each new thought into its path.
It could be nothing, like Brady said.
Or it could be everything.
* * *
After dinner, I sat on our bed upstairs, my cell phone in my hand. The texts from my mother had come all day, most of them repetitions of the original text.
CALL ME, DON’T TALK TO ANYONE.
DON’T LISTEN TO THAT WOMAN.
Of course, I hadn’t obeyed her orders; I’d gone right to CNN, and I’d watched Anna Kovics’s allegation a dozen times, until I’d memorized the set of her jaw, the tremble of her lips. I couldn’t stop trying to understand why someone would invent a story like that, one that was sure to bring pain and humiliation. It was a twisted way to get fame, and there were easier ways to get money from the Mabreys. I suppose it might have been wounded pride from a crush gone wrong, or a case of mental illness with its paranoia and delusions of grandeur. But I didn’t see any of this in Anna Kovics. She looked young and scared, but behind that trembling lower lip was a fierce sort of determination, one I certainly didn’t have at her age. Or now.
I looked at my phone again, hovering over the green icon that would initiate the phone call, that would drag me back into that world.
Over the years, Brady and I had found reasons to visit my side of the family less and less. Dad and Mom had been too busy, for one thing, their calendar dotted with speeches and fund-raisers and important dinners, and it was difficult to remember when they were in DC and when they were back at Holmes House. Kat and I kept in touch via Skype every week or so, but our talk was inevitably of what was going on with our kids and who wanted what for her birthday. I talked to MK less frequently, mainly because his own career had skyrocketed, and as Brady said, he now regarded us as the “little people” he had promised not to forget on his climb to the top.
“Come over to the dark side,” MK joked to Brady on the rare occasions when we were together, as if he were the older and wiser of the two, taking a young man under his wing. “There’s never going to be money in that kind of law.”
“Immigration law is not about the money,” Brady would say, deaf to the way his voice came across, wounded and defensive in a way that probably tickled MK to no end. “It’s about helping people, reuniting families—”
MK would inevitably laugh, clapping him on the shoulder. “Just teasing you, buddy. Course you do an important job. If I had a better sense of ethics, I’d be doing it myself.”
“Your brother,” Brady complained on our drive home from Thanksgivings and Christmases and Fourths of July, the girls asleep in the back seat, their heads leaning toward each other, mouths slack. “Does he hear how he comes across?”
“Ignore him,” I advised. “He’s always been an ass.”
Then one year for Christmas, we vacationed with Brady’s family in the Florida Keys, happy to escape the New England chill for weather so humid, it made the girls’ hair frizz and curl. The following year, Brady had a conference in Savannah in late June, and we rented a house on Hilton Head for two weeks, just the four of us. I’d forgotten how peaceful life could be without the constant forced chumminess of the Mabreys, the increasingly close quarters of summers on The Island. Instead, Brady and the girls and I took boat rides and rode horses and watched old movies. Brady and I made love every single night, something that rarely happened when we were with my family, where we ended up going to sleep annoyed and exhausted, nursing a dozen small slights. After that summer, we made Hilton Head our annual trip, and then it seemed that the rope that tethered us to the Mabreys had gone slack, as if the knot had come loose and we were being allowed to drift peacefully away.
I felt pangs of guilt from time to time when Mom called, reminding me that it had been months since she’d seen the girls, or when I dashed off a birthday card instead of making the two-hour drive to Simsbury. And then last year Mom’s cancer had come back, unrecognized in the immediate aftermath of the funeral, as if we could only grieve for one thing at a time. It had spread to her lungs and then her liver, and the treatment was aggressive. Since then, Kat and Rebekah and I had alternated our visits, and I’d begun calling more frequently.
Even after all these years, Mom and I had nothing in common, and it was a stretch to find good topics for conversation. She wasn’t a good source for parenting information, and I could hardly go to her with my concerns when Stella had a low quiz score. And anything relating to the past, especially that last summer on The Island, was off-limits, topics we tiptoed around as carefully as landmines. Mostly I shared recipes with her—kale smoothies and roasted squash salad, things she wrote down for Hildy to try. The rest of the time I tried not to reference the date she’d been given by her doctor—twelve to eighteen months, if the chemo didn’t work.
I looked at the display on my phone. It was 8:17. Outside the bedroom door, I heard Emma’s voice raised in a question—probably something about the toucans she’d been watching on television—and Brady’s lower-pitched voice, answering. Straining, I heard the water running in the hallway bathroom. Brady would be standing in the doorway, reminding her to brush her back teeth, too, to rinse with the fluoride and floss.
This was my life now, and it was more precious to me than anything.
