The First Affair (10 page)

She reached over to break the edge off my cookie. “Has she said anything to you about Peter?”

“No, why?”

“Oh, nothing.” She swirled the straw through her iced tea. “It’s just that she doesn’t have the greatest track record and she won’t even let us meet him.”

“You can’t really judge her life now based on before.” I took a bite of salad. “She seems fine.”

She nodded down at the plastic cup. “No, you’re right.” Looking up, she reached across the Formica to squeeze my hand. “Thank God for you. If I’d had two girls like your dad. . . .”

“You think she’s like him?” I asked, a little taken aback. “I mean aside from the obvious.”

“Are you kidding? That’s why they rile each other up.” She took more of the cookie. “I’m just grateful you focused on the scholarship, waited until college to date—you’re on the pill, right?”

“Mom!”

“Look, I’d rather you were a bad Catholic than a good mother right now.” I smiled as she glanced at her watch. “Your dad’ll be here any second.”

“How’s he doing with this Baker thing?”

She didn’t answer.

“Erica thinks he needs to accept responsibility,” I paraphrased her.

Mom’s eyes flashed. “Does she now? He has been sober for eight years. Enough said.”

“Okay.” I put down my fork, thinking of those nights he wove into the house, the time he fell asleep in the flower bed, not sure how she was calculating that. “I’ll need to get going soon.”

She dropped her hands on the table. “Really? They’re not paying you.”

“No one at my office sees their families. And they
are
paid. I’m sorry,” I said, even as I saw a slide show of school auditoriums full of parent audiences that didn’t contain her. “It’s just that there are no jobs out there right now—”

“You’re smart. You’ll find something—” She stopped herself, spotting Dad making his way across the grand hall. “Don’t talk about the job stuff, okay? I don’t want him to have to worry about you.”

• • •

That night we waited with what felt like all of humanity for clearance to the White House lawn. “Oh my God, am I late? I’m totally late,” Rachelle answered her own question as she squeezed in where we were shuffling toward the metal detectors. “They’ve closed off
everything,
but I mean
everything.
” As she spoke, she kissed my parents’ cheeks, and even Erica’s, blowing right past Erica’s recoil. “How long have you been standing here?” I admired how at ease she was.

“Not long,” Mom lied.

“We really hoofed it today,” Dad said with crossed arms and a set brow.

“And I never properly rehydrated after my run,” Erica added.

I pulled my ID and ticket out and they followed suit. “This—this—” Rachelle looked through the fence, where we could see the stage draped in bunting, the building majestically lit.

“Is the single greatest place to celebrate July Fourth, unless you own Macy’s,” I finished, and she grinned and squeezed my hand.

“Miss, your face.” A security guard instructed Erica to remove her sunglasses.

She looked up for him, squinting against the sunset. As soon as he cleared her, she put them back on.

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Erica,” Dad scoffed.

“I’m taking care of myself—”

“So, here we are,” I cut in, tipping up onto my toes to try to see what—if anything—was happening on the stage. “Where I work,” I couldn’t help adding, because the tickets I could have traded for a kidney were being treated like something they showed up for as a favor.

“Stop being such a—”

“A what, Dad?” she baited him, all of us shuffling forward on the crowd’s heels.

“Erica, let it go,” I implored.

“No.”

“Fucking princess.” Just as he said it, he was pushed so hard by someone trying to get through that he teetered off balance.

“Jim.” Mom grabbed his arm before turning to me. “Can he sit down?” she asked.

I pointlessly looked in the free inches to my left and right for a chair.

“I bet there might be something at the comfort station,” Rachelle suggested, pretending she wasn’t standing in the middle of whatever this was with my family. I shot her a look of gratitude as it occurred to me that in the same situation Lena would have just clammed up, adding an extra frosting of awkwardness. “I’ll go check. Be right back!”

“I’m fine,” Dad said as she elbowed away. “My knee is fine.”

“What’s wrong with your knee?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“It’s been acting up,” Mom explained.

“Getting help isn’t being a princess,” Erica, stewing, shot back at him. “Knowing your boundaries isn’t being a princess. We can’t all be tough Irish fuckers, or whatever you call yourself.” Mom tried to take her hand. It was Freshman Weekend all over again. Except this time Erica was ruining it in person.

