We disembarked, walked along the cobblestone promenade. Blake ducked into one of the massive glass-and-steel apartment buildings. “To grab a brochure,” he said when he returned. In we went to a bookshop, then an art gallery. Cricket considered an oil painting, fallen petals and lemons and a hyacinth in a chinoiserie vase. It was lovely. The price—impossible. It was gone, her old life, and I saw in her eyes she was still adjusting to her new one.
I wrapped my arm around my mother’s shoulders as we made our way past restaurants full of young people drinking cocktails, and the luxury hotel, to wooden steps near the water.
As we sat, my phone chimed with an incoming message. Atlas. My pulse skipped. If this text was about the kiss, I think I’d throw myself off this beautiful dock into the harbor. His pity would be worse than his rejection. I read with trepidation:
Hi. My editor has scheduled the story about your dad to run on April 15. If you’d like to go on record, we can speak any time before then. No pressure. Lots of fun last night. Thank you for inviting me.
Okay. That wasn’t so bad.
Why, then, did my heart still feel like lead?
Confusion must’ve shown on my face, because Cricket asked if I was all right. “Work,” I told her. She accepted this lie.
I hoped the right response to Atlas’s text might materialize as I listened to Blake and Wallis describe their night previous over the bag of gourmet nonpareils he’d bought from a chocolate shop the size of a stamp. “We were celebrating—oh, God, Daisy.” Wallis raised her hand to her head. “I completely forgot. I got a job.”
This was wonderful, yet overdue, news. Maybe Wallis’s pay would be good. Private-sector good. Principles withstanding, a defense contractor salary would be very useful right now. Glad to have one problem in my life solved, I rallied, clapped my hands like she and Blake had earlier in my apartment. Now she could help contribute to her rent. “Where?” I asked.
“Women First.”
“A remarkable organization!” Cricket pronounced.
Cricket was right. Wallis would be helping to safeguard women’s breasts and uteruses, though I couldn’t overlook the fact that nonprofits in this town pay almost nothing. Less-than-federal-government nothing, and that’s saying something.
“You’re going to kill it,” Blake said, displaying no concern at all that his girlfriend was going to work at a place his mother fought every year to defund.
“I’m so happy for you.” And I was. Our family had been accused of many things, but selling out would not be one of them. “Are you happy?” Wallis nodded. “That’s great, then. I know you’ve been looking for a while. I was almost going to suggest you come work for me.”
“No offense, Dodo,” said my sister, smiling sweetly, “but who would want to work in Congress?”
“I remember when my mom announced she was running,” Blake said, “we all tried to talk her out of it. It’s a thankless thing. You’re blamed when things go badly and you’re forgotten about when things go well.”
“We do acts of good every day,” was my response. “Incremental change, while not always sexy or newsworthy, is still a reason not to lose all faith.”
“I remember reading something a while ago,” Cricket said. “Gosh, let me see if I can remember it. The writer was saying, there used to be artistry in politics, and now we’ve found ourselves in a music class for toddlers.”
“That was Atlas,” I said, recalling with a pang the exact article. I read them all. He’d been talking about Parliament, but might as well have been writing about us. “Atlas wrote that.”
“That’s right,” said Cricket. “Gosh, he’s a good writer.”
“What is Atlas up to today?” Wallis asked. “I didn’t see him after you two left last night.”
Blake whistled. “You guys left together? I called it, didn’t I, Wallis?”
“We didn’t,” I said shortly.
“We should text him,” said Wallis, pulling out her phone. “See what he’s up to.”
“Don’t.” I was terse, and everyone looked at me curiously. I deliberately softened my face. “I mean, let’s not bother him.”
“Why are you being weird?” said Wallis.
“I’m not being weird.” If anyone has discovered a way of saying this without sounding profoundly weird, please do let me know. “He did me a favor and came to Mac’s wedding. Today, I’m just giving him a little bit of space. Space is sometimes a good thing. Sometimes people need space.”
“Say space one more time and I’m committing you,” said Wallis.
“Space,” I said.
“Why do you need space from Atlas?” asked Cricket.
“Fine, okay.” I settled my breath. The truth—or at least part of it—would get them off my back. “He’s writing an article about Gregory.”
Cricket and Wallis gaped at me.
“And we’re okay with him writing this?” Blake asked diplomatically.
“He’ll do a good job,” I said. In truth the kiss had made me wary of the whole undertaking, but that was not a topic we would be discussing today. “And it will be a fair treatment, I believe, of Gregory. Of his best parts and his bad ones.”
“I don’t know how I feel about this,” said Wallis.
“When is this coming out?” Cricket asked.
I checked my phone’s calendar. The article would be published in less than two months. The clock was officially ticking. “Middle of April,” I said. “It’s long-form, and I know he’s doing a lot of research, some interviews.”
“I wonder if we should get out of town when it drops,” said Wallis. She was thinking about the renewed attention, the looks we were still receiving, even at that moment on the Wharf, the second glances, the is that...? squinty-eyed stares.
I turned away from the gawkers. There: I could almost pretend everything was back to normal. Though how I would ever face Atlas again was still to be determined.
