Ladies of the House

by Lauren Edmondson

  “Like what?”

  At her question, a wave of exhaustion overtook me. Concealing had taken an enormous amount of emotional energy, and I had tapped out of my reserves. Had Gregory felt the same, near the end? I forced myself to face her. “Like the fact that our father paid for our tuition with money that wasn’t his, Wallis. Is that important enough for you?”

  Her jaw hit the floor, her hands slowly rose and landed on the top of her head. My chest tightened as I waited to see how she’d handle this news. I prepared myself to console, to act as a sounding board, perhaps even to absorb her anger. But, to my surprise, after she blinked a few times, her arms fell to her sides and she went back to firing. “You love Atlas. All these years, you’ve loved him. I know you have—”

  Wallis was obviously deflecting. Wearily, I crossed the half dozen steps that separated us and joined her on the other side of my desk. “Did you hear me? Gregory stole to pay for our colleges.”

  “I understood you the first time,” she said, quiet but firm. “Deep down, I think...we all suspected something like this might be around the corner.”

  “Suspected, not expected. Now I’m doing gymnastics to keep it secret.”

  “Why?” When I didn’t answer, she continued. “Seriously, Daisy, why bother?”

  “Do. You. Remember,” I said, purposefully spacing out the words, wondering how she could be so calm, “the sound the brick made as it crashed through Cricket’s window?”

  “There are other things,” she said, affecting my slower cadence, “that take precedence.”

  I stifled a groan; I didn’t know how much more I could handle of my sister’s fearless, defiant optimism regarding me and Atlas. “The love I have for him is my problem, not yours.”

  “Really? This is how you’ve been thinking about love all this time? As something to be endured? As something that can be replaced by other things? Dodo, I can’t think of anything sadder.”

  “All my happiness,” I insisted, tapping the back of one hand on the palm of the other, “cannot rely on one person. Think of what happened to you when Blake left. What you went through. Extrapolate, then, what might happen to me if I was to rest every single one of my hopes with Atlas. I kissed him, Wallis.” I said it before I knew I was going to. “At the wedding months ago. I kissed him, and he didn’t kiss me back.”

  This astounded her. “He didn’t kiss you back? That can’t be right.” She shook her head until she saw how perfectly serious I was. “God! He’s such an idiot. Sorry, sorry, I know you love him.” She stepped closer now, rubbed my arms. “You’ve been so steady,” she said, more tender. “You’ve been like a rock, and I’ve just been crashing against you, battering you with every bit of my broken heart, and you didn’t say one word.”

  “Yes! Exactly!” I moved away from her and began to pace my already worry-warn carpet. “I have pushed this down. I have done this because I had to. What good would it have done if we both suffered like you did? Do you think it wasn’t hard for me? You pity me because I’ve endured this? You can’t think of anything sadder than the way I choose to cope with this? I have soldiered on, despite the fact that the one man I love most in this world is with another woman. But do not—do not—feel sad for me, Wallis. I don’t want your pity. You needed my strength, and I gave it to you, day after day, week after week.”

  “I never asked for that,” Wallis said, urgent, attempting to reach me through my pacing. “You think strength means pushing everything you felt down so far it was hidden from me? God, Dodo, I’m sorry, I love you, I adore you more than anyone in this world, but you’re so wrong.”

  “No.” I pivoted at the corner, resisting her words. I didn’t want to be wrong. If I’d been mistaken, how many days had I wasted?

  “Yes.” She pressed on. “Daisy, you asked what good it would have done if we both suffered. Telling me the truth about Atlas would not have compounded our pain. That’s not how pain works, and that’s not how love works. We would’ve leaned on each other and shared the load.” I stopped and blinked up at the ceiling, willing the tears not to fall. “I’m so sorry, Dodo,” she said. “If you felt like I was demanding something from you, I’m sorry. I wasn’t asking you to carry all my burdens. I was just asking for you. To be with me. To be my sister.”