Suddenly the crowd rippled as the Secret Service cut a path for the President, clipping ropes up with the speed of FoxConn employees. We stepped back off the red carpet I didn’t even realize we’d been
standing on, our toes on the edge as Greg made his way toward us in his khakis, shaking hands, slapping backs, Susan right behind him, her hair twisted up smartly against the heat. I was stunned—I’d had no idea he’d be walking the lawn, and I instinctively shrank a little behind Erica, my face turned to the ground.

“Jamie!” I looked up, taking in his delight. Susan moved on to greet the Majority Leader’s wife. “Are these your parents?” the President asked of the gobsmacked people on either side of me.

“Y-yes. Mom—Betsy McAlister, James McAlister, this is—”

“Gregory Rutland, great to meet you.” He pumped their hands while they stared at him, speechless.

“And this is my sister, Erica,” I added as she whipped off her shades.

“Lights give you a headache?” he asked.

“Yes,” she almost whispered as if she were hearing from a psychic.

“Susan, too. She wears tinted contacts to get through these things.” He turned his attention back on my parents. “Your daughter was a real trouper during the furlough. Couldn’t have pulled through without her.”

My parents didn’t seem to understand his language.

“All the interns,” he added. “They were our cannon fodder. Heroic.”

“You having fun, sir?” someone to my left asked, thrusting out a photograph for Greg to sign.

“Nothing better than celebrating our nation’s independence. On nights like tonight it’s always good to see friendly faces”—he glanced at me as he handed back the autograph—“amid not-so-friendly faces.” He tossed his head in the direction of the Majority Leader, who was making his way up the line with Ronald, but I will always think he privately meant Susan. Everyone laughed. “Well, enjoy the fireworks.”

He moved on.

My parents turned to me.
“The President knows your name?”
Mom asked when he was out of earshot.

I watched his broad back as he worked the crowd. I could feel the electric jolt of his hand slipping between my legs, and my name felt
like the least of what he knew. “Well, there weren’t very many of us here during the furlough and—you know—politicians are good with names.” With remembering what’s important to people.

“Jamie,” Mom marveled, looking younger from the thrill. Basking in her full attention, I beamed.

“I don’t like him.” I heard the words, but still had to turn to confirm it was Dad’s voice and not one of the “unfriendly faces.”

“What?” I asked.

“I don’t like him. In person. He was . . .” He struggled, his face darkening. “Glib. Politician-y. I—”

“Okay, this is a migraine,” Erica announced, cutting him off. “I’m going back to the apartment.”

“I’m with you,” Dad agreed. He turned to follow her toward the exit. And I realized Mom was right: ultimately they
were
the same, leaving me and Mom to be the other pair, but we were just—not. With an apologetic look over her shoulder, Mom, confused, followed them, quickly swallowed into the crush.

No one suggested one of them stay with me. No one asked if I was coming.

I remember feeling momentarily suspended as the sky bruised black, my inhale trapped, ribs flared, lips parted.

Then I was moving before I realized I was moving. Aggressively elbowing my way in an arc to wriggle into a spot down the line. “Excuse me, pardon me, forgive me.” I made a few inches where there were none, anger abutting me, the velvet pressed against my hips. But I didn’t care. He spotted me, his face shrinking as he saw my watering eyes, and he hugged me.

He hugged me.

Chapter Five

July 12

Over the next week I had to bully myself to leave the vicinity of Gail’s landline for anywhere other than the office, living to get back inside those seconds in which I sought rescue and for once in my life found it waiting. For Rachelle, I framed my hermit status—not untruthfully—as a budget issue. But there was no arguing when she showed up Sunday morning, sucking her third iced espresso, her Groupon app loaded with Chinatown mani/pedis. Dressed in a vintage Vivienne Tam Mao-in-pigtails minidress, she followed me around the apartment as I reluctantly collected myself, making little “let’sgo-let’sgo-let’sgo” claps.

Matt McGeehan had swung through town. The previous night she’d been stunned to run into him at a cocktail party she’d expected to be tedious. Instead, they talked for
hours
before he’d had to leave with friends. But he’d suggested they meet for coffee before he went to the airport, and the possibility that he really meant “coffee” necessitated emergency full-body grooming—“So find your other fucking flip-flop and let’s GO already.”

