The Senator's Children

by Nicholas Montemarano

  Avery closed her laptop. She didn’t quite trust herself when she made sudden decisions, but she was certain now that she didn’t want to be here anymore today. What she wanted was to be seen. And heard. She was angry—she wasn’t sure at whom—and sad enough that she didn’t know if she could stand up, gather her things, and walk out of the school without tears. There were things she needed to say; they had been a long time coming. The angry part of her wanted to say: “Why have you never sought me out? What did I ever do to you?” The sad part wanted to say: “I’m sorry. This day must be hard for you.”

  *

  During the subway ride from Queens to Manhattan, Avery tried not to think too much more about what she might say, but it was impossible, and she was privately embarrassed at how nervous she was. “You don’t know me, but—” But what? “My name is—” “I’m your—your father’s—” “I know that today must be—” “I’ve never lost a parent—actually, my father—yours—I never really had him to lose, so—” So what? Her thoughts stuttered, and she couldn’t remember why she had decided to do this, what she wanted out of it.

  To be seen.

  How ridiculous; how weak; how needy.

  But it was true: she wanted her sister—she didn’t feel that she had the right even to think that word—to look at her.

  In her secret folder she had a file for each of them. Her father’s contained the most information. As the train made its first stop in Manhattan, she opened Betsy’s file to double-check the address of the Danielle Glass Foundation, which Betsy had started and now directed. She would be thirty-four years old—more than twice Avery’s age. A few years older than Avery’s mother had been when she gave birth to Avery. But in most of the photos Avery had of Betsy—from the year preceding and the year following Avery’s birth—Betsy was close to Avery’s age now; they could have been sisters.

  Could have been.

  How ridiculous, Avery thought. How stupid.

  As the train arrived at her stop, Avery took a few last looks at those old photos of Betsy, when she was just a teenager and looked sad and vulnerable. Avery imagined that they could magically be the same age—Betsy then, Avery now. She looked like someone I might get along with, Avery thought. Might understand and be understood by.

  *

  Avery’s plan—not the most detailed, she knew—was to wait for Betsy outside the building where she worked. It was 3:00 PM. She assumed that Betsy hadn’t left work for the day. There was the chance, she knew, that Betsy might work late, in which case Avery might have to stand there who knew how many hours. There was also the chance, she just realized, that Betsy had taken the day off; today was, after all, Election Day.

  It felt sketchy to be waiting there, lurking in front of the building on Twenty-Third Street, but the nearest bench was on the corner, far enough away that she might miss Betsy. She texted her mother to say that she was going over to a friend’s house after school to watch the election results and would be home late. Her mother texted back to ask which friend and how late, but Avery didn’t reply. She’d figure out the details of her story during the subway ride home.

  For the next forty minutes, Avery kept practicing silently, but then she realized that she was actually speaking: “You don’t know me . . . You don’t know me, but . . .” and just as she decided that she was crazy and that this, what she was doing, was crazy, she saw her.

  A pretty woman with brown hair held back from her face walked out of the building’s revolving door and stood on the sidewalk, about ten feet away from Avery, as if trying to decide which way to walk.

  Avery was scared but didn’t hesitate.

  “Excuse me,” she said. Betsy looked at her.

  Avery tried to continue, but her mind started to stutter again. “I’m sorry, but . . .”

  “Excuse me?” Betsy said.

  “I’m sorry, but do you have the time?”

  “No, sorry, I’m afraid I don’t.”

  Betsy smiled politely, then looked away. Avery didn’t move. She took out her phone and pretended to text someone. Stupid, she thought. If I have a phone, then why would I need to know the time?

  Betsy’s phone rang, and Avery thought: So you did have the time.

  Do you have the time for me—your sister?

  No, sorry, I don’t have the time for you.

  Well, technically, they both had said sorry.

  Betsy looked at her phone but put it back into her pocket. A moment later, it rang again, and this time she answered.

  “Hello,” she said.

  Avery pretended to be sending the longest text ever, but listened.

  “What happened?” Betsy said, clearly upset about something. Probably someone who worked for her had messed up. Avery didn’t wait to hear more; she started to walk back to the subway station.

  *

  By the time Betsy arrived at the hospital—she took the train from New York to Philadelphia to avoid rush-hour traffic—her father was ready to be released. His only injuries, the doctor explained, were a bruised hip—thank God it didn’t break, Betsy thought—and a sprained wrist from when he’d tried to break his fall.

  Betsy was happy to see her father dressed, sitting in a chair. He was shaking more than the last time she saw him, in September—another fall, that one at home rather than in the middle of the street, and not involving a dog and a car.

  She touched his shoulder. “Dad, tell me what happened.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “You didn’t need to come.”

  “When someone calls and says your father was hit by a car—”

  “I wasn’t hit by a car.”

  “The doctor says you were.”

  “It was the dog.”

  “Where’s the dog?”

  Her father looked confused, then panicked. “God, where’s Swish? Did he get hurt?”

  “Slow down, Dad. Tell me what you remember.”

