Wallis and Atlas returned with Crabtree, all out of breath. “What were you guys talking about?” she demanded. “God, this dog. Never again. Were you talking about me?”
“I—no,” I said, because I couldn’t say the truth aloud, for then it would be real, and I would have to live with it, and sleep with it, and my bed was full of enough worry already. “Just...the defense authorization bill. Aircraft carriers, nuclear weapons.”
“I didn’t make a great impression. God, I made no impression at all. What did I even say to her? I was in some kind of fugue state... Shit.” Wallis put her hand to her head. “We forgot about Dad.”
“Another day,” I said. I couldn’t spend one more minute there.
Atlas, still breathing shallowly, managed, “Lunch this week, Daisy? I—I’d like to catch up.”
“I’ll let you know,” I said, noncommittal, trying to keep a neutral expression as we said our awkward goodbyes.
I turned Wallis toward the cemetery exit and we began our procession out. Of course, now that I was desperate to leave, Crabtree moved at a snail’s pace, probably exhausted from the most eventful walk of his short life. Atlas and I hadn’t embraced, and I felt the drought of it on my skin as we made our way through the rows of graves and pine needles and first daffodils of spring.
“You’re sure Blake is worth all that?” I broke the silence when Wallis and I were at last through the gates. “You’re going to have to fight for him. Harder than you think.”
But Wallis simply smiled to herself and said, “She hugged me tightly. I’m optimistic.” Then she gave all her attention to Crabtree, leaving me alone with thoughts filled, unlike hers, with worst-case scenarios.
* * *
The pictures were leaked less than twenty-four hours later. Miles was the one who alerted me, texting me about a dozen screenshots in a row, then about thirty-seven question marks, also in a row.
The camera had caught Melinda Darley, Wallis, and me candidly. The smiles, the hugs. We all looked like friends. From the angle of the pictures, it seemed like they were taken by an enterprising photographer, one who’d undoubtedly received more money for these photos than from any related to Melinda Darley’s graveside presser.
I knew I should resist, but I followed the links to the comments, then to the hashtags, and became lost in the consternation and scorn of the social media universe, in which mercy and measure were absent.
That night I did not go upstairs to see Cricket. Wallis called me. She knocked on my door. But she couldn’t find me because I was outside, crouched on the curb outside our building, my face all but in the gutter. Because where else do you go if your phone won’t stop ringing all day? Where else do you run when you are sure the floor will collapse under your feet, when you are positive your home will turn to rubble around you?
Wallis discovered me, eventually. She shook my shoulders. She told me to breathe.
“I’m fucked,” I gasped. “I’m finished.”
She knelt in front of me in the gutter, in the runoff and the leaves. “No, you’re not,” she said, wrapping her arms around my shoulders. “Daisy. No. You’re. Not.”
The force of her, the certainty behind her words, momentarily consoled me. I met her eyes, and she waited, silently imploring me to say All right, yes, I believe you.
The night stretched before us. Our breath came out in frosty clouds. Sirens, the sounds of go-go music a block over.
I couldn’t give her what she wanted.
Yet still she waited.
Fifteen
The Monday after what I’d come to think of as The Afternoon I Dug My Own Grave, Miles called a staff meeting. All eyes naturally turned to him, sitting at the head of the conference table, his sleeves rolled to the biceps, impatient to get started. He had been in rural Western Maryland when he saw the photo, parading down the main street of a charming small town celebrating its sesquicentennial, waving flags and shaking hands, holding babies. I’d answered his texts, which ranged from irate to disappointed, from my bed, trying my best to apologize and explain, then ate dinner, lukewarm noodles washed down with a big glass of dread, and finally fell asleep around three in the morning, fitful, my dreams full of nothing.
“We’ve been off to a slow start this year,” Miles began. “As a result, we’re not getting visibility on the right things.” His eyes flicked to me. “What are we doing to get back on our feet? I want ideas. And if someone tells me to rename a post office, I’m going to lose my mind.”
