Ladies of the House Read online

“Of course it is. It’s completely illogical.” That didn’t mean I couldn’t still blame myself.

  “Well.” He looked at me fondly. I hoped, at least, it was fondness and not pity. “Then I guess you’ve settled it.”

  I could’ve used a pet just then, a cat, maybe, to leap between us. To give me something to caress thoughtfully as I was processing hard things. Instead, all I had to clutch was my knobby old couch blanket.

  “What’s your plan?” he asked. “In the short term, that is?”

  When I worked for him, my father, when bored, would sometimes come into my office and tell me stories about his childhood with Grandduff. Look, Daisy, he had said once, maybe a year into my tenure with him. I’ll give you the same advice your grandfather gave me. Want to be a success? Don’t be an idiot. Get to the center of photos. Give as many attaboys as you get. When you find yourself at the right place at the right time, you’d better not blink.

  And, I’d said, do some good.

  Yeah, Gregory had said, that, too.

  “I’m going back to work,” I told Atlas. “I’ll try to recalibrate, undo my father’s damage. Do some good and redeem myself.”

  “Redeem yourself after a crime you didn’t commit?”

  “Exactly!” I said, remembering the snarl of the man who had shown up at P. “Have you met America?”

  “I’m so sorry,” Atlas said, “I don’t have any more words except those.”

  “Coming from you,” I said, “those words are plenty.”

  He draped his long arm over the back of the couch. “I want to talk to you more about this, but before we go on, I do have to tell you something,” he said, fiddling with a piece of thread unraveling from the upholstery.

  You’re marrying your girlfriend. She’s pregnant. Your children will be beautiful and brainy and charming. You’re moving away and I’ll never see you again. I’ve had something in my teeth this entire time. “What is it?” I asked.

  “The Post Magazine commissioned a long-form feature on your father. His rise. His...crash. The cover-up. The editor thinks this kind of story is in my wheelhouse.”

  “The editor assigned this to you?” I’d expected this kind of coverage of my father after his death—the excavation of his past, the turning over of all the stones—I just didn’t imagine my best friend would be the one to write it.

  “I’m still a freelancer, so if I don’t want the story, I could turn it down.”

  “You could?”

  “I could.”

  I frowned. “It also sounds like you don’t want to.”

  Atlas blew out a breath. “It’s a big assignment. An important one.”

  “But, you know me. I mean, we’re...close. Isn’t that a conflict of interest?”

  “My editor actually likes that I know you, that I originally met you covering your father all those years ago. Makes it gonzo. Reporters are becoming part of the story again, especially when it comes to true crime. Not that your father is a criminal—”

  “He is.”

  “I’m not explaining this correctly.”

  His explanation, actually, was fine. It was me that was a mess. I stood, walked into my tiny galley kitchen. “I’m so sorry that I didn’t offer you anything to drink. I have water. And red wine. Oh, there’s a can of soda in the back of my fridge. You can have it, if you want.”

  “You’re upset.” He peered at me from his spot on the sofa.

  “No.” I looked around my kitchen. There was nothing I wanted. “I’m just conflicted.”

  “I understand.” He rose. “I’m also conflicted. It’s a good assignment. But I—You’re my friend. I don’t want you to be upset with me.”

  That word—“friend.” How I wanted to ring that word’s neck. “I don’t want your career to suffer just because a giant scandal has ripped through my family, leaving death and destruction in its wake.”

  “Then I won’t do it.”

  “Stop.” I opened a cabinet and then immediately forgot what for. “You have to.”

  “Daisy,” he said, “are you trying to talk me out of this or into this?”

  What was I trying to do? I certainly didn’t want to take away a good career opportunity from Atlas. But would I really be comfortable with someone so close to me writing about my father, possibly my mother, and maybe even—Oh.

  This was a scary thought.

  Slowly I closed the cabinet door and met his eyes across the room. “Will I be part of the story?” I asked.