It was one of those thickly wet days where you felt trapped in a water balloon simmering in the sun. Plus, we weren’t the only ones trying to cash in, so the tiny unair-conditioned salon was packed with girls dissecting their big weekend dates—those accomplished and those they still hoped to make happen. It was torturous to sit silent among all that strategizing chatter and not stand in my bucket and beseech, “Help! The President of the United States grabbed me—I know,
me!
—now what?!”

“I’m going to wear my eyelet sundress with a great bra peeking
through. Nude lips, bronzer . . .” Rachelle planned her Look, as she would call it. I used to tease her that I was going to pull her building’s alarm one night just to see what she’d wear to the street. But I loved her for her costumes, and more so for what they revealed about her sense of the ever-present opportunities awaiting. Her favorite story was about Jerry Hall, from Nowhere, Texas, who used her pageant money to get to the coast of France. Once there, Jerry put on her bikini, curled her hair, threw on platform heels, and went to the beach proclaiming, “I am getting discovered today!” And she promptly was. Rachelle was perpetually straightening her hair and proclaiming her intention to succeed.

“But
where
is this sex actually going to happen?” Rachelle, test-running her pending date, had arrived at The Deed. “My roommate’s random-ass acquaintance from Semester at Sea is crashing. Plus this girl’s—and I use the term loosely—boyfriend is lying in the middle of my living room like a downed elephant. She said depression, but he’s so obviously sleeping something off. He has this smell—just stale—like socks on a road trip with the windows rolled up. Maybe if I smoke on the walk back? It would at least fill Matt’s nostrils while we get to my room. I was going to leave a candle burning, but that seemed, like, trying. And dangerous. Oh my God, you are so lucky to live alone. You can do
anything
at your place. I can’t even imagine.”

My anything consisted of a singular activity: phone-staring. At the nail parlor, surrounded by estrogen being channeled into finding/getting/keeping The Guy, I panicked that I should be doing
so much more
.

“The way he hugged me last night was just so . . . it went on that second too long, you know?”

I felt a wave of déjà vu—junior high school, sitting on the dog-haired carpet of someone’s den, the same smell of polish remover making me light-headed as I forced myself to refrain from talking about Mike. “Um-hmm.” I focused on flipping through the week’s
People
, slick from drying oil.

“I can’t just ask Matt to come back to my place. Unless he
wants
me to ask him because he’s too afraid to put it out there.” She snapped
her fingers. “Maybe I’ll offer him a cigarette, steer him in the direction of my apartment . . .”

And suddenly I was facing the photo I’d been turning away from all week, the White House silhouetted, fireworks illuminating their faces. Greg, one arm around Susan, the other around their sixteen-year-old daughter, Alison. Their seventeen-year-old son, Adam, laughing, the little lines around his eyes just like Greg’s—

“Matt’s ex was a total bitch. She wore this perfume handmade on a farm in Italy—
that
girl.”

I looked around for somewhere, anywhere, to toss the magazine. Instead I flipped it over on my lap and put my bag on top as if to smother the intruding reality. I turned to Rachelle, mouth open to tell her. “I . . .”

Deeply immersed in her possibilities, her brown eyes returned my intense gaze. “Sky.”

“What?”

“Sky Hoppey. She and Matt were together for junior and senior year. Forever. But every time we talked, there was always such a
thing
there. Matt looked content with her, I’m not an idiot, but with me he looks . . . intrigued. Don’t you think that means something?” God, I wanted it to.

But then I felt the pages adhere to my sweaty thighs, afraid the image would be transferred onto my skin like a Cracker Jack tattoo. “Don’t you?” Rachelle repeated urgently, lifting her freshly depilitated brows as the balloon popped outside and heavy drops spattered the street.

I honestly didn’t know what I thought—for either of us. “Of course.”

• • •

Half an hour later, I made a sloshy beeline to my bathroom, the remnants of sodden tissue still between my toes. Shivering, I twisted on the hot water and was just peeling off my shorts when I heard the ringing. I flat-out ran.

“Hello?”