Half of What You Hear Read online

  She’d discovered that kids made fun of Lauren, who had a little bit of a limp. One day, when they were at lunch, Livvie asked her if she’d hurt herself, and Lauren seemed almost relieved by the question. She explained that she’d always had it. Her legs were actually different lengths. “It just is what it is,” she said. The way she said it made Livvie think it sounded like Lauren was repeating it, like maybe it had been said to her a lot.

  “Do you know that nobody at this school has ever once taken the time to actually ask me about it?” Lauren said. She grinned. Her teeth were all goopy with the bread and peanut butter from her sandwich.

  Livvie shrugged.

  Lauren put her sandwich down, and when she did, it bumped against her lunch bag, which pushed Livvie’s water bottle aside. Livvie pushed it back, adjusting the bottle so the picture of the cute red fox on the side was facing her.

  “Why do you . . . ?” Lauren started.

  Livvie put her apple down. “Have weird habits?”

  Lauren exhaled. “Yeah.”

  Livvie shrugged. “I don’t know. I just like things a certain way.”

  “Oh.” Lauren nodded. “Like that thing you do with your backpack?”

  Livvie nodded.

  “And kids make fun of you?” Lauren asked.

  Livvie raised her palms up to the sky and rolled her eyes. “What do you think?”

  “Yeah. Well, they call me ‘Stop and Go,’” Lauren said.

  Livvie chuckled, she couldn’t help it, and then Lauren laughed, too. “Sometimes they walk behind me—they stand like ten feet back so they think I don’t notice it, but I do—and they imitate me.” She scrunched her lips together. Her nostrils flared.

  Livvie could see the tears welling up in her eyes. She reached across the table and put her hand over Lauren’s. “Kids are jerks,” she said.

  Lauren nodded. “They totally are.”

  Livvie handed her a napkin to wipe her nose. “Do you want to come over to my house after school sometime?”

  Lauren nodded.

  “Awesome.”

  Five

  Bess

  An unwelcome, familiar feeling rises up in my belly as I turn onto the long, meandering driveway that winds up to Susannah Lane’s home: I do not belong here.

  My eyes flick to the name of the house, scrolled into the top of the iron gate at the edge of the property. Esperanza. Spanish for “hope.”

  I take a deep breath, and as I inch closer to the estate, I realize that the formidable view of the house that I have seen from the road doesn’t reveal even a fraction of its true size.

  According to my research, the limestone mansion was built just before the Depression, on land that had been owned by the Greyhills since even before the founding of the town toward the end of the 1800s. The house itself was a gift from Susannah’s grandfather to his wife, who was a debutante and textile heiress from Charleston.

  For the past several days, I’ve spent nearly every minute while the kids are at school and at night after dinner reading about Susannah Lane. Beside me, in my bag, is a notebook filled with copious notes about her family history, her marriage to Teddy, the gossip column she briefly wrote—anything I could find, and all of it, I know, is far more than I will ever be able to fit into my article. And yet still, despite all my preparation and everything I’ve learned, despite the fact that I’ve driven past the property many times before, I’m awestruck. I can’t believe the hulking enormity of this place. It sits on top of the hill like a fortress, with a grand staircase in the middle that looks like it belongs outside a concert hall. The stairs lead to a terrace lined with Doric columns that remind me of the ones at the front of the Lincoln Memorial. I count fourteen windows along the top floor. The double door, where I’ll soon be standing, looks like the arched entrance to a palace.

  My heart lurches. I can’t begin to imagine what it must have been like to grow up in a place like this, though I’ve known plenty of people who did. My mind flashes back to a familiar memory from high school, the one that seems to crop up whenever I come face-to-face with this sort of wealth.

  “NOCD.”

  I’d heard one of my privileged classmates say it to another, the two of them standing behind me in the hall of the elite all-girls boarding school I attended as a day student on a full academic scholarship. When I turned around and asked what she meant, they both burst into hysterics.

  “Not our class, darling,” one said, looking me over.

  “Not at all,” the other agreed.

