Hurricane Days (3 page)

That was my first lesson in duplicity. I discovered I was good at it. For most of the summer, to avoid that kind of kiss again, I made excuses every time he wanted to see me. And when I did see him, I made sure it was at a group, family or church event, so he wouldn’t try that kind of kiss there.

A few weeks ago, as summer was drawing to a close, we talked on the phone.

“I’m really gonna miss you,” Marc said. He sounded upset, as if something was on his mind.

“Me too,” I replied.

“I don’t feel like…well, it doesn’t seem like you really wanna be with me anymore.”

“Why would you say that?”

“You never can go out with me.” His voice was sad and kind of pitiful.

“It’s not my fault I had summer jobs.”
Yes, make him feel guilty for saying such a thing.
I was being so manipulative, I was surely damned to hell. Dad always said I was melodramatic, and now I was using my acting powers for evil purposes. I was sure to burn for eternity. Even so, it seemed worth the price to avoid having to kiss someone like that.

“No, I get that. I understand. I really do.” Of course he did. How could he argue with helping schoolchildren learn how to read or coordinating all the food for the church picnics? After all, that potato salad wasn’t going to make itself.

There was a long silence. “I have to go. My mom needs my help with dinner.” I always found a way to get off the phone quickly.

So the last call before I’d leave for college was one I couldn’t endure—an awkward maze with no easy way out. As the credits rolled for
Casablanca
, I sat back in the comfortable velvety chair and sighed. I loved film noir. Nothing in these films was as it seemed, particularly the women. They were mysterious creatures with power and beauty and that certain something that made the men fall at their feet.

Of course I couldn’t imagine myself as a film siren or
femme fatale
. I wasn’t as cool or confident. I worried constantly, always feeling a little strange compared to my friends. I spent my time deep in thought, usually thinking about things I couldn’t control—the nuclear threat, violence in the Middle East or when
Saturday Night Live
was going to get funnier. I was inquisitive about the world and social issues, but all my friends wanted to talk about were boys. Not to sound rude, but my friends were boring. It was as if none of them cared about whether or not we invaded another country or why the price of gas was going up. They were content to live in their little suburban bubbles with freshly cut grass and think only about getting a ring. I’d have to accept being different.

I didn’t even dress right, according to the unspoken laws of high school. Too often I wore blouses given to me by Granny Inez, who sewed them from ugly, old-lady patterns. I couldn’t hurt her feelings or Dad’s by refusing them. As a result I ended up going to school looking about forty years older than I was. For college, however, I packed only two of the blouses—to appease Dad. Then I said I didn’t have any more room in my suitcase. When I could, I wore simple, button-down shirts tucked into jeans. I liked simplicity, not fashion trends.

I had my mom’s hair, black like a crow’s and shiny. I wore it long and straight. I didn’t like the big eighties’ hairstyle. When I heard someone say you had to spray it at the roots to get that wild look, I decided it was too complicated and worried that it could possibly make your hair fall out. Besides, I didn’t have enough time in the morning to do that much hair preparation.

Boys told me I had pretty blue eyes, but I didn’t think of myself as glamorous or poised or any of those things I associated with my mother. June Sanders was the most elegant woman I knew. She breezed in and out of rooms, balancing casserole dishes with ease. She always knew the right thing to say, except for talking about sex, and she stayed amazingly calm, even when Dad flew off the handle. I tried for a long time to be like her, then gave up, realizing it wasn’t possible.

Whenever I felt insecure, which was nearly every day of my high school life, I looked to the poster of Bette Davis hanging in my bedroom. She served as sort of a guardian angel who reminded me I didn’t have to fit in. Bette didn’t seem to care what anyone thought of her. She didn’t live to please other people; at least it didn’t seem so. Being a pleaser myself, I looked up to someone like her.

At home, it was a constant struggle between who I was and who my parents needed me to be. They had expected me to go to college at Dad’s alma mater, Florida State, and major in political science like he did. Mom hadn’t finished college, so she agreed with Dad. The trouble was, here in this house of white walls and perfect décor, everyone knew their place. My dad knew politics and farming, Mom knew cooking and decorating, and my brother Kenneth knew football and tinkering with cars or anything with an engine. To them, I was an enigma, someone who daydreamed too much and watched too many movies.

