Half of What You Hear Page 8
Cole took me up to the so-called Cliffs after dinner during that visit, the two of us laughing over the fact that of course Greyhill would have a cheesy, classic drink-beer-and-make-out spot up on the mountain. Once we got up there, however, the view was spectacular. The sky was full of stars, and the town sparkled in the valley like a scene straight out of the inside of a snow globe. We’d sat on the hood of his car, and it felt silly, like we were playing characters in an old movie, but sweet, too. It feels ridiculous to care—I’m his wife—but it somehow spoils the memory to hear that I was just the last in a long line of women who’d accompanied Cole to the same spot.
“I have to tell you, Bess,” Eva says. “I find it very interesting that the Washington Post would find it remotely worthwhile to write about Susannah Lane and our little town.”
“Oh, come on, Eva,” Whitney says. “You know people write about Greyhill all the time.”
“We’re in all those ‘best small towns’ lists,” Carol says. “Southern Living, Travel and Leisure. And this is Susannah Lane we’re talking about. You know, my father was always going on and on about Teddy, listening to his interviews in the news about the stock market.”
“I don’t know.” Eva shrugs. “I guess I don’t see why everyone’s so obsessed with her, though. What did she do, other than be his wife?”
Huh. If I’m not mistaken, Eva sounds jealous. “She did a ton of charity work and worked with his foundations,” I say, referencing what I’ve researched and what Susannah told me yesterday. “And she was a bit of a fixture on the New York social scene. She was always throwing big parties, and unlike a lot of the other wealthy society wives, she was friendly with a really diverse cast of characters—artists and writers, musicians, fashion people. And she wrote a gossip column for a little while. It’s actually funny—she told me that she wrote it because it was an easy way to get the press off her case. Beat them at their own game. The media loved her.”
“Well, I guess you know better than I do,” Eva says, looking down her beak at me. “Given your experience.” She grins. “With the media.”
I freeze, a jolt running through me, but not without noticing the nervous look that passes between Whitney and Carol.
“Yes,” I say, mustering my strength and laughing it off. “I guess I do.”
Whitney opens her mouth like she’s about to say something but then stops.
I raise my eyebrows at her, smiling and willing her to say whatever she was about to. I want someone to take the floor away from Eva.
She opens her mouth again, stretching her lips out, wincing, and I know what she’s about to ask because she’s making the face that everyone makes before they ask me the question they always do.
“So what was it like?” she asks, her voice quiet, leaning in like we all need to huddle for the secret. “Working for her? You were . . . social secretary?”
“Yes.” I nod. “I was.”
“Tell us about it,” Carol says. “I’m dying to know.”
“Oh, ah . . . ,” I say, hating myself for stumbling over my words. I glance at Eva. She’s smirking at me. “It was . . . ,” I start. “How else can I say it? It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”
Whitney nods slowly. Carol tips her head to the side. They obviously want to ask about what happened. Of course they do. The words are practically bursting out of their mouths. Why did you say what you said on those recordings? And how could you?
“It’s a demanding place to work,” I say, using the line I always used back when the job was truly mine, in the present tense. The women hum and nod; I know they’re hoping for more. “And not for the faint of heart.” I look quickly at Eva, wanting her to feel warned. “But it was also an honor, unlike anything I could have imagined.”
Their faces go flat, obviously disappointed that I haven’t offered them more.
“There must be a lot you can’t say,” Whitney says, putting her hand on her belly.
“A lot of unusual regulations,” Carol adds. “Confidentiality, that sort of thing.”
“Yes,” I say, clearing my throat. “Working for the First Family is sort of like working for the mafia.” I wink.
“Oh?” They tilt their heads toward me.
I fake a laugh. “No, not really.”
“So what is the job exactly? When you’re social secretary?” Whitney asks.
“It’s the event planning, right?” Carol asks.
“Yes,” I say. “I was responsible for all the social visits for the president and the First Lady. The state dinners, receptions, even informal gatherings among the First Family and their friends. Traditionally, you work almost exclusively with the First Lady, but you also work with the protocol office, the president’s staff . . .”
