Mrs. Everything (59 page)

When Lester’s misdeeds had finally been exposed beyond all reasonable doubt, he’d released a combative statement that proclaimed his innocence and announced his retirement. Missy, as promised, inherited the keys to Lester’s kingdom, and all of his surviving authors, but it was as if she’d sat down at a banquet of rotten fruit and spoiled meat. She’d be forever tainted by her association and her loyalty. Last year, one of her authors had won
the National Book Award. At the awards dinner, Missy, the author, and the author’s husband had been seated all by themselves at a table for ten.

“Missy,” Jo said. “How are you?”

“Okay. You know. Hanging in there.” Missy sighed and shook her curls. A shaft of sunlight pierced the room, illuminating a wedge of Missy’s cheek, a single eyebrow, one brown eye.

“Are you going to beat yourself up forever?” Jo asked. “Because I’m not going to be able to enjoy the afterlife if I know you’re down here suffering.”

Another sigh, another shrug. “How can I forgive myself?” Missy’s voice was loud and anguished. “I knew. Or at least I suspected. And I looked the other way, because I liked my job, and I liked him. Do you know what I told myself?” Without waiting for her mother to answer, she said, “I’d say that all geniuses are flawed. Some of them drink, and some of them beat their wives, and if all Lester does is, you know, grab the occasional intern, on the grand scale of things, that isn’t so bad.” She rubbed her hands on the sides of her pants. “And when those women would go to hotels so Lester could edit them, I’d think they were dummies. I’d think, What do they expect to happen with a man in a hotel room?” She gave a short bark of laughter. “Some feminist you raised. The only woman I was looking out for was me.”

“So you made a mistake.” Jo wanted to tell Melissa more. She wished she’d spent more time teaching her girls that women should forgive themselves, showing them how to take care of themselves with kindness. The world was hard enough, would beat them up enough without them adding to the pain.

Missy was pacing now, her heels loud on the wooden floors. “You know that thing you used to tell us? That quote about how all it took for evil to flourish was for good men to stand by and do nothing?” Missy asked. Jo nodded. “That was me. A good person who stood by and did nothing.” Missy’s voice cracked. “A good person who stood by while her sister got hurt.”

“So you’ll do better.”

Missy stopped, mid-pace, and hung her head.

“You can’t fix anything that happened. You just have to try to do better from now on.”

“I know.” Missy smoothed her hair, untangled an earring from a curl. “I know.”

Jo heard the door bang open and raised voices and footsteps approaching quickly.
Here we go
, she thought, gathering what strength she had. And finally, there was Lila, her baby, tanned and glamorous in peep-toe booties and bubblegum-pink lipstick. A short, sheer dress of pleated beige linen skimmed the tops of her knees, and aviator sunglasses hid her eyes. Jo felt herself exhale, felt the taut muscles of her back and shoulders unwinding. When she’d asked Bethie for this one last thing—the thing she wanted most, one last chance to talk to Lila—her sister had promised to try to track down Lila, but Jo hadn’t been optimistic.

Lila was based in New York, at least nominally, but she’d spend months away, visiting points unknown, with traveling companions her family never met. For a while, Jo and Kim and Missy had been able to keep track of Lila by her social media accounts. Lila would post pictures of herself at a beach in Mexico, or she’d snap a shot of herself on a roof, and Kim or Missy would recognize one of the buildings in the background, or she’d show up in Atlanta, on Aunt Bethie’s doorstep, and stay with Bethie and Harold for a week or two. Sometimes Lila took Jo’s calls or returned her texts. More often, both were met with silence. Lila was angry. She was angry at Missy for not believing her about Lester Shaub; angry at Kim for kicking her out of her cushy au pair gig, for tattling to Jo about that sugardaddy website, and for taking Missy’s side; angry at Jo for a list of sins too long for Jo to even remember most of the time. Leaving Dave, that was one, even though Dave had been the one who’d left her. Leaving their neighborhood—again, Dave’s fault, but Lila couldn’t see it. Finding Shelley and making a life with her. Jo would have to own that one. Not taking Lila’s side against her sisters; not letting her live
at home indefinitely, not giving her money, or the car keys when she asked, kicking her out when Shelley discovered that Lila had swiped the Percocet that Jo had been prescribed after her mastectomy. “Who does that?” Shelley had demanded, and Lila had pouted, standing hipshot at the front door, and said, “Someone who figured out she can sell them for twenty bucks apiece.” Lila was angry, and if Lila did not want to be found, there’d be no finding her. Jo had prayed that her sister’s money and connection to her youngest daughter could work some magic, and that she’d be able to say goodbye to Lila, to send her on her way with some advice, or at least the knowledge that her mother loved her and always had. She was leaving Lila her estate, such as it was, the money she’d saved and the money she’d invested over the years. Kim and Missy would administer the trust fund. Jo knew that Lila would be furious when she found that out. “I know how to handle money! I don’t need a babysitter!” Jo could hear her shriek, but handing her youngest daughter a pile of cash, all at once, would surely end in disaster.

