The Daughters Join the Party

by Joanna Philbin

  “First of all, this has gotten way blown out of proportion,” she said. “It was barely anything. I didn’t even make it into the dorm. Nothing happened.”

  “Whatever happened, it was bad enough to get your mother and me in a car at eight thirty this morning.”

  “I’m just asking you to have an open mind. The way you would if Remington got into trouble.”

  Her dad gave her a searing look. “Your brother doesn’t get into trouble,” he said, just as the door to the office opened and Emma’s mother entered.

  “Hello, honey,” she said, reaching out her slender arms. Even in a crisis, Carolyn Conway could be counted on to look good—no, impeccable. She wore a yellow silk top and navy blue capris with gold ballet slippers, and she’d pulled her thick black hair back into a casual but chic ponytail. She didn’t wear makeup, and she was too practical to indulge in jewelry. But she did like handbags. Today she carried a bright pink Kelly bag in the crook of her arm, and it banged against Emma as she gave her mom a hug.

  “Hi, Mom,” Emma muttered, getting a noseful of citrus-gardenia perfume. “Sorry about this.”

  Carolyn pulled out of the hug and frowned at Emma. “So. You snuck into a boys’ dorm.”

  “I tried to sneak in,” Emma said. “Huge difference.”

  Her mom seemed about to say something when she noticed Emma’s T-shirt, silk-screened with Edie Sedgwick’s face, and her black skinny jeans.

  “Sorry I’m not decked out in J. Crew,” Emma said.

  “Nice earrings,” Carolyn said. “Skulls really send a great message.”

  “Okay, let’s get this over with,” said her dad, heading toward Mr. Moyers’s office. Her mom followed.

  Emma trailed behind them with a sinking feeling in her chest. She had a strong hunch that this wasn’t going to go very well.

  When they walked inside, Mr. Moyers almost leaped out of his chair. “Senator, Mrs. Conway! It’s so nice to see you again,” he said, approaching them with his hand extended.

  “Same here,” said Senator Conway, shaking Mr. Moyers’s hand. “And please, call me Adam.”

  “Then call me Jim,” Mr. Moyers said, so excited that his eyes seemed about to bulge out of his face. “Mrs. Conway,” he said, turning to Emma’s mom.

  Carolyn shook his hand. “Hello, Mr. Moyers,” she said in her brisk lawyer’s voice. Unlike her husband, she had little talent—or use—for chitchat. She sat down next to Adam on the couch.

  “Emma?” Mr. Moyers said. “Do you want to join your parents?”

  Emma realized that she was still standing by the door. She perched herself on the arm of the sofa and winced. Her butt still hurt from last night’s fall.

  “So, uh, Jim,” her father said. He leaned forward so that his elbows rested on his knees. She’d seen him sit this way in some of the photos on his Senate Web site. SENATOR ADAM CONWAY CARES ABOUT NEW YORKERS, read the banner at the top of the page. “What can we do to help?”

  “Well, I believe you know what happened here last night,” Mr. Moyers said, settling into his chair. “Leaving one’s room after lights-out, and then trying to enter another dormitory, is a serious violation of the Rutherford student code.”

  “So what’s the punishment?” asked her mom. “This can’t be the first time someone has done this.”

  “It’s the first time someone has violated as many codes as your daughter has,” Mr. Moyers said.

  “How many are we talking about?” Emma’s father asked, casting an alarmed glance in her direction.

  “Well, let’s see here…” Mr. Moyers picked up the file on his desk. “January tenth, Emma showed up in homeroom with purple hair.”

  “What?” her mother exploded. “She dyed her hair?”

  “Yes. Purple.”

  “Burgundy,” Emma cut in.

  Mr. Moyers gave her an annoyed glance. “February fourteenth and twenty-first, she cut first and second period to sleep in.”

  “I was sick,” she argued.

  “When the RA went to her room,” Mr. Moyers said, “she found Emma watching a movie on her laptop.”

  “Which was for class,” Emma said.

  “Emma,” her father warned.

