All of Us and Everything (12 page)

And it was as if he'd been standing there all these years, waiting for her on the stoop.

He'd never gotten over her, never been able to let go of her or the girls.

The girls.

Should she tell them?

Your lives,
she imagined saying to them,
have not been completely your own.

“No,” she said aloud. “He should do it himself. In person. The old bastard.”

She walked to the little secretary's desk in the corner of her bedroom and scratched out a letter.

Nick,

You need to come to the house. The girls are arriving. Get here soon. We need to settle things once and for all.

No one could really be that invested in kidnapping your children now! They're grown women, and certainly most of your enemies are dead or senile.

She wasn't sure how to sign off.
Love?
That seemed overstated.
All my best?
That would be dishonest. She simply went with a basic
Sincerely.
She was certainly being sincere.

She folded the letter angrily, using her thumbnail to crease it, slipped it into an envelope with no outward markings, and wondered, momentarily, if she'd remember where to drop it. Then she worried if the drop location still existed. It could have been washed out by the hurricane.

Of course, the letters had stopped and Bill Huckley didn't know whether Nick was dead or alive. She could be trying to communicate with a ghost, but that had always been a fear. It was one she was used to.

She put the envelope in her pocketbook and walked downstairs and out the front door. She didn't lock it. The girls didn't have keys.

She marched to the boardwalk, and at the familiar spot, she walked down the wooden steps to the beach, took off her shoes, and set foot on sand for the first time in decades. She dipped under the boardwalk's slats. People clomped overhead, pulling their rolling coolers and dragging their rafts, clipping the light with their shadows.

She found the little cove in the back of the boardwalk—its red paint had faded to pink and some young punk had written
SHERRI B. HAS LICE PANTIES
over part of the mark, but it was enough to direct her to the familiar crevice.

She slipped the letter in and let her fingers grip the wood for a moment, as she used to long ago, and she remembered—quickly and viscerally—what it was like to miss Nick with her entire body, to feel dizzy and wrung out with longing. As awful as it was then, she missed the feeling now.

They never did have a wedding, but when Esme and Liv were still little and left behind in Jessamine's care for a weekend, she bought a wedding dress, changing on the bench seat of a rented car, and they drove out into West Virginia and rented horses at an old farm.

“We're newlyweds,” Nick told the farmer.

“I can tell,” the old man said. He looked at Augusta. “She shouldn't ride sidesaddle. It's not safe.”

“I won't,” Augusta said.

Augusta did ride with her veil on, though. It floated behind her. Out in the middle of a field of wildflowers, they exchanged vows they made up on the spot, ones she couldn't remember.

After that, they stopped at a bed-and-breakfast somewhere in North Carolina, and for the first time in their lives Nick signed the registry as Mr. and Mrs. Nolan—a stolen name?

Later, after they had sex, Augusta took a drag from his cigarette and said, “Who are Mr. and Mrs. Nolan?” She expected it to be neighbors from his childhood or someone he'd always admired from politics.

“We are,” he said, and then he whispered into her ear.

And now she pushed off the boardwalk's underpinnings and walked back into the full sun, which made her eyes flutter.

Nick Flemming. Did he think of her still? Miss her? Had he finally settled down with another woman? Could he be dead or senile—as Augusta had depicted his enemies?

What if the go-between was the dead one? Their dead-drop letter relied on a go-between.

She walked home, muttering things as she went. “Won't be long now…One way or another…I'll know by not hearing anything…”

When she got home, the house was still empty. She marched up the stairs and into her room.

Once there, for the first time in twenty-nine years, Augusta Rockwell went to her family's cedar chest that sat at the foot of her bed, lifted the lid, and unfolded the old, frayed Rockwell family flag.

She opened her bedroom window, thrust her upper body into the salty air, and, with great exertion, attached the flag to its rusty latches and let it snap in the wind.

Down below, two cars pulled up and parked in the narrow driveway, single file. Esme and Atty got out of the first car, a cane rocking chair strapped to the roof. Atty was holding a stack of ten Nancy Drew mysteries and wearing a fanny pack, which Augusta was sure that only old people and heavyset tourists wore these days.

They looked up at Augusta, who nodded to them.

Liv and Ru got out of the second car. Liv wore enormous sunglasses blocking out most of her face. Ru pulled her bag out of the backseat but then, as she looked up at the house, she dropped it on the lawn.

“Good God!” she said.

All of the women looked at her and said, “What?”

“Holy shit,” Ru said. “The old spy. You're calling him in.”

Esme, Liv, and Atty didn't understand what she meant, but Augusta did, of course. “Yes,” she said. “How'd you know?” She also meant—
What
do you know? How long have you known it? And how did you find out?

But Ru took the question literally. “The flag,” she said, pointing at it. “Obviously.”