  She was right—she’d never explicitly asked. No one had asked me to build the guardhouse. I recalled my father’s books and photographs that I’d thrown away, everything I’d asked Atlas to bury, all that I’d withheld from the people I’d loved the most. I had believed I was protecting my family, but hoarding secrets, stashing away all the discomforting aspects of my past and present, had also made me feel safe.

  How devastatingly unfair I’d been, to all of us and especially to myself. A few tears escaped, and she handed me a tissue from the box on my desk. We each folded and touched them to the skin below our bottom eyelashes, a trick passed down from Cricket. We saw this and laughed, rueful.

  Wallis wrapped her arms around me. Into my shoulder, she whispered, “I know you were doing your best. So why do I get the feeling like you are disappointed in yourself?”

  “Because I am. I’m not particularly strong, or brilliant, or even good.”

  “Don’t talk about my sister that way.” Wallis released me, dabbed her eyes once more, then entwined our fingers. “She’s my best friend, and I won’t let you disparage her like that.”

  I smiled, buoyed by my sister, who, I saw now, was incredibly brave. Her vulnerability and loyalty to those she loved, her ability to remain staunchly by my side in spite of everything I’d hidden from her was an act of grace, really. One I wasn’t sure I deserved.

  “Now, the tuition. Tell me more.” Wallis led me to my chair, had me sit.

  I needed a few deep breaths. Then: “Atlas did some sleuthing,” I said softly. “But he’s not the only one who knows. Melinda Darley does, and at least a few of her staff. They’re not doing anything with it for now. But I don’t know how long the détente will hold, and others might find out themselves.”

  Wallis stood before me, sure-footed, full of conviction. “Okay, so, like I said earlier. Why bother holding it, if it’s going to come out? You’re still looking at me like I’m out of my mind. Listen, Daisy. All this time you’ve been dealing with Mom and me, Dad, and now Atlas, I think you’ve been picturing yourself as the broken glass, lying in shards on the floor of our old house. But you’re not.” My office phone rang, but I ignored it. “You have another option, Daisy.”

  “I do?” It was an honest question.

  Her smile, before she made her big pronouncement, was broad and easy. “Be the brick.”

  Thirty-Three

  After Wallis left my office, I sat for a long time, thinking.

  By a long time, I mean a full workday. Imagine a movie montage. The sun rises high then sets. The shadows shift across my face. The flurry of activity around my desk, people coming and going, dropping papers, picking them up. Miles, pacing. The fluorescent lights go on, the janitorial staff vacuums around me. Everyone in double time, except me, so still I might’ve been confused for a statue.

  It was a news alert on my phone that woke me up around dinnertime. Another man—prominent, respected, you can surmise the rest—had been caught cheating. The details didn’t really matter; I knew them by heart anyway.

  I placed my phone back on my desk.

  * * *

  That night, I found Cricket at her computer. “My journal,” she said. “Be right with you.” She fussed over a single sentence, deleting, rewriting. Finally satisfied, she pressed save and swiveled her chair around to face me in the doorway.

  “I have to tell you something,” I said.

  She pushed her glasses to the top of her head and pointed to her bed. “Sit.”

  She was smiling, curious. Perhaps she assumed this was about Atlas. I drew a frilly pillow into my lap. “It’s bad, Crick
et.” Her smile faded. I confided about the tuition, just as I’d practiced. I watched her expression fall into the routine, by now, we Richardson women knew as muscle memory. Confusion. Shock. Denial. Sadness.

  “Why would he do this?” She stood, then dropped next to me on the bed.

  “In typical fashion,” I said, “he abandoned us to figure that out on our own.”

  Cricket, ignoring my cynicism, began to answer her own question. “He loved you more than you realized, Daisy. He just saw so much of himself in you. That’s why I think he was so hard on you, and, I suspect, that’s the reason he went to those lengths even if it put you in such jeopardy. Not to excuse him, but he must’ve wanted to help you, to remove an obstacle from your path. He thought he was doing this for good reasons.”

