“Why’d you turn the engine on?” Walter asked. His face was scratched, and he was breathing hard. “You know better than that. You’re wasting gas.”
“I was cold.”
“Then why are you still shivering?”
She hadn’t even noticed. But she was shivering, and her teeth were chattering so loudly it was amazing she could hear the music at all.
Part VII
EVERYBODY WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD
Released 1985
Reached no. 11 on Billboard Hot lid on June 8,. 1985
Spent 24 weeks on Billboard Hot 100
41
“DO YOU WANT TO STOP?” Vonnie asked. “There are a bunch of places at the next exit, and we’re making good time.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“There’s a Dairy Queen.” She drew out the syllables, knowing what tempted Eliza. “And a Cracker Barrel.”
“That’s okay.”
“Who knows? Maybe we’ll find a Stuckey’s.”
Eliza began to laugh, almost in spite of herself. “The infamous peanut log, which you insisted on having—”
“We both wanted it.”
“And it was awful and Daddy copped one of those attitudes he had every now and then, said we had to eat it, because we had been adamant about wanting it, that it would be our treat every day of the vacation until it was gone—”
Vonnie put on their mother’s voice. “Oh, Manny, I’m sure the girls have learned their lesson.” She switched to a lower octave. “They must learn proportion in some things, to stop being so wasteful. Children are starving.”
“So, on the second night at the—what was it called?”
“The Martha Washington Inn. In Abingdon.” Vonnie’s memory always amazed Eliza, but maybe it was just another facet of Vonnie’s certainty about everything. She believed she was right, and no one called her on it. “They took us there because it had a good theater and they were going through one of those phases where they thought we were philistines.”
“Not you, never you.”
“Yes, me too. Daddy thought I had atrocious taste in my recreational reading, and you didn’t read at all when you were young. So they took us to Abingdon to see Of Mice and Men. Which was pretty good, but what we all remember is what happened when you and I tried to flush that Stuckey’s peanut log down the toilet in the Martha Washington Inn’s quaint antique bathroom. If only we had used the ceramic bedpan that was provided for purely decorative reasons!”
Of course. That was why Eliza had started reading Steinbeck a few years later. Because the play had moved her, all of eleven years old at the time. It was 1981, the first year of the Reagan administration, and their parents felt like exiles in their own country, out of step with the times and the mores. Their father was prone to moods like this, a situational depression generated by the culture around him. It was as if he saw his children being borne away on a stream of cheap toys and stupid sentiment. As a parent, Eliza understood better now. She often felt the same way about the things that Iso and Albie coveted, their susceptibility to trends and advertising. But she was less inclined to counter as aggressively as her father had, to insist on trips to Gettysburg and Antietam and the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. The trip to Monticello notwithstanding, as that had been more of a cover for the need to go to Charlottesville.
If Eliza and Peter had been inclined, they could have married this trip to a visit to Williamsburg and Busch Gardens. Instead, they had claimed that Peter and Eliza were going on a getaway to Richmond, which had been written up in the New York Times as an ideal weekend retreat. They assumed the children could stay with their grandparents, but it turned out that Manny and Inez had their own plans for the weekend, a trip to the Greenbrier in West Virginia, and Eliza could not bear to disturb their genuine getaway for her fake one. Instead, she called Vonnie, who declared she would be happy to stay with her niece and nephew. But Peter countered that it might be better for the two women to hit the road together. “No knock on your sister,” he said, “but I would be distracted beyond all reason, wondering if she would remember to pick Albie up at school on time. Besides, Iso’s still grounded, and she’ll find a way to get around Vonnie. Your sister may be able to go toe-to-toe with most secretaries of state and the chairman of the Fed, but she’d be outwitted by a thirteen-year-old intent on making contact with some pimply boy in North London.”
Eliza was pretty sure that this was a knock on her sister, but she decided not to fight about it. The two hadn’t been alone for a long time, perhaps not since Eliza’s children were born. They had seen more of Vonnie in London than they had since they had moved back to the States because Vonnie’s work brought her there more often than it did to Washington. Even then, their visits tended to be dinners at London restaurants where people were constantly swanning up to Vonnie and kissing both her cheeks. Vonnie always chose the restaurants, so presumably she preferred that kind of atmosphere. She found multiple excuses not to come out to Barnet for dinner—so very far, and the Underground didn’t run that late, never mind that she could have spent the night in their spare bedroom, but she always had early meetings the next day. No, she met Eliza and Peter in the trendy restaurant of her choice, then sent them home weighed down with expensive, but not-quite-right, gifts for the children.