  “I want to do this story right, Daisy. I think I’ll be able to. I’ll be able to be fair. If you want to be interviewed, have your side on the record...”

  “Atlas, you know I can’t go on record.” Cardinal rule: children of politicians cannot air their family’s dirty laundry. Not even when they’re dead. Not even when they’re guilty. Especially not when they’re guilty.

  “But you knew your father,” he said.

  “I didn’t, obviously. And we just can’t handle the scrutiny right now. It’s bad enough what Gregory did. But he’s gone, and I’m still getting the finger from strangers on the daily.” I plucked the last can of soda from my fridge, popped it open. Flat. Atlas was right. In so many ways I was organized. Yet I couldn’t manage to get to the grocery store before soda went bad. “And isn’t it true that reporters end up hating their subjects?”

  “You’re thinking of biographers. Will you come out of the kitchen now?” He cocked his head. “I feel like you’re hiding from me in there.”

  He was right. Reporter or not, this was Atlas. “Yes, I will. But once I do, we will not talk about my father, or your story, for the rest of the afternoon.”

  “You called it my story.” He smiled, slightly at first, then wider. Even with the distance, I could see the laugh lines deepening around his eyes. “Come on, then. Let’s shake on it.”

  For better or worse, DC has a short memory. People seem more willing, here, to soon forget a scandal. In the meantime, Atlas had moved back. Wallis was home. Cricket was managing. I still had a job. Things could be worse.

  I left my bad soda on the counter and stepped out of the kitchen, walking as slowly as a bride down the aisle. He stood by my couch, waiting, watching, and I thought of grooms and altars and all those other lovely dreams before I shook myself awake.

  When I reached him, he held out his hand for me.

  “I will think about the interview,” I said, taking it.

  “Good,” he said with a nod as we shook.

  I took in his familiar, comforting face. The way his hair settled just over his ears, the way he made words into cozy blankets—he was near, and this article he was talking about, and my father, for that matter, seemed very far. I wanted to keep it that way. “But no more work-talk for the rest of the day.”

  “A gentleman’s agreement,” he said. “Although I am no gentleman.”

  I was still grasping his hand. The broad palm. The long fingers.

  Jesus. If I wasn’t careful, he’d surely see how I felt. And how does a friendship come back from that? I gently broke off contact, wondering whether he might try to resist, to keep us close. But he let me go.

  I cleared my throat. “You know what I need?”

  “A vacation?” he joked. “A time machine?”

  “A big bowl of beautiful, spicy umami ramen.”

  This made him laugh, an accomplishment that always filled me with pride and pleasure. “With a nice little egg on top?”

  “Yes, please,” I said, trying to compose myself back to normalcy, or whatever semblance of it was still possible.

  “What should we do while we wait?” he asked after we’d put in our perfect order.

  “I got a new game.” I pointed to my console. “It’s basically a joust tournament. You want to be the last woman standing.”

  “Turn it on.” He settled
back on my couch, right at home. “Although it’s the definition of stupidity to keep playing you at this stuff. You always beat me.”

  “You’re English.” I handed him a controller, turned on the system. “Jousting should be in your blood.”

  Atlas looked me square in the eye and smiled again. “I’m glad to be back, Daisy. We have much to catch up on, yeah?”

  “We do,” I said. “Including this wedding in a few weeks. Wait until you hear what the groom said to Cricket. But I know you’re really busy, so whenever you need to go, just let me know. I don’t want you to feel like you have to keep me company all day.”

  “I’m good,” he said.

  And, yes, here he was: a man I could still believe.

  Eight

  After a month of personal leave to help Cricket and Wallis with triage, it was time to return to work. I donned makeup and real pants, the latter of which felt strange after so much time in loose denim and black spandex. On the Red Line, I practiced the several dozen talking points I’d prepared:

  Yes, this is truly unfortunate...

  I was just as shocked as you...

  I appreciate your concern, and hope you understand why my family requests privacy during this...

  I prefer to keep my father’s life separate from my own...