“Atlas is a great journalist,” said Blake. “He’s curious and smart. I like reading everything he writes, even when he is writing about my own family.” He smiled kindly, and I realized he was offering these words for my sake, too. He was trying to make inroads, and I couldn’t fault him for it. In fact, I appreciated it.
“I hear you,” replied Wallis. “But I still think wistfully about moving somewhere else, like San Diego, or LA. I feel like I’d be so much healthier there. I’d be away from the drama.”
“Yeah, right!” said Blake. “Wallis, you say one of your favorite things in the world is the crunch of autumn leaves. You’d be bored of the sunshine within a year.”
“And you would never leave us,” said Cricket.
“You could always come with me.”
“Perfect.” I laughed, glad to be done with the topic of Atlas. “Let’s dream of moving to a place where housing prices are even more absurd.”
“When I imagine you,” Blake said, “you’re always in DC. It suits you.”
“You imagine me in a town filled with gossip and gridlock, literally and figuratively?” asked Wallis.
Blake shook his head and turned his face to the water. Just then, the sun reemerged from the clouds, illuminating his skin, which was fair but flawless. “This town is giving you a hard time,” Blake said. “But for all its faults, it is really beautiful. It is small enough to feel manageable, but it has a sprawling history. It adapts to the times—they’re still building monuments here. This is a town of colleges, of intellectual debates. The Metro tells you how many minutes until the next train. Baristas learn your name. This is a place of marble palaces but also of the tiny toy store on H Street that has been owned by the same family for sixty years. People move in and out of here, the tide sweeps in and retreats with every election, but there is something dependable about DC. It doesn’t try to be quaint, unlike Charleston, which is overrun by carriages pulling tour
ists down the Battery.”
“Someone call the mayor,” Wallis said, raising her hand. “DC has a new spokesman.”
“I had no idea I could like this place as much as I do.” He pulled Wallis close; she rested her head on his shoulder. “I’d been coming back and forth for some time, and never fully engaged with it. I didn’t even really ever unpack. But I’ve been happier here than I have anywhere else. Even when I am supposed to be in South Carolina, I’m here. Maybe if every city had a Wallis, I would be as comfortable as I am now.”
Wallis looked at Blake with an expression that suggested she felt exactly the same. “You’ve talked me out of it,” she said. “California dreams will remain just that, wisps of fantasy that fade once I awake.”
Blake grinned broadly and kissed her on the mouth. “Can she also promise that she won’t trade me in for someone else?”
Wallis laughed. “Who in the world would I trade you for?”
Although Blake was still smiling—he was always smiling—I could see he was serious. His eyes flicked to me, and I wondered if he was thinking not so much about who Wallis would otherwise prefer, but who I would choose for her. He wanted my approval.
True, a man from the Darley family would, even a month ago, never have been my first choice. But Blake was real, their relationship was happening, and I realized with a start that it didn’t worry me so much, after all. I wouldn’t get my love, but my sister would—had, actually—and he was here, and good, and kind, and the type to share his snacks and jacket and say nothing of it. Here was a man who was with us on a Sunday. Here was a man who was talking about giving up his hometown, his former life, his roots, his mother’s expectations, to be with us.
I’d think of this day often, later. Whether Blake was lying, I still don’t know. Perhaps he wasn’t deceitful; maybe he just changed his mind. In the end, of course, one doesn’t know how they’ll react to power until they’re offered it.
* * *
We stayed at the Wharf until the sun set, then went back to Cricket’s. Wallis made us one of Blake’s favorites, pimento cheese and crackers and dirty rice, and after dinner we borrowed blankets from bedrooms and started a new show. Cricket promptly fell asleep. Wallis, too, as Blake rubbed her back. I, curled on the floor, leaning against the couch near Cricket’s feet, pulled up Atlas’s text from earlier on my phone. I wondered if he’d seen on his screen those three gray typing dots pop up, over and over, throughout the afternoon. I must’ve begun and ended at least a dozen drafts.
By the time I finally composed a reply, even Blake had dozed off. Thanks for coming yesterday, I wrote. Agreed, lots of fun. I was overserved. Too much champagne! Thanks for article info. Still mulling. Talk soon. I ended with a happy face emoji, figuring it was more appropriate than a red heart and a knife.
March
Thirteen
Bo and I had the Senate gallery to ourselves. It was a Friday morning, and generally quiet on the Hill; most members of Congress were already back in their home districts for the weekend.
Minutes earlier in the hall, we had run into my dearest friend Todd from the Times. “Hey there, you,” he had said, his tone so simpering it made me want to choke him with his press lanyard. I could only bring myself to nod curtly before he went on his merry way.
As Miles readied himself to speak down on the floor, I had to marvel at how easily Todd was able to stroll from one story to the next, while I was stuck up to the neck in my father’s. Although the hate mail I was still receiving outnumbered the lawyer’s bills by about fifty-to-one, I couldn’t decide which I dreaded more. And there was the matter of Atlas. In the two weeks since the wedding, we’d texted. Friendly stuff. Fluff, really. He’d offered to meet me for lunch at Old Ebbitt, coffee at Blue Bottle, a drink at CityCenter.
