Sisterland (25 page)

“No,” I said. “I think I will.”

“So I get off the phone with some dude at a newspaper in Longview, Washington, and I’m thinking, how weird is it that someone from the state of Washington even cares about an earthquake in St. Louis? And then I check my messages, and the state of Washington is the least of it. And while I’m listening to all these voice mails, I hear a knock on my door, and it’s a guy from the
Post-Dispatch
, and while I’m talking to him, a van
shows up from Fox. I already can’t remember what I said to which person.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t talk to any more reporters.” I didn’t tell her there had been one at our house, too, also from the
Post-Dispatch
, a girl lurking by the driveway when we returned from the Wheelings’ whom I didn’t recognize as a reporter because she looked about sixteen. After she introduced herself, when I did understand, I pushed past her and brusquely said, “No comment.” I’d been surprised, though, when I peeked outside a few minutes later, that she was gone.

“It’s not like I’m hawking salad choppers,” Vi was saying. “I’m trying to warn people so they can protect themselves.”

“What if you come over here tonight?” I didn’t want her in my house; I didn’t want her to infect my children with the germs of public exposure, the antipathy of strangers. And it wasn’t entirely true that she wasn’t selling anything—as she’d mentioned to me before her
Today
interview, she’d be happy to generate new business. But nothing good could come of Vi hanging out by herself at home, accessible to anyone. I said, “Hank knows a publicist he thinks could help you, a woman he went to college with. How about if we get in touch with her before you talk to anyone else in the media?”

“And I just don’t call back the
Washington Post
or the L.A.
Times
?”

“Yeah,” I said. “For now.”

“A publicist probably charges a million bucks.”

“Hank said there might be ways for you to make money off this.” I couldn’t bring myself to specify what the ways were. I said, “If Jeremy drives over right now, will you just promise me you won’t talk to more reporters before he gets there? I’m not saying you shouldn’t at all, but we need to come up with a plan. I’ll call Hank and get the publicist’s number. She’s in L.A., so she might still be at work.”

“Hold on,” Vi said. “My doorbell is ringing.”

“Don’t answer it!”

She laughed. “What are you so scared of?”

Besides the potential for mass hysteria? The professional humiliation
for Jeremy? The official destruction of our friendship with the Wheelings? “What’s to be gained by doing all these interviews?” I said. “Your prediction is out there. It’s all over the Internet, too, in case you don’t know. But you’ve said what you have to say, and aren’t you just repeating yourself now?”

She was silent for a few seconds, long enough that it didn’t seem unreasonable to hope I’d persuaded her, but when she spoke, she sounded peevish. “Guardian told me to warn people.”

I said nothing—wasn’t the deal we had that if she invoked Guardian around me very infrequently, I would be respectful when she did?—and she added, “I know you think I want attention. And maybe compared to you, I do. It’s not my goal to be invisible. But that isn’t what this is about.”

“Just stay where you are,” I said. “Jeremy will be there in ten minutes.”

While I’d been
on the phone, Jeremy had begun giving dinner to Rosie and Owen, and as I returned the receiver to its cradle in the kitchen, I said, “How about if we switch and you go get Vi and bring her back here?”

He looked less than thrilled.

“Otherwise, she’ll keep talking to reporters,” I said. “They’re knocking on her door and calling nonstop.”

“Are you thinking she’d spend the night here?”

“Maybe.” Our eyes met.

“I’ll go get her,” Jeremy said. “But it’s not your job to save her from herself. She’s her own person.”

Not really
, I thought.
Not entirely
.

And he could tell this was what I was thinking, evidently, because he said, “I’m not talking about when you were embryos. I’m talking about now.” He passed me the spoon he was using to feed Owen sweet potatoes, and as he walked out of the kitchen, I called, “Thank you.”

I texted Hank
then, to ask if he’d had a chance to contact the publicist, and he called and said, “I’m forwarding her email to you right now, and she said she’s happy to help however she can.”

