Whatever show tune she’d been playing stopped. “Maybe there’s more to Mom’s story than you realize.”
“Like what?”
“It’s not my place to tell you.”
Another power play. Holly had the goods and I never would. So I took the plunge, trying to sound world-weary and in the loop. “Are you talking about Mom’s affair?”
There was a most satisfying gasp at the other end. “You knew? When did you find out?”
“I’ve always known. I sensed it. Call it intuition. I didn’t need anyone to spell it out for me.” Only the perpetrator himself, shocking me to the core at the Knights of Columbus Hall.
“You couldn’t always have known! I only found out the night before my wedding.”
Wait. What?
“Mom told me. Well, not in so many words. She came to my room and sat on the edge of the bed. You know what a goody-goody she was. I thought it was going to be the honeymoon talk. So I said, ‘Ma. C’mon. You think Doug and I have never done it?’ She looked puzzled, so I said, ‘This isn’t about what to expect on my wedding night?’ She actually laughed. And it was like—I don’t know how to describe it—like there was this sophisticated woman sitting on my bed laughing at how clueless I was. About her.”
“Go on,” I whispered.
“This was after the rehearsal dinner, so she’d had a few drinks. She said, ‘Don’t make the same mistakes I made.’ I said, ‘What mistakes?’ She said, ‘There are temptations around every corner. It’s not worth the immediate gratification.’”
“Mom actually said ‘immediate gratification’?”
“Maybe not, but something like that—maybe ‘not worth the thrill.’ Plus, she was in her party clothes, looking flashier than usual. Do you remember that dress? It was a navy blue taffeta or something that rustled—”
“Holly! What else did she say?”
“That Dad was a wonderful man.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning he didn’t cheat on her. Or that she loved him even if she fooled around.”
“Or that she was sorry?”
“To me, it meant, ‘Your father isn’t capable of such a thing, but I am.’ Quite a thing to lay on your daughter the night before her wedding!”
“Did you ask her why she was telling you this?”
“No! I was so mad! I was getting married in, like, twenty hours. I needed my beauty sleep, and I get socked with that.”
And now I was the one being socked with new examples of my mother’s bad judgment, bad timing, unnecessary unburdening, and infidelity. “Did you ever ask her why?”
“Why she cheated or why she was confessing?”
“Both.”
“I tried the next morning, just the two of us in the breakfast nook. I said, ‘The stuff you told me last night—about temptation, about staying faithful to Doug—what were you really saying?’ She just cocked her head like she didn’t know what I was talking about. I said, ‘Don’t give me that look. You more or less told me you cheated on Dad. I need to know if your lover is going to be at my wedding.’ She said, ‘No, of course not.’”
And now Holly’s voice was all chummy. “But I have a theory.” She stopped there.
“Can I hear it?”
“You ready?”
I was, on one hand, entirely ready because I knew the answer, yet not ready because my sister would be guessing Peter Armstrong, so obvious from the podcast, and I’d have to confirm, deny, or plead ignorant.
But what I heard was “Lyman Roundtree.”
I repeated the name, laughing.
“Hear me out: the North American Scrabble Championship in Springfield? They drove there together.”
“So? They were colleagues.” Lyman Roundtree was a guidance counselor at Pickering High notable for the odd reason that he wore only brown suits, shoes, and ties, and had a very amateurish toupee. “What led you to that conclusion?”
“A letter I inherited.”
“Mom specifically left you a letter from Lyman Roundtree?”
“In a way. It was with her stuff—”
“What stuff?”
“Her photo albums. Her grading books. Cards and letters she kept.”
“We went through her stuff together. Why didn’t I see it?”
“I didn’t know what I had till I got everything home. You signed off on the albums because you thought it would be nice for my girls to have them. The rest looked like nothing.”
That was true. I remembered that gesture of mine, meant to seem auntly and altruistic, but it had more to do with the limited storage space in my apartment. “When did you find it?”
“What does that matter? At some point, when I was back home, I went through everything.”
“And you found a letter from Mr. Roundtree?”
“No. From his wife.”
“Saying what?”
“Saying, very angrily, leave him alone.”
“Holly, don’t you remember that his wife was crazy? She was in and out of a mental hospital. She thought every woman who ever talked to her husband was in love with him.”
“Why’d Mom keep the letter if the woman was crazy?”
“As evidence. It could be exhibit A in a court case if Mrs. Roundtree ever got sprung from the state hospital and came after Mom.”
“I think there’s something to it. I think he could’ve been the man Mom had an affair with.”
“That’s the best you can do—Lyman Roundtree? I’m almost offended on Mom’s behalf.”
“I think the whole idea of Mom’s cheating on Dad horrifies you. You don’t want to go near it.”
Hmmm. How to play this? I decided to plead guilty to protecting my innocent mother’s virtue. I said, “I think you’re right. I’m bending over backward to keep her memory . . . pure.”
“The podcast sure wants us to think she fooled around with some students. Do you also want to leave that unexplored?”
I said yes; to what end, what good, would it serve otherwise?
“Because if it’s true, Mom and Lyman Roundtree, it explains why she was fired.”