Lila swept across the floor, tall and glamorous, smelling like perfume and strong mouthwash, as if no more than a week had elapsed since they’d last seen each other, as if Lila had spent the last weeks and months taking Jo to her doctors’ appointments and visiting her in the hospital, rubbing her back and moving the heating pads and offering her sips of water from the bendy straw, as devoted a daughter as Jo could wish.

“Hi, Mom,” she said, bending down to kiss Jo’s cheek, and, finally, Jo started to cry.

*  *  *

“So what do you think?” It was nine o’clock at night. Outside, the Atlanta sky was dark velvet. Jo could hear crickets chirping and cicadas humming, and the faint murmur of the air conditioner that kept the temperature bearable.

“About what?” Her voice was slow and slurred.

“Your youngest.” Shelley had climbed into bed with Jo, had
tucked her body around Jo’s, and was holding Jo’s hand. “You know there’s something going on.”

“I’m just glad she’s here.” Jo knew that Shelley was right. There was always some drama with Lila, and this would be no exception, but Jo had just taken one of her pills. Her body felt deliciously ethereal; the world and its troubles seemed very far away. “She’ll tell us when she’s ready.”

“You mean when it’ll make the most impact,” Shelley said.

“Or then.” Jo adjusted herself against the warmth of Shelley’s body. “I’ll bet you’re glad that you didn’t have kids.”

Shelley gave a dramatic shudder. “Yours have been plenty, thank you very much.” Smiling, Jo squeezed her beloved’s hands.

“Whatever it is, we’ll manage it,” Shelley said. “Me, and the girls, and your sister.”

Jo nodded. She was tired, so tired, and soon she’d be beyond help and beyond care. All she could do now was hope. She hoped that Kim would stop hating herself for leaving her husband, for wanting to be free. She hoped that Matt would be a good father to his girls. She hoped that Melissa would forgive herself. She hoped that Lila would find her way, somehow. She hoped that things had changed, but she knew that they hadn’t changed enough. All the demonstrations, all the consciousness-raising, all the protests, all the pickets, all the books she’d read, all the conversations she’d had, all the ballots she’d cast, all the
work
and here they were, still.

The door opened, admitting a spill of warm light onto the floor. Lila, barefoot, bare-legged, dressed in a T-shirt, with her face scrubbed clean and her hair pulled up in a messy topknot on her head, came traipsing into the room. Without a word, she padded across the carpet and perched on the edge of the bed, for once not acting disgusted that Jo and Shelley were in there together. Shelley got to her feet and looked at Lila with a narrow, suspicious expression. Jo didn’t know what her own face looked like. She couldn’t really feel it, or much of anything else.

“Mommy,” said Lila, who’d quit calling Jo
Mommy
at some
point around her third birthday. Her lower lip quivered as she stared at the floor.

“What, honey?”

“I need to tell you something.”

Jo could picture Shelley rolling her eyes, thinking,
Here we go again
. “Okay.”

“I’m pregnant.” Even with her head sunk deep into down pillows, Jo could hear—or imagine—Shelley’s snort. She could picture Shelley’s disgusted expression, and knew that this was probably exactly what Shelley expected from Lila.

