The Senator's Children

by Nicholas Montemarano

  “Come straight to the room and knock once.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “Straight to the room—do you understand?”

  “Yes, Dave.”

  That name, and the way she said it, stirred something in him, and by the time he heard her single knock thirty minutes later, he had almost convinced himself that there was David Christie and there was another man named Dave, whose existence might begin and end in this room.

  She was wearing a red skirt and red heels.

  After hello, but before either said anything else, she kicked off her heels and stood there barefoot, three inches shorter, but still tall. He sat on the bed and looked at her. She opened her mouth slightly, and he saw the gap between her front teeth. He loosened his blue tie and unbuttoned the top button.

  She put her thumb against her lips, then moved the tip of her thumb into her mouth.

  He stood, moved closer.

  She didn’t move back, and now they were close enough to touch. She put one bare foot on top of the other, and then he reached out for her, replaced her thumb with his own.

  *

  She would leave notes in David’s ticket pocket. Always the same pocket, never anywhere else. Republicans made a stink over the fact that David’s suits had ticket pockets—a sign of his East Coast elitism, they said, despite the fact that he grew up middle class. The notes were risky, but she signed them T. or T. S. so that anyone who saw them would think they were from Tim Swisher. David would wait until he was on the plane to Iowa or Florida or wherever he was holding babies that week. Pleased with the way things went down. You performed well, really connected. Keep it up. Plenty more low-hanging fruit to look forward to. He’d read the note a few more times at the hotel. Then, guilty after a call with Danielle, he would tear the note into pieces so tiny that no one, not even the most ambitious tabloid journalist, would be able to reconstruct it.

  She had girly handwriting. Large, curvy letters, bubbles over her i’s. To be safe, she would write small and sloppy, but not so sloppy that David wouldn’t be able to read her words. She told him that she hated having to write David or Senator rather than Dave. Once, he held her note up to a light and could see that she had written xoxo but then erased it. At first David refused to give her notes, but she was hurt. She was good at being hurt. She cried; she spoke like a child. Sometimes, she sucked her thumb in her sleep. David felt sorry for her; he gave in. He wrote letters, but only with his left hand and never addressed to her. He signed off Thanks or Thanks for your help or Take care or Best wishes or All the best or Best.

  She wanted Love, but David said no way. She wanted xoxo. No way. She wanted Fondly or Warmly, but he said no, too risky.

  “Come on, it’s me,” she said, as if David had known her his entire life and not just a few months.

  She said, “It’s not like I’m going to the Enquirer.”

  *

  “Did you use protection?”

  “No.”

  “David, you put me at risk.”

  “She was tested.”

  “Tested for what?”

  “She was tested, okay?”

  “How do you know? Because she told you?”

  David closed his eyes and moved his lips as if practicing what he could possibly say.

  “She could be pregnant,” Danielle said.

  “She’s not.”

  “So you pulled out every time.”

  “No.”

  “So she could be.”

  “She was on the pill.”

  “And you believed her—this woman you didn’t know.”

  “I saw her take it.”

  “So what?”

  “So she’s not.”

  “Not what?”

  David hesitated.

  “Say it,” Danielle said.

  “She’s not—pregnant.”

  “If I have to say pulled out—for God’s sake, you have to say that.”

  *

  It ended in early February at the Algonquin, where it began. David had not seen Rae since December. When he told her it was over, she cried but stayed calm. She stood beside the bed, but he would not move any closer to her, would not comfort her. She already knew, she told him. She knew when she called his hotel suite in Des Moines the week before Christmas and he canceled their plan for her to fly to Iowa. The businesslike way he had spoken to her, his tone of voice—she knew.

  “I have a family,” he said now.

  “I’m well aware,” she said.

  “We made a mistake.”

  She walked over to him and stood too close; he looked away from her. “Sometimes,” she said, “we make mistakes for a reason.”

  “I’m sorry for my part in this,” he said.

  “Mistakes were made,” she said. “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to say?”

  “I have to go,” David said.

  She hugged him and, with her arms wrapped tightly around him, she said that everything happens for a reason and maybe he did need to walk away from her—for now—because that would give him the space and clarity so that at some point—she knew this, she told him—the two of them could be together more “cleanly.”

  David didn’t disagree with her—not verbally. He didn’t want to do anything to set her off. He told her again that he was sorry.

  “Don’t be,” she said.

  She reached into her bag, pulled out a box, and gave it to David. “This is not a good-bye gift,” she said.

  David opened the box; it was a dark blue tie with white stripes. She said she’d bought it at Barney’s before Christmas. He thanked her and put the tie into his bag.

  “I want you to wear it,” she said.

  “I will.”

  “Now,” she said. “Please,” she added in baby talk. She pouted her lips, trying to look sad, David assumed, but it looked more like she was blowing a kiss. He could easily get pulled back in, he knew that.

  “I have a flight to catch.”

  Iowa is a week away, he thought. New Hampshire is eight days after that.

  “If this is the last time we’re ever going to see each other,” she said, “if you really mean that, then please just let me see you in the tie.”