  I look up at the house, thinking of my childhood home and how visitors who pulled up to it were greeted with my mother’s weather-faded, polka-dot mushroom garden ornament in the flower bed, an iron stair railing that rusted into the concrete stairs, and a squeaky screened door.

  My parents met at an outdoor concert in Burlington, Vermont, in the mid-1960s. That suggests a certain kind of couple—hippies connected in their mutual pursuit of free love and good hallucinogens—but it actually couldn’t be further from the truth. Neither of them can remember the name of the band they saw on the day they met. Both had been dragged to the show by more adventurous friends, and when they found each other, my mom was standing on the outskirts of the crowd, “trying to get a break from the noise.” Dad says he noticed her because of her dress. In a sea of cutoff denim and skin, she “looked like a librarian,” he says. He knew in that moment that she was the one for him.

  My parents are simple people, hardworking and thrifty, and for all I know they now have millions sitting in their savings account at Merchants Bank, but money was tight when I was growing up. Dad was a mailman who worked for the post office his entire career, and Mom still works as a secretary (that’s the term she insists on) at a travel agency, an ironic choice for a woman who never takes a vacation.

  As a girl, I often felt like I was growing up in the wrong house. I deeply love my parents, but it’s perhaps because of the plain and simple way I was raised that I became obsessed with the little luxuries we never had. We didn’t do birthday parties or big celebrations. Meals were based on what was on sale and which coupons we’d cut out of the Sunday paper. Our house was clean and bare—decor is not a word my parents use. A few years ago, while visiting for Christmas, I asked my mother if she’d ever thought about replacing the old chenille sofa that’s been pushed up against the wall in the family room, across from the ancient Panasonic, since my parents were newlyweds. She looked at me like I’d just suggested they install a seesaw in its place. It was a look I knew well.

  As a kid, I satisfied my cravings by getting creative. Once, I tried to turn an old bedsheet into a canopy for my bed by attaching it to the ceiling with a combination of duct tape and thumbtacks. In sixth grade, using a craft book from the library, I taught myself how to make scented soap. (I procured the necessary rose petals by furtively plucking them off a bouquet in the floral department at Shaw’s.) I wouldn’t let anyone use the little squares, instead displaying them, like jewels in a museum, on a saucer next to the plastic bottle of generic hand soap we kept in the bathroom.

  In middle school, I was at a friend’s house when I discovered her mother’s copy of Entertaining, the book that made Martha Stewart famous. Mrs. Connor let me take it home to borrow it, amused that a thirteen-year-old would find it so enthralling. I devoured it at the kitchen table after school while Mom and Dad were at work, and then continued under the covers at night, saying the names of the recipes to myself as if I were learning a new language. Croquembouche. Gravlax. Carpaccio. Coeur a la Crème Fraîche. Reading Martha’s instructions—how to create ambience, how to make food look beautiful—was like having the most delicious secret whispered in my ear. I dreamed of the day when I could go to the grocery store with a list that had nothing to do with the sales circular. I dreamed of the day when I would throw parties in my own home. I dreamed of special occasions. Special anything.

  When I became the social secretary for the Calhoun White House, I felt like I had reached the p
innacle of a trek I’d started in childhood. I had learned over the course of my years of event planning that if I wanted to reach the top of the industry in DC, I needed to both do a spectacular job and network with the right people, the latter of which usually stirred up my old inferiority complex and pushed me to prove, to both myself and the people around me, that I was as good as it gets. When I got the White House job, on the recommendation of a former client who had worked with the president in the Senate, I felt that I was finally where I was supposed to be. I had succeeded through my own sheer grit and had beaten back the old demons who told me I wasn’t smart enough, rich enough, elite enough. Not our class, darling. And then I fucked it all up. It is amazing to me, now that it’s happened, that an entire dream can disappear as quickly as mine did, in the space of a single day. I assume Susannah Lane knows what I did, and there is no telling what she thinks of me because of it.

  I pull my car around the back of the estate and I park next to a green Ford Focus, which I assume belongs to Cindy, Susannah’s assistant and housekeeper. Setting up the interview had been shockingly easy. I’d simply pulled out the Greyhill directory, a spiral-bound phone book published every spring by the town council that reminds me of the types a school or church or country club might publish, and found Susannah’s number listed under the L’s. When I called, Cindy answered, listened to the spiel I recited from a piece of paper I held in front of me, and cheerfully responded that she’d talk it over with Susannah and call me back.

