“So what did my sister say to you?” he finally asks.
“She—she mentioned an agreement with the Banks company… I think.… Then she threatened to call the cops if I didn’t get off her property.”
Anthony fidgets in his chair, sniffs, rubs his right eye like he hasn’t slept in days.
“Can you tell me about the agreement?” Bunny asks.
“It’s the money they paid to keep us quiet,” he says.
Frustrated, Bunny demands, “Why didn’t you tell me this before I went over there?”
“Because you wouldn’t have gone over there if you knew we’d been given money.”
“Why would you assume something like that? Your sister was completely paranoid about me. And if you had warned her—she said you haven’t spoken in months—why did you lie to me? You didn’t have to lie to me. I would have still gone over there! I would have still tried to give her the money!” Bunny is working herself up, performing a kind of fake vulnerability, making her case for not being able to give him any money. A violent and manipulative navigation rooted in her shame and guilt for pretending to be someone else, for thinking she could help him. “I’m so sorry,” she says, “there’s… nothing else I can do.”
As if coming down from a high, or from a false and angry hope, Anthony looks at her; it is the most vulnerable she has ever seen him. He knows what he’s up against: multiple counts of first-degree murder, armed robbery, extortion, theft, arson. He’ll get life in prison without the possibility of parole.
“I tried, Anthony,” Bunny says, bowing her head.
“Then just help find me a lawyer! Find me a lawyer, I’m going to fucking die in here!”
“I’m—I’m a journalist, I—I can’t.…” Trapped in her legacy of lies and warped fantasies of terror and victimhood and self-righteousness, Bunny is left with nothing but the reality that the system was designed for this.
Anthony nods, on the verge of tears, then reaches down off-screen where Bunny can’t see. He comes back into the frame, composed, and holds up a copy of the Washington Post business section:
Bartholomew Industries to Acquire Banks Family Business Assets in Monopoly over Chemicals Industry
“Do you know who this family is?” he asks her.
“I—I can’t really see it, I’m having trouble reading—”
“Let me move it closer.” Anthony thrusts the headline so it fills the entire frame of the monitor. Bunny reads it, her heart thumping; the words probe her deepest fears, her nascent narcissism and whiteness railing against the belief that he didn’t do it, warping the truth, blind to the possibility: Did my family kill them?
Anthony laughs, a medicated laugh. “Sounds just like your family, Amazing Grace. Doesn’t it?”
Bunny feels herself falling back into the shadows of her privileged conscience before the Bankses were murdered.
“Did you fuckin’ lie to ME?”
“I—I—I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“YOU’RE THE FUCKIN’ LIAR! I may die in here, Grace, but at least I’ll die knowing the truth, while you may never accept yours.”
Bunny’s absorption of the Banks family legacy ignites a kind of new fragility within her she isn’t sure she can withstand, it feels too big. This door is closing on me. She cannot escape her inner circle, the expectation that someone else will do it for her, will welcome her with open arms, without consequences—but there are always consequences.
She thinks of Billy and his father. She wants to run and hide with him. To think she could solve the problems of the world—how could she be so naïve? Honey… you’re not on this road. She is entrenched in those problems, sinking in the quicksand of an antiquated life, romanticizing history, soaked in white paranoia within a hierarchy and nation stuck in its own imprisonment. That will be her legacy.
“I’m sorry,” Bunny says to Anthony. “I’m so sorry.” She hangs up the phone. Anthony looks at her through the screen as she gets up, rageful, scared; she is everything he thought she’d be. He wanted to tell her one last thing, but all he hears is silence.
Kicking Bear and the Ghost Dance
Matho Wanahtake, also known as Kicking Bear, was a chief of the Lakota Nation. He rose to prominence after the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, in which American troops were resoundingly defeated. In 1889, he traveled to Nevada to learn what was known as the Ghost Dance from its leader, Wovoka, and bring it back to his people. The dance, which spread quickly through the western part of the country, was believed to help reunite Native Americans with their ancestors and protect against white colonialism, bringing back their land, their traditions, and their good fortune and causing the white man to “be swallowed up by the earth.”I
Before the turn of the twentieth century, Kicking Bear traveled to Washington, DC, as a delegate for the Sioux Tribe fighting for more rights with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. During this time, he agreed to have a life mask made of himself. After his death, architect Glenn Brown, who designed the Dumbarton Bridge, lined the bottom of the bridge with fifty-six sculptures of Kicking Bear’s face.II
I. Akta Lakota Museum and Cultural Center (website), http://aktalakota.stjo.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=8750.
