Ladies of the House Read online

  Her cell phone rang and she pulled out of my arms, looking sheepish, patting her tears away with her fingers. She answered, cautiously, wondering, as I was, who was next to collect, to rubberneck, to exploit. I doubted it was Uncle Danny, who’d been of no help; when Wallis had gone to fetch him, his assistant had in effect used her body to dead bolt his office door. Certainly not a relative, many of whom had stopped returning our phone calls, including Cricket’s own brother. Friends, too, had declined to text or, worse, sent vague, pandering emojis.

  “Mac!” Cricket’s face relaxed against the telephone. “It’s Mac,” she explained to me. “Dear Mac.” Her attention was back to her old friend on the other end of the line. “Thanks for calling. Yes, we’re okay. Thanks for checking in. Yes, it’s been miserable. But we’re so looking forward to your wedding. It will be nice to see everyone, get our minds off everything for a bit.” I was about to leave, but her next words stopped me. “Yes, of course we’re coming. Did you not get our RSVP card? I know I sent it in.” Cricket cocked her head, clearly confused. She didn’t see the wave, not even when it was right on top of her. “We’re coming, Mac,” she said. “What is this—you don’t want us there?” She turned away from me, but not before I saw the crash. “Well, thank you for your concern about my feelings, but we still plan on attending.” Her voice, quieter now. “I’m sorry if you feel like our presence will be an embarrassment... No, that’s what it sounds like, Mac. Truly... Okay, then, fine. You’re fine with it. And so are we. We will see you in three weeks. Goodbye.” She hung up and faced me. “That was Mac,” she said, matter-of-fact.

  “I got that.”

  “Confirming the wedding,” she said.

  “Maybe we should consider skipping it?” I asked, hopeful.

  “And let him, and that twenty-eight-year-old cocktail waitress he’s marrying, win?”

  “She’s not a cocktail waitress. She was his paralegal.”

  “He divorced Louise for that bimbo.”

  “That ‘bimbo’ went to Yale.”

  “So there aren’t any bimbos at Yale?”

  “If we skipped the wedding, it wouldn’t be because they won. It would be because we’re going through a lot right now, and it may be best for us to lay low.”

  “We’re going.” Cricket continued to stack silver. “Do you have a dress? Does Atlas have a tux? He’s still your plus-one?”

  “We’re going to get looks,” I said.

  “Then we better look good,” she said. Utensils forgotten, she drifted out of the room, muttering about dresses, about a Carolina Herrera she may or may not have already consigned.

  I, too, left the kitchen and made for the dining room, cataloging what still needed to be done. The polished, three-leafed table—where my grandfather had built his business inspecting land plats, making deals with pawnshop owners and small-time hustlers, prospecting where people had still sold peaches and apples from farm stands, collecting titles from dairy farmers—would have to be sold, hopefully for a solid sum. Cricket had cared for it; there was not a single scratch. Mahogany chairs, old books, rugs, most everything would have to find new homes.

  That thought, and the realization that this would be my last night sleeping in my childhood bedroom, made me shiver. This house hadn’t just shaped my youth, but my adulthood, too. After college graduation, when Cricket had to pry me away from the tiny apartment in Charlottesville I shared with two beloved friends and their gray parrot, I’d moved back to P Street. I’d meant only to stay a few months, maybe a year. A master’s degree, I thought. Education, maybe. It had been a brief, bright window when I could’ve escaped my father, the scale that measures concentrations of power, the running list that tells us who is up and who is down. But Wallis had been there, in the room next to mine, my baby sister, a young girl on the cusp of womanhood, needing my advice on outfits, on boys, on which brand of tampon to buy, and this house, this town, my family, all of it had turned my bubbly plans into sludge.

  The evening shadows crept up on me. I turned on the chandelier, then the hall light, then the sconces along the stairs. I paused and listened for signs of life—or at least the sounds of packing tape—from upstairs, but it was silent.