  “If he thought his reasons were honorable, then why didn’t he tell you?”

  “Because he knew he was wrong.”

  My gaze drifted to the painting hanging over Cricket’s tufted headboard. One of Gregory’s favorites, it had once hung in his Senate office—a pure abstraction in oil, a red circle on the right, a shimmering white one on the left, both layered on a luminous yellow sky. Often I’d catch him staring at it, deep in thought. What had he seen? The red devil on one shoulder, the white angel on the other, both anxious to speak? I knew which had proven more persuasive. “I think the power got to him,” I said, turning back to Cricket.

  “People aren’t corrupted by power, Daisy. Power just amplifies who they already are. As Gregory’s power grew, it made him that much more obstinate and difficult.”

  “It was all about him, all the time.” I’d heard parents refer to their children as a reflection of themselves. But I was not a mirror to my father. Instead, I was one of his limbs, an extension of him and his public persona. He moved me through life as he wished.

  Cricket played absentmindedly with her reading glasses. “When I married him, my greatest fear was failing him, not keeping up my end of the bargain to do, to say the right things. It never crossed my mind that he might fail me. Or you.” She touched her fingertips to my cheek. “I’m sorry you had to keep this burden. I just—had no idea. And I never would’ve asked...” She looked down to her hands, to the gold-and-diamond wedding band she still wore. She twirled it around her finger. “But this is his doing, isn’t it? Not just what he did at the end, but everything he did to us for years. Remember how each of us knew that he was having an affair, but kept it quiet?”

  I straightened, knowing she was right. “Our loyalty to him was greater than our loyalty to each other. That’s not good enough anymore. So, no more apologies, full stop. At least when it comes to Gregory. We won’t give him that power anymore.” I cleared my throat, because there was more to my story, in particular how I had wielded my power. “After Atlas discovered that Gregory was funneling money back to the family, he asked me if I wanted to make the entire article go away.” Cricket raised her eyebrows. “I said yes. I wanted everything to go away. The article first, then, later, the tuition.”

  “Ah,” said Cricket, as though she’d just stumbled upon a lost trinket. “There it is. I knew something was up with Atlas at that dinner. With you both, actually.”

  I rose and went to Cricket’s dresser, started fiddling with her perfume bottles, perfectly arranged on a silver tray. “And I used our friendship as leverage against him, because I was scared of what the article might do to us, to our family.”

  “Are you still scared now?” she asked.

  I pried my eyes away from the perfume. “Are you?”

  She thought about it for a moment. “Our loyalty to Gregory was greater than our loyalty to each other,” Cricket repeated. “I’m loyal to you. Let Atlas publish the article. Or don’t. Either way, I trust you.”

  I caught a glimpse of myself in her dresser mirror. There had been days when I woke up unsure of everything about me, down to my own last name. But today was no longer one of those days. The truth was that I’d spent too much time hiding behind rationalizations and excuses and smoke screens. Which is to say, instead of wielding my power differently from my father, I’d come dangerously close to mimicking him. I’d taken the easy way out, and what would follow would be hard, but necessary. But I would do it, even if no one noticed. Or if everyone noticed and condemned me anyway. Because that’s what it meant to have character, and I wouldn’t lose sight of that the way my father had.

  “I’ve talked a big game about how I’m trying to do some good in the world. I think it’s about time I actually start doing it. I’m going to talk to Atlas.”

  “Good,” Cricket declared. Then, because my mother was still my mother: “Wear something nice when you do.”

  Thirty-Four

  I arrived at Ari’s apartment building on Saturday night; the doorman had to call up to verify my visit, then accompanied me to the elevator, swiping a card to make it move. It was a lot of procedure for a building that looked mostly to be occupied by people aged thirty and under. When I thanked him, he shrugged.

  Twelve floors up, I knocked on the door. Atlas answered. Hellos. One-armed hugs. He drew me inside, commenting on the rain, the London-like dreariness of the summer. He took my jacket and hung it up with care, as though it were a mink. My dripping umbrella I placed next to the door.