  That last one was probably my weakest. Who would believe me? My father had given me my first real paying job in politics, after all, though nepotism had only gotten me so far; he’d hired me as a legislative correspondent, one rung above an intern. Don’t say I never did anything for you, he told me on my first day.

  His last gift: this mess. I was furious with him. But I also wished he was here. He would know, with certainty, the quickest way to mop it up.

  “Your dad is a dick,” I heard someone say.

  Looking up from my notes app, I discovered the young woman in the seat directly across the aisle staring at me. She had inky-blue eyes and a short, chic haircut.

  “He is a complete asshole,” she said again, loud, making sure I heard over the rumbling whine of the train.

  Is. Present tense. She held my gaze, which I read not so much as a threat, but a dare to respond, to defend. I thought I might simply remind her that my father was dead, but as we pulled into the station, she rose abruptly and stood by the door. I didn’t notice it was also my stop until it was too late.

  * * *

  Sara was behind her high desk when I arrived at reception. Tardy, thanks to my Metro detour. When she saw me, she smiled her slow smile and asked after my mother and sister. She’d known us all for ages, and had actually worked for my father before I’d lured her away three years ago. She liked to grumble often that I’d delayed her retirement.

  “What do I need to deal with?” I asked. I was more than ready to be back in the office, with its familiar if mundane sounds and smells. “Tell me what I missed.”

  “I’m so sorry.” She reached for my hand. “What a shock. What a nightmare.”

  “Yes.” Already one of my prepared statements making itself useful. “It is really unfortunate.”

  “I’ll let you get settled,” she said. “No need to dive into anything straightaway.”

  “Sara.” I withdrew my hand, grabbed my day planner from my bag, and held it up for her. “You know I’ve got this.”

  “Understood.” She folded her fingers under her chin. “The copy machine upstairs is broken, and everyone has been using mine. We need you to do that magic thing you did last time that fixed it.”

  “Noted.”

  “People are overusing reply all.”

  “Got it.”

  “I’ve been telling them not to, but people just keep putting papers on your desk. I know how much you hate that.”

  I did, though trying to stop paper falling into my lap often felt like a Sisyphean task, and therefore a complete waste of energy. “They’ll hear about it, believe me.”

  “And there’s a new intern.”

  “Name?”

  “Does it matter?”

  This was all so blissfully easy. “No,” I said happily.

  “We missed you,” she said. “Miles is upstairs.”

  I found him sitting in the little room by the staircase that housed the signature machine, jacket off, cuffs rolled, positioning a piece of paper under the autopen. When Miles wants to be alone with his thoughts, he signs his own letters with a contraption that is supposed to forge his signature. The whir of the machine, he says, the tedium of it, helps him relax. I tried once myself, but it didn’t work.

  Today he was signing copies of his recent book. Part memoir of growing up mixed-race and gay, part argument for mental health reform, it had been published when I’d been on leave. Instant bestseller. There was talk of a movie. I waited for him to turn, noticing some gray in his barely there buzz where I could’ve sworn there hadn’t been at my father’s memorial service. Miles doesn’t rattle easily, not like the rest of us do, but there it was—the reminder of how stress manifests itself outwardly, even when we do our best to hide it.

  “Daisy,” Miles said, the machine still whirring, “is that you?”

  “I’m back,” I said, and I meant, Here I am, set to go.

  “Good. It’s been hard out here without my chief of staff. First, will you look at a statement Bo wrote for me yesterday? Please convince him to quit using the phrase ‘commonsense solutions.’”

  “It’s not a bad line,” I said.

  “Thank you, Daisy.” Robert Smalls Reed himself, speak of the deputy, was suddenly beside me in the doorway. Bo, as everyone knew him, had left the Low Country when he’d enlisted in the army a dozen years ago. He still had the basic training haircut, still wore unfussy clothes in colors that could be found in camouflage, still could sneak up on you without unsettling the dust. “You’ve been gone, and nothing has been right,” he said. “Miles talks shit about everyone and everything. For the past forty-eight hours, he’s been on a rampage about some bro from K Street who won’t take no meeting for an answer.”

