Sylvie, meanwhile, was urging Diana to be patient, not to judge until they knew for sure what had happened. She gathered herself, asking, “Are you two all right? Lizzie, are you handling this okay?”
“I’m fine,” said Diana. She sat down in a metal chair and crossed her toned, tanned legs, swinging the right one hard over the left. “Thank you for your concern.”
“I’m okay,” said Lizzie, who knew why her mother had asked about her first. Of course Diana was all right. Diana was always all right. The world could be crumbling to rubble at their feet and Diana would be going for a run through the ruins. Lizzie took an experimental breath as, once more, the television set showed footage of her father with his arm around that other woman. Sources report that the senator gave Stabinow significant raises during her employment, then helped her find a six-figure job at a prominent D.C. law firm, said the voice on the screen, as the video dissolved into a still shot of the woman graduating from somewhere, beaming in her cap and gown. “I’m all right,” Lizzie said more strongly.
“You’ll be sure to go to a meeting tonight?” asked her mother. Diana recrossed her legs and glared at the row of lockers as if they, too, had offended her. Diana was not a believer in meetings, or in what she called, with quote marks you could almost hear, “the culture of recovery.” Diana thought that if you had a problem, you dealt with it on your own, with willpower and cold showers and fast five-mile runs.
“I’ll go,” Lizzie said, trying to sound like her sister, solid and smart and in control.
“I’ll call you soon. I love you, girls,” said Sylvie, and Diana and Lizzie answered that they loved her, too, before Diana broke the connection. She put her phone in her pocket and snapped the television off.
“I can’t believe this.”
Lizzie couldn’t, either. Couldn’t, and didn’t want to. “Maybe it isn’t true.”
Diana rolled her eyes again. Her talent for dashing Lizzie’s hopes, for puncturing Lizzie’s balloons, hadn’t diminished at all in the years since they were girls. “Of course it’s true! Dad said so.”
“Not to me,” Lizzie said stubbornly.
“And there’s video.”
“Maybe it was Photoshopped.” Such things could happen. Hadn’t there been some kind of movie-star sex tape later proven to be a fake? And what about the time that talk-show hostess’s head had appeared on a magazine cover on top of someone else’s body?
“It wasn’t. God!” Diana bounced back to her feet.
Lizzie edged toward the window, turning away from Diana’s rage. She looked at her phone—her father had called her twice, probably while she’d been coaxing Milo out of the water, and it was almost five o’clock. “Milo needs dinner.”
“Fine,” Diana snapped. “Take him to McDonald’s again. Take him to Wendy’s. Get him pizza. Whatever he wants. I don’t care.”
“Are you going to tell him?” Lizzie asked.
Diana lifted one hand to her face and swiped at her forehead, and when she spoke, she sounded, for the first time, unsure. She walked to the window to stand next to Lizzie. The blue of the sky had deepened, and the angles of her face, the line of her lips were lit by the twilight glow. Lizzie reached for the camera that hung against her chest, then stopped her hands. Diana hated having her picture taken, and now was definitely not the time, even though she didn’t think she’d ever seen her sister looking so beautiful, or so sad. “I don’t know,” Diana said, and then startled Lizzie by asking, “Do you think he needs to know?”
Lizzie thought it over. If Milo was in school or camp, surely the other kids would have overheard their parents’ conversations and would possibly be talking about it. But school was out, and Milo had refused to go to computer camp or cooking camp or, heaven forbid, sports camp, which meant that he went for days without talking to anyone but his parents and Lizzie. He hardly watched TV—his mother carefully monitored his screen time, and what he did see was mostly nature documentaries, which Diana approved of, and cooking shows, which Milo loved.
“Maybe we shouldn’t tell him yet,” said Lizzie.
Diana gave a brisk nod, herself again. “Okay,” she said. “Give him dinner. I’m going to stop at home to change. I’m going out with Gary tonight, remember?”
Lizzie slipped her phone back in her purse. The two of them walked into the waiting room and found Milo sitting with his Leapster abandoned on his lap and his gaze trained on the television set.