As the oldest Rockwell daughter, Esme felt a livid spasm in her chest that made her blush; she was angry at Ru for knowing something she didn't.
The flag, obviously.
What was obvious about the tattered relic of the Rockwells' glory days in commercial fishing, munitions, and banking, and what could it possibly have to do with their fabled father? Being the oldest came with responsibility, overwrought scrutiny, and pressure; the only upside was that eventually you could know things the younger siblings couldn't, things you were supposed to protect them from. Ru was always screwing that up. Even as a little kid, she walked around with her ears popped out like satellite dishes, gathering data that clearly didn't belong to her, as if pretending to be part spy herself.

Their father wasn't a spy.

They had no real father.

Their mother was a woman who'd wanted kids but was too off-kilter to handle marriage.

The old spy was an ancient invention, one that proved Augusta's limited imagination, to be honest.

Ingmar barked from the screen door—again, Augusta didn't appreciate what she perceived as an outburst of the dog's masculinity. Augusta told her daughters to get inside. “For God's sake,” she added, “let's not air this on the front lawn!”

The three sisters and Atty took their seats around the kitchen table with Augusta standing in front of the sink, all thick shoulders and long imperious neck. And Ingmar padded around them, nervously, the way he often did before a thunderstorm.

Augusta faced them, prepared to explain something—something that Ru already knew. Was their mother going to trot out the old lies and was Ru going to support her?

“Jesus,” Esme said, “just spit it out.” Her anger now felt inextricably stitched to some old instinctive fear—about lying mothers or unknowable fathers?

“I kind of like the overt drama,” Liv said.

“You would,” Esme said. It wasn't a nice thing to say but Esme wasn't feeling nice. She felt like she was about to be attacked, and the year had offered enough unpredictability—on the boarding school's playing fields, in the mahogany halls, at dinner parties, endlessly. Plus, Liv had been living such an overtly dramatic life that it seemed like she was purposefully trying to live in opposition to Esme's decisions, which, until recently, had seemed safe and responsible. Liv's dramatic lifestyle had felt like a judgment on Esme's practical one.

Liv was annoyed by Esme's impatience. Liv had always been prettier than Esme, and Liv was sure Esme couldn't ever really get over a slight genetic injustice like that. And so Liv had spent much of her life giving Esme a wide emotional berth because of it. She was sick of it now. Her mother deserved a little attention. The girls hadn't been doting daughters. Case in point, Liv wasn't sure what her mother was going to say, but she also didn't really care. Fairly well medicated at the moment, she looked at her mother as if she were made of soap bubbles. Sweet smelling, but ultimately fragile. She thought,
My mother is poppable.
“Just let her have her moment,” Liv told Esme.

Ru was silent and wide-eyed. She'd given up on the idea that this moment would ever come, so she was surprised that it had arrived with such little fanfare.

“I'm not going to have a moment,” Augusta said. “
You
are.”

“Me?” Atty said. Augusta's eyes had been scanning but had accidentally fallen on Atty right at the end of her sentence. Atty was still holding the Nancy Drew books in her lap. She was confused and a little gleeful. Atty's mother had told her stories of her unconventional childhood and Atty knew she was about to see some kind of performative event. She'd gone to an experimental play in New York City with her drama class a few months earlier, where they were allowed to walk from room to room, scene to scene, and interact with the actors. She'd kissed a man's shoulder in a dark hallway. He hadn't been an actor after all, but he kissed her back on the mouth, and it was a strange moment of groping that Atty had never been privy to before. She'd tweeted,
Immersive theater just got handsy. #Idontkissandtell.
Before her father's affair, she hadn't been the type to get invited to the orgies that took place on campus, but after, imbued with a collateral air of illicit sexiness, she had what turned out to be an audition, one that had gone incredibly badly, and which she'd recently decided was the origin point for her downward spiral.

“Not
you,
Atty,” Esme said. “You're not going to have a moment. She meant
us.
The girls.” She and her sisters would always be
the girls.
Esme said this in an attempt to relieve her daughter but Atty looked a little disappointed. Esme just wanted this to all be over with. “Go on, Mom. Please.” She sounded whiny and childish, and hated how these family get-togethers always seemed to make her regress.

Augusta clapped her hands together. “Fine. Yes. Your father. I know I've stopped talking about him altogether. I thought that might be best. But a man came to the door today. Something's been churned up by the hurricane. A box of letters. His father was a friend of your father's and so this up-churning happened in a basement.” It was oddly formal but disconnected, as if she'd practiced some version of a speech and was telling it out of order.

“The hurricane,” Ru said with quiet astonishment. This is what it had taken—a brutal act of nature—to get to the truth.

“Correct, Ru. The hurricane,” Augusta said. “And your father had been writing this friend all these years. Your father and I were never married and so we never really divorced, but we stopped seeing each other in 1984.”

“Wait,” Liv said. “You're a divorcée?”

Augusta nodded. “In a way, yes. We have that in common.”

Esme shook her head. “That's the thing that's most impressed you so far with this story? That she's a divorcée who was never actually married?”

“Oh, I like all of it,” Liv said. “What's not to like?”

“What's not to like?” Esme said. “It's delusional. It makes no sense.” She turned to her mother. “Are you going to get to the part where you tell us he was
a spy
?”