I pictured Mom in one of her velvet lounge suits, a scarf tied expertly around her bare scalp, sitting in her office, planning away. If anyone could save this family from the allegations of Anna Kovics, it was Mom. She had no doubt been behind the statement that was released earlier today, the one that denied the charges and subtly shifted the focus to Anna’s loyalty, her motives.
If I called, she would insist on my cooperation, providing me with the approved narrative, the things I could do to show my support.
Instead, I picked up the phone again and tapped out a message: I’m sorry, but I have to think about my own family right now. I’m sure everything will work out the way it’s supposed to work out.
I stared at the words before hitting Send, wondering exactly what I meant by that last sentence, and wondering, too, how Mom would interpret it.
But rather than waiting around to find out, I powered off my phone and went downstairs.
SUMMER
2001
Lauren
We spent that spring trying to coordinate our summers. Megan wasn’t going back to Woodstock—no way, no how, she said whenever the topic came up—and Camp Watachwa was out of the question for me, as was a summer spent solely in the company of my mother. It was our favorite topic of conversation, one we circled back to every few days with on
e unlikely suggestion or another.
“I read online that you can make a year’s salary working on an Alaskan fishing boat for the summer,” Megan would say.
“Or we could find some rich families who need nannies,” I would suggest, and we would laugh at each other.
We would both be horrible fishermen.
I would be a horrible nanny.
Megan went so far as to bike down to a vacation rental office in Scofield, offering to clean properties between guests. Later, she plopped onto her bed, announcing her defeat. “They have someone already, and she’s worked there for thirty-five years. It’s the same everywhere.”
“We’ll figure it out,” I said.
“Yeah,” Megan sighed, staring up at the ceiling. “Someone is bound to need a pair of dishwashers.”
“Or dog walkers.”
“Or Sandwich Artists.”
A week later, she presented me with a ripped page from the Scofield Sentinel, triumphant. “Here,” she said, thrusting the scrap of paper in front of me. “I found yours.”
“What am I supposed to be looking at? Lawnmower repair services?”
She jabbed one corner of the newspaper. “The Sentinel is hiring a photographer. See? Problem solved.”
I read the advertisement slowly. Freelance photographer needed. Experienced only. Pay per assignment. There was a name and phone number listed below the article. I fingered the feathered edge of the paper doubtfully.
“You have experience,” Megan pointed out. “All you have to do is pull out your portfolio and say, ‘Here’s the proof that I’m a genius.’”
I doubted that genius was one of the job requirements; the photographs in the Sentinel tended to be of championship teams in a semicircle around the three-point line, or the weekly “Good Neighbor” features, which were basically snapshots of women in their gardens.
* * *
But the first week of March, I found myself sitting in front of Phil Guerini, a portly, balding man my dad’s age who had greeted me with a grunt and a frown. He was a retired firefighter who ran the paper more like a hobby than a business, as was clear from his cluttered second-floor office. He glanced briefly at the album Megan had helped me assemble, a portfolio of my collected works—the best shots from my photography classes, a few of the assignments I’d had with the Keale Courier, mostly profiles on students or visiting lecturers. Toward the back, I’d added some of the photos I’d taken at Holmes House—snow falling and Lizzie laughing and one of Megan walking ahead of me into the sunlight, her body taking the form of a blurred silhouette.
He looked up at me, then down again at the book. “I don’t think this job is the right fit for you.”
I flipped to another page, drawing his attention to a photograph of my father, a newspaper open in front of him. He wasn’t recognizable as Charles Mabrey, US Senator, but it was an interesting angle, a line of text reflected in the mirror of his glasses. “Here’s another,” I said before he could object, flipping to one of Megan in a tank top in front of a white sheet, Richard-Avedon style. “I’ve been studying portrait photography.”
Phil tapped a finger against his chin. “The pictures are good. That’s not the problem.”
I shifted in the wobbly chair, the only seat in the room that wasn’t covered with stacks of old Sentinels. “What is the problem, then?”
“Look, Laurie—”
“Lauren.”
He bobbed his head slightly. “Lauren. This is your basic hack operation here. It’s not an art studio. There’s no glory in it. One week I might need a picture taken of a big rig overturned on the highway. The next week someone’s recipe wins a national contest. It’s not—” He gestured to the album, which I closed. “It’s not all of that.”
“The ad said that experience was needed,” I reminded him, feeling warm beneath my sweater. “I was showing you my experience. But I can shoot anything.” My voice caught in my throat, and I realized how desperately I wanted this—the first time I was earning something without the interference of my mother, or the influence of my father. Phil Guerini seemed to have no idea who I was, and that was fine with me.
He was quiet for a long time, paging through the album. “Anything?” he asked finally.
I smiled. “Anything.”
He grunted, which wasn’t a yes or a no. “There’s a science fair this week,” he said finally. “Winners announced Friday.”