  No surprise, then, that I found Wallis sprawled on her back on her twin-size, scrolling through her phone. When she noticed me, she scooted over, and I crawled in beside her, turning on my side and tucking my hand underneath my cheek.

  “If your life was a book,” she said, our noses inches apart, “what is the title?”

  It didn’t take me very long to answer. We’d been playing this game, when times were rough, for years. I sometimes played it by myself when we were apart. “Everything Is Delightful.”

  Wallis giggled. “Book of essays, I assume?”

  “Clearly. And yours?”

  Wallis considered this for a minute. “Remeasuring the Moon, or When Everything You’re Sure of...” She stopped and rolled back to face the ceiling. “I don’t know. I used to be good at this game. Now I’m getting tangled in subtitles.”

  “The first part is good,” I said.

  When she left for college, Wallis had asked Cricket not to alter her room, as she had with mine, swapping out my double for a beautiful canopied daybed. Wallis felt the idea of coming home to one’s childhood bedroom left untouched by time was poignant and meaningful. But I now recognized the dolls and lunch boxes and the faded floral wallpaper were making it harder to say goodbye.

  “You know who I haven’t heard from?” Wallis asked me.

  “If I start guessing, I’ll never stop,” I said, flopping onto my back.

  “And your tone tells me that we shouldn’t bother.”

  I shrugged. “People do what they need to do. And, mostly, they need to judge.”

  “But it’s one thing to judge Dad,” Wallis said. “It’s another thing to stop responding to my texts. To just completely ice me out.”

  “Who’s cutting you out?” I meant, who now?

  “My newsletter people,” Wallis said, sitting up and reclining into her pillows. “I think they must’ve started a new group text without me. And I’m off the LISTSERV. I mean, this is a volunteer task force. I literally want to give my time away to destroy the patriarchy, and they’re like, nah.”

  “I know there are good people in that group.” I also sat up, tucked a knee under my chin. “Maybe some even disagree with you being left out. They just must’ve been thinking about the optics.”

  “They were pretty quick to kick me out. And without giving me a chance to defend myself? That’s hard to swallow. I anticipated some hostility. I just didn’t see it coming from my own friends.”

  Speaking of friends. “Mac just called Cricket,” I said. “He doesn’t want us to attend the wedding.”

  “He’s uninviting us?”

  “Not exactly. He was trying to guilt Cricket into dropping out. She didn’t fall for it.”

  “God, people are vile.”

  Although I didn’t like it, I understood Mac’s position. We weren’t the most desirable of guests. But this subject would not exactly cheer my sister, so I gave her the best advice I could summon. “Remember how Cricket always used to adjust our shoulder blades? She wanted us so badly to have fine, upright posture, with our chins high and boobs out. Well, for the next few months we’re going to do the opposite. We’re going to hunch our shoulders and assume the posture of a turtle retreating into its shell, okay?” This made Wallis smile. “This will pass.” She nodded like she believed me. Good. At least one of us had faith.

  “I want to talk about something else,” Wallis said. “Let’s talk about Atlas. I’m so looking forward to seeing him at this miserable fucking wedding. How is he?”

  “He’s good,” I answered, as honestly as I dared. “I mean, he’s happy with his work, and generally still the good person he’s always been.”

 
“It’s a shame he’s still traveling so much. It’s a shame all he does is work, period.”

  “A shame?” I asked. “Why would he not devote his life to his work? It’s important and he loves it.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that, Dodo. And anyway, it doesn’t matter what I think. It matters what you think. What you feel, I should say.”

  “I think he’s honest. He’s an amazing journalist. Always compassionate, even when people are yelling obscenities at him. Levelheaded in situations that would send me running for a cliff.” I chose my next words carefully. “I admire him so much. I respect what he’s doing for journalism and this country.”

  “You respect him?” Wallis threw her hands over her face. “You admire him? Oh my God, Daisy, you’re killing me.”

  “I can’t do anything more than admire him,” I said. “Don’t encourage me to do more.”

  “You’ve done it!” Wallis cried, all drama. “I’m dead.”