“I think we’ve all got scandal fatigue,” said a redhead in a sweater that struck Lizzie as too low-cut and clingy for TV, or for someone who was old and emaciated. “Giuliani, Spitzer, Edwards, Sanford … what’s surprising at this point is the politician who doesn’t have something on the side.” She gave a bright little laugh as the screen filled with a shot of Milo’s Grandpa Richard, murmuring into the curly-haired woman’s ear. “The only interesting thing at this point is how the wife’s going to behave. If she’s going to stand up at the press conference or make him go sleep in the barn.”
“Those are the options?” The host sounded amused. “Stand by your man or go sleep in the barn?”
“Personally, I’d respect it if one of these women told her guy to go sleep with the fishes,” said the redhead. Her collarbones bounced up and down as she giggled at her own wit.
“Let’s give the senator credit,” said the young man in a bow tie who sat at the table beside her. “At least he didn’t use taxpayer money to pay for hookers. Or tell his constituents he was hiking the Appalachian Trail.”
The redhead gave him a thumbs-up. Her face was tight as a tambourine, but Lizzie could see blue veins bulging across the backs of her hands, and her skinny fingers looked like claws. “Bonus points for that.”
What if it was your dad? Lizzie wanted to call, assuming the brittle, bony old crone had ever had a father, that she hadn’t been hatched in some conservative think tank’s laboratory. How would you like it, if it was your father, and I was the one on TV, laughing at him?
Lizzie marched to the television set and stood on her tiptoes, trying to change the channel. “Miss,” called the woman behind the reception desk. “You can’t touch that!”
“Yes, she can,” said Diana. She knelt down in front of Milo and started talking to him in a low, comforting murmur. Nothing to worry about, Diana was telling her son. Everything’s okay. Lizzie strained and stretched until she hit the power button. When the set was off, she turned and beckoned for Milo, who was even paler and more somber than normal, looking even more like a miniature banker whose job it was to tell young couples that their mortgage applications had been denied.
“Mommy’s going back to work,” Diana told her son. “Aunt Lizzie’s going to take you home.” She bent, hugging him. “I love you miles and miles.”
“Miles and miles,” he repeated, then gave her a high five, a low five, and a fist bump before smoothing his bangs again and tugging his hat down securely over his ears. Lizzie reached for her camera again—she’d love to have a picture of that, of her sister being decent and gentle and sweet. Then again, she made her hands drop. Diana mustered a smile, gave her sister a tight nod, and slipped back into the ER. Lizzie took Milo’s hand.
“Aunt Lizzie?” he asked in his gravelly voice as he followed her into the hallway. “Why was Grandpa on TV?”
“Well, you know, he’s a senator.”
“He makes laws in Washington,” Milo recited. “But who was that lady? They said she was his girlfriend.”
“You know what?” Lizzie said, and took his hand. “Let’s talk about your delicious dinner. We don’t have to worry about Grandpa right now.”
SYLVIE
As the car swung into the rest area, Sylvie grabbed the door handle, and the instant the tires had stopped, she yanked the door open. Avoiding Clarissa’s pained gaze and Derek’s murmured “Ma’am?” she hurried through the heat of the parking lot, up the concrete stairs, and into the rest stop.
There, in the wide, tiled entryway that smelled
of frying food and disinfectant, Sylvie stood as if frozen, head tilted back, staring up at the television set as it broadcast CNN. Travelers flowed around her: harried mothers with toddlers in their arms hustling into the ladies’ room, senior citizens making their slow way toward the Burger King, or stopping to peer at the giant maps on the wall. Sylvie ignored all of them, letting them walk around her, barely hearing their “excuse me’s” and “watch it, lady,” and “hey, that’s a real bad place to plant yourself.” Over and over, the same snippet of film played on the screen: a woman, her head bent, curly brown hair blowing in the wind as she walked through an apartment building’s door, followed by footage of Richard (blue suit, red-and-gold tie from Hermés she’d bought him last Christmas) on a standard-issue podium, delivering what was undoubtedly a standard-issue speech (together, they’d written one on education, and one on the environment, and one on Our Leaders of Tomorrow, which could be tailored for an elementary school or high school audience and padded for college graduations). Words bubbled out of the speakers, but Sylvie could no longer make sense of them. It was as if her mind was a Venus flytrap: it had ingested the pertinent facts, then snapped shut tight, refusing to let the words back out for further consideration. Sources are reporting … Joelle Stabinow, a former legislative aide, a Georgetown Law School graduate who frequently traveled with the senator … donor-funded junkets at tropical resorts …
The pictures cycled past again: the young woman, then Richard. Her brown hair. His red tie. And now, another picture of the girl, in a bikini that Sylvie never would have attempted, not even at her thinnest. The girl—the woman, Sylvie supposed, because that was the politically correct term—sat, cross-legged, on the wooden deck of a boat. Her belly pushed at the low waistband of the white bikini bottom, her breasts pressed at the cups of the top. No Special K and skim milk breakfasts for this one; no five A.M. sessions with a Pilates Nazi who’d bark, “USE your CORE,” as if Sylvie were a dog failing obedience class.
