How Lucky You Are (9781455518548)

by Kusek Lewis, Kristyn

  “Oh, give me a break,” says someone in the room. I keep my eyes glued to the television screen. Where is Kate watching this? Is Kate watching this?

  “I don’t know yet what the future holds for me and my family,” he says. “I can tell you that I’m so, so sorry, and I’ll do whatever it takes to win you back. I believe in the power of Virginia. Always have, always will. If you can believe in me again, I’d like to prove it to you. Thank you.” He nods quickly and then turns from the podium and off of the screen, leaving the reporters collected in front of him clamoring like zoo animals watching their caretaker walk away with a handful of food.

  “Well, that was a command performance,” Mona says, patting my arm.

  “He has a black eye!” Randy says. “She hit him! Don’t you think she hit him?”

  I turn, pointedly glaring at him to remind him that he’s talking about his boss’s best friend, but he’s probably right. Kate can get riled up over having to wait too long for a table at a restaurant. I can only imagine how this would set her off.

  “Excuse me.” I touch Mona’s arm and walk back to my office. Just as I’m sitting down at my desk, my phone rings. Finally.

  But it’s Amy. “Hey, any word?”

  “Still nothing.”

  “Did you see it just now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Poor Kate.”

  “I know.”

  “And, um. Kind of ironic, huh?”

  “What?”

  “His eye.”

  Oh God. It hadn’t occurred to me until now. Kate hitting Brendan. Amy’s situation.

  “Do you really think Kate hit him? They’re already talking about it on TV.”

  “I…Amy, I don’t know.” I rub my eyes. This is all too much. I want to pretend that none of this is happening. Amy and Kate need me now more than ever, but I just want to go home and lock the door, to pull down the shades and hide out where everything is…well, it’s not perfect, but it’s stable, isn’t it? I take a deep breath. “How are you doing?”

  “Me?” Amy asks. “I’m fine. Why?”

  Why? Because you told me last night that your husband’s been beating you for three years; that’s why. “Amy, I’m not going to lie to you. I don’t feel good about it, what you’re doing.”

  “I know that you think I should leave,” she says. “That’s why I never said anything. Don’t take that personally, Waverly. I’m sorry. I just…I know what I’m doing, okay? My God, you must feel like you’re the next to fall, huh? First me, then Kate.”

  “Well.” I take another deep breath, and just in the nick of time, my other line clicks in. “Let me take that. It might be Kate.”

  “Okay, call me back.”

  “So can you believe this shit?” Kate says, skipping hello.

  My stomach flips at the sound of her voice. “Finally! Are you okay? Where have you been?”

  “Here at home, trying to avoid both my mother and the media. Not to mention my husband.”

  “Did you get my messages? I’m dying to get over there. Oh, Kate. What happened?”

  She laughs. “Well, my husband fucked his assistant. That’s what happened.”

  “Oh, Kate.”

  “Yep. What a guy. It’s a perfect Washington story. A reporter told me. Called me in the middle of the night. I could still hear him talking when I threw the phone across the room.”

  “Oh, no. Oh, Kate.”

  “Gotta love this town.

  “I mean, it’s not like I should be surprised,” she continues. “Did you see what I did to him? His eye? I don’t know what got into me, Waverly. I’ve never done anything like that before.”

  “So you did hit him?”

  “Well, I didn’t exactly hit him. I threw a shoe at him.” She laughs. “And then I pushed him over and kicked him—hard—where it counts.”

  “Oh, Kate.” It’s hard to imagine Kate physically harming someone, like picturing a swan in a dogfight.

  “He just rolled over. Like the spineless piece of shit that he is. And then he left. Off to work as usual.”

  “What are you going to do, Kate?”

  “Oh, I’m leaving him. Or I guess, more accurately, I’m kicking him out.”

  “You’re sure? That quickly?”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” she says. “He’s done. There’s no ‘three strikes, you’re out’ with me.”

  It’s surprising that she can be so certain, so soon. “I’m dying to get over there, Kate.”

  “I don’t think you could even get to the house, Wave. And I don’t want you to end up on TV.”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Nope, got it covered. Has anyone tried to call you yet? Any reporters?”

  “No, nothing.” I know they will inevitably show up at some point. Soon after Brendan announced his candidacy, a newspaper reporter came into the bakery to interview me about Kate. She wanted to know everything from the names of her college boyfriends to the name of her hairdresser.

  “They’ll be there, so be ready,” says Kate.

  “What should I tell them?”

  “Just ‘no comment.’ I’ll answer all of their questions myself. I’m going to release a statement, probably tomorrow morning.”

  “Are you going to say anything about the shoe?”

  “Why should I?”

  “Amy says they’re already talking about it on the news.”

  “Well, fuck them! It’s not as if I wasn’t provoked. I’m the victim here.”

  “Right.” She is, isn’t she? This is different from Amy and Mike, undoubtedly. You can’t even compare the two. But still…

  “I’ll call you later. I’m fine, so don’t worry.”

  “Okay.” I wait a beat, considering. “Hey, Kate?”

  “What?”

  “I love you.”

  She groans. “I’m fine, Waverly,” she says. “And I love you, too.”