Eva, beside me, isn’t saying a word, but I can feel her eyes crawling all over me. A woman in a Little Bo-Peep costume squeezes by with a tray of chocolate truffles. The other women wave her off, but I stop her and take one.
“It must have been fascinating,” Carol says.
“It was,” I say, feeling the peculiar swirl of pride and remorse I’ve become accustomed to whenever I let myself linger on what it was like. “It really was.”
“And the First Lady . . . ?” Eva starts, cocking her head at me. I can tell she’s trying to bait me.
“She’s exactly what she seems,” I say, biting into the truffle before it melts onto my fingertips. Who wouldn’t serve these with napkins? Or at least in a little candy liner? “Incredibly smart and warm. I can’t say I ever encountered a single person who didn’t feel captivated by her when they met her, even if they were just briefly shaking her hand on a rope line. She is the definition of a magnetic personality.”
“People say she should run when her husband’s term is up,” Carol says, nodding.
“She’d be great,” I say. “No doubt about that.”
“That’s so . . . interesting.” Eva peers at me, and I know exactly why. She’s trying to reconcile what I’ve just said about the First Lady with what happened all those months ago. The chocolate aftertaste in the back of my throat suddenly tastes off, like watery chalk.
“Are we having fun yet?” a voice behind me screeches, and Mindy, our host, appears at my side. “You look like you’re talking about something good. Fill me in!”
“We were just getting to know Bess,” Carol says.
“We’re so glad you moved back. Or, well, that Cole brought you back. You know what I’m trying to say!” Mindy says, reaching to give me a squeeze. One of her fake nails digs into my arm, leaving a little half-moon on my skin.
“Thanks,” I say. Behind her, I can see Cole standing by the open doors leading out to the patio, talking animatedly, waving his hands, laughing and laughing and laughing. The room feels suddenly, unbearably hot.
“Now, remind me,” Mindy says. “How old are your kids?”
“The twins are twelve.”
“Same as my Brittany,” Eva says.
My Brittany, I think, remembering the way she references her daughter on the blog, like the child is an accessory she picked up at the Neiman Marcus semiannual sale.
“Are your kids enjoying Draper?” Eva says.
“Oh, yes,” I say. “So far, so good, I think, though they don’t really tell me much. You know kids at this age, they can get a little less forthcoming.”
“Really?” Eva says. “Not my Brittany. She just loves school. Always has.”
“Well, the kids at Draper are all such dolls,” Mindy says. “And the teachers! The best of the best! Aren’t we lucky?”
“Uh-huh,” I say, thinking that Mindy, nice as she seems, appears to have the substance of cotton candy. My stomach turns—the wine, the chocolate . . . the company. I look across the room at Cole. He looks like he’s having the time of his life.
Eight
Cole is giddy on the ride home—chatty, almost giggly—telling me stories about the various people he caught up with tonight. I’m driving, which we’d established I
would before we even left for the party, and while I expected Cole to have a good time, I haven’t seen him like this in a while. A few of his friends tried to get us to stay longer, one of them pulling Cole by his shirtsleeve toward the bar and threatening tequila shots. Fortunately, Cole was just sober enough to recognize that we are not, in fact, despite what he may have reverted to tonight, still in our early twenties.
He babbles on, and I try to pay attention, to keep the names and stories straight so I’ll familiarize myself with them, but the truth is, I’m exhausted. I stifle a yawn as I turn onto Old Meadow Lane, a short, dead-end cove populated by just two homes: ours on the right and Cole’s parents’ on the left. When I turn onto our new street, I often think of my mother, whose first comment when I called her to tell her we were moving here was that she’d rather live next to a slaughterhouse than across the street from my mother-in-law. “But!” I heard my dad cackle in the background. “I suppose it’s kinda the same thing!” I’ve realized that having Bradley and Diane in our daily lives now just makes me miss my parents that much more. I need to get them down here for a visit, not only because I want them to see Greyhill—all these years later, they’ve still never been—but also because I know they’ll see what I do: it can’t possibly be the utopia that everyone here seems so fervently to believe it is.