So Ceil and Diana were right. This was real. She must have made some noise, some cry of dismay. Clarissa, who’d appeared at her elbow, looked at her sadly, but said nothing. Then again, really, what could Clarissa say? Sylvie was certain that the topic of how to handle it if your boss’s spouse was caught in a sex scandal had not been covered at Vanderbilt, where Clarissa had gotten her degrees.
She tried to speak. “I think,” she began. But whatever she’d thought was interrupted by a man who’d come to stand next to her. He was a beefy fellow in blue jeans and a plaid shirt. Red suspenders kept the jeans aloft. He had a grease-spotted Burger King bag in his hand.
“Boy oh boy,” he said, as if Sylvie had started a conversation; as if, in fact, she’d been waiting all day to talk with him. “Here we go again with this. Pigs. All of them. Pigs.”
“Pigs,” Sylvie repeated.
“Okay,” said a young woman in jeans and dark-framed glasses, “okay, fine, but why are they wasting their time reporting on this? There’s a war going on. People are dying.” She gestured at the screen, where the words SEX SCANDAL crawled underneath the knot of Richard’s tie. “And this is what the news shows are doing? Following politicians around to find out where they’re getting their rocks off? Like, who even cares?”
“Who,” said Sylvie, like an owl.
“She’s not even that hot,” offered a fellow in a Giants jersey. Sylvie was unsurprised to see that he had a weak chin and teeth that pointed in several directions. Everyone’s a critic, Ceil always said. “Shit,” said the Giants fan. “If I was a senator, I’d get, like, Miss Universe to sleep with me.”
“Nice,” said the girl in the glasses … but she said it quietly, so that the Giants-jersey guy could pretend he hadn’t heard.
“I think it’s a disgrace,” said the man with the Burger King bag. “He’s probably got daughters her age.”
“Daughters,” Sylvie repeated. She was aware, behind her, of the desperate glance Clarissa was undoubtedly shooting at Derek, a glance that telegraphed that this was developing into a Situation, that Steps Must Be Taken before Sylvie did something or said something to worsen this crisis before it could be massaged and managed and spun. Clarissa had gotten as far as placing a tentative hand on Sylvie’s shoulder and uttering the word “Ma’am?” when Sylvie’s bag (Prada, but discreet, with just one small label sewn underneath the handle) slipped out of her grasp and thumped to the floor. The fellow with the Burger King lunch knelt to retrieve it. “Ma’am? You all right?”
Sylvie looked down at herself: her sheer hose and plain pumps, her expensive navy-blue knit skirt and jacket, a little too tight at the bust. (“Crunches!” she could hear her trainer exhorting. “Presses! Flies!” And his favorite, “Push-aways!” which meant pushing yourself away from the table.) My husband is fucking a legislative aide. There was a small reddish stain on the toe of the man’s work boot. She could feel her throat clenching tight, and the pressure of tears building. She could smell onions, the onions Richard denied himself in his morning omelet. It was a poor place for a life to end. But that was what was happening. Her life, the one she’d built over decades, the one she’d made alongside Richard, her life as his wife, her life as she’d known it, was ending, unraveling, coming apart right here in a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike.