Augusta sat down at the kitchen table and pursed her lips.

Ru feared her mother was retreating, and so she jumped in. “He was a spy,” Ru said flatly. “He was. People are spies, you know. It is an actual occupation and there are those, in reality, who do the work. CIA, NSA, FBI. These aren't just organizations made up by the entertainment industry.”

Atty piped up, “Alicia Spitz's dad is in the CIA.” She went ignored.

“How would you know anything about our alleged father?” Esme said.

“Yeah,” Liv said, rubbing balm from a metal tin onto her lips. “Why are you saying things like this, Ru? I mean, where's this coming from?”

Augusta knit her hands together. “How
do
you know about the flag, dear? I've never told anyone about the flag.”

Ru stood up, walked to the cupboard, and pulled out a small juice glass. “Not one of you, not one, ever asked me where I went. Not one!” She was surprised how quickly the anger flared.

“You went to Vietnam,” Esme said. “You told us.”

Ru spun around. “No! I was sixteen years old and gone for three days—three whole days—before you even realized I was gone.”

Liv laughed. “I know. Right? Three days. That's
hilarious.
I mean, that is
classic
Ru's Poos. It would only happen to her.”

“
Classic
Ru's Poos,” Atty said, wagging her head—obviously familiar with the phrase.

“What do you mean?
Classic Ru's Poos
? What the hell?” Ru said. “Is that something you say behind my back?”

“No, dear,” Augusta said quickly. “I'm sure that's something they've said to your face. It's a full-family joke. Isn't it, Esme?”

“It is. Absolutely. I mean, we started saying that when you were really little.”

“I remember you two saying that one time when I was like thirteen and we were playing Risk, but I cried and you swore you'd never say it again.”

Esme looked at Liv, who then nodded. “That might have been when the saying went underground, but you do these classic Ru's Poos things. And our hands are tied.”

“Screw you, Liv! At least my classic moves don't land me in rehab.” On the car ride home, Ru had pieced together that the spa that Liv was raving about wasn't really a spa.

“Don't attack Liv!” Esme shouted. “That's not a fair fight.”

“Oh, because I've hit a low point, Esme? Like I'm the one made of dish soap bubbles?” Liv said. “And I'm just going to pop to death if I have to take a jab?”

“That's not what I meant!” Esme said. “I was sticking up for you!”

“By putting her down!” Ru countered.

Atty's heart was skittering in her chest. She put the Nancy Drews on the ground just in case this got physical. She wanted to be ready to participate.

“Is this because I pooped in a shoe once as a two-year-old?” Ru said, holding her head with both hands.

“We've seen you poop in a shoe. All of us. Me, Esme, Augusta, and even Jessamine. We saw it.”

“If you pay attention to the rest of the story,” Ru said, stiffening, “you'll recall that I really only had one accident.”

“I think it's the image that just sticks with you,” Esme said.

“It's kind of a first impression,” Atty added—as if Ru needed more people lining up against her. “And first impressions are important.”

“Basically, I could win a Nobel and this is the way you'd think of me, still, as a shoe-pooper.”

Liv raised her eyebrows and froze for a moment. “Really?” she snorted. “Now you're going to win a Nobel?”

“Screw you!” Ru said.

Augusta raised her hands in the air and shouted, “Enough! Enough! Enough!”

The kitchen fell silent.

There were some short sighs, huffy breaths, the scrape of a chair against the floor as Ru took a seat, pulled back from the table, holding her empty juice glass.

“We made light of your disappearance because it was a horror. We joked because the love and fear we felt overwhelmed us. And we believed you when we found the note you wrote that you'd come back soon!” Augusta sometimes relied on the tenets of the old lost Personal Honesty Movement, by offering many simple statements in a row.

“I looked him up,” Ru said.

“Who?” Liv asked.

“Our father.”

“You looked him up?” Esme said.

Augusta was stunned. “And you found him?”

“Yes.”

“Where?” Liv asked.

“In Guadeloupe.”

“You made it to Guadeloupe?” Augusta said. “You didn't have a passport, did you? That's international travel!” Augusta seemed retroactively terrified.

Ru didn't want to bog down in details right now. “I found him and we talked in a bar. He's real.”

“Our actual father,” Esme said aloud—half question, half statement.

“And you never told us?” Liv asked.

“You didn't ever ask where I'd gone!” Ru said, trying to keep calm.

“Right,” Liv said, and she sat back. “I get that. We didn't deserve to know.”

“Right,” Ru said, relieved.

“Nineteen ninety-two,” Esme said, doing the quick math.

“How did he look?” Augusta said, a little defensively, as if she might have wanted him to look forlorn and lost without her.

“Like a middle-aged man,” Ru said.

“I don't even know his name. What's his name?” Esme asked.

“Nick Flemming,” Ru said.

Esme glanced at her mother for confirmation.

Augusta nodded.

“What was he wearing? Did he know you'd been hunting him down? What did you talk about?” Esme asked.

“We talked about the past, about his relationship with Mom, about his regrets and failings.”