The Senator's Children

by Nicholas Montemarano

  “You pursued her, you know.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “You were like a little puppy.”

  “Yeah, and right away your mother started to train me like one.”

  “I told you before—go home.”

  Without saying another word, Eddie walked casually onto the stoop, grabbed a snow shovel leaning against the house, pulled it back, and with one swing shattered the pane of glass in the front door. Gently he put down the shovel. Careful to avoid the shards still clinging to the open frame, he reached inside, unlocked the door, and opened it.

  They stood in the dark, just inside the house, but neither of them moved.

  “Stay here,” he said.

  Avery grabbed his arm. “This is my house.” It was strange to hear herself say this. She had never been able to think of the house as hers or her mother’s because her father had paid for it. But he never visited or had any contact with them, just sent the monthly child support check.

  “Let me,” Eddie said.

  “She’s my mother.”

  “I’m not leaving.”

  She fought off snapshots in her mind: her mother in the tub, her eyes open; her mother hanging from a ceiling fan by an extension cord, a chair on its side beneath her, her eyes open.

  “We don’t need you,” Avery said.

  “I’m going to wait right here,” he said.

  She walked upstairs trying to take deep breaths, but all she could manage were shallow puffs, and by the time she reached the top, her arms and hands and face were tingling. The snapshots were coming so rapidly now that they became a single, constant image: her mother’s eyes were open. She couldn’t take this terrible feeling of anticipation any longer; she wanted whatever was going to happen to be over. She walked to her mother’s bedroom and put her hand on the doorknob.

  Then a calm came over her. She thought: Whatever happened has already happened—except her seeing it, knowing it. She thought: Now I won’t have to worry about her anymore. And it was a surprise to admit this—that she worried about her mother.

  Slowly, as calmly as Eddie had picked up and swung the shovel, she opened the door. Even in the dark she could see her mother on the floor. She was on her back, one arm at her side, the other stretched above her head.

  Avery picked up the pill bottle on the floor beside her mother. She shook it and it sounded more than half-full.

  Her eyes adjusted. Her mother was still dressed—jeans, a red sweater. She was still wearing one sock. Maybe she’d started to undress and gotten as far as one sock before giving up.

  She moved closer and saw that her mother’s eyes were closed. A dead person’s eyes could just as likely be closed as open, but Avery took her first deep breath since Eddie shattered the front window.

  She pressed her fingers to her mother’s neck to be sure. But Avery didn’t move her mother to the bed. She wanted her to wake up on the floor and remember what she’d done. She took the blanket from her mother’s bed and covered her. She took the bottle of Xanax with her.

  Eddie was halfway up the stairs.

  “She’s sleeping,” Avery said.

  “Is she all right?”

  “That’s none of your business anymore.”

  He moved up to the step below the one Avery was standing on—that way they were the same height—and opened his arms to hug her.

  “Good-bye, Eddie.”

  He lowered his arms, walked down the stairs, and left.

  Avery used her phone to take photos of the empty window frame and the glass on the floor. Something for her scrapbook. Then she went upstairs to take a photo of her mother.

  The photo made her cry in a way her actual mother on the floor couldn’t make her.

  She deleted it.

  APRIL 11, 2008

  Avery’s mother had just picked her up from school. During the ride home she told Avery, “Sometimes I pretend that I don’t know you.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “Be quiet, please. I’m about to say something nice.”

  Avery made a gesture of zipping her lips and looked out the car window at light rain falling on Queens.

  “Just now, when I watched you walk down the street, I pretended you were just some girl.”

  “I am just some girl.”

  “That’s just it—you’re not. Sometimes I look at you and imagine how a stranger might see you.”

  “That’s kind of creepy, Mom.”

  “I was like, who is that tall, beautiful girl? I mean, do you know you have this amazing walk where you’re kind of pigeon-toed?”

  “Oh, great.”

  “No, it is,” she said. “You know how some models stand a little pigeon-toed—it’s like that except you’re walking.”

  “I sound weird.”

  “And you have a great mouth—do you know that?”

  “Stop.”

  “Seriously, you have a woman’s mouth,” she said. “You’re going to be a heartbreaker.”

  “Just like you.”

  Her mother was quiet for a minute. Avery was always hurting her. And her mother seemed to invite it. What she really wants, Avery thought, is sympathy. She wants someone to take care of her. Baby her.

  The light rain suddenly became a downpour; it was hard to see where they were going. Her mother leaned forward in her seat and squinted. She tried to switch lanes, but a car sped up to block her. She stepped hard on the brake; traffic stopped behind her. She leaned into the horn. The sound was so loud and went on so long, Avery was afraid her mother would never stop. Her mother was shaking with rage. It was as if she were waiting for the world to say it was sorry for whatever it had done to her, and she was prepared to wait forever.

  “Mom, stop,” Avery said, but her mother didn’t seem to hear.

  She lifted her hand from the wheel and stared at it. Cars behind them were beeping now.

  She drove home, then parked in front of their house. It was still pouring, and they didn’t have an umbrella.

  “We used to play a game,” she told Avery.

  “Who?”

  “Who do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” Avery said. “Which is why I asked.”