Sylvie pressed her fist against her lips. Clarissa’s face, pale and worried, swam into her sight as she interposed her body between Sylvie and the man. “Mrs. Woodruff?” She shot a look over her shoulder and lowered her voice. “Sylvie? Are you all right?”
Sylvie’s telephone burped. The man picked up her purse. Hoping that it was Ceil again, that sensible Ceil could somehow explain this all and make sense of it for her and tell her that things would be fine, Sylvie located her cell phone and lifted it to her ear.
“Hello?”
“That crotch!” Selma hollered, in her unmistakable hoarse, loud Brooklyn accent. “I knew he was no good for you! The first time you brought him home I knew it! I never liked the way he smelled!”
“Ma.” The single word had exhausted her. Sylvie pressed the telephone against her face, hoping that no one in the crowd had realized who she was. It was unlikely—the average American, if pressed, probably wouldn’t be able to pick a Supreme Court justice out of a lineup, so the chances of a senator’s wife going undetected were high. Bathroom, she mouthed to Clarissa, and carried the telephone into a stall as her mother continued to talk.
“Insect repellent. Took me years to figure it out, but that’s exactly what he smells like. Bug spray. You should have married Bruce Baumgardner. You remember the Baumgardners? They lived on seventeen. Carpet stores.”
Sylvie didn’t answer. “Are you gonna divorce him?” Selma asked. “If you are, you tell me first. I know all the best family law guys.” Sylvie shook her head. This was surprising. As far as she knew, her mother had always liked Richard. He sent flowers on Selma’s birthday, and on Mother’s Day, and on the anniversary of Sylvie’s father’s death. He picked up takeout from the Carnegie Deli once a month when they went over for dinner, and always held doors and offered to carry Selma’s bags and picked up her favorite See’s candies when he traveled to California. Sylvie twisted on the toilet seat as her mother’s voice spilled into her ear. “Bruce lives in New Jersey. His wife was running around with some fellow she met in her yoga class …”
“Yoga,” Sylvie repeated. Her voice was hollow, and her skirt, as she sat on the toilet, was bunched in an unflattering way around her hips. The word had always sounded strange, but never more so than at this moment.
“They split up and he moved into the basement while they’re waiting for the house to sell.” Selma paused, perhaps realizing that a revelation of below-street-level tenancy did not put Bruce in the best light. “It’s a finished basement. With a half-bath.”
“Ma, this isn’t a very good time …”
“Sylvia, listen to me, because this is important,” Selma continued. “If you do a 60 Minutes interview, don’t wear t
eal.”
Her head was spinning. The word teal sounded just as odd, as foreign, as yoga. “What?”
“Teal. Hillary wore teal. After the whole mess with Gennifer Flowers? Where Bill said he’d caused pain in his marriage? Teal wasn’t a good look for her and I don’t think it’d be good for you, either.”
“Ma …”
“Washes you right out. Wear red. Red says you’re strong and you’re not going to take it. And you’re not. Going to take it. Are you?” Selma paused to take a breath. “Oh, and make sure it’s that Lesley Stahl who interviews you. Not the African-American fellow, the one with the earring. He’s very abrupt.”
“Ma.” Sylvie sagged sideways against the wall. With her fingertips she touched the sagging skin beneath her eyes, the hound-dog droops that the Botox doctor hadn’t been able to fix. “Ed Bradley’s dead. I’m not going on 60 Minutes. Please stop calling my husband a crotch.” From underneath the stall door she saw Clarissa’s black heels and slim ankles. There was a soft knock on the stall door. “Mrs. Woodruff?” her assistant whispered.
“Ma, I have to go.”
“Can I give Bruce Baumgardner your number?”
“No!”
Her mother’s grating voice softened, as if she’d remembered that she wasn’t sparring with opposing counsel or interrogating a hostile witness. Sylvie’s father used to be the one to calm her with a quiet word or a Yiddish endearment, but Dave had died of a stroke five years ago, leaving Selma alone and unmodulated. “Are you all right?”
Sylvie considered. She’d just learned that her husband was carrying on with a legislative aide, a woman who was probably half her age, a woman who, she thought with rising horror, could possibly be pregnant, was at least of an age where she could get pregnant, like John Edwards’s mistress had, so she was a very long way from “all right.”
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