Tariffs, someone said. That domestic violence act, said someone else. A good plan to get on board with the marijuana decriminalization act. That one is popular. Student loan forgiveness. Honeybees.
“Daisy,” Miles said. “What have you got?”
“Could ask DOT for more money to get high-speed rail running,” I said. “Northeast corridor runs right through Maryland.”
Miles narrowed his eyes in concentration, clicked the button on his pen. “High-speed rail?” Click, click. Click, click. “Wasn’t that one of Gregory Richardson’s pet projects? I remember he was an early evangelizer. And investor, no?”
There was a knot in my sternum, right below my neck. Miles was right. What was I thinking? Those investments were long gone, but still, it could very well look to the average observer that I was trying to line my own pockets. I closed my notebook gently and wondered if I might have to excuse myself to throw up. “Student loan forgiveness,” I said.
“Already been said.” Miles quit his clicking, placed the pen in the crease of his notebook, and shut it. It didn’t make a noise, but I winced nonetheless. “Everyone out, please, except for Daisy and Bo.”
They followed his order and left the room. You’d think I was radioactive, the way they avoided my chair as they filed toward the door. Only Bo had mercy and inched his seat closer to mine.
“I’m disappointed, Daisy.” Miles spoke as though these words tasted awful. “This isn’t good work.”
“I hear you,” I said. “You’re saying that I’m not on top of my game.”
“This isn’t therapy; I don’t want you to just repeat my words back to me. Furthermore—” This was the type of man Miles was. He spoke with transitions. His sentences had semicolons. I felt outgunned. “If you had heard me, on your very first day back in the office, when I told you to lay low, be careful, we wouldn’t be staring at pictures of you smiling with Melinda Darley all over my socials.”
“If you look at them, though”—Bo wore glasses for reading; today, as he studied the aforementioned pictures on his phone, I noticed they needed a cleaning—“we can tell it was Daisy’s campaign trail smile, not her real one.” He braved a glance at our boss, gauging his reaction, as did I.
“Stay in your lane.” Miles raised his finger at Bo, and my friend’s valiant stand was over before it started.
“The optics aren’t great,” I conceded. Above us, one of the fluorescent light tubes in the drop ceiling hummed and flickered; I really hoped its death rattle wasn’t an omen.
“I was forgiving after all this shit with your father. Because that was him. That wasn’t you. However, now your sister is dating a Darley and you’re both caught hanging out with his mother.” Miles’s finger focused on me now. “I can’t be linked to that woman, Daisy. I can’t be near enough to smell her perfume.”
“I get that.” If only I had a picture of my eyes that morning, red-rimmed, dark purple half-moons underneath, maybe I could prove to him that, yes, I get it.
He closed his eyes for a moment, inhaled with his full body. “Obviously you don’t. And it concerns me, because we have things to do, and battles to wage, and you don’t seem like you’re here. You seem like you’re somewhere else, flouncing around in a world where my reelection doesn’t matter, and love conquers all.”
“To be fair,” I said, trying to diffuse some tension, hoping this new approach might help my case
, “I’ve never flounced anywhere in my life.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Bo hide a smile behind his fist. Miles didn’t laugh, but one side of his mouth did inch upward, which I counted as a victory. Still, he went on: “You’re making mistakes, Daisy. You’re fumbling on easy plays. It makes me think—” He stopped and recalibrated. “I think your father’s death and the news of his royal fuckup has affected you more than you realize. Maybe you came back to work too soon,” he said.
“No.” My reaction was quick, vehement. Without work, then what? This job was the only thing in my life that was making sense.
“The shit with your father, that you couldn’t control,” Miles said, softer now. “But this you could’ve. Take some more time off, okay? I’ll call you in two weeks. Deal with your family. Be there for each other. I know things have been difficult, and it’s clearly getting to you. Bo, you’re acting COS.”
