Ellie hadn’t wanted him to run for Congress, nor had she been enthused over any of his earlier grabs for power. She had married the well-to-do heir to a profitable and honored business, expecting that his position would allow him more time with her and their family. And, for the first year, that was how it had been. But then inflatable boats had become too small a kingdom for her prince. He had sought and won the presidency of local business organizations, headed state commerce commissions, and chaired redevelopment programs and trade commissions. Gordon was perpetually involved and he seemed to thrive on the exposure. Gradually, Ellie had realized that she occupied only one small compartment in her husband’s express train to the top.
It was a pleasant compartment. When he was with her, his love seemed genuine. He was solicitous of her pregnancies and proud of his children. On days like this, the quiet moments between his public activities, he was a perfect husband and devoted father. But as his career broadened, the days between commitments had become fewer. Other interests demanded more and more of his time.
She hated politics and the blind ambition that it seemed to nurture. But the campaign had at least reestablished her place by Gordon’s side. Congressmen had to be sold to the public, and the family image was considered an essential part of the sale. She and the children had been brought forward, and despite the frantic campaign schedule she was seeing more of her husband.
For the first time in her marriage, she knew that she was needed. She had rationalized Gordon’s dalliances with other women, but now his faithful devotion was mandatory. She was his only love interest. He had shown little awareness of Ellie’s career in education, but now her role as an advocate for children was invaluable. His arm was around her at nearly every public event, and she suddenly was being treated like the queen of his expanding empire. She would prefer his admiration in the privacy of their family, but there was no longer any privacy in her family. So she would accept it in public even though its sincerity was always tinged with comments about how important she was to his image.
“Ellie?” It was Gordon’s voice from the front of the cockpit.
She smiled in embarrassment, realizing that her mind was back somewhere in their wake.
“It’s so lovely,” she answered.
He looked over the side at the silver water reflecting the golden clouds, and then to the rocky shoreline colored with spring. “It really is,” he said as if he had suddenly found time to look outside of himself. “Fantastic.”
“You were going to ask me something,” she reminded him when he turned his attention back to her.
“Just the girl. You will at least consider her, won’t you?”
She nodded without any great enthusiasm. “It seems to be okay with the kids.”
“Because it’s important. Henry thinks it will help erase the blue blood stigma. He thinks it will give me a much broader following.”
Henry, she thought, taking care not to show her exasperation. His strategy was intruding into every corner of their relationship, even to the choice of her children’s companion. God, but how she hated politics.
Four
Ellie was as nervous as if she were the one being interviewed. She paced the hallway, glanced down at her watch—which didn’t seem to move at all—and peeked out through the panel windows at the empty driveway. Theresa Santiago wasn’t scheduled to arrive for another five minutes, but Ellie had been fussing and pacing for the past twenty.
For Gordon’s sake, she wanted the meeting to go well. Ideally, Theresa would charm her, the kids would be thrilled, and she could go to Gordon and agree that her nanny and his olive branch to the minority community were one and the same person. But her instincts argued that the meeting was going to be a disaster. Molly had already decided that she wanted Trish Mapleton to be their summer babysitter. She was a year older now, and Ellie suspected that she wanted another chance to find out what was going on under that blanket. Timmy had gone one step further, announcing that he wanted his mother to spend the summer minding him, and he wasn’t going to be nice to either Trish or Theresa. And, of course, the minority poster child was Henry Browning’s idea. As a result, Ellie was predisposed to dislike Theresa. She had planned a productive, yet relaxing, summer interrupted by only a few obligations to Gordon’s campaign. Now she was awaiting the arrival of the young woman who might foul up everything? She saw the car as soon as it turned into the long driveway. Instinctively, she went to the window and pressed her nose against the glass, hoping that the girl’s manner and appearance would be a ray of sunshine. But her spirits sunk as the car moved closer and came into focus.
It was an old car, two design eras behind the industry’s current aerodynamic styling, and painted in a color that could have been anything between a dirty gray and a faded black. Japanese, she thought immediately. One of those cookie-cutter, faceless coupes that tried to pass itself off as a European roadster. As it pulled to a stop in front of the porte cochere, she could see the worn edges of the tires and the faded rims that were missing wheel covers. On the Cape, the car would have been towed into the harbor and sunk as a permanent mooring.