“Are you going to have the baby?” Her voice was a whisper.

“I think so,” Lila whispered back. She shook her head, and said, “Honestly, after I found out, the first thing I thought was that it’s not like I’ve got anything else to do.”

“Is this what you want?” she asked.

Lila nodded immediately. “It is. Really. I think it’s all I’ve ever wanted. I was a good babysitter, remember?”

Jo nodded. Questions were occurring: Where would Lila live? How would she support herself? Did Lila know the baby’s father, and would he be part of things?

“I know I’ve messed up a lot, but this is what I want. I’m going to be a good mother.” Jo heard Lila’s voice catch. “I’m going to make you proud. And Aunt Bethie said I can stay here. Me and the baby. She said she’ll find me a job at Blue Hill Farm, if I want one, when I’m ready. She said . . .”

“. . . that I owe you one.” Bethie stepped into the room and put her hands on Lila’s shoulders, keeping her eyes on Jo’s face. She’d changed her hair again, letting the gray grow in, and she wore it loose, down past her shoulders, the way it had been back in the 1960s.

We tried so hard,
Jo thought. On the television screen, Hillary Clinton raised her face, smiling, as a thousand silver balloons came pouring from the ceiling. They’d tried so hard, and come so far, and still, there were miles and miles left to go, a whole journey that she’d miss.

“Take care.” Jo hoped they all could hear what she meant. To Bethie: Take care of my girls. To Lila: Take care of yourself, and your baby. To Kim and Melissa: Take care of yourselves, take care of each other, be as good as I know you can be. To Shelley, I will always love you. I am sorry for all the years we missed, but glad for all the years we had. She could feel the darkness pulling at her, caramel-thick, candy-sweet, a cocooning, velvety silence . . . and faintly, from somewhere, the baby crying, and Lila’s voice singing “Hush, little baby, don’t say a word.”
Oh
, Jo thought.
So that’s who you are
.

*  *  *

She woke, and slept, and woke again, weeping, moaning in pain, saying,
Oh, Shelley, I’m sorry, make it stop, it hurts, it hurts so much. Shh, shh
, Shelley soothed her, and then there was a prick in the crook of her arm as someone gave her a shot. Time expanded and contracted, like a balloon being blown up, deflated, and blown up again. When she woke up in the morning, the tears had dried to a filigree of salt on her cheeks. On TV, Hillary Clinton, in a white pantsuit, was standing at the center of a stage, to the sound of cheers so loud that Jo imagined the building must have been shaking. The camera panned through the audience, picking out the faces of women her age. Some of them were crying.
Look
, Jo tried to say, but no one heard her.
Look what we did.

“Mom.”

Jo looked up at Lila.
It won’t be long now
, she thought.
Hurry up please it’s time.

She closed her eyes . . . and then she was back in her bedroom, in the house on Alhambra Street. They’d just moved in, and her mom and dad were so excited! This was their step up in the world, the American Dream, and Sarah had let Jo wear her favorite pants and her most comfortable shirt instead of a dress, because pants were what Jo wanted. Jo’s feet were bare, and she knew she could run around and shout as loud as she wanted. No one would get mad. Her mother would make Jo’s favorite
chicken for dinner, and Mae would come, to bake corn bread and sing along to the radio. Frieda would be there to play Cowboys and Indians with her, and at night her little sister would look at her, wide-eyed and excited and a little afraid in the new bedroom of the new house. Jo had promised to tell her a story. “But not too scary,” Bethie had whispered, and Jo said, “No, not too scary, I promise.” She loved her mom, she loved her dad, she loved her little sister. She wanted to make them happy and proud. She thought of dragons and princes and towers surrounded by thorns, of brave girls and happy endings. “Once upon a time,” she began.

2022

Bethie

W
hat’s the name of this place?” Tim asked Bethie, taking his fingers out of his mouth long enough to ask the question, then popping them right back in.
Tiny Tim
, Lila called him, even though he wasn’t tiny anymore and was getting too big to be carried, although he would still shout
God bless us every one
in his best cockney accent, if his mama asked him nicely.