Fly Away Home (4 page)

“Personally, I’d respect it if one of these women told her guy to go sleep with the fishes,” said the redhead. Her collarbones bounced up and down as she giggled at her own wit.

“Let’s give the senator credit,” said the young man in a bow tie who sat at the table beside her. “At least he didn’t use taxpayer money to pay for hookers. Or tell his constituents he was hiking the Appalachian Trail.”

The redhead gave him a thumbs-up. Her face was tight as a tambourine, but Lizzie could see blue veins bulging across the backs of her hands, and her skinny fingers looked like claws. “Bonus points for that.”

What if it was your dad?
Lizzie wanted to call, assuming the brittle, bony old crone had ever had a father, that she hadn’t been hatched in some conservative think tank’s laboratory.
How would you like it, if it was your father, and I was the one on TV, laughing at him?

Lizzie marched to the television set and stood on her tiptoes, trying to change the channel. “Miss,” called the woman behind the reception desk. “You can’t touch that!”

“Yes, she can,” said Diana. She knelt down in front of Milo and started talking to him in a low, comforting murmur.
Nothing to worry about
, Diana was telling her son.
Everything’s okay
. Lizzie strained and stretched until she hit the power button. When the set was off, she turned and beckoned for Milo, who was even paler and more somber than normal, looking even more like a miniature banker whose job it was to tell young couples that their mortgage applications had been denied.

“Mommy’s going back to work,” Diana told her son. “Aunt Lizzie’s going to take you home.” She bent, hugging him. “I love you miles and miles.”

“Miles and miles,” he repeated, then gave her a high five, a low five, and a fist bump before smoothing his bangs again and tugging his hat down securely over his ears. Lizzie reached for her camera again—she’d love to have a picture of that, of her sister being decent and gentle and sweet. Then again, she made her hands drop. Diana mustered a smile, gave her sister a tight nod, and slipped back into the ER. Lizzie took Milo’s hand.

“Aunt Lizzie?” he asked in his gravelly voice as he followed her into the hallway. “Why was Grandpa on TV?”

“Well, you know, he’s a senator.”

“He makes laws in Washington,” Milo recited. “But who was that lady? They said she was his girlfriend.”

“You know what?” Lizzie said, and took his hand. “Let’s talk about your delicious dinner. We don’t have to worry about Grandpa right now.”

SYLVIE

As the car swung into the rest area, Sylvie grabbed the door handle, and the instant the tires had stopped, she yanked the door open. Avoiding Clarissa’s pained gaze and Derek’s murmured “Ma’am?” she hurried through the heat of the parking lot, up the concrete stairs, and into the rest stop.

There, in the wide, tiled entryway that smelled of frying food and disinfectant, Sylvie stood as if frozen, head tilted back, staring up at the television set as it broadcast CNN. Travelers flowed around her: harried mothers with toddlers in their arms hustling into the ladies’ room, senior citizens making their slow way toward the Burger King, or stopping to peer at the giant maps on the wall. Sylvie ignored all of them, letting them walk around her, barely hearing their “excuse me’s” and “watch it, lady,” and “hey, that’s a real bad place to plant yourself.” Over and over, the same snippet of film played on the screen: a woman, her head bent, curly brown hair blowing in the wind as she walked through an apartment building’s door, followed by footage of Richard (blue suit, red-and-gold tie from Hermés she’d bought him last Christmas) on a standard-issue podium, delivering what was undoubtedly a standard-issue speech (together, they’d written one on education, and one on the environment, and one on Our Leaders of Tomorrow, which could be tailored for an elementary school or high school audience and padded for college graduations). Words bubbled out of the speakers, but Sylvie could no longer make sense of them. It was as if her mind was a Venus flytrap: it had ingested the pertinent facts, then snapped shut tight, refusing to let the words back out for further consideration.
Sources are reporting … Joelle Stabinow, a former legislative aide, a Georgetown Law School graduate who frequently traveled with the senator … donor-funded junkets at tropical resorts …