“What are you thinking about?” Cole asks, unbuckling his seat belt as I ease the car into the driveway.
“Oh, nothing,” I say. “I’m just tired.”
He reaches for my hand and squeezes.
“Hey,” I say, trying to keep my voice light as I pull the key out of the ignition. “Question for you.”
“Yeah.” He smiles. He has the slightest chip on one of his front teeth—a run-in with a baseball during an attempt to steal home in his senior year at Draper. That, combined with the golden glint he sometimes gets in his hazel eyes, made me swoon when we were first getting to know each other.
“A story came up tonight when I was talking to those women. About the Cliffs?”
He laughs. “Uh-huuuuh . . . ,” he says expectantly.
I turn in my seat, slapping the console between us. “Okay, that’s just it!” I say. “You’ve answered my question without me even having to ask it!”
“Whoa, what?”
“They kind of made it sound like you had a reserved parking spot up there. And that you were giving out ‘frequent customer’ cards to all the girls in your class.”
“Oh, come on.” He rolls his eyes. “Please, Bess.”
“Well,” I say. “How much truth is there to it?”
He lifts his palms to the air. “What does it matter?” he says. “It was a billion years ago.”
“Uh-huh . . . ,” I say.
“What?” he says. “You’re going to hold my teenage years against me?”
“So it’s true, then?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugs. “I might have gone through a phase.”
“Right,” I say, laughing at him now that he’s squirming. At least he admits it. “And what did Eva think of all the other girls? How many came before her? How many after?”
“Bess.” He rolls his eyes.
“Actually!” I start. “What did your mother think?”
“Come on,” he says. “First of all, she never knew anything—”
“Well, of course she didn’t. And even if she did, she wouldn’t fault you. We both know her perfect princely son can do no wrong.”
“Jesus!” he says. “Really?”
“I’m sorry,” I say, reaching over to squeeze his shoulder. “But you know it’s true. I know firsthand.”
“Yeah, well . . .” He grabs my hand. “She is who she is.”
“Yes, she is.” I lean across the center console and kiss the spot on his cheek where the lipstick dot has now officially smeared off. “Anyway . . .”
“Anyway,” he repeats.
“I’m glad you had fun tonight,” I say, wanting to make up for giving him a hard time. I am glad he had fun. I’m just a little jealous, too, is all.
“Thanks,” he says. “I did. And you? Seems like you were talking to that same group for a long time.”
“Yeah,” I say, swallowing against the lump in my throat. “It was nice.”
“Uh-oh.” He manages an awkward laugh. “You’re not exactly convincing.”
“No, no,” I say, patting his hand, wanting to reassure him even if it’s not entirely true. “It’s just different, that’s all.”
I look up at the house from where we’re parked in the driveway and see Diane standing in the living room, a mug in her hand. She likes all those “Zinger” teas, so I bought a stash for when she’s over, not that she’s ever bothered to thank me. Not that I’m keeping score. At least, I’m trying not to.
I can feel Cole watching me. “Do you still love the house?” he asks. “Despite the neighbors?” He playfully pinches my leg.
“I love the house,” I say, looking up at it.
We get out of the car. I start to pull the braids out of my hair and Cole yawns, saying something about how we’re too old to stay out this late. Diane opens the front door before we’re halfway up the walk. “Oh, Bess,” she says, her arms crossed over her chest. “You should have told me about your floors. I couldn’t find your mop. Do you have one, dear? You know I would have brought mine. All you have to do is ask.”
Nine
“Did you see her costume?”
“I mean, Cole looked great, but the Dorothy getup wasn’t exactly flattering.”
“Why does it not surprise me that you think Cole Warner looks great even when he is shedding hay all over my house?”
“Oh, stop it, Mindy. We are ancient history. A million years ago. Ancient!”