  I leave the catering job around ten o’clock that night and call Kate from the car to tell her that I’m on my way over. She tries to convince me that it’s unnecessary, and when I pull onto her street I discover that she was justified in telling me that it would be difficult to get into her house. It is still media mayhem. I park way down the street and then cut across the lawn. I think I’m being crafty, but before I make it to Kate’s driveway two reporters stop me, both of them grinning in a way that’s not so much friendly as pleased with themselves for spotting me, their assumed bait. I shake my head and hurry past them, not even bothering to stop, and slip into the house, entering through the side door with the key that I use when I watch the dog.

  “Kate?” I call. She’d said on the phone that nobody was there with her. She sent everyone home. “My housekeeper reads a lot of tabloids,” she said. “This might be too tempting for her.”

  “I’m upstairs,” she yells.

  When I get to her bedroom, she’s sitting in the middle of the floor in a pale peach nightshirt. There’s a glass decanter of whiskey on the floor next to her. Her face is mottled. She’s been crying. “Want some?” she says. “I’ve been taking swigs all day but, I swear, I don’t even feel it.”

  She actually seems quite pulled together. The room, however, is not. “Sorry about the mess,” she says, laughing. “I just, you know…” She shrugs and laughs again. Brendan’s clothes are strewn everywhere—shirts and ties, boxer shorts, balled-up black socks. “Look at all of these loafers,” she laughs, picking up a white suede buck and tossing it across the room. “There are enough shoes here to outfit the entire Nantucket Yacht Club. I hate these stupid shoes. Always hated these stupid shoes.”

  I sit down next to her on the Persian rug and put the bag of food that I brought with me in front of her. I doubt she’s eaten today. I packed a grilled cheese, a turkey club, a few of her favorite scones, chocolates—all of the things I know she loves most. “Tell me what happened,” I say, unwrapping the grilled cheese for her and handing her a piece.

  She considers it and hands i
t back to me. “Thanks, but I can’t.”

  “It’s okay,” I say, placing it on a napkin in front of her, just in case she changes her mind. Let’s not forget that I’m a person who eats her way through tragedy.

  “Evelyn called a little while ago,” she sulks, as she typically does when talking about her mother. “She’s so predictable: ‘Put on a brave face, Katherine,’” she mimics her saying. “‘People like us don’t air our dirty laundry. Certainly there’s a way to move past this.’” In the way that some people are great conversationalists and others are quietly insightful, Evelyn’s trademark characteristic is the steely way that she can turn the other cheek. She is as effusive as the ice sculptures she has made for her annual Christmas ball.

  “How could he do this to me?” she says. “I mean, putting aside the most obvious thing—that he’s my husband—think about the money that my family invested in him, the career I gave up for him. My life,” she moans. “All of this,” she says, waving her hands around the room. “All of this was apparently nothing to him. I’ve been sitting here all day long, thinking about how carefully I’d decorated this room when we moved here. Isn’t that weird? But I’ve been thinking about how, for example, I chose the sheets because they’re the same ones that we slept on during our honeymoon, and how I’d found this rug in this great little shop in Savannah when we were there for a long weekend.” She rubs her hands over the pattern. “This all feels so artificial now, like our bedroom is the set of a bedroom on a soap opera’s soundstage. This was all just a huge fucking act to him.”

  “Oh, Kate, no. He loved you. He still loves you.” I’m not sure I believe it—I don’t quite know what to believe—but it feels like the right thing to say to spare her any more heartache.

  “He wanted to bring kids into this?” she says, incredulous. “Can you imagine? If I’d agreed?” She gulps.

  “I can’t…,” I start. I can’t imagine. What was he thinking?

  “Do you know that when he came in here this morning, after supposedly working all night at the apartment, he didn’t even know that it had come out? I was the one who told him. His team is in touch with him every ten seconds. They call him when someone on staff sneezes and yet they hadn’t told him that this had broken. It’s suspicious to me. I wonder if he’d turned his phone off because he was with her. Anyhow, he walked in, saw that I’d trashed the room…you should have seen the look on his face, Waverly. He begged me to try to understand. Can you believe that?”

  I shake my head.

  “I just don’t know how I fell for this,” she says, straightening her shoulders. “We grew up in this town. Just like French women know how to dress, or Italian women know how to cook, we are D.C. girls—we know how to deal with these vultures who will do anything for the right connection. I mean, I was barely out of puberty when men started taking me out to dinner to try to get closer to the ‘empire.’ They all thought that they were so original for waiting until the third course before asking about my father. I thought that Brendan was different,” she says. “I feel like I’ve been totally duped.”

  She gets up and peers out of the window to look at the news crews. “I wonder how long they’ll stay. They showed up less than an hour after the reporter called and told me. Four o’clock this morning. I swear, I don’t know how they sense it…they’re like ants at a picnic.” I’ve already decided not to tell her about the three reporters who came into to the bakery today, each more vicious than the last.

  Kate sits down at the writing desk under the window. “Stephanie. I can’t believe that she’s what he wanted, with her stringy hair and schlumpy pantsuits. She’s probably not even the first one. I should’ve known. It’s not as if men in D.C. aren’t known for this. My own father has occasionally, quietly, been known for this.”