The pictures cycled past again: the young woman, then Richard. Her brown hair. His red tie. And now, another picture of the girl, in a bikini that Sylvie never would have attempted, not even at her thinnest. The girl—the woman, Sylvie supposed, because that was the politically correct term—sat, cross-legged, on the wooden deck of a boat. Her belly pushed at the low waistband of the white bikini bottom, her breasts pressed at the cups of the top. No Special K and skim milk breakfasts for this one; no five
A.M.
sessions with a Pilates Nazi who’d bark, “USE your CORE,” as if Sylvie were a dog failing obedience class.

So Ceil and Diana were right. This was real. She must have made some noise, some cry of dismay. Clarissa, who’d appeared at her elbow, looked at her sadly, but said nothing. Then again, really, what could Clarissa say? Sylvie was certain that the topic of how to handle it if your boss’s spouse was caught in a sex scandal had not been covered at Vanderbilt, where Clarissa had gotten her degrees.

She tried to speak. “I think,” she began. But whatever she’d thought was interrupted by a man who’d come to stand next to her. He was a beefy fellow in blue jeans and a plaid shirt. Red suspenders kept the jeans aloft. He had a grease-spotted Burger King bag in his hand.

“Boy oh boy,” he said, as if Sylvie had started a conversation; as if, in fact, she’d been waiting all day to talk with him. “Here we go again with this. Pigs. All of them. Pigs.”

“Pigs,” Sylvie repeated.

“Okay,” said a young woman in jeans and dark-framed glasses, “okay, fine, but why are they wasting their time reporting on this? There’s a war going on. People are dying.” She gestured at the screen, where the words
SEX SCANDAL
crawled underneath the knot of Richard’s tie. “And this is what the news shows are doing? Following politicians around to find out where they’re getting their rocks off? Like, who even cares?”

“Who,” said Sylvie, like an owl.

“She’s not even that hot,” offered a fellow in a Giants jersey. Sylvie was unsurprised to see that he had a weak chin and teeth that pointed in several directions.
Everyone’s a critic
, Ceil always said. “Shit,” said the Giants fan. “If I was a senator, I’d get, like, Miss Universe to sleep with me.”

“Nice,” said the girl in the glasses … but she said it quietly, so that the Giants-jersey guy could pretend he hadn’t heard.

“I think it’s a disgrace,” said the man with the Burger King bag. “He’s probably got daughters her age.”

“Daughters,” Sylvie repeated. She was aware, behind her, of the desperate glance Clarissa was undoubtedly shooting at Derek, a glance that telegraphed that this was developing into a Situation, that Steps Must Be Taken before Sylvie did something or said something to worsen this crisis before it could be massaged and managed and spun. Clarissa had gotten as far as placing a tentative hand on Sylvie’s shoulder and uttering the word “Ma’am?” when Sylvie’s bag (Prada, but discreet, with just one small label sewn underneath the handle) slipped out of her grasp and thumped to the floor. The fellow with the Burger King lunch knelt to retrieve it. “Ma’am? You all right?”

Sylvie looked down at herself: her sheer hose and plain pumps, her expensive navy-blue knit skirt and jacket, a little too tight at the bust. (“Crunches!” she could hear her trainer exhorting. “Presses! Flies!” And his favorite, “Push-aways!” which meant pushing yourself away from the table.)
My husband is fucking a legislative aide
. There was a small reddish stain on the toe of the man’s work boot. She could feel her throat clenching tight, and the pressure of tears building. She could smell onions, the onions Richard denied himself in his morning omelet. It was a poor place for a life to end. But that was what was happening. Her life, the one she’d built over decades, the one she’d made alongside Richard, her life as his wife, her life as she’d known it, was ending, unraveling, coming apart right here in a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike.