  David, wanting this to be over before it could start again, quickly pulled off the tie he was wearing—Betsy had given it to him for Christmas—and replaced it with the tie Rae had given him.

  He walked to the door with his bag. “I really need to go.”

  Rae didn’t move from where she stood.

  “You need to go first,” David said.

  Rae asked if they could walk out together. He said no. So she bargained: okay, she understood why they couldn’t leave his room together, but just once couldn’t they leave the hotel together? No, he said, much too risky. Okay, she said, but how about together but not together, like two strangers who happened to be leaving at the same time, and he hesitated, and she rubbed her eyes, perhaps to remind him that she had been crying, and said please, and then put the tip of her thumb into her mouth and waited, and he said, “Two strangers.”

  Down in the lobby, David walked through the revolving door first, Rae behind him. Outside, they stood in front of the hotel—two strangers, it would seem.

  She’ll walk away, he thought, and I’ll wait here for a car to bring me to the airport, and time will pass, and eventually it will be as if this never happened.

  But then she walked closer to him and said, “Aren’t you Dave Christie?”

  He wasn’t sure what she was up to. Maybe she was trying to start over as if they’d never met.

  Sorry, he thought, but Dave is dead.

  And then: She’s dangerous.

  “I just wanted to ask for your autograph,” she said.

  She handed him an Algonquin notepad and pen.

  As he was signing his name, she touched him. “Your tie’s crooked. Who dressed you today?” She smiled, but he didn’t return it.

  She centered the tie, and then tightened the knot ar
ound his collar—too tight, he felt.

  “Better,” she said, and when he said nothing in reply, she touched his face and said, “Bye—for now.”

  She walked away. David stood there holding the pen and his own autograph. He dropped both in the trash in front of the hotel. He watched her walking slowly—too slowly—down the street. She stopped, and he was worried that she might turn around. But she started walking again. He was relieved when she turned a corner and he could no longer see her.

  MARCH 2, 1992

  When Nick died, Betsy had wanted to return to school right away, though she came to see that as a mistake. Now, she never wanted to go back. She was a senior in high school, she had sent in her college applications, but she had missed two weeks of school, and it wasn’t like anyone had died this time. The principal had been very understanding; everyone had. “Take as much time as you need,” her teachers said. Some offered to meet with her one-on-one. But two weeks was probably enough, she decided. The longer her absence, the more attention she would receive upon her return. Maybe everyone was talking about her. Or maybe no one really cared.

  If asked how she was doing, what would she say?

  Fine, thanks.

  Good, how are you?

  Hanging in there.

  It hasn’t been easy.

  To be honest, life kind of sucks.

  The truest answer might be to say nothing. Because she really didn’t have the words. Maybe she did, but it would be too complicated, too much for polite conversation.

  She would have to explain that as bad as it was to hear her parents fighting—sometimes in the middle of the night—worse was to hear their silence, and worst was to be barely able to hear them, to know that they were trying to keep their voices down for her benefit.

  Some nights she couldn’t hear everything they said, only words, phrases.

  I feel sick.

  Love note.

  It was about sex.

  Bullshit.

  Pulled out.

  Pregnant.

  She lay awake in bed now and could hear them. Their bedroom was at the other end of the hallway, Nick’s old room between them, and their voices were low. It was after midnight: already Monday, the day she had decided to return to school. She was too nervous to sleep. That her parents were awake and talking at this time usually didn’t mean something good. She reached in the dark to her bedside table and turned on her shortwave radio. She turned the dial, English, English, Spanish, English, German, until she heard a language she didn’t know: it sounded Arabic. But the man’s voice was too loud, he sounded upset, and so she kept turning until she found a woman speaking French. Her voice was like a song. Betsy brought the radio into bed and rested it against her ear, and it was as if this woman were in the room with her. Her parents’ voices faded.

  Just as she was about to fall asleep, the radio went silent. She turned the dial, but there was nothing; the batteries had gone dead. There were new batteries downstairs in a kitchen drawer, but she didn’t want to get up and walk past her parents’ room. Their voices went up and down in waves. Then she thought she heard—yes, she did—her mother crying. Betsy got out of bed and went to her door; she opened it a crack and listened. She remembered how frightened she’d been the first time she heard her mother cry. Betsy was seven, and her mother had banged her knee on the bottom of the dining room table, and the pain brought tears to her eyes, and then Betsy started to cry, and hugged her mother and said, “Stop, please stop, please.” Before that, she hadn’t understood that adults cried.

  She had an urge to do something similar now—to walk down the hallway and into her parents’ room without knocking, and say, “Stop, please stop.”

  She wanted to shake them and say, “Look at me—it’s Betsy, your daughter. Look at each other. It’s you. It’s us. We’re okay, we’re going to be okay. No one died.”

  But she couldn’t decide whether that would help or hurt. She was having trouble making any sort of decision lately. She had decided to return to school, that was something, but now she stood in her bedroom doorway and could not decide what to do—which itself was a kind of decision. She waited and listened and stayed where she was.

  Now fully awake and feeling alone, she reached to turn on the shortwave, then remembered that the batteries were dead.