  This is news to me, but I don’t say anything. I don’t want to interrupt her. She needs to get all of this out.

  “Stephanie is always with Brendan, but I never suspected anything because it’s her job. I have to call James. I can’t believe he didn’t say anything to me. Surely, he knew.”

  “James?”

  “Brendan’s body man. He’s responsible for taking care of Brendan’s basic needs throughout the day—holding his cell phone, ordering his lunch. Stephanie’s job is to make sure that he gets to wherever he needs to be…apparently in more ways than one. But James practically sleeps at Brendan’s side, practically wipes his ass for him, so there’s no way he couldn’t have known about this.” She looks at her watch. “We’re right on time for the eleven o’clock news. Let’s see what they’re saying.” She walks across the room, picks up a remote off the nightstand, and turns on the television in the armoire in the corner.

  “Kate, no, let’s not—,” I plead. “You don’t need to see this crap.”

  “Waverly, I can handle it,” she says, sitting down next to me on the floor. “My husband—the one who’s spent a good part of the last year trying to convince me to bear his children—is sleeping with someone else. What could they say to make it worse?”

  I want to grab her hand, pat her back, something, but I know that it will just anger her if I try.

  “Brendan must’ve thought that I would play along if he ever got caught,” she says, her eyes locked on the television screen, waiting for the broadcast to start. “He never would have risked this otherwise. And you know what occurred to me earlier today? I think he may have been pushing for kids because it would have made it harder for me to leave if this ever got out.”

  “Oh, Kate, I don’t know—,” I start.

  “Come on, I’m the bank account!” she interrupts. “He needs me. But I don’t know what made him think that I would be the kind of sweet, muzzled wife who’d stand by her man, no matter what. Have they started comparing me to the other ones yet? To Hillary and Jenny Sanford? Silda Spitzer? I should call Jenny Sanford. Mark didn’t stand a chance after what he put her through. She handled her situation perfectly.”

  “I haven’t watched the news,” I say. “Just the press conference.”

  “Breaking news today,” the newscaster’s voice rolls into the room like a cloud of smoke. “Brendan Berkshire, the candidate for the Virginia governor’s office, admits to an affair. These pictures, obtained overnight by WUSA news, show the candidate kissing his assistant at her Dupont Circle residence.”

  “Have you seen these?” Kate says. “These are great.”

  I’d seen the photos online earlier in the day. Brendan, in grainy black and white, is kissing his assistant in the dim vestibule of her apartment building. His palms cup the sides of her face. His wedding ring is conspicuous.

  The newscast cuts into footage of Kate speaking to a group of women. “Oh Lord,” she groans. “That’s from a few weeks ago. Some women entrepreneurs’ thing.” She points at the screen. “See that scarf I’m wearing? Ferragamo? He bought it for me when we went to Italy when we were dating.

  “God, in the entryway of her building?” she says to me, watching the report. Her speech has become watery.

  “Oh, Kate. I know.”

  “Did he actually think he’d get away with this?” She’s looking at me like she legitimately wants an answer. I just shake my head.

  “He said this morning that he loves me. Did you hear that in the press conference? That’s what he kept saying when he came in this morning and I confronted him: I love you, Kate. He doesn’t love me. He loves the idea of me, just like everyone else.” She looks at me and laughs. “He ruined us,” she says. “He didn’t think he could, but he did. He ruined us.” There are tears in her eyes. “You are so lucky. You know that, right? You are so, so lucky not to have my life.”

  I shift closer to her and pull her into a hug. Whatever my problems right now, I agree with her.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  When I finally get home, it’s well past midnight. I’m surprised when Larry meets me at the back door.

  “Rough day?” he says, wrapping his arms around me.

&nbs
p; “Yeah.” I rest my head on his chest and close my eyes. “What are you doing up?”

  “Waiting up for you.” He kisses the top of my head. “You want to take a bath? I’ll get it going for you. Are you hungry?”

  “I should go to bed. It’s so late,” I say, my voice muffled by his shirt. “But maybe a bath.” Despite the grueling workday and the obvious emotional hangover, I know I’ll never fall asleep if I try now. There’s too much on my mind.

  “I’ll run the water for you,” he says, smoothing his hand over the top of my head. “Go fix yourself a drink.”

  I hug Larry closer, joining my hands together behind his back. “Okay.”

  I stretch my leg out of the water to turn the faucet off with my foot. I breathe the steamy air in and out, in and out, wishing that the thick fog could cleanse me of every single thought in my head. Sweat drips from my forehead. Larry has run the water extra hot, which is how I prefer it. I hook one leg over the ledge of the old clawfoot tub, the same bathtub that my grandmother filled with Mr. Bubble when I slept over here as a child. The tiles on the wall are a color that inspired my dad to deem this the “mint ice cream bathroom.” My mind flashes to the conversation I had with Gary earlier today. I tilt my head back and shake my glass of Baileys, as if the sound of the ice cubes rattling the quiet could shake the thought away. Foreclosure. The threat looms over everything now.