  “He has a girlfriend,” I reminded her, again. “He always seems to have a girlfriend. This one is especially gorgeous. I’ve seen her picture. Besides, if he liked me that way, he would’ve done something about it by now.”

  “But—” Wallis began, serious once more.

  I shook my head. “There are no buts. At least, not about this.”

  Wallis took a piece of my hair between her fingers and twirled it as she spoke. “I think you’re wrong. And I’m really trying not to pry, you know. And I’m well aware you don’t want me hoping that you two get together.”

  “Your hope sometimes transforms into expectation.”

  “Yes, but I can’t help but marvel at how good you two fit. You carry yourselves similarly, you know? You aren’t the kind of people who say stuff just to say stuff. Not like me, anyway. You don’t mind the quiet.”

  “You seem to know me very well, despite claiming the other day that you had no idea who I was.”

  Wallis stopped playing with my hair. She held my hands and wouldn’t let go. “I’m sorry I was so mean to you, Dodo. I’ve been super on edge and moody.” Then she laughed, bitter. “What I mean is, I feel like I am channeling the ghost of Dad.”

  She seemed desperate, and I could sense she needed reassuring words about how she shouldn’t worry. About how she wasn’t like Gregory at all. But the day had been long, and I was tired, and I wasn’t sure it would come out the way it should.

  “Don’t do anything else tonight.” I pulled away from her, silently begging forgiveness. “Get some sleep. We’ll have the day tomorrow to pack up the rest of this room.”

  She told me she loved me, and I just managed to say it back before I slumped outside her door, exhausted and terrified that I might go back in there and tell her the truth. Our childhood home was up for sale because of what passion did to Gregory Richardson. Entitlement, power, and hunger can’t be untangled. I wonder, then, why it caught us all by surprise. We should have known. The only thing uglier than politics is love.

  Seven

  Atlas entered my apartment messenger bag first. It took a minute to unburden himself of his gear, umbrella, sodden coat, and Converse, then we were sitting on the couch and I was watching him run his fingers through his soft hair. It was Saturday, a week after Cricket and Wallis had moved upstairs. He’d been on an assignment in New York all week and promised to swing by once he’d returned. Cricket and Wallis were right, of course. He did look wonderful. Smelled it, too—like vanilla and spring water. If sliding into a bed with cool, fresh linens had a scent, it would be his. He’d been living in London the past two years, but when he sat close to me, he appeared absolutely the same, which was both nice and painful.

  I was glad to have him back in DC, but to want to not want something is a peculiar kind of torture. Like a student furiously erasing a wrong answer from an exam, I’ve been hovering for the past decade and then some, trying to scrub off any stray mark that would hint at my wrongheaded love. It’s not lost on me that while I was working, harder than ever, to fall out of love with my best friend, my father had been, by all accounts, falling into bed with a woman who was not his wife.

  I’d first met Atlas in Virginia coal country, where Gregory Richardson thought I, his college-aged daughter, could help reinforce his threadbare support. I spent many nights counting the bumps on the popcorn ceilings of motel rooms, dreading another morning of runny eggs and talking points, of being a prop for my father. (Only later would I fully recognize the good he was doing, bringing dentists and doctors to underserved communities, repaving crumbling roads, introducing broadband internet. It would be several years more before I realized I wanted to get into politics to do the same.) I would’ve despised the assignment entirely if it hadn’t been for Atlas. He wasn’t necessarily supposed to befriend the daughter of the guy he was writing about, but the campaign trail is narrow, and the loneliness makes it claustrophobic.