  I didn’t have to sweat it out too long, because my phone rang within the hour. She said Susannah would be pleased to meet with me and advised me to look for the small parking pad behind the house, telling me, “There’ll be plenty of room for you next to me. Susannah keeps all her vehicles in the covered garage.” She’d started to laugh. “Minus the truck, of course.” I wasn’t sure whether the joke was meant to put me at ease, but it didn’t. Nor did the awkward encounter I’d had with Susannah at the inn after dinner with Bradley and Diane last week. I check my reflection in the rearview mirror, using my pinky to fix a smudge of eyeliner. It’s the first time I’ve worn makeup in months.

  As I make my way along a central covered path through the garden that separates the parking area from the house, I’m surprised by how overgrown and untended it is, the ivy a tangled knot that I have to step over to get past. As I get closer, I start to feel the telltale tingling that I get in my fingertips when I’m nervous. My choice that morning to wear heels—another first in a long time—now feels questionable, as they sink into the dirty pea gravel beneath my feet.

  I finally make my way around to the front of the house. The stone exterior sparkles in the bright morning sunlight, and before I climb the steps to the front door, I take a moment to collect myself and admire the expansive view of the Blue Ridge Mountains and the rolling pastures. The maple leaves that have fallen on the front lawn—brilliant reds, oranges, and yellows—look like they’ve been placed by hand. It is so picturesque, almost unreal. And it is so quiet. The only sounds I hear are the gentle gurgle of the fountain in front of the house, birds chirping, and my heartbeat, pulsing quick and heavy behind my ears.

  I shake out my hands, working out the nerves, and start up the stairs, reminding myself that I can do this. I belong here. This is not the first time I’ve gone to meet a well-known personality in an imposing white house.

  I’m searching for the doorbell, thinking as I do that perhaps houses like this don’t have simple doorbells . . . maybe there’s an intercom of some sort, a buzzer, something . . . when the massive oak door swings open, revealing a small woman who must be Cindy.

  “Bess!” she says, wiping her hands on a rag before she stretches her right one out to shake mine. “Come in, we’ve been expecting you.”

  “Oh—” I stammer, surprised. “Thank you.” I don’t know what I expected—someone more staid? A dowdy maid in a formal Downton Abbey–style uniform?—but it certainly wasn’t this. Cindy is maybe sixty, tiny with a youthful face and short, heavily frosted hair. She is barefoot, in bedazzled jeans and a faded T-shirt that has pink palm trees and the word Miami printed in a 1980s brush font across the chest.

  “Excuse my outfit,” she says, looking down at her top after she sees me studying it. “The house and its mistress might be fancy, but I’m not.” She winks and laughs, a loud cackle that feels outsized for her teensy frame.

  The foyer smells like lemon Pledge. The familiar scent feels out of place here, too normal for a room with marble floors and a grand staircase. Though I notice, trying to be subtle so Cindy doesn’t see me gaping, that the house has seen better days. The carpet on the stairs, I can see, is frayed. The trim on the walls looks dingy. Honestly, the house looks the way it would if my family moved in. There is crap everywhere: a laundry basket—a regular old plastic one—on the floor in the hallway, messy piles of paper on the steps, a book splayed open on the chaise in the formal living room to our right. A sweater threatens to fall off the banister. A pile of junk mail is on the entry table. There’s a ballpoint pen on the floor, its cap removed.

  “I’m cleaning! I’m cleaning!” Cindy jokes, busting me.

  “No, it’s—” I start, fumbling for something to say. Noelle had mentioned a photo shoot. We might need to bring in a cleaning crew.

  “It’s an absolute disaster,” Cindy says. “But what with playing Nurse Ratched to Miss Priss, I haven’t exactly been prioritizing the housekeeping.”

  “Understood,” I say. Miss Priss?

  “Come on,” she says, heading up the stairs. “She’s up here.” She turns and leans toward me. “In her boudoir,” she says, exaggerating the word like boo-dwaaaah.