  “Your father and I,” her mother said. “We’d pretend we didn’t know each other.”

  “Well, you didn’t.”

  “We did.”

  “Not really.”

  “Sweetheart, will you please be quiet, just for a few minutes, and let me tell this story?” She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and then opened them again and looked at Avery. “I know it’s just a silly story to you, but please let me tell it, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “We’re not going anywhere anyway.”

  “I said okay.”

  She told Avery how she’d stay in the Hotel Fort Des Moines one floor below David. He didn’t have much downtime leading up to the caucuses, but when he did, he’d call her room to tell her where he was going, so that she could show up too. They’d watch each other from a distance, and make eye contact, and there was something thrilling about this game, especially when they’d meet back at the hotel.

  One night, a few weeks before David won the debate in New Hampshire, he and Tim Swisher went out for a beer at a restaurant in downtown Des Moines. Her mother showed up later and sat a few tables away. She was wearing stonewashed jeans, a white blouse, a black blazer, and black flats. Her hair was pulled back.

  The first problem, she told Avery, was that she looked really good but David pretended not to notice her, not even when Tim went to the men’s room. “It felt like a power move,” she said. “You’ll find out what that is, believe me.”

  So she broke a rule—the biggest rule. As soon as Tim came back to the table, she walked over to David.

  “The look on his face,” she told Avery.

  She stood there smiling but didn’t say anything. Finally Tim said, “Can we help you?”

  She ignored him and said to David, �
��We know each other, don’t we?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said.

  “You look so familiar.”

  “He gets that a lot,” Tim said, but she wouldn’t even look at him.

  “I’m David.”

  “Rae,” she said.

  “Nice to meet you.”

  “We’ve met before.”

  “I don’t know,” David said.

  “I never forget a face.”

  “Maybe you’ve seen me on TV.”

  “That’s it,” she said. “You’re on that soap opera—what’s it called?”

  Tim laughed, and then David did too.

  “That’s funny,” David said. “No, I’m running for president. That’s probably how you know my face.”

  “I don’t follow politics.”

  “Me neither.”

  “I don’t trust politicians.”

  “Hey, I don’t blame you.”

  “What’s your last name?”

  “Christie.”

  “Well, good luck with the election.”

  “I appreciate that,” he said. “It was nice to meet you.”

  She started to walk away, but came back. “Are you sure we don’t know each other from somewhere else?”

  “Quite sure,” David said without smiling. “Have a nice evening.”

  She left the restaurant, feeling embarrassed.

  “I didn’t like that—quite sure,” she told Avery now. “His tone of voice, you know.”

  But what David didn’t know, she told Avery, was that she’d taken one of his room keys, and after his quite sure, she let herself into his room and took off her clothes. Her plan was to wait until David walked into the room and saw her, and then say, “Are you sure you don’t recognize me?”

  “Mom,” Avery said, “do I have to hear this?”

  “No, you don’t have to.”

  Her mother looked hurt; she turned away from Avery and stared out at the rain.

  “Finish your story,” Avery said.

  “No, it’s all right,” her mother said.

  “Just finish,” Avery said.

  “I’m trying to tell you about your father.”

  “Go on, then,” Avery said, but wanted to say: “No, you’re telling me about you.” And as her mother continued, she imagined saying this word over her mother’s story: “You you you you you you you.”

  “The problem was,” her mother said, “Tim was in the hallway with your father. So I grabbed my clothes and ran into the bathroom just before they came into the suite. I got into the tub and closed the shower curtain.”

  She heard them talking about the next day—a wrestling tournament in Ames, a stump speech in Grinnell—and about the Redskins, and then the bathroom door opened. She didn’t dare open the curtain to look, but then she heard David on the phone and knew it was Tim in the bathroom. She tried to think of what she’d say were he to find her. She couldn’t think of any story he might believe—other than the truth. Yes, she thought—the truth. It’s about time. And for a moment, a stupid moment, she considered opening the shower curtain and scaring Tim Swisher, probably make him pee on his shoes.

  She thought better of it and didn’t move.

  Tim took forever washing his hands. When he left the bathroom, he didn’t close the door. He wanted to go over a few more things with David, but David told him that he was tired, so Tim went back to his own room.

  Then David came into the bathroom. She could see his shadow on the other side of the curtain. She was still afraid to move.

  He pulled back the curtain suddenly, and there she was—naked.

  You you you you you you you, Avery thought.

  David was holding her earrings, which she’d left on the nightstand. He wasn’t smiling.

  “Don’t we know each other from somewhere?” she said.

  “We have rules.”

  “How do I look?”

  “This isn’t funny.”

  “What is it, then—sad?”

  “Maybe it is.”

  “Don’t say that,” she said, and then started to cry.

  David told her please to be quiet, someone would hear her, but she couldn’t stop, and so he took her to bed.

  “And then he was nicer to me,” she told Avery.

  “Is that the end of the story?”

  “Yes, that’s the end of my boring story.”

  “I never said it was boring.”

  They sat in the car waiting for the rain to stop. Avery wanted to break the silence but couldn’t think of anything kind to say.

