The Daughters Join the Party

by Joanna Philbin

  Of course he’d gotten a phone call, she thought. Her brother would always beat her in everything—grades, popularity, and parental attention, even when he was overseas. “How’d he like Cambridge?” she asked.

  “You know Remington,” her dad said. “Sounds like he loved it.”

  “He took post–World War Two European History and English,” said her mom. “With that and his AP classes he’s almost got the first year of college covered. Isn’t that amazing?”

  Emma fought the urge to roll her eyes. Only her brother would already be started on his college courses while he was still in high school.

  “We should invite some press to this event tonight,” Shanks piped up from the front seat.

  “Let’s ask Bernard Summers at the Times,” Adam said. “We went to college together.”

  “Don’t you know his daughter?” Carolyn asked, turning to Emma. “What’s her name? Lucy?”

  “Lizzie,” Emma said. Lizzie Summers wasn’t her closest friend in the world, but they’d attended each other’s family Thanksgivings and Christmas parties. Lizzie was one of the nicer girls Emma had known when she lived in New York.

  “Right. She goes to Chadwick, doesn’t she?”

  Emma gripped the armrest of her seat. Don’t say anything, she thought. “Yes,” she managed to say.

  “Well, then at least you’ll know someone there,” her mom said, taking out her BlackBerry.

  “Wait. I have to go to this tonight?” Emma asked.

  “Well, since both you and Remington will be home, yes,” she said. “And maybe you and Lizzie can talk about Chadwick.”

  Emma squeezed the armrest harder. “I told you I don’t want to go to Remington’s school. Can we not talk about this like it’s a done deal?”

  “Emma, it’s August fifteenth,” her mom said, fixing her with a glare. “School starts in three weeks. Where on earth do you think I can get you in by then?” Her mom pressed a button and put the phone to her ear.

  Emma wanted to grab the phone, or at least yell and plead her case. But then she remembered Shanks and Tom in the front seat. She couldn’t say anything—not with them there. How convenient, she thought. Her parents had probably brought them on purpose.

  With a sigh, she grabbed her iPod out of her backpack. When they got home, and they were finally alone, she would try to get her mom to listen to her. If they were finally alone. She was starting to think that the little privacy they’d had as a family was now going to disappear.

  It was late afternoon when they crossed the Henry Hudson Bridge into Manhattan. As they drove down the West Side Highway, the Hudson River looked as smooth as glass. Beside it a steady stream of bicyclists and Rollerbladers rode up and down the path, luxuriating in the beautiful summer day. Emma remembered her dad teaching her how to ride a bike on this path. Remington had tried to teach her how to Rollerblade, too, but it had been a disaster. She’d refused to wear kneepads and skinned both her knees pretty badly. But for the few moments before she’d fallen, she’d loved the feeling of skating near the water, and being a part of the city. She’d never loved New York the way her brother did, but now, as they drove, it felt good to be home.

  Home, specifically, was a bright, sprawling apartment on Eighty-ninth between Lexington and Third, not too far from where her dad had grown up, in an even more sprawling apartment on Park Avenue. Adam Conway came from money—lots of it. His father was Remington Conway, a brilliant lawyer who founded one of the first literary agencies in the country. Along with his two older brothers, Adam attended Andover, summered in Southampton, and made annual trips to Italy and the South of France to brush up on his language skills. It was expected that he’d go to work for his dad, or at least become a lawyer. But when he decided to run for president of his class at Harvard Law School, and won, everything changed. He decided to go into politics.

  At first his parents were aghast. But Adam Conway’s career took off right away. At twenty-six he won a spot on the New York City Council. At thirty, he was elected to the New York State Senate. Despite his upper-class background, he quickly earned a reputation for being hardworking, committed, charismatic, and brilliant. The newspapers called him the “Camelot Kid,” comparing him to another politician who also had looks, ambition, and loads of charm. It was only a matter of time until he ran for the United States Senate. But there was still something of the black sheep about her father, despite his success. His wife—whom he’d met at Harvard Law—was the one who became a lawyer at a fancy midtown firm.