I was always busy. Even when I wasn’t.
“Mr. President.” From behind our side’s wooden podium, Miles addressed the freshman senator from Georgia, who was, for the morning, acting president pro tempore. I couldn’t help but notice that this man sat in his elevated chair with the posture of one scanning his phone under the desk. “The bill will fund a five-year Department of Education study, screening public elementary-school students for learning disabilities and mental illness.” Miles’s voice carried. “Catching these issues early will almost certainly offset future special needs and remedial education expenditures. It will touch every aspect of school retention, including lowering the number of suspensions and expulsions, not to mention dropout rates.”
“He’s not punching the opening hard enough.” I leaned back in the gallery’s auditorium-like seat, aggravated, though I kept my voice low. “I told him not to hold back. I knew he wasn’t listening to me.”
This bill was a good idea, maybe even a great one. For months we’d worked on it, consulting every expert that would take our calls, attending meeting after meeting with the suits in the Office of the Legislative Counsel. And it was personal. For Miles, who hated school, flipped trays in the cafeteria and cursed his bus driver, who got suspended more than once before he was diagnosed with dyslexia at seventeen. For me, who spent my entire sophomore year eating lunch alone in the girls’ bathroom, whose anxiety went undiagnosed until I was eighteen.
“I envy the way the British do it,” Bo said, sinking into his seat and crossing one khakied leg over the other. “Speeches over there are given to full houses. You look your detractors and skeptics in the eyes as you dismantle their arguments. There are cheers and applause when you get it right.”
“What are we doing here,” I asked, “except screaming into the wind?”
“Hoping someone will hear us,” Bo said. In the army, he’d worked with computers. He never elaborated on his particular duties, but often I caught him staring at people as though deciphering lines of code. Now I was the target of such a gaze. “You all right over there? You seem to care about this one speech a lot.”
“I always care,” I said, defensive.
Bo nodded. “I know you do. But—I say this with all due respect—why are you here? Both of us didn’t need to come.”
He was right. I’d been micromanaging. “I want to be sure,” I said, “that we’re making some progress, somewhere. After my father...you know.” I lifted a shoulder. “I feel that I need to—”
“Prove yourself?” Bo finished for me.
“Is that lame?”
Bo shook his head. “I get it.”
“You’re not going to tell me to back off?” I asked.
“If I did, would you listen?” Bo smiled.
“Probably not.”
I scooted up to the edge of my seat, willing Miles to amplify his performance: “This bill is especially important for LGBTQ youth,” he continued, “who are disproportionately affected by our country’s uneven distribution of mental health services. Yet the distinguished senator from South Carolina, Chairwoman Melinda Darley, has chosen to continually block this bill in Committee.”
“I should have told Wallis,” I said, mostly to myself, “that we’re punching up at her future mother-in-law today.”
From Bo, an abrupt turn of the head. “What? Wallis is engaged?”
During Miles’s campaign, Wallis had still been in college, but she’d pitched in on breaks. She and Bo had been buddies. There had been talk of them starting a politics podcast—he, the play-by-play, she, the color commentary. There had been picnics on conference room floors. With her humor and love of impromptu dance parties, she’d lessened the tension of those brutal summer months before the election. She was a little sister to us both, is what I mean.
“No,” I said, my eyes still on Miles. “No, it was just a joke. Wallis is—God, I can’t believe I’m about to say this—dating Blake Darley.”
It was hard to shock Bo. He’d held weapons, he’d gone without nights of sleep, he’d take state secrets to his grave. But I’d managed it. “Not Darley Darley.
”
“The same.”
Bo was quiet for a moment. “I know Blake Darley. From around Charleston.”
I poked his shoulder and badgered him for details. At the Wharf, I’d come to accept Blake and Wallis’s relationship, but here was Bo, reminding me that there was still so much to learn about the man who’d managed, in only a few short weeks, to steal into our lives. What? How? When? Did he still know him? Instead of answering my questions, Bo asked one of me. “He and Wallis, they’re serious?”
“Here’s what I know for sure—Wallis likes him,” I said, checking my phone and starting to scroll through the latest barrage of emails. “She might think she loves him. Is it enough to survive all the flak? I don’t know.”
Bo remained very still. “She loves him. Okay.”
“I know,” I said. Miles. The delicacy—impossibility?—of dating across the aisle. “I’m going to have to tell him. But I’m waiting to see how the next month goes. Wallis insists that Blake isn’t concerned with his mother’s politics. And I’ve made it clear that I won’t be pulling any punches for her sake—or his. Now, tell me what you know of Blake.”
But Bo didn’t have much. “I’ve met him a time or two,” he said. “All that matters is that Wallis is happy and he’s treating her well.”
“He is,” I admitted.
“Then why does it look like you’re about to throw your phone off this balcony?”
It was true. The way I was glaring at my phone, you’d think it was spewing personal insults. I relaxed my grip. “It’s not about Wallis.” I said. “I’m just doing some light cyberstalking.”
I’d drifted from my email folder into Google, to a page left up from last night.
Ladies of the House Page 9