  She didn’t watch much TV, especially not this late, but she turned it on. The theme song of M*A*S*H depressed her. She had only ever seen the show in reruns, and the music, now, reminded her of a time before she was born. She changed the channel. A late-night comedian was telling jokes, and it was nice to hear actual people laugh rather than a laugh track. The comedian, a tall man with dark wavy hair and a Brooklyn accent, was talking about how his wife was always mad at him—he used too much toilet paper, he snored, he was a slob, he didn’t make enough money—but now, finally, he had the perfect response: “Hey, at least I’m not David Christie.” The audience laughed, and Betsy was too stunned to turn the channel. The comedian went on: “Did you hear what David Christie said now? Did you hear what this guy said? He said about his mistress, ‘I don’t love her.’” After a pause: “Real smart, man, now you’ve got two women mad at you. Great, way to go.” Now the audience’s reaction did sound like a laugh track. Betsy wanted to turn off the TV, but didn’t. She kept listening. “This guy, I’m telling you, he makes a terrible husband like me look pretty good. You remember during his campaign, he was always talking about how there are two Americas. Well, no wonder: in one America he was faithful to his wife, and in the other America he was, in fact, banging his mistress.”

  Enough.

  Betsy turned off the TV, got back into bed, closed her eyes, and listened: the house was quiet. She thought about Nick, mental snapshots of him at different ages, each for only a few seconds before it was replaced by a new one, and suddenly he was sixteen, and there was nowhere to go but back in time: her brother got younger and younger until he was the youngest she remembered him, when she was three and he was nine. She shut her eyes more tightly and could see in the darkness beneath her eyelids strange shapes and flashes of light, and she looked for her brother in them. She’d seen him there before, but never when she tried; he showed up, if it was him, on his own terms. She tried to have Nick be the last thing she thought of before falling asleep, hoping she might dream about him, but when she woke in the morning, she couldn’t remember any dreams at all.

  *

  She showed up to her first class early and asked her English teacher if she might change her seat. She wanted to sit near the door, if that was okay, and her teacher said, “Of course.” The idea behind this request was that if she wanted to leave, if she needed to, she would be only a few feet from the door, and she could be gone without having to see anyone’s reaction.

  But as the other students started arriving to class and took their seats behind her—Betsy kept her head down, pretending to look through her bag for something—she realized that she had made a mistake: she had asked to sit where everyone could see her. And so before all the seats were taken, Betsy went up to her teacher and said, “I’m sorry, but I changed my mind. Is it okay if I sit in the last row instead?”

  “Sure, whatever you need,” her teacher said.

  But this too turned out not to be the best decision, Betsy realized, as she now had to pack up her books, with everyone watching, and walk to the back of the class—looking down, not meeting anyone’s eyes—and call even more attention to herself than had she simply stayed in the front or, even better, never asked to change her assigned seat in the first place. Some of her friends turned to look at her; one even mouthed, “I’m so sorry.” She could have used their support, but she was embarrassed and didn’t want to hear their sympathy, genuine though it would be.

  Later, she asked if she could skip lunch—not skip eating, she didn’t mean that, she explained, but eat somewhere alone, maybe in a classroom.

  Whatever you need.

  That’s what everyone was going to say to any req
uest she made, it seemed. The kind of thing you’d say to someone who had experienced a death in the family.

  She wanted to say: “No one died!”

  Except she did feel that someone or something had.

  After lunch, upon remembering that comedian’s jokes, she made another decision. It came to her suddenly and clearly, and even though she hadn’t made the best decisions today, she knew that this decision was right. She went straight to her guidance counselor and told him: she’d changed her mind about colleges. She’d applied only to schools on the East Coast—Columbia, Penn, Amherst, Swarthmore, Bowdoin—but she realized now that she might want to go farther away, maybe Stanford or UCLA or Pomona. Her guidance counselor, Mr. Alford, a thin man who always wore white shirts and bow ties and had glasses and a graying goatee, asked if she was sure, and she said yes, and then he said, “So, do you mean you’d apply next year? Because all the deadlines have passed.”

  “I was hoping maybe they could make an exception,” she said. “Maybe you could talk to someone.”

  “I’d be glad to reach out to them,” Mr. Alford said, “but I’m not sure if they’d even be allowed to make an exception.”

  He must have seen the disappointment on Betsy’s face, and of course he had to know that this was her first day back. “I’ll try,” he said. “I’ll do whatever I can.”

  But in AP Calculus at the end of the day, Betsy’s mind wandered back to Mr. Alford. She imagined the conversations he might have with directors of admissions at the schools Betsy had mentioned.

  Yes, that Christie.

  His daughter.

  She’s going through a tough time.

  One of our best students.

  I know, but under the circumstances.

  Before she left school for home, she went to see Mr. Alford. But as she waited outside his office for him, she decided that she didn’t want to talk to him after all; she just wanted to leave. So she left him a note:

  Dear Mr. Alford,

  Thank you so much for being willing to help me, but I’m really not sure, and I think I should stick with the schools I applied to. I’ll probably defer anyway.