  “I wasn’t hit,” he said. “I was grazed.”

  “By a car.”

  “Right here,” he said, and touched his hip.

  “But a car knocked you over.”

  He held up his wrist, which was in a brace. “I’m fine,” he said.

  “Dad, I’m having a hard time hearing you,” Betsy said. “You’re practically whispering.”

  “I’m not,” he whispered. “Where is my dog?”

  Then he seemed to remember something. “I was walking the dog,” he said.

  “Why, when we got you a dog walker?”

  “He’s old.”

  “The dog walker is not old.”

  “The dog,” her father said. “When he has to go, I take him out.”

  “But your legs.”

  “They’re fine.”

  “They’re not fine.”

  “He’s my dog, and I like to walk him. I should be able to. Just up Delancey and once around the block.

  “Okay, but look what happened.”

  “I’m not sure what happened,” her father said. “Somehow he got into the street.”

  “What street?”

  “Spruce,” he said. “I saw cars coming and went after him.”

  “Dad, you could have been—”

  Bracing himself on the chair, his arm shaking, he stood. “I want my dog,” he said.

  *

  The dog, Betsy finally found out from the nurse, who had heard it from the EMTs who had treated her father and transported him to the ER, had been taken by a neighbor to an animal ER because he was limping and it wasn’t clear if he’d been hit by the car as well. But Swish was twelve and his limp was from arthritis. That is, Betsy thought, unless he now had a new limp from being struck by a car.

  Betsy brought her father home, a short cab ride, and told him to stay there.

  “Where would I go?” he said.

  Still wearing his jacket, he lay on the couch and closed his eyes.

  “Just rest,” Betsy said. “Don’t get up unless you have to.”

  She got back into the cab—she
’d asked the driver to wait for her—and took it to the animal ER, where Swish, tail wagging, seemed very happy to see her. The vet confirmed that there were no signs of physical trauma, just the normal aches and pains of old age. Betsy paid the bill and then brought Swish outside to the waiting cab.

  The driver, leaning against the cab, smoking a cigarette, saw the dog and said, “No way.”

  “I’ll pay you extra,” Betsy said.

  “Sorry,” the man said.

  Swish pulled on his leash, as much as an old dog could, toward the driver. He sniffed the man’s shoes, the bottom of his jeans. The man shook his head and then crouched down to pet Swish. “I like dogs,” he said, “but I don’t give them rides unless they can fit into your purse.”

  “It hasn’t been a good night,” Betsy said. “I’ve been to two emergency rooms.”

  The man laughed. “Okay, but keep the dog on your lap.”

  “Thank you,” Betsy said, and then covered her face with her hands. She’d been crying too much lately, and sometimes she didn’t know why, and often she hid it from Cal. Tonight, at least, it made more sense. She wondered if her father remembered what day it was. If not, she would be that much more worried about him. But assuming he did remember, she considered the possibility—she hated thinking this—that her father might have—

  No, he never would have put the dog at risk, never would have let go of the leash on purpose.

  She turned away from the driver and tried to compose herself.

  “Hey, it’s no problem,” the driver said.

  “I’m okay,” Betsy said, what she’d been saying to Cal every time he asked what was wrong. “It’s just been a long night.”

  The driver opened the back door. “The dog can sit wherever he wants.”

  Betsy helped Swish onto the back seat, and then she got in beside him. The driver opened the back window on Swish’s side, and the dog stuck his head out the window and let the cool night air blow against his face.

  When they arrived back on Delancey Place, Betsy was ready to sleep. As she was paying the driver, thanking him again, she noticed a red, white, and blue sticker on his jacket that said I VOTED.

  “Shit, shit, shit!” she said.

  “What happened now?” he said.

  “Please wait here,” she said.

  “Don’t tell me,” he said. “Another trip to the ER.”

  “No, but—just promise you won’t leave.”

  “Swear to God,” he said, and crossed himself.

  Betsy hurried inside with Swish, who went straight for her father on the couch. “Good boy,” he said. “Actually, bad boy. But we forgive you, we forgive you.”

  “Dad,” Betsy said, “where do you vote?”

  “I don’t remember—some church.”

  “Did you vote before you got hit by a car?”

  “I didn’t get hit.”

  “Did you vote?”

  “I haven’t voted in years.”

  “Well, I didn’t get to vote today because I came here.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “As long as you vote, I’ll be happy. But we need to figure out where, and we have fifteen minutes.”

  “At a church,” he said.

  “The same one where we voted for you?”

  “Must be,” he said.

  She remembered being ten—that year, 1984, when so much happened—and walking from their home on Delancey with her father and mother to a church on Spruce Street—Catholic, Episcopal, Presbyterian, she had no idea—to vote for her father. It had been in the morning, before school. She’d sat on his lap as he filled in the box beside his name, and when he was finished, they stayed there in the voting booth for a few more minutes. He had wrapped his arms around her and rested his head against her back.

  Now, Betsy helped her father down the stoop. The driver opened the back door for them. She asked him to take them to Sixteenth and Spruce. “I know it’s only four blocks, but we need to make it there before the polls close.”