“She was never fired! She was teaching the whole time I was at Pickering High.”
“The union got it fixed. I can’t believe you didn’t know this.”
That again, the favorite/better-daughter competition. I couldn’t admit that I’d missed something so major, so I said, “It’s a little fuzzy, but now I remember Mom and Dad whispering about something job related.” I followed up that lie by asking who had fired her. Surely not Principal Maritch.
“The school board tried to fire her. In executive session.”
“You’re quite the authority on all things Mom.”
Her answer was a nonresponsive, overly breezy “I have another theory: Peter Armstrong.”
Uh-oh. “What makes you say that?”
“Dad getting arrested in his office? C’mon. Dad was angry at something. Does he live in Concord or still in Pickering?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“I’d like to talk to him.”
“Why? What possible good would that do anyone? And who’s going to admit to a daughter that he fooled around with her mother? If he’s the one.”
“I’d be fact-checking. I don’t want to get sued for reporting something that never happened—”
“Report to whom? What are you talking about?”
“It’s public knowledge now, Daff. Our mother’s love life has been turned into a podcast. Which reminds me: Weren’t you going to overnight the yearbook to me?”
I told her no, never. I had enough trouble getting it back into my possession. It was in a secure location, locked up.
“I’ll need it eventually. There’s a lot of research still to be done, and I want the original source.”
Had I not caught on yet? “To give to Doug’s lawyer friend?”
“No! For my project!”
After additional backs and forths, purposely vague on Holly’s part, increasingly agi
tated on mine, I finally got a concrete answer: My sister, who’d dropped out of law school specifically so she’d never have to pick up a pen again, thought she’d witnessed enough dysfunction and scandal to write a memoir.
30
Further Confusion
I’d sent Jeremy a purely informational email announcing a dinner at which I’d be telling my dad everything, laying my soul bare.
Jeremy called immediately even though it was 10:55 p.m. “I think I should be there,” he said.
“Do you mean now?”
“No, the dinner.”
“Why?”
“Can’t it just be for moral support?”
“A little late for that,” I said.
“Unfair and off topic. Deets, please, the when and the where.”
“My place, six o’clock, but—”
“I can do six.”
“On a Saturday? You don’t have tickets to a sold-out Broadway hit?”
“C’mon, Daff.”
“C’mon what?”
“You still sound pissed.”
I didn’t say, You’re right, I’m beyond pissed. How could you do this to us? What a bumpkin, what a romantic fool, thinking that fate and real estate were the things we’d be toasting at . . . Oh, never mind. What I did say was “Why should I be? I always knew our thing came with an expiration date.” Before he could answer, I pivoted to the dinner he wouldn’t be attending, asking, “Do you think I’ll need to play episodes of The Yearbook for my dad or just kinda outline them?”
“That’s your dinner party, playing the podcast? Without some kind of warning? You can’t just have a nice dinner?”
“No. Because if I don’t tell him, my sister will. She thinks it’s better if he gets a heads-up before the Concord Monitor and Union Leader call him for comment.”
“I’d be good at the warning part, as a neutral observer. I could signal: green light or red, play or don’t play.”
Why this persistence? I said, “I don’t need to add more awkwardness to what could already be the worst dinner party I ever throw.”
“Me, you mean? I’m the extra dose of awkward?”
“You know why? Because no father’s in a big hurry to meet his daughter’s ex–fuck buddy.”
There was silence at the other end. Do I wait or do I hang up? He settled that with an overly dignified response, gallant in the extreme but cold. “I’ll be sure to tell him I regret nothing except this.”
“Which is what?”
“The end of a friendship.”
“Not my fault.”
More uncharacteristic nothingness. Finally: “Well, good luck with your dinner party. I’m sure it’ll be great; I’m sure your dad will really appreciate knowing about the podcast. And here’s an idea: Invite Geneva. That’d make for a lively evening.”
He really had gone to the other side. I said, “I won’t dignify that with a response. For the record, I haven’t seen her since our vigil—you remember that, right? How you rushed from the set to keep me company in the emergency room in another lifetime? She must still be at her father’s. Maybe she died and they buried her on Long Island.”
Jeremy said, at last a note of charity detectable, “That doesn’t sound like the Daphne I know.”
“People change. And then they throw parties and don’t invite you. And next time they run into you, they give you back your key.”
“I don’t need—”
“And I want the yearbook, too.”
I didn’t actually care where that poisonous book was being housed, but what else did I have to repossess that would sound as finito? “Have I made this very clear: The dinner party will be fine. If you were there, I’d have to explain that we’re no longer seeing each other as . . . whatever we were.”
“Lovers,” said Jeremy before the line went dead.
Why did he have to use that word and pronounce it so solemnly?
On Saturday at exactly six, the doorman called to say that my guests had arrived and were on their way up. I opened my door to find three faces smiling at me.
“We just bumped into each other,” announced Jeremy, standing between my father and Kathi.
“Like when?”
“Just now,” said my dad. “He was leaving his apartment as we got off the elevator.”
“I bet.”
“Now, now,” said Jeremy. “Don’t be like that.”
“Jeremy thought I’d need his help tonight, but I said it wasn’t necessary,” I explained.