Then Theresa stepped out and glanced up at the front door, catching Ellie in the act of peering down at her arriving guest. Ellie winced; the hair was deranged, and the dress was a nightmare. The young girl, who stepped around the front of the car clutching a purse that she had probably borrowed, was floating in space between two generations. She had traded the jeans of her contemporaries for the formal business dress of her elders, and her discomfort was apparent.
Ellie fixed her warmest smile and threw open the door. “Theresa?” she said, using the name as a question. The young girl stopped dead, as if she had been caught carrying a television out of a broken storefront. “Yes. I’m supposed to see Mrs. Acton.”
“I’m Mrs. Acton. Please come in.” Ellie stepped aside, clearing the doorway, but still Theresa managed to keep as much space between them as the dimensions of the entrance-way allowed. Then, as she moved inside, her face stretched out ahead of her body so that her saucer eyes could take in the size and appointments of the living room.
“Go right in,” Ellie said pleasantly. “I’ll get us some refreshments. Would you like a soft drink? Or a lemonade?”
Theresa kept staring into the living room as if she were looking through the bars of the heavenly gates. “Sure. Thanks,” she answered off into space.
Oh God, Ellie thought. Disaster. Worse than I could have imagined. She filled two tumblers with ice, and poured a can of Diet Coke over cubes. “Have you eaten? Can I fix you a sandwich, or get you a snack?” she offered as she entered the living room.
“No thank you,” Theresa said from the center of the sofa on the other side of the huge coffee table. She was still clutching the purse under her folded arms as if she were carrying her paycheck through a dark alley.
Theresa’s physical assets were instantly visible. She had smooth tan skin of mulatto coloring, a perfectly proportioned face, and incredibly light blue eyes. Caucasian, with perhaps a black slave anchoring her genealogy, and clear evidence of an Irish overseer who had gone through the cabins. She was a world child, the ideal recipient of adulation by a politician who needed to be a man of the people. But her liabilities were equally visible, and far more numerous.
First, was her hair. It stood out from her head forming an oversized frame for her face. It needed pruning.
Then there was the dress. The gray and blue pattern was tastefully conservative, certainly appropriate for a secretary in a law office. But the neckline was edged in white lace that was heavily embroidered and well over the top. It seemed almost like a trellis as it rose into her hair. The same lace outlined the patch pockets and finished off the hem. The stockings were gray, and the black shoes were right out of a shoe box.
She seemed a bit overweight, not for an adult who would have been comfortable in the dress, but rather for the young woman that went with the face. Her figure was obvious and attractive, but
more mature than typical Cosmo covers. The girls on the Cape, who had personal trainers and flaunted their anorexia, wouldn’t recognize her as a contemporary.
“Well, tell me something about yourself,” Ellie tried as a starter.
Theresa cleared her throat, and kept her eyes fixed on her hands, which were now folded across the captive pocketbook. “I’m a high school graduate,” she began, “in the top ten percent of my class and on the honor roll.”
“I heard you were your class valedictorian,” Ellie prompted her.
Theresa nodded. Then she suddenly opened the purse and took out a sealed business envelope. “I have a letter of reference from my principal.” She stretched across the table to hand the letter to Ellie, who took it, opened it, and made a great show of reading it carefully.
“You were first in your class,” Ellie blurted out, as she read the school official’s comments.
Theresa nodded.
“And you held down a job after school and on weekends?”
Another nod.
“What kind of job?”
“With Digital Electronics in Fall River. I’m there full-time now. I’m a quality inspector on the circuit board production line.”
Ellie couldn’t hide her surprise. “That’s a very responsible job. Do you like it?”
“It’s kind of boring. And you never finish. The boards are coming down the line when you get there, and they’re still coming down the line when you leave.” She smiled at the irony, which gave Ellie a reason to laugh.
“Then why did you choose it?”
Now Theresa seemed surprised at the density of the question. “The money. It pays much better than retail jobs. It’s a union shop…” She trailed off just after she said “union,” remembering that the word was very offensive to the people who lived on Ocean Drive.
“What about school activities?” Ellie wondered.
“I’m in junior college now. And there aren’t any activities. But in high school I was in the orchestra. I play the flute.” She went back to staring at her hands until she remembered that there was salvation in her purse. “I have a recommendation from my music teacher.” She pulled out another official envelope and delivered it across the table.