I grinned. “I’ll be there. I’ll do it.”
“I only pay twenty-five dollars per assignment. That’s hardly enough to...” He waved his hand vaguely in my direction, as if to encompass the cost of my general upkeep and maintenance. He was right—it was nothing, comparatively speaking. The Sentinel was a weekly paper, appearing on front porches and café tables on Wednesday mornings, and each edition held only a handful of original photos, beyond the submitted artwork of second graders and the oversize real-estate ads. It wasn’t going to pay my rent for the summer, not even for one of the basement apartments listed in the Sentinel classifieds.
Still, I wanted this. I held out my hand before Phil could change his mind, and he clasped it, surprised.
“We’ll see,” he said, gruff again as he removed his hand from my grasp. “We’ll see what you can do.”
* * *
The best part of the Sentinel was its darkroom, old and barely functional, a relic from the previous editor, who’d mostly used it to develop pictures of his grandchildren. I spent a week putting it back into shape, despite Phil’s insistence that the trend was to use digital photography. It was faster, yes, and easier to see if one of my subjects had blinked, but I hadn’t warmed to the digital medium. There was no mystery there, no grand reveal when the paper hit the developing fluid and a composition magically appeared. Phil was happy with my work, giving general grunts of approval to my pictures. He was right—the job didn’t require a lot of artistry, although it gave me a thrill each time I saw my name in the fine print of the caption. Photo by Lauren Mabrey. Not bad at all.
On nights she wasn’t working at the switchboard, Megan came with me to the Sentinel, sitting quietly on a stool in the corner, her face glowing red in the safelight. She was taking her final general education course, a massive political science lecture, and she’d made friends with some of the girls in her class, a ragtag group she referred to as the Sisters, as in, “The Sisters are grabbing pizza. Do you want in?” or “Some of the Sisters are going to that film festival at Smith this weekend...”
I always said no; it wasn’t my thing, although it did give me a perverse pleasure to imagine myself being photographed with the girls in their Down with the Patriarchy! shirts. It was good that Megan and I had our own interests, wasn’t it? It was natural, and probably healthy. I didn’t have a lot of experience with female friendships, not the kind that spanned beyond months into years. The summer camp chumminess I’d experienced as a preteen had typically worn off by October, when our newsy letters became postcards and then nothing at all. Reardon had been full of cliques, a constant tightrope walk between praising one person and offending another, and I’d considered myself a free agent, beholden to no one. Sometimes it amazed me when I looked at Megan, thinking how improbable it was that we knew each other in the first place, and how amazing it would be if we were still friends in twenty years.
She’d even survived my family—the snootiness of my mother, the whininess of Kat, the general disgusting fratboy behavior of MK. I’d been half-asleep on the couch in The Dungeon when MK made his move on her on New Year’s Eve, and I’d held my breath, praying that nothing more would happen. Good for Megs—she’d brushed him off and never even mentioned it to me. Now when she answered our phone and it was my mother on the other end, they chatted for a few minutes about her classes, and I listened, marveling at how much better she was at tolerating my family than I was.
Even though we needed summer jobs, I i
gnored the emails that came from MK all spring. He was persistent; each email had a link to the internship application for Dad’s office, and I deleted them, one by one. Finally, he sent a read receipt, and I replied.
Do me a favor and pass it on to your girlfriend, too, he wrote.
Very funny, I wrote back.
He emailed again a few days later, asking where our applications were. I hadn’t mentioned it to Megan, even though every morning when she combed through her wet curls, she told her reflection in our mirror, “I am not going back to Woodstock,” like a mantra. But she would have hated DC, same as I knew I would: the social climbing, the political alliances, the law and public policy majors.
I wrote, Sorry, dude. Looks like Megan has other plans.
Are you kidding? This would be a great opportunity. Tell her to reconsider.
Face it. She’d just not that interested in you.
Impossible.
Quite possible, I shot back.
It took him a few days to write, Well, what about you? Mom seems to think you’re going to do it.
That’s because she’s delusional, I countered. Washington wasn’t plan A or B or C as far as I was concerned. Case closed.
* * *
Megan stayed at Keale for spring break, picking up some extra hours at the switchboard, and I went home to plead the case for staying in Scofield. I put off the question until the end of my stay, a Saturday morning when she was sitting in her office in Holmes House, organizing her calendar. It seemed an appropriate setting for a business arrangement. I was asking for a thousand dollars a month, but was prepared to settle for five hundred. That would barely pay our rent and keep us in ramen noodles and peanut butter sandwiches, but it was still a bargain compared to what Mom had paid to Camp Watachwa. I laid it out, step-by-step, but Mom only stared at me, her lips pressed in a half smile, half frown.
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