II. John Kelly, “Those Carved Faces on the Q Street Bridge? Meet the Real Person They’re Based On,” The Washington Post, January 31, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/those-carved-faces-on-the-q-street-bridge-meet-the-real-person-theyre-based-on/2018/01/31/61a66fca-05f6-11e8-94e8-e8b8600ade23_story.html.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Billy is sweating, his shirt sticking to his back; it is days before Christmas and the weather channel signals a code orange. Billy feels the raw whoosh of cars passing by as he trails the edge of the sidewalk along Massachusetts Avenue—before the galas, the fundraisers and salons, the things this town tries so hard to cultivate, to make them feel important, to make them feel enough, to make them feel worth the weight of the world on someone else’s shoulders.
Billy approaches the gates of the Russian ambassador’s residence. He wobbles. He waits. He turns around to see if anyone—the Washington Post, the Daily Mail, that jealous no-name twentysomething who writes a Washington gossip blog—is following him. Instead of reaching for the bottle, the drug one last time, Billy makes a deal with himself: if his friend Stan answers, he won’t do it. He won’t do it. Stan would never betray him, right? He would never have released the video—on behalf of his father, on behalf of Russia.
Accustomed to lone helicopters flying overhead, Billy hears the sound of a government chopper churning in the polluted air, catching his attention for once. He looks up, then wraps both his hands around the Russian gates in front of him. Where are the guards? Where is my buddy, Putin 2.0? Where is Stan? Billy lifts his head: a lock and chain hold the metal gates together. He turns his back, holds his hand to his forehead like he’s saluting the sun; he hears Bunny’s voice like a whispering ghost, catching him in this righteous stillness: Why are you so afraid of the dark, Billy? He is not what she says he is: She doesn’t understand me, and she never will.
An old white man approaches Billy with his chocolate Labrador puppy, all floppy paws and wobbly limbs. The white man: blue polo, yellow khakis, brown loafers, a walking Brooks Brothers mannequin. “We finally kicked those bastards out, eh? No one left to let you in, they’ve abandoned it—heel, Bailey! Heel!” The white man pulls the puppy away from Billy, who takes a few steps backward. Billy lowers his face to the ground, pulls his hoodie up over his head.
“Thank God, send all the bastards home!” The man cackles, an annoying laugh.
Billy doesn’t understand what he means by this. What the fuck is he talking about? Where did everyone go?
Billy is unsteady, his mouth dry, his head light. He tries to speak but stutters, for Billy hasn’t said a word to anyone in days. Waking up to the shame, the family name smeared, his legacy ripped from underneath him, and overwhelmed by the steps it would take to fix it, hea
l it, change it, bury it—to not become it. It is too much. Swallowing feels like a razor slicing through his guts, where the truth lives, day after day. He is a boy who cannot see the other side of disruption. He sees only his shadow, distorted from the bright sun and propelling clouds, shaking in the dead grass.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Meredith sits before her computer screen fingering her cigarette, gazing every so often out the window—at the tulip poplar tree which is no longer there, only its phantom. She holds her phone to her ear listening to Chuck give her online banking directions for a separate account. Sunlight hits the side of her face, forcing her to hold up her hand like a shield. For all these years, the tulip poplar blocked the rays.
“Hold on,” Meredith tells Chuck as she walks to her cherry-colored balloon curtain, kneeling on the floral love seat to tug at the cord, releasing the curtain’s fold down the window. On the shelf next to her, her mother’s white debutante gloves rest atop Sally Bedell Smith’s biographies of Queen Elizabeth, Princess Diana, the Kennedys, William S. Paley.