“Did she say how much she charges?”

“You can read her email, but it would be about fifteen thousand to have her on retainer for the next few weeks.”

“Fifteen
thousand
?” I knew I sounded like a rube, but it was hard to conceal my shock.

“She’s good, Kate. I trust her completely. And I think that’s the going rate for people at her level.”

I had two thoughts then, and the first was that one or both of the Wheelings had to have family money. Because they never seemed worried about it, but even when he’d been an art teacher, before Amelia was born, Hank couldn’t have made much more than I had at the elder-care agency. My second thought was that I wished Hank would come over to our house because I was pretty sure he’d be better than I would at persuading both Vi and Jeremy that Emma would be worth the expense. But even if things weren’t tense between Courtney and me, this would be an inappropriate favor to ask in light of her pregnancy. I needed to let Hank stay home.

When Jeremy returned with Vi, it emerged that in addition to the various reporters I already knew she’d granted post-nap interviews to, she’d spoken to people at newspapers in Naples, Florida; Richmond, Virginia; and Wellington, New Zealand. She mentioned this with what I felt was increasingly disingenuous surprise that all these journalists were interested in
her
, and she did not acknowledge the request I’d made for her to stop; it was possible, however, that she’d talked to the reporters before our conversation. “Oh, and good news.” She grinned. “Patrick says he’ll be my publicist for free.” Given that Patrick was a manager at Crate & Barrel, this was not encouraging. “Can I have a beer?” Vi asked. As she headed toward the kitchen, she called over her shoulder, “Either of you want one?”

In the living room, Rosie had just yanked a dump truck out of Owen’s hands. I whispered to Jeremy, “We’re about to call this publicist Hank gave me the name of, but she costs fifteen thousand dollars. Can we pay for it?”

Jeremy looked faintly amused, as if I were joking.

“I know it’s a lot,” I said, “but things are getting out of control.”

His expression changed—he was registering my desperation, which was not the same as agreeing to my request—and then Vi was back in the living room. “Let’s call the publicist,” I said. “Her name’s Emma, and Hank said she’s really great. And”—my face was burning even before I said it; surely this was the worst act of manipulation I’d committed in my marriage—“she’s kind of expensive, you were right about that, but Jeremy and I want to pay for her because it just seems worth it.” Feeling Jeremy’s angry surprise (it did not billow from him, as with smoke, but rather was laserlike in its precise focus on me), I added, “After you’re flooded with new clients, you can pay us back.” She would never pay us back, I knew, and I would never try to get her to, but perhaps the suggestion would assuage Jeremy.

I didn’t dare make eye contact with him as I retrieved the phone from the kitchen and pressed the number from Hank’s email. “Emma Hall PR,” said a female voice, and I said, “It’s Kate Tucker, Hank Wheeling’s friend. I think he told you my sister and I—?”

“Emma’s out of the office, but let me check if I can find her,” the voice said—of course she wasn’t Emma Hall; of course a publicist in L.A. had an assistant—and after a silence, she said, “Putting you through to Emma Hall.”

Emma Hall was driving, possibly with her windows down, and she was also British, which Hank hadn’t mentioned, and the combination of the rushing air, the fact that I’d put her on speakerphone, and her accent made her hard to understand; I needed to hear an entire sentence before I could decipher it. Also, one of the first things she said was “Isn’t Hank the best? And Courtney, too, I love them both. I’ve always fancied the idea of a trip out to Kansas City to see them.” But I liked everything else about her: She was friendly and confident and not condescending, she had already watched the clip of Vi on
Today
, she complimented the shirt Vi had worn, meaning she complimented my shirt, and when I said, “We just want to make sure we know what it is a publicist does,” Emma laughed and said, “Right, what a great question.”