Miles stood, adjusted his cuffs, and left the room. Outside, the sounds of business—phones, footsteps, shuffling paper. Someone had turned on the television in the press office, and it was too loud. Commercials for diabetes medicine blared. Catheters would come next. Then, life insurance for the over-fifty.
“That was tough.” Bo studied me in his typical way. That is, it felt as though he was doing some back-of-the-envelope calculations about my mood and what he could say that wouldn’t hasten my spiral.
“An understatement.” I stared at my phone. I needed to look busy so I didn’t look ashamed. I’d helped Miles get elected; now he felt I was deadweight. “But that’s business.”
“He’s angry about the picture,” Bo said. “Once the news cycle changes, he’ll get over it. They’ll all get over it.” His hand squeezed where my shoulder muscle should have been. Instead, what did he feel? Flesh, padding, softness—no real definition at all.
My phone I placed facedown on the table. Its protective, rubberized cover used to be bright white before time and everyday use and the occasional mishap soiled it into a beigey gray. “Miles is right,” I admitted. “I’m off. I’m not performing like you all need me to.”
“You make yourself sound like an internet router,” said Bo.
“Unplug me,” I said. “And plug me back in... You know what gets me?” I spun my chair so we were facing and, carefully, removed Bo’s glasses. It was stuff like this that made people confuse us, early on, for a couple. There had been a night on the trail, with red wine and long conversation, hotel room, barefoot possibilities, when I briefly considered him. He was wholesome and unfussy and kind and there. But he wasn’t Atlas. And, despite the copious amount of wine we’d consumed, I could tell he wasn’t thinking of me when he spoke about wanting love in spite of—because of?—our eighty-hour workweeks. “There are so many single men in this town.” I used the edge of my cardigan to wipe the smudges from his lenses. Satisfied with my work, I handed them back to him. “And Wallis finds herself Blake Darley. I can’t fathom the odds.”
He adjusted his newly clean glasses on his nose. “It’s so...” he said, gaze drifting to the awful popcorn ceiling.
“Inconvenient!” I finished for him, laughing, because it was either that or cry.
Bo folded his hands neatly on the conference table, frowned at them. “For me, too.”
He was right. He’d be doing my job—and his—for the next two weeks, without an increase in pay. This was not just an inconvenience. It was an imposition. “I’ll be back in fourteen days,” I promised, nudging him with my shoulder. “I just have to figure out what in the world I am going to do in the meantime.”
“I think I have an idea. Well, I’ll borrow an idea from Wilde.” Then he straightened, and recited one of his favorites:
“‘Nay, let us walk from fire unto fire,
From passionate pain to deadlier delight,—
I am too young to live without desire,
Too young art thou to waste this summer night...’”
When he finished, I gave him a little applause, and he bowed in his swivel chair. “Are you suggesting that I go snag myself a boyfriend?”
He chuckled. “Wilde is reminding you to have some fun. In other words, he and I both think you need to get out of DC.”
“I almost was fired a minute ago. And you’re asking me to plan a vacation?”
“Fair enough.” Bo sighed. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m considering a visit back to Charleston.”
“When was the last time you were home?” I asked.
“About four years,” Bo said, “give or take. The family’s come and visited me in DC, just how I like it. Going home feels harder, somehow, than them coming here. It feels like I’m on their turf. When I go to Charleston, that’s when the wheels fall off. I always come back needing twice as much therapy per month.” Bo had skipped college, and his mother, seemingly the only one who cared or remembered, liked to remind him of it often.
“Then why are you going back?”
“My twin sister is having an engagement party. Attendance is mandatory, according to my mother.” Bo stood; so did I. I had an office to shut, a walk of shame to complete. “Think about it, Daisy. Take a break from DC. Some good might come of Miles kicking you out of here. Even if you leave just for a night.”
Bo’s advice was tempting—to sail away for a minute, to move out of range from the faces who knew us, from the cameras that found us, even in graveyards. The alternative was to stay here, in DC, inventing busywork, crossing off days on a calendar.