“I hope you’ll let me help,” said Kathi.
My lovestruck father added, “Nobody clears a table like this lady!”
I said, “Thank you, but I didn’t mean that kind of help.”
I was effectively blocking their entry, which prompted my father to ask if they had the right night. “Of course, of course. Come in! Sorry.”
“Daphne’s position is that I’m crashing the party,” said Jeremy.
What half-decent hostess wouldn’t lie, and say, “Not true.” I collected their coats and invited everyone to take a seat. They were dressed up, my dad in a suit and bow tie, Kathi in a short black dress, lacy stockings, and ropey pearls, unlike my jeans and a wrinkled shirt. “Cosmopolitans, anyone? Dad? A Manhattan?”
“Or a martini,” piped up my uninvited guest.
“And, of course, I have this terrific”—I checked the label of the bottle Kathi had brought—“gewürztraminer. Which will be perfect with the chicken.”
“Something does smell great,” Jeremy said.
“Drunken thighs. I hope I made enough.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not staying,” he said with a stagy pout.
When everyone had a filled glass, Kathi lifted hers. and said, “So nice to be together, and to meet you, Jeremy.” Because he was checking his phone, I punished him by saying surely he had plans, this being Saturday night, with Tina the part-time professor who lived downstairs.
Kathi said, “Oh, that must be nice, having a girlfriend in the building.”
This much was clear: She had no idea that Jeremy and I had been an item, which made sense. My father, ever protective, hadn’t wanted to explain that I was having fun of a horizontal nature, no strings, with the nearest male.
Jeremy said, “‘Girlfriend’ might be an overstatement. We’ve hung out a couple of times, but that’s really it.”
I said, “I wouldn’t call orchestra seats to Hamilton ‘hanging out.’”
The Hamilton reference threw Kathi ecstatically off course. We then heard how she’d seen it at the Public Theater before it went to Broadway. No one could believe she’d been that lucky. Just try to get a ticket now!
“Did you love it?” Jeremy asked.
Back and forth that conversation went—about how everyone had been bummed when Lin-Manuel Miranda left and when the actors playing Aaron Burr and King George III did, too . . . etcetera.
Kathi asked when he and—was it Tina?—were seeing the show.
“We already did. A couple of weeks ago.”
“Are we meeting her, too?” Kathi aed.
I sent my father a look that asked, Why so clueless? Jeremy stepped in with exactly the right subject changers. “Thanks, but Tina’s away—her mother’s not well, unfortunately—and I’ve got lines to learn.”
Empathy plus an acting career. What’s not to love about those two lumps of conversational sugar? Ever gracious, Kathi asked, in the correct order, “Is her mother seriously ill?” followed by “Lines? Are you in a play?”
Jeremy smiled, which I interpreted to mean It’s almost too easy. Then, gravely, he said, “It’s cancer. But the prognosis is good.”
I said, “Jeremy plays a teenager in Archie and Veronica Go to High School.”
Jeremy said, “Aka Riverdale.”
How had I not noticed that his braces were gone? I tapped my own front teeth. “All done with that?”
“Yup, all done, because Timmy couldn’t go off to college with braces on.”
“‘Off to
college’ as in ‘off the show’?”
“No. Still on. Luckily, he got into the college right in Riverdale. Many of us will be enrolled there.”
“Would that be Riverdale U by any chance?” I asked.
“Good guess,” he said.
Next, Kathi was telling us that she once gave lessons to an actor playing a pianist—not really playing the piano because the music was dubbed, but she worked with him to make his hands move believably over the keyboard.
My father said, “It’s another thing I love about New York! Movies, television, actors, and celebrities in your midst. Filming things right on the street!”
“Tell them about Cleopatra,” said Kathi.
My dad said, “Cleopatra belongs to an opera singer, a real one. She’s been an understudy at the Met.”
“Cleopatra has?”
“No, Cleo’s her dog, an Afghan hound.”
I reminded Jeremy that my father was a professional dog walker.
Jeremy said, “I always thought a Manhattan dog walker would make a great character in a movie.”
“You write movies?” Kathi asked.
“So far just screenplays that go nowhere.”
How did I not know that? Months of pillow talk, yet he’d never told me he had screenwriting dreams? No wonder we were . . . nothing.
“I’m going to start watching your show,” said Kathi.
I stood up. “I have to check the rice,” I lied.
Before I’d taken two steps toward the kitchen, Jeremy asked, “Daff—before I don’t stay for dinner—did you want to tell your dad about that thing we discussed?”
No, I did not.
“The podcast?” he prompted.
And with only that, my father asked, “From the gal who put it together. Jennifer? I had coffee with her last month.”
“Geneva,” I nearly stuttered.
“Right—the woman who had us for Thanksgiving dinner.”
Did I bravely explore this revelation further? Ask the when/where/how of it? No, I excused myself, pleading rice again.
I heard Jeremy say, “I’ll see if Daphne needs any help,” and in seconds, he was next to me at the stove.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I’m in shock. How long has he known about the podcast! I’m afraid of what I’ll find out next.”
Good Riddance Page 18