  “March fifth,” he went on, “Emma was caught in the pool, with a boy, after hours.”

  Emma let that one pass. Her dad sighed deeply and looked at the carpet.

  “April seventeenth,” said Mr. Moyers, “Emma started a food fight in the dining hall.”

  “I flung a piece of bread at someone,” she said.

  “Which hit Miss Wilkie, the math teacher,” Mr. Moyers added. “May tenth—”

  “Okay, we get the picture,” Adam interrupted, holding up his hand. “And then last night—”

  “Our head prefect heard Emma first try to scale the boys’ dorm, and then fall on the ground.” Mr. Moyers closed the file. “Which leads me to conclude that this might not be the best place for your daughter.” He cleared his throat and swallowed. “We think it best she explore new possibilities for the coming school year.”

  Her parents looked dumbfounded. “Are you saying you don’t want her to continue here?” her mom asked.

  “I don’t believe Emma wants to be here, Mrs. Conway. And I think she’s doing everything she can to let us know that.”

  “You know she’s dyslexic,” her mom pointed out, in a way that made Emma cringe.

  “We have plenty of other students with learning disabilities who don’t have the… behavioral issues that Emma has.” Mr. Moyers swallowed again. He seemed uncomfortable. “Emma’s bright. She has the capacity to be an excellent student, despite her learning disability. But she doesn’t take school seriously. In fact, she doesn’t seem to take anything seriously.”

  “That’s not fair,” Emma argued. “What about my A in Swimming? And Photography? And the social service I did at the animal shelter?”

  “Emma,” Adam said sternly.

  Carolyn reached over and put her hand on Emma’s arm.

  “I’m sorry,” said Mr. Moyers. “But we think it’s best that you find Emma another school.”

  Emma fumed silently. Come on, Dad, she thought, staring at the carpet. If he could get the Republicans and Democrats to agree on a health-care bill, he could get Mr. Moyers to keep her here. But instead of saying something persuasive and charming, her dad simply looked at her mom and held up his hands.

  “All right, then,” Carolyn said, reading his signals. “We’ll take her home.”

  Emma got to her feet. “It was Jeremy Dunn,” she confessed. “That’s who I was trying to see last night. He’s on the second floor of Flanner. Summer student, from Boston. Just ask him—”

  “Thank you, Emma,” Mr. Moyers said, scribbling something on a pad. “And good luck.”

  “That’s it?” she asked. “I just gave you a name.”

  Mr. Moyers sighed. “Good-bye, Emma.”

  She went straight to the door, not even waiting for her parents. This was a joke. If this school wasn’t going to give her a second chance, if it was going to kick her out for attempting to sneak into someone’s room, and if it wasn’t even going to give her a break for naming names, then she didn’t want to be here anyway.

  She hurried past Kathy, who she knew had probably heard every word, and threw open the door to the hall. All she wanted to do was run back to her room, slam the door, and try to think. She just needed to be alone. Even though she knew that would be impossible. Behind her she heard her parents walk into the hall.

  “Well, I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised,” Emma heard her dad say. “It was a matter of time.”

  “You’re the one who thought she was ready for boarding school,” her mom replied.

  “I just said we should try it,” he said. “I didn’t say it was going to be the perfect solution.”

  Emma whirled around. “Can you stop talking about me like I’m not here?”

  “What would you like us to do?” her father asked. “You’re walking ten p
aces ahead of us.”

  “You didn’t even try to talk him out of it!” she said. “You didn’t even defend me.”

  “Defend you?” Her mother’s voice was uncharacteristically loud. “For dyeing your hair purple? Causing food fights?”

  “Of course you’d believe all that,” Emma muttered.

  “Are you aware of what’s going on with your father these days?”

  “No, I have no idea,” Emma said sarcastically.