“I know, I know, you’re happily married. Cole’s even better with age, though, I’ll say that.”
“He is, isn’t he? But she’s bigger than I remember, don’t you think?”
“Yes! Did you see how she was shoveling those truffles into her mouth?”
“I swear, every time I looked over at her, she was wiping chocolate from her face.”
“She’s less . . . I don’t know . . . I guess I thought she’d be more poised or something. More polished? You’d think so, wouldn’t you? With the job she had . . .”
“Speaking of, you should have seen how she squirmed when I brought it up.”
“Brought it up! You’re evil.”
“Well, I find it really telling. You can see what kind of woman she is. And now . . . to hear that she and Susannah Lane are spending time together!”
“She’s definitely not someone to be trusted. I wouldn’t dare tell her anything I don’t want repeated. And she doesn’t seem particularly friendly anyway. Let her go sit up in Esperanza with Susannah.”
“Agreed. She’s kind of an ice princess, no?”
“You mean ‘ice queen.’”
“No, I don’t! I’m the only queen around here!”
“I know you like to think so! And you better be careful. She seems to have it in for first ladies.”
“You’re sweet, but I would hardly compare myself to Candace Calhoun.”
“I wasn’t—”
“Anyway, her kids seem cute, I’ll give her that. Brittany seems to like the girl, though have you seen her?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“She seems a little . . . I don’t know how to say it. Just a little awkward, I guess. But the boy, Max, is apparently a doll. Kind of quiet. Not the athlete type, but really nice, Brittany says.”
“They must take after their father.”
“Let’s hope, for their sake.”
Ten
Bess
Draper Hall occupies eight acres of land on the east side of Maple Street, anchoring one end of downtown. It is an idyllic campus, made up of a collection of charming ivy-covered brick buildings that sit on a sloping blanket of plush green grass dotted with colorful flower beds kept up by the grounds crew, who get very sp
ecific instructions from the Greyhill Gardening Club about what to plant and how to do it. I know this because Diane is a member. The women—all of them older, all of them with too much time on their hands—take themselves very seriously, and Diane gripes about the constant back-and-forth between the club and the workers like they’re negotiating arms deals. Every time I spot one of the guys at the school mowing the grass or wielding a leaf blower, I feel an empathetic pang in my chest, knowing what they must deal with.
The first time the kids saw the campus, they said it looked like something out of a movie, and compared to the cheerful but 1960s-industrial public school they’d attended in northeast DC, it did. Too good to be true, I’d thought, especially once we embarked on our tour of the buildings’ interiors. We were led around by the headmaster, an eager bespectacled redhead with the trim frame of a cross-country runner, who Cole said had been poached from some elite school in Tennessee several years back. The floors of the main building were covered with Persian rugs. Oil paintings hung on the polished mahogany walls. “This place is nicer than the inn!” I said, realizing as I caught my husband’s eye that he did not appreciate my joke. Neither did the headmaster, who was so embarrassed for me that his cheeks turned the same shade as his hair.
I could tell when we left that Cole was pissed, but he was trying to keep it together for the kids. He wanted them to be as enthusiastic as he was about his alma mater, and who did I think I was, he said later, to criticize our family’s business in front of school leadership? When I admitted that I was worried about sending the twins to a place like Draper—private, exclusive—he accused me of projecting from my own experience.
I still maintain that the joke was no big deal (and only stung because it’s the truth), but he’s right about my projecting. The private school I attended for high school was beautiful, too, I said to Cole when we fought that night, and an absolute nightmare. I also didn’t love the idea that almost the entire student body was composed of a certain kind of kid—all the posh ones, really. They were mostly from Greyhill but there were also some from Charlottesville and Culpeper, plus the handful of kids from out in the country who attended on scholarships. “Fine, then, what do you want to do?” Cole barked. He happened to be wearing a navy-blue Draper Hall baseball cap as we fought, a fact I found sickly comic as he grumbled. “Do you want to send our kids to the shitty public school on the other side of the county, just to make a point?”