  When they reached their apartment building, Tom double-parked and stayed behind the wheel. Her mom dialed someone on her BlackBerry. “Remington? Could you come down here? We just pulled up. Emma has a lot of things she needs to bring in.” She paused. “Yes, Emma’s home. It’s a long story.” She hung up.

  Great, Emma thought. Of course she would have to get expelled on the same day Remington came home from Cambridge. She leaned down and grabbed Archie’s tank. Suddenly all of her limbs felt weary. None of this was going to be easy.

  Outside on the street, Emma helped Tom and her dad pull her belongings out of the back of the car and onto the curb. It was a messy pile of stuff, and Emma caught her dad eyeing the snake tank in her arms with irritation.

  “You guys need a hand?” asked Shanks as he got out of the car. Emma finally got a good look at him. He had a mustache and a potbelly and a permanently distracted air, as if he were late for three things at once.

  “No, we’re good,” Tom said, hefting her suitcase down onto the sidewalk. He seemed to be eager to impress her dad. Just as the suitcase touched down the zipper opened slightly, showing the lace-edged back of one of Emma’s bras.

  “I got it!” she yelled, frantically stepping in front of the suitcase. Why were there always so many people around? Why couldn’t they just be alone once in a while?

  Remington walked out of the building and stopped short at the sight of Emma, stuffing her bra back into her suitcase with her foot. “You okay, Em?” he asked. “Need some help?” Her brother was extremely, ridiculously handsome, with light blue-green eyes, wavy chestnut hair, and a cleft chin.

  “Nah, I’m good,” she said, finally managing to get the bra out of sight. “Hi,” she said, giving him a quick hug.

  “How are you, sweetie?” Carolyn asked her son as she hugged him. “How was your flight?”

  “It was okay,” he said. “Not too bad. Here, Em. Let me take that.”

  As he picked up her suitcase, Emma noticed that he’d lost weight over the summer. His favorite Harvard crew shirt seemed a bit big on him, and his legs looked thin under his khaki shorts. Whenever he stopped his swim team training, he always got skinnier.

  “Good to see you,” Adam said, giving his son a hug, too. “We missed you.”

  “I missed you, too, Dad.” Somehow Remington was able to say things like that without sounding totally cheesy. “So, what are you doing home, Em? I thought we wouldn’t see you until next week.”

  Emma felt Tom and Shanks looking at her. “Um…” she began.

  “And is that a snake you have in there?” he asked.

  She knew that he’d changed the subject on purpose. “This is Archie,” she said, holding out the tank. “I rescued him.”

  “Interesting,” he said. “Hey, Michael,” he said to Shanks. “Good to see you again.”

  “Remington,” Shanks said with obvious respect, nodding back at him.

  “I’m Remington,” he said to Tom, extending his free hand.

  “Good to meet you,” Tom said, shaking it. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  Remington glanced at Emma. “That’s cool,” he muttered.

  Emma wondered how he felt about being the perfect kid sometimes. In some ways her brother’s intelligence was fascinating. He was smart enough to get straight A’s and ace every AP class he took. But didn’t that also mean that he knew getting perfect grades was all kind of meaningless, too?

  “I’m gonna go park this,” T
om said, getting back behind the wheel. “But you should all be ready to leave here by six o’clock.”

  “We’ll see you at six,” Adam said.

  Note to self, she thought, as they walked into their building. Do whatever you can to get out of this thing tonight.

  The lobby was still badly furnished—a chintz-covered couch flanked by spindly wood chairs with needlepoint seat covers—but there was something comforting about the fact that it all looked exactly the same. The two doormen, Gus and Jairo, gave Emma high fives as she walked by. They’d covered for her one weekend a year ago, just before she’d gone to boarding school, when she’d had a few people over without her parents knowing about it. She’d definitely lucked out by having cool doormen. Not everybody did.

  “What’s going on tonight?” Remington asked, as they walked into the elevator.

  “I’m speaking at an event for the Parks Department tonight,” her father said, as Shanks squeezed into the elevator with them. “Shanks figured it would be a good opportunity for press.”

  Her brother nodded as if he understood completely. “Good idea,” he said.