Sylvie pressed her fist against her lips. Clarissa’s face, pale and worried, swam into her sight as she interposed her body between Sylvie and the man. “Mrs. Woodruff?” She shot a look over her shoulder and lowered her voice. “Sylvie? Are you all right?”

Sylvie’s telephone burped. The man picked up her purse. Hoping that it was Ceil again, that sensible Ceil could somehow explain this all and make sense of it for her and tell her that things would be fine, Sylvie located her cell phone and lifted it to her ear.

“Hello?”

“That crotch!” Selma hollered, in her unmistakable hoarse, loud Brooklyn accent. “I knew he was no good for you! The first time you brought him home I knew it! I never liked the way he smelled!”

“Ma.” The single word had exhausted her. Sylvie pressed the telephone against her face, hoping that no one in the crowd had realized who she was. It was unlikely—the average American, if pressed, probably wouldn’t be able to pick a Supreme Court justice out of a lineup, so the chances of a senator’s wife going undetected were high.
Bathroom
, she mouthed to Clarissa, and carried the telephone into a stall as her mother continued to talk.

“Insect repellent. Took me years to figure it out, but that’s exactly what he smells like. Bug spray. You should have married Bruce Baumgardner. You remember the Baumgardners? They lived on seventeen. Carpet stores.”

Sylvie didn’t answer. “Are you gonna divorce him?” Selma asked. “If you are, you tell me first. I know all the best family law guys.” Sylvie shook her head. This was surprising. As far as she knew, her mother had always liked Richard. He sent flowers on Selma’s birthday, and on Mother’s Day, and on the anniversary of Sylvie’s father’s death. He picked up takeout from the Carnegie Deli once a month when they went over for dinner, and always held doors and offered to carry Selma’s bags and picked up her favorite See’s candies when he traveled to California. Sylvie twisted on the toilet seat as her mother’s voice spilled into her ear. “Bruce lives in New Jersey. His wife was running around with some fellow she met in her yoga class …”

“Yoga,” Sylvie repeated. Her voice was hollow, and her skirt, as she sat on the toilet, was bunched in an unflattering way around her hips. The word had always sounded strange, but never more so than at this moment.

“They split up and he moved into the basement while they’re waiting for the house to sell.” Selma paused, perhaps realizing that a revelation of below-street-level tenancy did not put Bruce in the best light. “It’s a finished basement. With a half-bath.”

“Ma, this isn’t a very good time …”

“Sylvia, listen to me, because this is important,” Selma continued. “If you do a
60 Minutes
interview, don’t wear teal.”

Her head was spinning. The word
teal
sounded just as odd, as foreign, as
yoga
. “What?”

“Teal. Hillary wore teal. After the whole mess with Gennifer Flowers? Where Bill said he’d caused pain in his marriage? Teal wasn’t a good look for her and I don’t think it’d be good for you, either.”

“Ma …”

“Washes you right out. Wear red. Red says you’re strong and you’re not going to take it. And you’re not. Going to take it. Are you?” Selma paused to take a breath. “Oh, and make sure it’s that Lesley Stahl who interviews you. Not the African-American fellow, the one with the earring. He’s very abrupt.”

“Ma.” Sylvie sagged sideways against the wall. With her fingertips she touched the sagging skin beneath her eyes, the hound-dog droops that the Botox doctor hadn’t been able to fix. “Ed Bradley’s dead. I’m not going on
60 Minutes
. Please stop calling my husband a crotch.” From underneath the stall door she saw Clarissa’s black heels and slim ankles. There was a soft knock on the stall door. “Mrs. Woodruff?” her assistant whispered.

“Ma, I have to go.”

“Can I give Bruce Baumgardner your number?”

“No!”

Her mother’s grating voice softened, as if she’d remembered that she wasn’t sparring with opposing counsel or interrogating a hostile witness. Sylvie’s father used to be the one to calm her with a quiet word or a Yiddish endearment, but Dave had died of a stroke five years ago, leaving Selma alone and unmodulated. “Are you all right?”