“Okay, what’s the log-in?” Meredith taps on the keyboard, throws on her tortoiseshell glasses to get a better look at the numbers. “Oh my God, Chuck.” She can’t believe the enormity of the number that she’s looking at. “Will this get leaked to the press?” she asks, concerned.
“The transaction of assets will be estimated, but nothing personal,” Chuck tells her.
“And the Bankses’ will? Has it been settled?”
“Most of it was for Audrey—a couple hundred grand has been liquidated for a few cousins, but it’s been dispersed, and contracts have been signed. It’s done. None of the threatened lawsuits against the Bankses’ side were credible.”
“And what about us?” Meredith asks.
“Mer, the government—local and state—didn’t have enough money and resources to prove it in court. The families don’t have a leg to stand on—it’s getting thrown out. I’m comin’ home.”
“Oh, thank God,” Meredith says, exasperated.
“Just get Bunny under control, will you? I’m wiring the five hundred grand I told you about into her trust now—with a limit on what she can take out monthly. It’s time for her to learn how to respect money,” Chuck says.
“I made her psychiatrist appointment to get her on the medication we discussed. We can talk tonight. When does your flight get in?”
“Around nine.”
“See you tonight, darling.”
* * *
Meredith has known since childhood that a seed of sin plants itself long before its money grows. That once it’s been planted, there is nothing you can do to determine where the roots will go, whether or not they will rot or flourish generation after generation. Most won’t know until the tree has fully grown—and even if cut down, its roots stay gripping the soil underground. It is only in the erosion of itself that one can see its nasty tentacles—how many, how far, how wide they have spread.
Meredith lights another cigarette and crosses to the lead-lined Edwardian liquor cabinet, opening it to a display of inherited and magnificently mismatched decanters of single malt scotch, sherry, and gin. She takes a glass and pours herself a shot of gin. She shoots it, squinting her eyes, then slams the glass down next to an ancient bottle of Schnapps with a gold leaf floating in it. Curbing her impulse to call the psychic medium again, she takes a drag of her cigarette and flips on the nightly news.
“… In breaking news, in the early hours of the morning the FBI arrested chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Edward Montgomery, who had recently been nominated by the president to become the next secretary of defense.… It is believed that the president will not pardon him. General Montgomery’s son William has also been under fire for a recent video, which went viral last week, showing him and several high school friends mocking US torture methods and using derogatory language on-camera. Some of those individuals were planning to attend elite universities in the fall next year, but it has been reported that those letters of acceptance have been rescinded.…”
Meredith stands riveted in front of the television screen, smoke climbing from the end of her cigarette like a slithering snake.
* * *
Bunny bursts through the front door, setting off the alarm; she grunts as she punches in 0007. Billy isn’t answering his cell phone or responding to her texts.
“Bunny?” Meredith calls, not taking her eyes off the television screen—at a loss for words, her world imploding with scandal.
Bunny steps onto the Persian rug, preparing to confront her mother about the news Anthony showed her in the paper. She turns to the television screen, attention caught.
“Have you spoken to him?” Meredith asks.
“Oh my God.” Bunny bolts for the front door. She races to her bike resting on the side of the garage. It’ll be faster at this hour to ride her bike over the Q Street Bridge to get to Billy’s house.
* * *
The temperature dropping, the icy wind burns Bunny’s pale cheeks. She pedals faster and calls Marty from her cell, but he’s not answering either. He had texted her while she was with Anthony, asking if she’d spoken to Billy; irritated, assuming it was about their breakup, she’d ignored it. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t—maybe it was about everything.
Bunny’s cycled this route a million times, but only now does its history seem to follow her: the muscular buffalo statues at the edge of the bridge, the Civil War hero atop his bucking horse, the stone faces of Kicking Bear, the Native American warrior who led the Ghost Dance ritual, lining the bridge.
Crippled expressions of looming gargoyles taunt her as Bunny reaches the grass of the Haitian Embassy where she hides her bike. She runs across the double yellow lines of Massachusetts Avenue and into the brick driveway of Billy’s mansion. Out of breath, she lifts the front door knocker—a brass ring inside of a lion’s mouth: bam-bam-bam. “BILLY!” she screams.