When we first talked about what I would major in, Dad stared me down across the dining room table. “You can’t major in film! There are no jobs!” He always looked like a general determined to win a battle.

“But…” I managed to say.

“She likes movies,” Mom said softly, adding a few points to my side.

“Life is not a movie!” Dad thundered. And that was that. His opinion was reinforced by the crucifix hanging on the stark, white wall behind him.

When I registered at FSU, I was able to slip two film courses into my schedule. Mom promised to tell Dad in her own way. It would be our little secret for now.

* * *

We lingered in front of the big house in Atlanta that I’d called home for the past eighteen years. It was really an estate, but Dad called it a farmhouse. We owned more acres and horses than I could count.

I took it all in, in one sweeping glance, my happiest memories of childhood flashing before my eyes, then looked back to the expectant, slightly anxious faces of my parents.

Mom squeezed all the breath out of me. “Call us when you get there.”

“I will.”

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” Dad yelled. “Let the girl breathe.”

I noted only two cars in the driveway. “Isn’t Ken coming by?”

“He had to work today,” Mom said apologetically.

“Everybody’s got a screw loose at that garage.” Dad shook his head. He didn’t really like his son working with guys who he thought were just one step up from being white trash. In truth, he was still nursing a grudge, mad that Ken didn’t want to stay closer to home and work the farm.

I tried to hide my disappointment. I’d miss my brother a lot. In his own quirky way, he was, most times at least, the sanest and most honest one of the family. He called things as he saw them.

I took a deep breath and picked up my last suitcase. Then, with a full tank of gas and my neatly rolled-up poster of Bette Davis in the backseat, I took off down the road. As I watched Georgia pine trees disappear, soon to be replaced by palm trees, I could almost hear the words: “Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy life.”

Chapter Three

Lara’s call came soon after the news broke. “I told ya, you can’t run for office nowadays,” she said in her raspy tone. “There’s nobody without some stain. You gotta be Jesus to make it past the research. Goddamn Internet.”

Lara Denning was Robin’s press secretary, a woman so full of herself that she believed she could manage anything, including the earth’s rotation.

“I don’t have any stains!” Robin fired back. She tried to sound calm, as if it were all a nonissue. She paced her bedroom and spoke softly. “This is untrue. Once it’s confirmed as a lie, a desperate last-ditch effort by my opponents, it will be over.”

“Oh, honey, this is me. In politics, perception is reality. You know that. As far as Georgia is concerned, you’re already a flaming lesbo. Wait a minute. Can lesbians be flaming? Or is that just gay men?”

“I don’t know. Really,
I don’t know
. Because I’m not part of that lifestyle. And what do you mean by…?”

“They’ve done flash polls in Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee. You lost, sweetie, thanks to Twitter.”

“It’s a nonissue.”

“You think it was Graham?”

“Probably,” Robin replied. “I don’t know.”

“Whether it was or not, that’s got to be our strategy,” Lara said. “Pin the smear campaign on him. Make him look like a garden-variety, dirty politician. And you’re an innocent, ethical leader.” Then after a pause, she added, “Nobody really likes Graham anyway. They’ll buy it.”

Graham Goodwin, named after evangelist Billy Graham, was in second place behind Robin. Rumors swirled that he’d had a facelift and hair plugs. He also had two artificial knees from playing college football. In fact, it was possible that nothing about him was real.
Literally.
It would have made sense for Graham’s team to dig up some dirt and conveniently leak it right before the final debate.

Robin hung up the phone, pondering Lara’s advice. She undid her silk scarf, her trademark accessory, and placed it in the closet with the rest of her vast collection. In fact, she owned more scarves than shoes. Tonight’s color was a flaming cranberry. As much as she hated to admit it, she wouldn’t even get a haircut without Lara’s approval. It had been Lara’s idea for her to keep a streak of gray in her hair near the top. She’d told Robin that too much gray would make her look like a witch, but just enough would make her appear wise. Sure enough, all the magazines had commented on how her gray strand was being copied by other women, who were all trying to look wise.

“Lara Denning,” Tom chuckled, buttoning his pajama top. He never could take Lara seriously.