  My Atlas—because I was already thinking of him as my friend, my person—and I stole moments to talk everywhere: in elementary school gymnasiums, buses that smelled of hand sanitizer and french fries, dim veterans’ halls, back roads bars filled with journalists with moderate alcohol issues and campaign staff with major ones. Atlas had spent his childhood off Marylebone High Street, in a dusty flat that implied inherited wealth, mostly gone, walls coated with lacquered paint and rooms filled with furniture not meant for children. His mother: American, a struggling actress. His father: Welsh, a mediocre barrister and part-time writer of mystery novels. They never married, and she left when Atlas was fourteen. When he told me this, he admitted that other people often found him reserved. He wondered if I thought his description of his childhood, as an example, was terse. No, I’d insisted. The way he recounted these details suggested a writer’s mind, always capturing the pertinent details and finding a concise way to convey them. It suggested someone who thought before he spoke. Sometimes Atlas sounded English; other times his accent was barely detectable. His face was slightly asymmetrical, his nose had a bump from when he fell off his bike freshman year at Stanford, but I often caught myself staring. I was nineteen and in love for the first time—with his deadpan manner, his way of sitting that made his rickety chair look comfortable, his big tips to tired waitresses.

  My Atlas. In fifteen years he never made one move.

  While he’d been overseas, I could forget, partially, how badly I wanted him to. Now I feared this desire would be plastered over my face.

  “So,” I said, leaning across the couch to give his arm a gentle punch, “how’s your girlfriend?” The second this question left my mouth, I flinched, realizing just how jumpy and awkward I was being. Asking him something so personal before I’d even offered him a drink! And some light boxing thrown in for good measure? Cricket would be horrified. “I’m so sorry I haven’t asked about Ariel in a while,” I said, reclining again, trying to be casual, trying to recover.

  “It’s...complicated,” he said, and my heart jolted. “She’s not leaving London anytime soon, and I’m feeling like I need to be in DC for a while. I’m not sure if we’re going to do long-distance. We’re still figuring it out.”

  “I’ve been a lousy friend.” Was I glad he was single? Yes. Did I want to see him go through a breakup? No. This was a strange spot to rest. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No.” His eyes met mine. He was smiling, but it wasn’t all there. “I want to talk about you.”

  I’d put on jeans, a real sweater, which I, in fact, now regretted, as I’d started to sweat and wool wasn’t breathable. I had to look away from his tidal basin eyes to collect myself. “Those websites that have our pictures,” I said, “never publish the flattering ones. Wallis is always beautiful, but they always seem to catch me with a double chin. It’s not fair. Still accurate enough to be recognized, though.”

  “This may sound odd,” Atlas said. “But I’m glad Wallis is here with you. I think this all would’ve been harder
for you had she still been in South Korea.”

  “I wanted her first months home to be nice. I made reservations. I got tickets. She’s been away three years and she comes home to this?”

  “Three years away?” Atlas said. “I thought it was two.”

  “Three,” I said, recalling the slow minutes of her years on the other side of the world. “She left shortly after her college graduation.”

  “I’m really quite a failure at keeping track of time.”

  “That pocket planner I got you,” I said, “like, five Christmases ago. Tell me the truth. Did you ever use it?”

  “No, but not because I didn’t love it,” he said quickly. “Really, I did try to be that kind of a person. The scheduled person. Like you! With your day planner. It just didn’t stick.”

  “So I’m also a failure then,” I said, “at giving good gifts.”

  “Hopelessly deficient,” Atlas said, teasing.

  “Trade me in for a new model,” I said, and chuckled to myself. “My father always used to say that.”

  “So, how are you then?” Atlas asked. “Really. Tell me.”

  The way he said this did not sound like an order, but an offering. “We sold P Street,” I began.

  “So, it’s gone then?” Atlas asked. “Officially?”

  “The closing is later this month, but the terms are agreed on and the contract is signed.” Cricket had had reservations about the listing price, but the agent with the pencil skirt and trendy glasses said that if we wanted to move fast, as with the lake house, we had to tender a bargain. “The money is gone, my father is, too. What’s done is done. But I can’t help feeling like I should’ve done something to stop my parents’ marriage from unraveling. Maybe then he wouldn’t have gone off and had the affair. He’d still be dead, but at least he’d have his dignity.”

  “I mean this in the kindest way,” Atlas said, “but it’s really unreasonable to find fault in yourself.”