Sylvie considered. She’d just learned that her husband was carrying on with a legislative aide, a woman who was probably half her age, a woman who, she thought with rising horror, could possibly be pregnant, was at least of an age where she could get pregnant, like John Edwards’s mistress had, so she was a very long way from “all right.”

“Poor Sylvie,” said her mother. “You should call Jan for the keys.”

“Keys?” said Sylvie.

“To the Connecticut house,” Selma said, as if this was obvious. “I’ll come up and visit once you get settled. Remember what I said about teal.” Her mother paused, the way she had before closing arguments. “I love you, sweetie. Always. I’m here if you need me.”

Sylvie ended the call, tucked her telephone into her purse, and stepped out of the stall. Clarissa stood back respectfully while Sylvie washed her hands and dried them in one of those high-tech blowers. Then, head bent as if buffeted by a heavy wind, she followed her assistant back out to the Town Car, where Derek hurried out to hold the door.

In the backseat, she slipped off her shoes and then, with some wriggling, her panty hose, which had dug bright-red ridges into her hips. She yanked them over her thighs, her knees and ankles and kicked them onto the car floor, considering her husband, whom she’d loved for so long and thought she’d known so well. She remembered the first time Richard had brought her home to Harrisburg, to the tidy two-bedroom ranch-style house where he’d grown up and where his parents still lived. Richard’s father was bluff and hearty, proudly bald, with a barrel chest and a booming voice and an undying love for the Philadelphia Eagles. “How do you like my boy?” he asked, pounding Richard on his back (this back-thumping, Sylvie would come to learn, was what the male members of Richard’s family did in lieu of expressing emotion or conversing with each other). Cindy, Richard’s mother, was a small, timid woman who didn’t walk so much as scurry, and who barely said a word after her whispered “hello.” (Maybe, Sylvie thought, Richard Senior pounded her back, too, which was what had given her such a cringing, flinching manner.) She’d made a casserole for dinner, something with cream of mushroom soup and ground beef—Richard’s favorite, she’d murmured, scooping it onto thin china plates. She’d put Sylvie’s serving in front of her, then suddenly frozen, looking as stricken as if she’d served her son’s girlfriend a stewed human hand. “Oh, no … is that okay for you? Can you eat it?” she asked, her voice so soft Sylvie could barely hear it. “I can make something else … it’s no problem at all …” Sylvie, puzzled, had assured her that the casserole was fine, and told her, once she’d tasted it, that it was delicious, rich and filling, the perfect meal for a cold winter night.

Later, tucked up against Richard in his old twin bed, with her toes touching his calves, she’d asked why Cindy had been worried. Richard said he guessed that it was because there was cheese in the dish, along with the beef, and that, even in a land bereft of Jews, his mother had enough of a rudimentary grasp of the principles of keeping kosher that she was worried Sylvie wouldn’t be able to eat meat with dairy.

“We should write a book,” Sylvie said, fitting her body against his with her cheek against his chest and her hands cradling the back of his neck. “
My First Jew
.” He’d rubbed his fingertips gently against the top of her head.

“I’m checking for horns,” he told her. She’d slipped one of her hands down the front of his pajama bottoms, whispering, “Me, too.” They’d made love for a long, slow time, neither of them making a sound until the very end. Richard, as usual, had fallen asleep almost immediately, but Sylvie lay awake, listening to Richard breathing beside her in this strange little house, as the wind whistled through the trees, thinking that she had never felt so safe, so content, so loved.

In the back of the car, through the bottom of her purse, she could feel her telephone buzzing and burping. She pulled it out and looked at the screen, hoping, again, for Ceil. Instead, Richard’s face flashed into view—Richard in their bedroom, smiling at her as he stood in front of the blue-and-white wallpaper. His hair was mostly gray now, but his optimistic grin hadn’t changed at all since she’d first met him. Sylvie punched
IGNORE
. She wasn’t ready for that conversation. Not now. Not yet.