It was 9 A.M. and they had been on the road since seven, anticipating a fearful journey past the famous Capital Beltway knot called the Mixing Bowl. Although Eliza knew it only by its reputation, as delineated in the “on the eights” traffic reports on WTOP, she feared it. The Mixing Bowl was like the soulless killer in one of those serial horror films. It rested at times, but it never died. Eliza decided they should leave as early as possible in order to avoid rush hour. To her amazement, traffic in D.C. was quite heavy at seven, but they were going against the flow and sailed through the dreaded Mixing Bowl with such ease that she almost felt a twinge of disappointment. They would reach Richmond well before lunchtime, hours before they could check into their room. They could have left Saturday morning, but visiting hours were relatively early. Eliza, advised by Barbara LaFortuny, had decided it was better to arrive a day early, then make the short trip from Richmond, past a town amusingly known as Disputana and into Waverly, home to Sussex.
Not that Barbara had ever been allowed to visit Walter, she told Eliza. But she knew other men at Sussex I and II, and she was familiar with the procedure. Her voice had sounded wistful, actually, when she spoke of Eliza’s trip. “I’ve never met him. Can you imagine? All these years and I’ve never seen him, face-to-face. Yet I know him as well as I know anyone.”
It had been hard not to ask: “And just how well do you know anyone, Barbara?”
“Did we ever come to Richmond when we were young?” Eliza asked Vonnie now. The city that was coming into view seemed vaguely familiar.
“I don’t think so. We drove through, on one of my college trips, when I went to check out Duke.”
“I’d forgotten about your college trips, how the whole family went along.”
“That was because both Mother and Father wanted to go, and they couldn’t leave you at home alone.”
“Really? I didn’t remember that part. I thought you insisted they both go, said you needed their input.”
Vonnie laughed. “Does that sound like me? I didn’t even want to go on college trips. I knew Northwestern was the right place for me, but they said I had to apply to at least five schools and visit each one. I picked the other four knowing I wouldn’t like them as much as Northwestern—UNC, Duke, Bennington, and NYU. A big state school, an idiosyncratic almost-Ivy, a private school on a par with Northwestern, and a big-city school. It made me look open-minded. But I wanted a strong journalism program and a strong theater department, and only Northwestern had both.”
“So you went through that whole charade and put them through all those trips, your mind made up the entire time?” It was all too easy to imagine Iso doing something similar.
“W
hy not?”
“Wouldn’t it have been simpler to tell them how you felt?”
“No, it would have been simpler for you. I broke them in, Elizabeth.” Vonnie was prone to use the old name when discussing their childhood. “All the privileges that you took for granted—I won them for you. I bet you weren’t told that you had to apply to at least five colleges and visit all of them.”
“No, but I didn’t have your grades, your opportunities. I had to have a safety school. A safety-safety, even. I still don’t know how I got into Wesleyan.”
Vonnie coughed-laughed.
“What?”
“Oh, seriously, Eliza. You can’t be that naive.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Your essay. I helped you punch it up, remember? You all but told them what happened to you.”
“I did not.”
“Yes you did.”
“My essay was about Anne Frank.”
“And your personal connection to her. It was subtle—especially after I helped you revise it—but there could have been no doubt in the minds of the admissions officers that you had firsthand knowledge of what it was to be held captive. That you were a victim of a brutal crime, with that hard-earned knowledge that people are not basically good.”
“That’s just not true.”
Vonnie shrugged, fiddled with the radio, probably looking for the local NPR affiliate or even, God help them, C-SPAN. The prime minister’s “question time” was one of the highlights of Vonnie’s week, although Eliza knew that was usually broadcast on Sundays. “I’m not criticizing you,” she said. “You’re entitled to use your experience.”
“I’ve never used it.”
“You’ve never really had to. It’s always there, like…like…some huge dog, sitting at your side. A big dog, that never barks or growls or shows its fangs, but it’s so huge, who would dare? You’ve effectively been spared from criticism for twenty years now. You’re untouchable. Like—to use a reference from your world—Beth in Little Women. So good, so sweet and with that horrible destiny hanging over her head.”
“Spared by whom? Only you, our parents, and Peter know about me. And our grandparents, but they’re gone. No one else can see this dog. If you want to talk about how you feel, have at it. But don’t put it on me.”
“Okay, fine. I’ll own my feelings.” Vonnie paused. She was going to say something difficult, Eliza realized, the kind of thing that could never be unsaid. “From the day you were taken, I’ve always felt that our parents became less interested in me, and my achievements. They almost lost you, so you’re more precious to them. They can’t help it. They try, because they’re smart and compassionate people, but nothing I do can compare to what you give them simply by existing. And, no offense, Eliza, but existing is pretty much all you do.”
It was the last bit that stung. Until then, she had been okay.
“I’m a mother and a wife. You probably couldn’t survive a day in my life. In fact, the reason we’re making this trip is because Peter didn’t think you could handle a day in my life.” That was cruel and would only damage the already tenuous bond between her sister and her husband, but Eliza was too angry to fight fair.