  She wanted to say: “If you’d been caught that night, I might never have been born.”

  “I want to say one more thing,” her mother said. “Make that two more things, okay?”

  “Fine,” Avery said.

  “One, I love you—okay? Look at me.”

  Avery looked at her mother.

  “I love you, and I’m sorry—okay?”

  “You don’t need to be.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t tell you normal stories about your father—how we met, our first date, how he was right there when you were born, things like that.”

  “I don’t need any stories.”

  “I’m not a bad person, you know.”

  “Mom,” Avery said. “You don’t need to convince me to love you.”

  “But you don’t like me very much.”

  “Sometimes—I don’t know, you try too hard.”

  “I’d like you to like me more.”

  “Stop trying so hard,” Avery said.

  Her mother stared at her for a moment. “You really are a beautiful girl.”

  “You said two things.”

  “What?”

  “You wanted to say two things.”

  “Be better than me,” her mother said. “I’m not a bad person, but please be better than me.”

  The storm wasn’t letting up. They waited for another minute in silence, and then her mother said, “Fuck this rain.” She got out of the car and ran for their front door. Avery got out and ran after her.

  NOVEMBER 4, 2008

  Avery knew what day it was. Every year, she started dreading it as soon as October turned to November.

  Today was two days: her mother’s birthday and the anniversary of Danielle Christie’s death. Her mother was turning forty-eight. Danielle Christie had been dead fifteen years.

  Today was also Election Day. Not that Avery could vote.

  At breakfast she wished her mother a happy birthday, gave her a quick hug. Her mother sighed and said, “Two more years until the big five-oh.”

  Her mother looked closer to forty than fifty, her hair still long and dark, some strands of gray here and there that suited her. Avery chose not to give her even this small compliment.

  But then her mother spilled coffee on her white sweater and looked on the verge of tears. Avery cleaned the coffee on the floor while her mother took off her sweater and stood at the sink in her bra blotting the stain. Her mother’s stomach was still flat, Avery noticed, and from the floor, on her knees, she said, “Mom, you don’t look your age.” Her mother leaned down to kiss the top of Avery’s head.

  On Avery’s birthday, her mother stayed home from work so that they could do something together. But not on her own birthday. For two years now she had been working at a theater in Manhattan—sales, administrative work. “So what if I didn’t make it as an actress?” she had told Avery when she took the job. “It’s nothing glamorous or anything, but hey, you never know.” Avery wasn’t sure what her mother had meant by you never know. That she might be discovered? Given a role in a play at the theater? Her mother seemed to like her job, and today of all days it would also serve as a distraction. She never made much of her birthday and had told Avery weeks ago that she didn’t want a gift.

  Avery felt the weight of the day all morning and heard only fragments of what her teachers said. In math class, she worked out her own private calculations: Her mother was born in 1960, when Danielle Glass
was twenty-one and in love with David Christie. They were seniors at Penn. Soon David would be off to law school and Danielle to graduate school. Four years later, they would get married, and four years after that, in 1968, they would have their first child. Of course there was no way Danielle could have known, Avery thought, that on that day in 1960, in Queens, a baby girl was born who would become the woman who would have an affair with her husband and give birth to their child. And there was no way Danielle could have known then that November 4 was the pre-anniversary of her own death. Avery, only sixteen, didn’t think too much about death, but during math class she realized what should have been obvious—that the date of her own death already existed, each year it came and went like any other day. She was glad not to know. Better not to know anything about the future.

  After lunch, during her free period, Avery sat alone in the library with her back to a wall so that no one could come up behind her. She put in earbuds and plugged them into her laptop. She opened her secret folder, hidden seven mouse clicks deep in decoy folders. It contained links to online videos of her father’s speeches and presidential debates he had participated in, even an older debate when he first ran for the Senate, and news coverage of the scandal. She’d watched all of those many times. But one video, which she had watched only once, she clicked on now: Tom Brokaw reporting the death of Danielle Christie on NBC Nightly News. Today, Avery thought, you’d find out on Twitter or Facebook; you’d know almost as soon as anyone. When someone famous or even semi-famous dies, she thought, that person’s Wikipedia page is updated before the body is cold. The nightly news, now, was hardly news.

  On November 4, 1993, Tom Brokaw reported that Danielle Christie, “wife of former senator and presidential candidate David Christie,” had died of cancer at her home in Philadelphia, and he noted that “many were inspired by her resilience under difficult and often publicly painful circumstances.” He added, almost as an afterthought, that she had been an English professor at Buchanan College. The one-minute segment included a condolence quote from President Bill Clinton: “Our thoughts and prayers are with the Christie family.” Brokaw ended with: “Danielle Christie was fifty-four years old.” The visuals during the segment, which Avery watched twice more: Danielle’s face in a box hovering above Brokaw’s shoulder; a photo of their daughter, Betsy, walking between them, holding their hands; the tabloid photo of Avery’s mother straightening David’s tie, her face too close to his; and the blurry photo—taken secretly by Avery’s nanny at her mother’s urging, its authenticity disputed at first by David—of David holding Avery when she was five months old, the only time he had ever seen her.