  We reach the top of the staircase, and I look up. How high are these ceilings? Twelve feet? Higher? Despite the elaborate chandeliers dotting the hallway (one of them crisscrossed with cobwebs), it feels dim. Solemn, even. I notice the open window at the end of the hall, the dust motes in the air. A sheer white curtain dances in the breeze.

  Cindy knocks lightly on one of the closed doors lining the hallway, using the same dun-dun-duhdum-dun pattern that I do for the kids’ bedrooms.

  “Come in,” a voice says.

  I take a deep breath, electric prickles dancing on the surface of my skin, and follow Cindy into the room.

  * * *

  Susannah Greyhill Lane is sitting on top of her made bed, propped up against a pile of apricot-colored satin pillowcases, a pen in one of her hands, which are resting in her lap. Her skirt—voluminous, ankle-length red taffeta—is fanned out around her, covering much of the mattress. The only other time I’ve seen her in person was at the inn the other night, when she was dressed in an equally memorable outfit: shiny silver pants, a colorful scarf around her head, a fur cape. It didn’t occur to me that her eccentric manner of dress was an everyday thing, but what do I know? Maybe if I had spent a lifetime amassing closets full of clothes, as I assume she has, I’d do the same? Would it be weirder to see her in my typical boatneck T-shirts and jeans? (Diane once asked me, in one of her more creative attempts to insult me, why “girls from New England don’t fix themselves up more”—referring, I assume, to my minimal makeup and L.L.Bean-heavy wardrobe. I replied that perhaps it was because we didn’t need to.)

  Her hair is pushed back from her head with a soft band. She has the faintest scar dotting her chin, shaped like a fishhook. She’s wearing lipstick. Maybe fake lashes. Her beauty is well documented, a mention in every single article I’ve read about her over the past week, but I’m still surprised how striking she is. It’s something about her eyes, dark and gleaming, and how they contrast with her light hair. She looks, even at seventy, like something out of a fairy tale.

  She puts down the pen she’s holding, placing it next to a gold leather journal on the pillow beside her.

  “Bess!” she says, stretching out a dainty, manicured hand. “Apologies for my state. I didn’t mean to greet you like this!”

  “Oh, it’s no problem, of course!�
�� I say, circling around the bed. Is she not feeling well? I wonder, eyeing the scar on her face. Is this a residual effect of the accident?

  “Well, I’m sorry I’m still in bed!” She laughs. “But they say LBJ took meetings on the toilet when he was in the White House, so at least I’m not that bad!” My heart lurches at the mention of my former place of employment, but fortunately she continues on before I have to say anything.

  “Regardless, it’s so nice to welcome you here! I know we met the other day at the inn, but this feels official!”

  “Yes, thank you,” I say, shaking her hand. It is cold and bony, but her grip is strong.

  “And you!” she says, motioning for me to sit in the upholstered armchair next to the bed. As I do, I take a moment to scan the room. It’s smaller than I would expect for a house this large, with faded floral wallpaper, cabbage roses in muted pinks and greens, but there are actual flowers everywhere—six vases on the dresser alone—at least half of the bouquets past their prime, in varying states of decay. You can smell the rot in the air.

  “So where’d you get a name like that? Bess?” she asks.

  “My full name is Elizabeth, after my grandmother.”

  She rolls her eyes. “I was named after my grandmother, too,” she says. “My mother, the indomitable Amelia Greyhill, hated her. I always wondered what that meant.” She ticks an eyebrow up. “Anyway, Besssss,” she says, stretching out my name like it’s a candy she’s turning in her mouth. “I like it. It’s cute.”

  Cute. Hm.

  “You know, I have a nickname, too,” she says, a gleam in her eye. “Cricket. My father thought it up when I was a toddler, because of my squeaky, little-girl voice.”

  “Oh, that’s—” I stop, realizing she’s turned her attention toward Cindy, who is leaning against the threshold with the bored, resigned expression of someone waiting for a bus.

  “I hate to say it, Cindy, but all these flowers are giving me a headache,” Susannah says.