  “I’m sorry to miss Wallis,” Atlas said. “Ari told me she couldn’t make it.”

  “She’s with Bo, actually,” I said. “There’s a bookstore opening in Anacostia. Bo wanted to go. So did she.” That was true. Also, when I’d explained to her my reasons for going to the dinner, and why I wanted to go alone, she’d understood.

  I trailed Atlas farther into the apartment, which was just as these new things are—one great room with a kitchen island, quartz topped, the size of a rowboat. Tall windows overlooked H Street, thick enough to hear nothing below.

  Atlas, in a striped apron, resumed his place back at the island. “Ari has just dashed out for a missing ingredient,” he said. “She’ll be back soon. She’s given me some tasks with the assumption that I can manage a charcuterie board. Stuffed grape leaf?”

  “Please.” I slid next to him and helped myself. “How are you?”

  “Well,” he said, slicing into a wheel of Gouda. “I’m not bad. Had to deal today with my latest fan.” He made air quotes around this last word with his free hand. “Why write a letter to the editor when one can compose a series of sadistic tweets? Do you think Ari will like how I’ve sliced this? Probably not. I’ve left the rind on. Perhaps I was supposed to take it off.”

  “I’m sorry you’re having to deal with trolls.” I smoothed my skirt—Wallis’s actually. I’d raided her closet, for a change, and found something—forest green, rather stretchy, flattering tulip shape—that fit me. It hit higher above the knee than anything I owned, and was, you know, a color, but I’d had the urge to be daring. “I know what that’s like.”

  “Ari wants me to take a job that doesn’t involve violent threats,” he said, running the back of his hand across his forehead. He was sweating mildly, and I wondered if he was nervous, or stressed, or a combination of both. I wanted to put him at ease. I certainly hoped this dinner would not be a redo of the awkwardness we encountered in my office the other day and, continuing with my efforts to live with integrity, I had committed myself to being cordial and friendly to his girlfriend.

  “Ari told me,” I said. “She has other ideas for you that don’t involve long hours and lots of travel.”

  He went back to slicing. “Funny she said that,” he said to the cheese board. “I have a suspicion she likes me better when I’m not around so much.”

  “Really?” My shock made this question louder than intended. “What gives you that idea?”

  “For one,” Atlas said, “she said so.” He glanced up. “She told me last week that I was annoying her, and that she likes me better when I’m on the road. In her defense, I was being a
nnoying.”

  “She was joking?” I used a toothpick to spear an olive. “Or did she mean it?” My eyes fluttered back to his.

  “Yes,” he said. “I mean, both. Both? No, she was joking. Probably. But the truth is, we do get along better when we’re apart. Is that the way it’s supposed to be?” He concentrated again on slicing, this time a hunk of orange cheddar. “I suppose we’ve got that backwards.”

  I was in the woman’s apartment, eating her appetizers. Run, I wanted to say, and pull him out of there. “Wine?” I asked, remembering I’d brought a bottle of sauv blanc. I pushed it forward on the island.

  He laughed and put down his knife. “My God, I’m an awful host. Let me just find the opener. I can never remember which drawer—ah, here! I’ll pour you some. I’m abstaining. Too much left to read tonight.”

  “Before Ari gets here,” I said, watching him cut the foil of the wine’s seal. “I have to talk to you about something that will add to your workload.” In the day or so since I’d set the course, I’d been oddly calm. But now my pulse hammered. Maybe he heard the nerves in my voice, for he retrieved a glass from the cabinet and filled it almost to the rim. “I want to do the article, Atlas. About my father. About everything.”

  He did this thing, sometimes, when he was startled—he liked to call it pudding arms—where his body kind of flopped dramatically. Thank goodness, in this case, he’d already put down the wine. “Daisy,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “About everything?”

  “Everything, everything,” I said, steadfast.