  The driver got them to the church—Presbyterian, it turned out—in three minutes. “I assume you want me to wait,” he said.

  “Yes, please,” Betsy said. “Last time, promise.”

  Inside the church’s basement, Betsy explained her father’s medical condition to the poll workers and that he was able to fill out his own ballot but might require her help in case he got confused.

  He sat in the chair inside the booth, and Betsy stood beside him. She watched, unsure if he would know what to do. He picked up the pen and held it above the paper. His hand shook so much that Betsy wanted to take the pen from him and complete the ballot herself. But this was his vote, not hers—the first time he had voted in twenty years, she assumed.

  She was relieved when he started to fill in the box beside Barack Obama. He took his time, but she resisted the urge to say, as if to a child: “Be careful. Stay inside the lines.”

  He didn’t vote in any other race at the state or local level. His own former senate seat was up this year, and the Republican who had held the seat for the past twelve years was in a tight race. Betsy hoped her father might vote for the Democrat trying to unseat the incumbent, and she considered explaining this to him, but she feared that he wouldn’t understand—or, maybe worse, that he would.

  Her father finished with three minutes to spare, and then they went home to watch the results. They sat together on the couch, her father on one end, Betsy on the other. Betsy had texted Cal a few times during the evening to update him on her father. She called him at eleven o’clock, when Barack Obama was declared the winner, and said, “Are you watching?” and he said, “Are you kidding—of course,” and she said, “Incredible,” and he said, “Wish we were watching together,” and she said, “Me too.”

  Outside, car horns blared. Neighbors came out onto their porches and banged pots like Betsy and Nick used to do at midnight on New Year’s Eve. “I’m so glad we voted,” she said to her father. “I mean, you did.” But he had fallen asleep on the other side of the couch, Swish asleep at his feet.

  *

  Avery thought about telling her mother the truth—she wanted to tell someone what she’d done, how she’d felt humiliated—but she stuck with her story: she’d been with a friend. She could tell that her mother didn’t believe her.

  Later that night, they watched TV together. The presidential election had been called for Barack Obama, and now, in Chicago, he walked onto a stage with his wife and two daughters to deliver his victory speech.

  “What a beautiful family,” her mother said.

  Her mother had tears in her eyes. So did many people in Grant Park in Chicago, Avery could see, but she wondered about her mother. Part of it had to be Obama—even Avery felt that she could cry—but something about the way her mother had said “What a beautiful family,” it sounded part admiration and part envy.

  And for once, for once, she understood her mother. Because she too felt it. Such beautiful daughters. Their adorably awkward waves to the crowd. Obama kissed them each on the head, then kissed his wife, and Avery thought: Let it be authentic. Let this family turn out to be okay.

  “It’s been a long time coming,” Obama said, and there was Jesse Jackson, crying, and there was Oprah, crying, and Avery looked over at her mother wiping her eyes.

  Before the speech was over, Avery stood up.

  “Where are you going?” her mother said.

  “To bed.”

  “Don’t you want to watch?”

  “I watched.”

  “This is history, you know.”

  “It’s awesome, really. I’m just tired.”

  In her room, she lay in bed but didn’t turn out the lights. For another twenty minutes, it would be that day—the day her mother was born, the day someone else’s mother died. From now on, it would also be the day she spoke to her sister for the first time, and the day an African American had been elected president.

  She was surprised that, of all these, the one thing that cont
inued pressing on her, just as it had at school that morning, was Danielle Christie. She shared Avery’s name—part of it. Avery Bautista-Christie. Danielle Christie had been born Danielle Glass, and now in death, at least in the name of her foundation, she was Glass again. Avery wondered what it would feel like to change her name. She could become Avery Bautista, drop the Christie, distance herself from her father and sister. Or, even better, she could drop the Bautista too. Choose a new name. Leave them all behind.

  PART SIX

  Sisters

  2010

  MARCH 15, 2010

  Two wet lines from the wheels of David’s wheelchair trail Avery as she walks down the hallway.

  She has to hand it to Peter: he doesn’t show too much surprise when he opens his dorm room door and sees Avery, dripping wet, with a much older man, also dripping wet, in a wheelchair.

  She steps into his room, leaving David in the hallway, but doesn’t close the door. Quietly, so that David doesn’t hear, she explains what happened: the man in the wheelchair is the one she’s been visiting at a nursing care facility; she was taking him out for a few hours; they were caught in a flash flood; a man who looked like Willie Nelson saved them and drove them to campus; Peter’s car—

  “My mom’s car,” he says.

  “It was very sudden,” Avery says. “I pulled over, I was trying to be safe, I swear, but then the water was—”

  “My mom didn’t want me to have a car on campus,” Peter says. “I pleaded, I lobbied, I bugged the crap out of her.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Avery says.

  “As long as no one’s hurt,” Peter says. “Are you okay?”

  “Sort of.”

  “And is he okay?”

  “I think so,” Avery whispers. “I mean, generally, no.”