  They walked into their apartment, and Emma was hit with the familiar smell of garlic and onions from the neighbors cooking in the apartment downstairs. On one side of the foyer, French doors led to a dining room, which was lit by a perpetually flickering chandelier, and on the other side was a living room that nobody ever used—mostly because of the stuffy furniture given to them as a gift by Adam’s parents. At the far end of the creaky wood floor was a den that both of her parents used as a home office, and beyond that, a hallway that led to three bedrooms. Like the lobby of their building, the apartment was in desperate need of a makeover, but neither Adam nor Carolyn seemed to notice. Both of them were way too busy.

  Emma and Remington walked to her room. As she opened the door, she was relieved to find that it was just as she’d left it, with its black-and-white fleur-de-lis patterned duvet, black lacquered desk, white chair, and bright yellow leather ottoman. Her mom hadn’t been so keen on giving her a black-and-white bedroom when she was in the sixth grade, but Emma had insisted. There was also a trio of black-and-white photos she’d taken of a cemetery during a school trip to Boston in seventh grade. Four headstones sunk deep into the ground, tilting in all different directions. Her mom called the photos morbid, but Emma thought they were beautiful.

  “So what happened?” her brother asked as he placed her suitcase on her bed. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

  She put Archie’s tank on the windowsill. “They kicked me out.”

  “Oh, God, Emma,” her brother groaned. “Are you serious? For what?”

  “I snuck out of my room. I was trying to visit someone.”

  “Someone?” Remington asked. “Like, a guy?”

  Emma felt herself blush. “It’s not like I was trying to have some X-rated night or anything. It was just this guy who was really cool, and we just wanted to hang out together in his room—”

  “His room?” Remington repeated.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” she said, picking up one of the throw pillows from her bed and throwing it at him. “Do you have any idea how strict that place was? How many rules there were?”

  “So naturally you decide that you’re going to break every one of them and somehow not get in trouble,” her brother replied, leaning against her desk. “Didn’t you think about the consequences?”

  “Whatever, it’s over,” she muttered. “That place wasn’t right for me, anyway.”

  “So now where are you going to go?” he asked.

  “Where do you think? Mom’s dead set on sending me to Chadwick.”

  Remington shrugged. “Well, I’ve been trying to get you to go there for years. I think you’d love it.”

  Emma flopped on the bed and faced away from her brother. She’d never been able to explain to Remington why she didn’t want to go to his school. It was too embarrassing. “What about Dad’s campaign? I almost threw up when they told me.”

  “I wasn’t that surprised. Dad’s been talking about this for months.”

  “But what does this do to us? Are we going to have Secret Service trailing us around? Are we going to have to drop out of school? Are there going to be death threats?”

  “Emma, you’re getting way too ahead of yourself. As usual.” He stifled a small yawn with his fist.

  “I just feel a little freaked out. Like I just got signed up for something I didn’t want to be a part of.”

  There was a knock on the door, and their dad peeked his head in. “Hey, pal,” he said to Remington. “Can you look over this speech for tonight? Tell me what you think?” He handed her brother some stapled pages. “I’d appreciate it. Tom just had it sent over.”

  “No problem,” Remington said.

  “Oh, and you and Emma meet your mom and me at the Boathouse,” he said. “Tom wants us to do an interview at Fox on the way.”

  “Sure thing,” said her brother.

  Her father closed the door and there was an awkward silence. Emma tried to imagine her father asking her to proofread one of his speeches. Her mind drew a blank.

  “I just think this whole campaigning thing is going to change all of our lives,” she said.

  “Well, that’s kind of the point, isn’t it?”

  Emma saw him become instantly absorbed in the speech, the way he did any time he was confronted with the printed word. “You can go read that. I should get unpacked.”

  “Okay,” he said. “And I’m sorry about Rutherford. But don’t worry. I have a feeling that everything is going to be just fine. You’re gonna love Chadwick.” He smiled, and then he was out the door.

  Emma looked out the window and sighed. Easy for him to say, she thought. Her brother had never had to worry about anything. Things just came to him—straight A’s, friends, opportunities to shine. And now she was going to be trapped in the same house, and possibly the same school, with him for the next year, until he went to college. Unless she could go talk some sense into her mom right now.