All media queries would go through her, she said; if journalists contacted
Vi directly, Vi would forward their number or their email to Emma, and Emma would be the one to respond. She said she’d decline most requests, which alone made me want to hire her. “Once you’ve done the
Today
show, there’s no reason to talk to the
Bumblefuck Gazette
,” she said, and as I confirmed to myself that yes, in her elegant voice, she had indeed just said
Bumblefuck
, she was already moving on. “And we can think about what your goals are, Violet, what image you want to project, so you’re not simply being reactive.”

“I want to get the word out so people can take precautions.”

“Absolutely, absolutely,” Emma said, and I had the distinct impression that she’d encountered people like Vi before—sincerely altruistic, but not completely so.

“And I don’t want to seem like a nut job,” Vi added. “I want people to know I don’t stand to gain from this.”

Emma asked if Vi had a website, and when Vi said no, Emma said, “Then that’s the first order of business. I’ll have my assistant get cracking on this the minute we hang up, on securing the URL and setting up something rudimentary for now. What I’d like you to do, tonight even, is write a personal statement. Something brief, one paragraph or so, about who you are and how your prediction came to you. Just very plain language. Nothing fancy.”

“Would you come to St. Louis or handle things from there?” I asked, and Emma said, “Well, that depends.” Then she said laughingly, “And I said Kansas City before, didn’t I, when you don’t live in Kansas City at all? And you were too polite to correct me. Shame on me!”

There was never a moment when we officially agreed to work together; by the time I told her that I’d be handling payment and that I was taking her off speakerphone so she and I could square it away, it seemed we’d all already decided. Vi was still right next to me, and because I didn’t want her to hear me say the number, I said to Emma, “The fee you mentioned in your email to Hank—”

“Fifteen thousand for thirty days.” Emma did not seem at all embarrassed. “Plus travel expenses and accommodations in the event of my visiting St. Louis.”

I felt a swirl of nausea in my stomach. “And we’d pay that up front or in installments?”

“Half now and the second half after two weeks.”

“So for the first part, I’d wire it to you, or write a check—?”

“As you prefer,” she said. “I trust you, of course, Kate. Any friend of Hank and Courtney’s …”

I was aware that at some point, Jeremy had collected Rosie and Owen and taken them upstairs, though until I hung up the phone, I didn’t entirely attend to this fact.

“I thought you were just trying to censor me, but she sounds awesome,” Vi said. “You really won’t tell me how much she costs?”

“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” Was Jeremy merely annoyed or outright furious? Either way, it wouldn’t improve matters if Vi knew that I hadn’t gotten his blessing.

“More or less than a thousand?”

“We’re finished talking about this,” I said.

“More, huh?” Vi raised her eyebrows. “Thanks, Daze. What does Courtney Wheeling think of their friend helping me spread my witchy message?”

As if I hadn’t wondered the same thing, I said, “She’s preoccupied with other stuff right now.”

Vi looked at me intently. “She didn’t miscarry, did she?”

If Courtney planned to terminate, it probably was better for my sister to believe Courtney had miscarried. But it also felt wrong to say she had while she was still pregnant. “Don’t ask me that,” I said.

“Yikes,” Vi said. “You think it was because she wasn’t eating enough?”

“Courtney eats. She’s just thin.”

“You know, I still haven’t watched myself on
Today
,” Vi said. “Have you?”

Didn’t I need to go upstairs and nurse Owen before he went to sleep? And I always put him down for bed, too. But maybe I’d let Jeremy handle tonight, I thought. Owen had polished off an unprecedented two jars of sweet potatoes at dinner, and anyway, it wasn’t like he wouldn’t wake up to eat again in three hours. “I’ve watched it, but I’ll watch again,” I said. To
my surprise, it had calmed me to watch online with Hank; the knowledge of Vi having been on
Today
was the opposite of calming, but seeing the segment itself, I’d been reminded of how well she’d come off.

Vi and I sat next to each other on the couch, Jeremy’s laptop resting half on my left thigh and half on Vi’s right one. “My hair looks awesome,” Vi said. “Good job. But holy shit, do I really have three chins?”