“Yes, she’s giving me the game plan.”

“A woman who emailed pictures of her bare ass all over the web.
She’s
the one you trust to manage your image.”

“That was years ago,” Robin insisted. “When she was young and drunk.” She brushed her hair vigorously as she always did when she was worried. “I don’t know, Tom. You think they’re right?”

“That you’re a lesbian?”

“Be serious.”

For the first time Tom saw a glimmer of uncertainty in her face. In a way, he was relieved to see it. It meant that she was, in fact, human.

“Do you think this scandal could bring me down?” she asked.

He exhaled. Softly, he asked, “Is it true?”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” she exclaimed.

Tom’s mouth twisted into a growl. “Not so ridiculous, Robin. If it weren’t for Kendrick, this wouldn’t be a real marriage at all.”

Years of memories hung heavily in the air between them, countless nights of sleeping alongside each other but not together, of forced kisses and the sadness that Tom wore like his suit, always clinging to him. She tried not to see it, though she knew it was true.

They hid it well, but theirs was primarily a marriage that looked good on paper. It was all part of a long-term strategy. To be a sure thing during this neoconservative era, Robin knew she had to win the heart of the South. Tom Rutherford was perfectly cast as the prominent, but not too prominent, good-looking, but not too good-looking, companion who wouldn’t overshadow her. In a courtroom, he was most disarming, using his laid-back, almost lethargic attitude to catch defense attorneys off guard. Then he’d go in for the kill. But in his private life, he was actually averse to confrontation, doing anything he could to avoid it.

When Robin chose a political career, she had ridden in on the coattails of her father. Because the Sanders name carried so much weight in Georgia, when she and Tom married it was agreed she’d keep her family name. No one questioned her decision, not even Tom. In fact, he was the most agreeable conservative husband she could have asked for. Why then did everything feel so wrong?

She watched as he slumped on the bed. Surely he didn’t want to talk about this
now
? This wasn’t the time to examine their marriage. Her head was going numb from all the stress. She couldn’t handle hearing how many years he’d waited to see that special light in her eyes when she looked at him. She would never be that woman, the one who couldn’t wait to throw her arms around her man when he walked through the door at night.

What good would it do to talk about it anyway? She knew how sad she made him feel. She also knew about his liaison with Darlene McFadden, one of the lawyers in his firm. It was inevitable but…okay. In a way, it took the pressure off her. He wasn’t even careful about hiding his trysts with Darlene anymore, sometimes even meeting her at the mansion. Maybe he wanted to be caught. Or maybe he wanted to see Robin get upset, to find out if she cared.

“A real marriage?” she repeated defensively. “Does every ambitious woman have to lose her husband because her success is too much for his ego?”

“Ambition? This isn’t about your ambition. It’s about sleeping next to the ice princess night after night. Can you blame me for wondering? If you were…it would almost make sense.”

“You know how I feel about that lifestyle.” She slammed the bathroom cabinets in search of a night cream she’d never find.

“Yeah, you’ve made it the centerpiece of your campaign.”

Robin didn’t hear the tone of suspicion in his voice. She was too caught up in concocting plans for damage control, weighing and analyzing all of her options.

“Yes,” she answered flatly. “That’s why they want to use this salacious, fabricated scandal to bring me down. How ironic: the God-fearing woman is really a queer! Come on, Tom. Isn’t it obvious? It’s not even creative.”

She had a point. “So what are you going to do?” he asked.

“I don’t know yet.”

* * *

In the early morning hours, when Tom was snoring violently due to a deviated septum, Robin gingerly pulled back the covers and climbed out of bed. She hadn’t closed her eyes all night. Rather than waste time sleeping, she tiptoed downstairs to the library, anxious to see the news reports, to hear what they were saying about her. She checked her phone, then the TV, flipping through channel after channel, hearing the same recycled speculation. Apparently, Adrienne had made an off-handed comment to a reporter in Boston, where she now lived, and the reporter had run with it. No one had since questioned her further. But her name was now all over the news. Robin couldn’t find any new information, only the same outrageous story being told a hundred different ways: “Rock musician Adrienne Austen claims she had a lesbian affair with the governor when they were in college. The GOP isn’t likely to nominate their front-runner now.”