  She left her suitcase unopened on the bed and went to the kitchen, where she found her mom making a pitcher of iced tea.

  “Mom?” she began. “About the whole Chadwick thing… You didn’t call the school from the car or anything, right?”

  Her mom stirred the tea vigorously with a wooden spoon. “I spoke to Mr. Barlow,” she said. “He’s going to look at your transcript, but it looks like you’ll be starting at Chadwick on September fifth.”

  “What? I thought we were at least going to talk about it!”

  “Emma, there is way, way too much going on in this family right now for you to be calling the shots. Especially in light of what you’ve done.” Her mom poured the iced tea into a tall glass. “Chadwick is one of the best schools in the city. And if it weren’t for the fact that your brother is such a good student, this would not have been so easy. I hope you remember to thank him.”

  “Thank him?” Emma exploded. “So I can have a daily reminder that I’m not as brilliant and wonderful as he is? I should feel grateful for that?”

  “Emma, please stop.” Her mother sighed and looked at her watch. “It’s time you got in the shower. There are going to be press people there tonight, so I’d like you to look like you made an effort. Do you have a dress?”

  That was the final straw. Emma turned on her heels and stormed out of the kitchen.

  “Emma!” her mom yelled after her, but Emma kept walking. She’d been home less than twenty minutes and she already wanted to scream. She slammed the door and stood in the center of her room, so angry she was shaking. She should never have tried to sneak into Jeremy’s room; she knew that now. But her mom wasn’t helping. And here she was, being dragged out to one of her dad’s stupid events on top of it, so people could take his picture and go on and on about how great his speech was. And so she could look like the perfect little daughter. Like she’d made an effort.

  An idea suddenly came to her. She we
nt to her suitcase and unzipped it. Inside she found her toiletries bag and, inside that, the extra box of the purple hair dye she’d used earlier this year. BERRY WONDERFUL, read the name on the box. The picture showed a woman with dark auburn hair, but Emma knew that if she left the color on long enough it would turn out three times that bright.

  She picked up the box and glanced at her watch. There was just enough time. She walked into her bathroom and turned on the shower. Her mom wanted her to make an effort? Done.

  chapter 4

  “I can’t believe you did that,” her brother said as they walked along the jogging path toward the Central Park Boat Pond. “You’ve been home for, like, an hour.”

  Emma ran a hand over her eggplant-colored locks and breathed in the soft summer air. “It’s hair dye, Rem. It’s not like I got a tattoo on my face.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Mom and Dad are going to freak. And your outfit isn’t exactly helping.”

  Emma glanced down at her super-short metallic skirt and ultra-casual, striped, long-sleeved, boatneck T-shirt. “What you don’t know is that this is all very Alexa Chung.”

  “Who?” Her brother asked.

  “Forget it. It’s way over your head, Mr. Men’s Wearhouse.”

  Remington smiled at this. He knew that he wasn’t the world’s hippest dresser. But he looked pretty good tonight, in his dark blue suit. “Just be careful, Em,” he said, straightening the knot of his tie. “You can be your own worst enemy sometimes. We both know that.”

  Emma let this last comment pass and gazed at the lake up ahead. Its surface was broken here and there by the last few rowboats of the day, skimming across the silvery water. It would have made a gorgeous photo, and she almost took out her iPhone to snap a shot of it. But Remington wouldn’t understand what she was doing. For all his brilliance, he could walk out of a Picasso exhibit at MoMA or a Kurosawa movie and have absolutely nothing to say.

  At the entrance to the Boathouse restaurant, Remington flashed the invitation their parents had given them. Two hefty security men nodded them in. The room was thick with adults mingling among white linen–covered tables set with flickering hurricane lamps. Inside, a banner hung across the restaurant proclaiming A WEN FUTURE FOR CENTRAL KRAP. Emma focused on the words until she guessed what they really said: A NEW FUTURE FOR CENTRAL PARK. Sometimes being dyslexic was like being a word detective. She just had to make her best guess as to what things actually said.