My phone rang. It was Cricket. Her computer mouse had stopped working, and she really couldn’t use the track pad, and could I come by during my lunch break to help?
“Lucky for you, Cricket,” I said. “I actually have the afternoon free.”
Sixteen
The door to my mother’s apartment was unlocked, so I let myself in after dumping my work bag in my apartment on my way up. No need to carry it around everywhere anymore.
“I like your sweater,” I said, catching a glimpse of Cricket puttering in the kitchen. Her top looked familiar, a formfitting crew neck with a swirl of sapphire sequins on the front. She had worn it to one of Gregory’s holiday parties a few years ago. “It’s very sparkly.”
“I had a lunch,” she said as I sank into her sofa. “Wine?”
“It’s three o’clock.”
“And?” She walked out of the kitchen holding the bottle, giving it a little shake side to side. “I feel like celebrating.”
“Okay. Fuck it.” I cursed so rarely, this really shocked her.
She said Daisy! in a way that made me seem like a teenager in need of stronger boundaries. And I said Oh, Mom, in a way that made it seem like I was bored of her overreactions. Then we both chuckled and she poured me a glass of wine. If she recognized my laughter as forced, she didn’t show it.
“Who did you lunch with?” I asked once she situated herself comfortably next to me.
“Whom.” Her feet were covered in nude-colored stockings—always stockings when it was cold, or slacks. This was a woman who thought a pair of ironed jeans was loungewear. She pointed her toes out in front of her; they were painted the usual pale pink. “A friend.”
“Do I know this friend?”
“I think not,” Cricket said, taking a slow sip.
“Is it a boy?” Wouldn’t that be fun? Cricket’s love life accelerates while mine reverses off a cliff. I’d been drinking too fast, and my wineglass was already half empty, which was a shame, as I really could’ve used more.
“Jesus, Daisy,” my mother said, swatting my leg. “Don’t joke.”
“I’m not joking. Why else would you be cagey about who you had lunch with?”
“Whom.”
“For God’s sake.”
“It’s for a job. Okay? Will that make you feel better? I saw my old friend, one of the few who still keeps in touch. She work
s at the Smithsonian, and gave me the name and email of the volunteer coordinator there.”
Cricket’s philanthropic inclinations were back, and the timing couldn’t be worse. “Just volunteering?” I asked, gifting myself another gulp. “You have a master’s degree.”
“I know.” She was curt. “We need money. I heard you the first one hundred times.”
I stared down into the remains of my wine. What leg did I have to stand on? None. Thanks to a series of unfortunate events, it had just been lopped off at the knee.
Now, it seemed, I’d arrived at the unavoidable. I’d have to share the events of the day. Because how long could I keep my job situation from her, from Wallis, even, when I lived beneath them? When the debt of one became a debt for all? Not a viable option. So, I went with the truth. “Today...well...” I started. “Miles told me to take time off. And since I used up all my PTO and vacation in January, I’ll be on unpaid leave for two weeks. And we just got a bill from the lawyer. And my rent is due.” I started strong, kept it together, kept steady. But my voice wobbled near the end, rising in pitch, unable to conceal my anxiety.
“Darling,” she said, calm, but not before I saw her widened eyes. She took my glass and placed it on the coffee table alongside hers, then wrapped her arm around my back. “You see so much that needs to be done in the world,” she said. “You see so much that needs to be done for this family. It’s a wonderful thing.” She looked at me like I was her baby, like she would gather me into her lap if she could. “I know that’s what drives you. But it is all right to rest, Daisy. It’s okay to take some time. You don’t have to do everything.”
“I’m not good enough to—” I cut myself off because the list of what I was failing at felt so long I didn’t know where to begin.
But Cricket smiled, one of a coconspirator, and leaned close. “You’re not qualified to do everything. There’s a difference. I’m not qualified to change the oil in my car—or, I should say, the car I used to own—but that doesn’t mean I’m no good as a human being. It just means I needed to hire a certified mechanic.”
Ladies of the House Page 11