Ellie read quickly, then stopped, and read again. “This says that you were first chair. And that you were soloist in the annual concert.”
Again, Theresa nodded.
“What did you play?”
“The allegro from a Mozart flute concerto.”
“How long have you been playing?”
“Since I was five. But then it wasn’t really a flute. More like a tin whistle.”
Ellie stared over the letter, trying to find the person who was across from her, hiding in someone else’s dress. This was a very talented young lady, obviously on another academic planet from Trish Mapleton and her friends, who would be pressed to draft a note for the milkman.
Theresa was back into her purse, retrieving still another envelope. “I also have a letter from my foreman at Digital Electronics,” she said. Ellie opened the letter eagerly, half expecting to learn that Theresa had invented a new computer chip.
Miss Santiago is our best quality control inspector, allowing production flaws in only .06 percent of units on her line, less than half the errors of our entire inspection staff, and less than a quarter of the industry average.
Ellie read several similar paragraphs from a company that clearly had a measure on its quality, and had documented that Theresa exceeded all standards. But it was the last paragraph that overwhelmed her.
Miss. Santiago achieves these results despite time she spends assisting her coworkers. When she finds a mistake, she doesn’t simply reject the board. On her own, she takes the error back to the appropriate workstation and helps the technician to develop corrective procedures.
Ellie was very impressed with the credentials, and honestly admired the girl’s nearly self-effacing modesty. But, it just wouldn’t work; the people on the Cape didn’t give a damn about production lines. They were into cars, boats, fashion, and parties. Quality became significant only when their stereos gave out. And while many of them were patrons of theaters and orchestras, she couldn’t think of one who even knew what a flute allegro was, much less identify the composer. Theresa Santiago simply wouldn’t fit in, and that would be painful for her, as well as a problem for the children.
Theresa’s soft voice interrupted her thoughts. “The job description said that you were a teacher, working on a thesis?” She turned up the last words of the question as if she could scarcely believe what she was saying.
“That’s right,” Ellie answered. “Unfortunately, the thesis has been dragging on for several months without much progress. I really have to get it finished!” Maybe that would be her excuse. That her back was to the wall and she simply couldn’t take a chance with a new and inexperienced mother’s helper.
“Maybe I could be helpful,” Theresa suggested, as if the thought were preposterous. “I’m very interested in education. I’d like to be a teacher. And I’m really good at finding my way through a library. When your children are taken care of, I might… maybe I could help as … kind of a research assistant.” She paused at the temerity of her own suggestion. “Well, not really an assistant, but maybe just… kind of… a gofer.”
“That’s a very interesting idea,” Ellie said, surprised that it actually was a good idea. But then she realized that she didn’t want to let herself sound enthusiastic. The girl simply wouldn’t work, and there was no point in getting up her hopes.
“Tell me about your experience with children. Have you ever worked as a full-time babysitter? Or as a mother’s helper?”
Theresa shook her head slowly. “No. Between the job and school…”
“Of course,” Ellie said to bail her out. “When would you have time? But, you know that really has to be my first concern. Children can find so many ways to get into mischief. You can’t take your eyes off them.”
“I know,” Theresa said. “I take care of my little brothers and sister on Saturday nights and most of Sunday. It’s hard just keeping them together where I can watch them all at once. Sometimes just getting them all into shoes for church is all I can handle.”
Keeping them all together? Ellie had images of shepherds trying to keep the flock going in one direction. “How many brothers and sisters do you have?” she asked.
“Five. I have four brothers and a sister. That’s just the younger ones. I have two older sisters.”
“You take care of five children on Saturday nights and Sundays?”
“Most weekends. My parents have to go down to Bridgeport to take care of their parents. And my older sisters are married. So I take over.”
Ellie stared dumbly, knowing that she needed help just to keep up with her two children. The young woman was already measuring up to more family responsibility than she or any of her friends could manage. Yet she was calm and composed, while many of Ellie’s contemporaries were tuned out on Xanax or Valium.
“Who’ll take care of your brothers and sisters if you’re working with me?”
“My parents will alternate weekends. And my sisters will help out if they run into a problem. They’re all sort of pitching in. My mother says this is a great opportunity for me.”
Ellie sat back into her chair and drew a deep breath. “Would you like to meet my children?” she suggested.
The Trophy Wife Page 35