  There was no way she couldn’t know. For the past six months, whenever she walked by the huge flat-screen TV in the student lounge, he was all over the news. If Conway runs for president… Senator Conway put in another appearance today… The crowds showing up for Conway today were in the thousands… Sources close to the Senator say he is definitely eyeing a run… She’d see a snippet of her dad making a speech in front of a crowd, or being applauded as he walked from his town car into a building, and it would all feel like she was watching someone else. It was too surreal. But ever since he’d won the Democratic New York seat for the second time, he’d practically become a celebrity.

  First there’d been the health-care bill that he’d shepherded through the Senate, the one that nobody thought would get passed. Then there’d been his book, Bridging the Divide, about his plans for a “united United States of America,” which had hit the New York Times bestseller list the day it was released and hadn’t dropped off since. Then there’d been the interview on 60 Minutes, where, when Morley Safer asked him about his plans for a campaign, he said, “I definitely haven’t ruled it out,” which only got every on-camera pundit and political blogger more obsessed over whether he might run. She would’ve had to have been trapped under a rock not to know what was going on with her dad. “Of course I know,” she said.

  “Well, there’s more,” her mother said. “When we get home—”

  “I’m not going to live at home.”

  “Emma, your mother is trying to tell you something,” her dad said somberly.

  “And I am not going to Chadwick,” Emma added. “You are not going to make me go to Remington’s school. I refuse.”

  She turned and headed for the door that led out onto the quad. She needed to get some air. Expelled, she thought. It was such an ugly word.

  She pushed through the doors and there, on the veranda of the administrative building, stood a man talking on a cell phone. “Yeah, we had a quick change of plans this morning,” he said in a raspy voice. “Now we’re at their daughter’s school.” His slicked-back, dark hair was beginning to thin on top, and he wore an expensive-looking black suit. He looked up and saw her. “Lemme get back to you.” He clicked off the phone. “You must be Emma,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’m Tom. Tom Beckett.”

  Emma shook his hand. There had always been people hovering around her family—mostly anxious men in their twenties, who were always waiting to ferry her dad to appearances or to hand him a speech. But none of them had ever seemed this confident or well-dressed, and none had ever come with her parents to her school. “Hi,” she said uncertainly.

  Just then her parents came through the doors. “Who is this?” she asked them, turning around.

  “This is Tom, my chief strategist,” said her father.

  “Chief strategist for what?” she asked. “You just got reelected last year.”

  Her dad paused for a moment. “I’m running again, honey.”

  Emma blinked. “You’re running again? For what?”

  “For president.”

  For a moment the words didn’t compute. She watched as he put his hand on Tom’s shoulder. “Tom here is the best,” her dad went on. “Came highly recommended to me by Shanks. Where is he, by the way?”

  “Out by the car, on the phone,” said Tom. “He’s lining up that Parks Department event for you tonight.”

  Emma tried to think of something to say. Anything.

  “It all just happened,” her mother put in. “Tom came up to the house yesterday for a meeting with a few people from his team. We were going to tell you when you came home next week.”

  “Come on,” her father said. “Let’s go pack up your things.”

  Emma began to follow them across the quad. She was supposed to be leading them, but she was too distracted to do anything but put one foot in front of the other.

  Tom Beckett slipped on a pair of black wraparound sunglasses that made him look like a cross between an alien predator and Tom Cruise. “Everything okay?” he asked her parents.

  “Not exactly,” her father said, giving Emma a disapproving glance. “But then again we’re all a little used to that by now.”

  chapter 3

  As they walked the curving path to her dorm, certain images kept popping into her mind: Cameras. Crowds waving. Halls packed with people and decorated with red, white, and blue bunting. Burly Secret Service men following her every move, for the rest of her life… Okay, calm down, Emma thought. First you just have to get through this day. Then you can freak out about the rest of your life.

  At her dorm she swiped her key through the slot and pulled open the door. She led the way up the staircase and unlocked the door to her single room. She tried to step in front of the terrarium on the floor and kick it under the bed, but she was too late.

  “A snake?” her mom said. “You have a snake in your room?”

  “That’s Archie. I found him outside the dorm,” Emma said, sliding the top door aside to pet the green garter snake.

  “He’s staying here,” her mom said firmly.