“Don’t twist this into some mommy-war argument. You know I’m not that simplistic. You…float through life. You let life happen to you. I think you’re a great mother, and I know you put a lot of energy into what you do. But you live the most reactive life of anyone I know, Eliza. Jesus, if there’s one thing I would have learned from your experience, I think it would be to never let anyone else take control of my life. Instead, you’ve handed yours over. To Peter, to the children. And now you’re giving it back to Walter Bowman.”
“I’m going there because he’s agreed to tell me what he’s never told anyone else. How many girls he killed, where they are.”
Vonnie was silent for a few minutes, and Eliza focused on the car’s GPS, which was narrating their way to the B and B, not having an alternate location to offer. She hated the GPS voice. It always sounded a little smug to her. She rather enjoyed it when construction or some other unanticipated problem put the GPS in the wrong, not that the voice ever admitted that she had screwed up.
“And then what?” Vonnie asked.
“What do you mean?”
“He confesses to you. So what? Has it occurred to you that it won’t be considered valid if his lawyer isn’t present? That it might not settle anything, just stir things up? It’s occurred to Peter, I can tell you that much.”
So Peter and Vonnie had discussed this, outside her hearing.
“When did you and Peter hash this out?”
“Last night. He was up late, working. As was I. I went downstairs to scare up a glass of wine. You know, someone should tell Peter that just because wine is expensive and French, doesn’t mean it’s good.”
Oddly, that offhanded criticism softened Eliza’s anger. It, at least, was classic Vonnie, careless and thoughtless.
“Back when we were teenagers, you once said that everything would be about me from now on. Isn’t it possible that your own perceptions became reality? That you see what you look for?”
“Yes,” Vonnie said. “But isn’t it also possible that I’m right? That I’ve lived my entire life in my sister’s shadow?”
“Not in the world at large.”
“Fuck the world at large. It’s the family I care about.”
That was news. “Are you worried that what I’m doing will become public? That all the old stuff will be dredged up again?”
“No. I know that’s not what you want.”
“So why are we talking about this?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we’re talking about it because it’s always there and yet we never have. Maybe it’s not a big dog but just the old clichéd elephant in the room. I’ve always understood that what happened to you happened to you. But it happened to the rest of us, too. To Mom and Dad. To me. We were there. Not Peter. Yet it’s Peter whom you trust, more than any of us. It’s Peter who shapes your life. You follow him wherever his job leads him, make the sacrifices necessary to make his career possible, even as you give up on your own.”
“Vonnie, this may be the hardest thing for you to understand, but I never considered dropping out of graduate school a sacrifice. If I hadn’t withdrawn, I’d probably still be there, trying to write a thesis on the children’s literature of the 1970s, and bored to tears. I learned a long time ago that I just didn’t have that much to say about Judy Blume’s Forever and why a boy would name his penis Ralph, given its associations to vomiting. Talk about semiotics.”
Vonnie laughed, and the air cleared. They continued to laugh throughout the day, old stories bubbling up to the surface. The Stuckey’s log (again) and their attempt to feign innocence as peanut-fouled water overflowed their bathroom at the charmingly quaint Martha Washington Inn. More memories followed throughout the day in Richmond, as they strolled through the fan district, ate dinner at the New York Times–anointed charcuterie restaurant. Vonnie remembered the terrible woman who had threatened to run them down at the beach, but also how Mr. Sleazak, their society painter neighbor back in Roaring Springs, had asked Inez to pose nude for a portrait, saying it would be “Just for me.” It was a most satisfactory day and one that had done the impossible—taken Eliza’s mind off tomorrow. She wouldn’t be surprised if the fight itself had been Vonnie’s attempt to distract her. She was a good sister, in her way, and her way was all she had.
But that evening, as Eliza tried to fall asleep in a strange bed, away from Peter, Iso, and Albie, she found herself reviewing the day’s events. Of all the funny stories she and Vonnie had shared, almost every one came from before. Was that because Vonnie had left for school? Or because the Lerner family lost its ability to be silly after Eliza came home? Strange, but she had never considered until now the totality of what Walter had taken, from all of them. From the day she came home, the Lerners had lived with a sense of remission, gratef
ul yet skittish. They were well today, but that could end tomorrow. Of course that was true of every happy family. The difference was that the Lerners knew. Having been unlucky once, they could be unlucky again. There was no protection, no quota system when it came to luck. It was like that moment in math when a child learns that the odds of heads or tails is always one-in-two, no matter how many times one has flipped the coin and gotten heads. Every flip, the odds are the same. Every day, you could be unlucky all over again.
42
“BACK AGAIN, MISS LAFORTUNY?” asked the young woman at the Hampton Inn’s front desk.
“You know me. I like to check on my boys.”
The clerk, a sweet-faced girl who should have taken better care of herself—everything about her appearance screamed poor nutrition and lack of exercise—smiled noncommittally. Like most people that Barbara met, she seemed torn between admiring her advocacy work and being horrified by it, with horror having a slight edge.
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