  “What else do you need me to do?” I asked Miles, because here it was: the first opportunity to disentangle myself from my father. “Besides helping you fend off the bottom-feeders?”

  “What I need”—Miles finally swiveled on his stool to face me—“is for you to be at full throttle. Are you ready?”

  I’ve been up, and I’ve been down, my father used to say. Up is better. “Yes.” I smiled brightly. “I’m ready to go yell at lobbyists for you.”

  He didn’t laugh often, but when he did, like now, he showed teeth. “Daisy Richardson, yelling? A month out of the office and you come back roaring.”

  “That might be my stomach you’re hearing, boss,” Bo said. “L.K. texted and said she’s bringing food.”

  “I’m here,” Lorelei Kaufmann, who much preferred to be called by her initials, rounded the corner with her briefcase and a plastic grocery bag. “I got bagels. Oh—Daisy! You’re back! Are you—I mean—how are guys doing?”

  “Did you bring the good salted butter?” Bo took the bag out of her hand, inspected the contents.

  “We’re fine,” I said, smiling, chipper, and L.K.’s face relaxed into relief. “Are there any sesames?”

  “You can have mine,” L.K. said. A Midwesterner with a healthy distrust of government, but a firm belief in the goodness of people, she was by far the nicest of us all. “I don’t need a second breakfast anyway.”

  “Daisy can have my bagel. I haven’t been to yoga in two weeks. I could barely button my pants this morning.” Miles rose, tapped his trim waistline. “Consequently, I’m going to send L.K. back out for a green juice.”

  “Do you mind opening that butter?” L.K. said to Bo. “I’m going to just dip my carb in it, then run out again. Daisy, Bo, juice?”

  I shook my head. Nine dollars for a cold-pressed? Better not.


  “Also, Daisy,” Miles said. “I know you have a voice mail from Politico asking if I am going to do a walk-back on that tweet yesterday.”

  “The answer is, of course, no,” I replied.

  “Just what I wanted to hear. Thanks. And did you see the email from the guy at...”

  “The guy at the OMB? Taken care of.”

  Miles nodded, approving. “Thank God you’re back.” And then, as he passed us on his way down to his office with the double height windows and the desk full of long, exacting memos and directives, he stopped, pivoted. “I heard you sold your family’s house in Georgetown,” he said. “I’m sorry to say it, but I agree it’s a smart move. Let people see you’re being punished.”

  “It’s good optics,” added Bo. He’d eaten half his bagel in one bite and was eyeing a second.

  “It’s good money,” I said. “And we need it.”

  “It’s really no fair to you guys,” said L.K., who had been following Miles out.

  “We didn’t know,” I said, “about my father. You—you all believe me, I hope.”

  “Look where you are,” Miles said, patting my shoulder. “You’re in the office, talking to me. Isn’t that proof enough?”

  Fair point, though I wasn’t convinced. As a gay man of color in politics, he couldn’t afford to make mistakes. And neither could his staff. “I feel like there is a but coming,” I said.

  Miles paused, scratched his temple. “I’ve already had two calls this morning.” I’d seen them on his schedule, the pollster and the strategist. I didn’t suspect this would be good for me. “But,” he delivered, as expected, “you’ve got to be careful. We’ve got folks making speeches about how your father fucked up. Anyone who even shared an elevator with your father has issued a press release saying they didn’t know him well. People are calling him a stain on the country. Melinda Darley was on the floor last week calling him a traitor.”

  Miles’s tone was gentle, but I felt defensive, all of a sudden, about my father. “I mean, Senator Darley,” I said. “Everyone knows she’s full of shit.”

  “You’re right,” Miles said. “But your last name is in the sound bite. You get what I mean? Folks are out for blood. Since they can’t have Gregory Richardson’s, they’ll settle for yours. If you aren’t careful.”