  “But who’s gonna take care of him?”

  “It’s a snake, Emma,” her father said curtly. “It can take care of itself.”

  “I’m bringing him,” she insisted. “There’s no need for him to be traumatized, too.” That’s when she noticed Tom Beckett staring at her and trying not to laugh. She glared at him.

  “I’ll go bring the car around the back,” he said, excusing himself.

  Adam bent over the mattress and began to pull it off the frame.

  “Dad,” Emma said, “the mattress stays here. I just need the sheets.”

  “Oh,” he said.

  He pushed the mattress back onto the frame, and Emma and her mom pulled off the hot pink and white batik sheets. It didn’t take long to pack up the rest of her stuff: her posters of PJ Harvey and Lou Reed, her clothes, her Doc Martens, her favorite rainbowcolored hook rug, her purple beanbag chair. She dumped all of her Clairefontaine journals into a shopping bag and held on to it, in case it wound up in her dad’s hands and, God forbid, one of the journals fell out and he glimpsed a page. Her mom zipped up her bulging suitcase and then picked up a framed photo of her parents and Remington, taken at Lake George several years earlier. “You don’t want to forget this,” she said, and put it in her purse.

  When everything was finally packed, Emma picked up Archie’s terrarium and closed the door behind her. So long, Rutherford, she thought. It’s been real. On her way past Tiffany and Rachel’s room she thought about scribbling a sarcastic message on their Dry Erase board—something like “Bye, guys! Vince Truffardi should be calling u later!”—but then thought better of it. The two of them weren’t worth it.

  She walked across the parking lot behind the dorm toward a black SUV in the guest spot. She supposed the SUV was Tom’s—it looked like the kind of car he would drive. Emma opened the backseat door, slid Archie’s tank onto the floor in front of the seat, and then swung herself up and into the car, next to her mom and dad. Tom Beckett sat behind the wheel and beside him in the shotgun seat was another man, older than Tom and much heavier, with a mop of gray hair and a large mustache. All of his attention was focused on a small laptop resting on his knees.

  “Emma, this is Michael Shanks,” her father said. “He’s my chief of staff at the Senate.”

  Shanks turned around and offered Emma his hand. “Hi there,” he said in a gravelly voice. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  “I haven’t heard a thing about you,�
� she replied with a smile, and felt her mom elbow her softly.

  A few moments later they were headed south on the highway, whizzing past green trees and the occasional roadside Denny’s. It was annoying to have these two strangers in the car. She wished she could at least have half an hour alone with her mom and dad. “So, why now?” she finally asked.

  “Your father set up an exploratory committee,” her mom said. “It’s a group of people in charge of finding out if it’s a good time for a candidate to run. They call people and do polling, and in the case of your dad, the response was enormous. A lot of people thought he should run for president.”

  “And then there’s been the response to the book,” her father added.

  “And the health-care bill,” Tom added.

  “It just seemed like the right time,” her mom said.

  Emma didn’t say anything. It seemed ludicrous to think that her dad should have consulted her about this first, but she almost wanted to ask him why he hadn’t.

  “So, as we were saying,” Tom said, looking at Adam in the rearview mirror, “the first thing you’ll want to do is get to the steak fry in Iowa next month.”

  “Already?” her mom asked. “The caucus isn’t for almost a year and a half.”

  “You can’t start courting Iowa too early,” Tom said. His blue eyes were harsh and glittery in the rearview. “Most of the other candidates have already made inroads there.”

  “Wait. A steak fry is important when you’re running for president?” Emma asked.

  “He’s not going there for the steak; he’s going there to speak,” Tom said condescendingly. “It’s an enormous Democratic event.”

  “Emma,” her mother said, taking her hand. “You can’t tell anyone about this. Not a soul. Your dad won’t be announcing this until January, at the earliest. So we have to keep this in the family.”

  “Fine,” Emma said. “Does Remington know?”

  “We called him yesterday,” her mom said. “He should be home by the time we get there. His plane lands at three.”