There is only silence.
She runs to the side of the house, where overgrown ivy has weaved itself through wrought iron gates. She stumbles upon a garter snake shedding its skin in the middle of the brick path; startled, she leaps, then trips and flies forward, skidding her soft palms into the ground. Bunny gathers herself and wipes her bloody palms at the chilling sight of the snake escaping its dead skin, but it is still a snake, and watches it slither back into the cold dirt. She looks up to her favorite gargoyle perched beside Billy’s bedroom window—his mouth open wide, his sharp fangs hanging like knives—“BILLY!” she screams into the sky, then goes to unlatch the gate.
* * *
Upon entering the back garden she screams his name one last time as she approaches his hanging body. His swollen eyelids are red from broken capillaries and pregnant with trapped tears; his head hangs peacefully over the rope around his neck—his teenage angst, his fears, his rage, his shame, his love, all gone. He hangs from the back limestone balcony of his father’s office below a stained glass window.
Bunny grabs his legs and swoops them into her arms, grunting with unleashed tears as she tries to lift them higher on her tippy-toes to make the rope loose around his neck, his knees pressed against her bulging cheek, but she’s not tall enough. … “SOMEONE HELP ME!!!” His body sways around her. She lowers herself, trying to gather his feet in her arms, but her arms are too weak. “SOMEONE HEELLLLPPPP!!!!”
A security guard appears, panic-stricken as he runs to Bunny’s aid and sees Billy’s blue body dangling from the balcony. He calls 911, says something into his radio that Bunny can’t understand, and bolts for the back garden of the embassy next door. He comes back dragging a patio chair and places it next to Billy’s body, then climbs on top of it, lifting Billy’s torso with his left hand, attempting to cut the rope with his right. Bunny looks up and sees Billy’s recent tattoo in the light, the one he never showed her, below his quiet heart, an unfinished circle.
As the security guard briefs the 911 operator, Bunny collapses into a parallel universe, her he
art slamming as she hunches over in prayer position, rocking back and forth, “… Please… please.…please…” curling her back, she roars again and again and again “… Please… please… please…” she gasps for air and Billy’s body is taken away, red lights and blue uniforms surround her as she kicks her arms and legs, flailing, “Get away from me.” Bunny falls to her side, bringing her knees to her chest, heaving and screaming in between blinding grunts.
CHAPTER FIFTY
Cate sits across from America’s presumed future first family, Doug, Betsy, Mackenzie, and Haley, in a blacked-out limousine. She glances at Betsy’s face, her tattooed eyeliner, her false lashes, her Botox and fillers, and hopes that one day she won’t feel the same, remembering what Doug told her once: My mother always told me to go for the pretty ones because they’re the ones with the lowest self-esteem. Thinking about what it must feel like to lose your beauty if that’s all you ever had—clinging to a man whose inherent value somehow becomes your own. But Cate doesn’t know how to climb out of the fishbowl she’s thrown herself into; her desire for power always seems to give her whole self away. The thoughts, in these moments on the way to Billy’s funeral, seem mostly abstract, but close enough for her to realize she doesn’t want them.
Doug’s cold withholding of affection, how quickly it left her, forces Cate to catch her breath. She swallows and lowers her sunglasses over her eyes and thinks about her father somewhere in a California prison, which is strange, because she never thinks about her father, not anymore. If she had been raised more like Bunny and less like herself, she wonders, would things have gone a different way for her? She thought she’d come to Washington to create herself, not find herself, and somehow she’s been caught in between the two. The violence in her head castrates her circular emotions: Aren’t I worthy of love? Will my strategy work? Stop being dramatic. Cate knows deep down that had she been given all of the harder things in life on a silver platter as Bunny was—the things she thought she needed to win—that her legacy alone would never be enough. People die, things change, it’s simple. And even with all of the glory and status, no matter how she looks at it, something inside of her knows it wouldn’t ever feel like enough.
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