It's Always the Husband

by Michele Campbell

  Her roommates were a conundrum. As much as she loved them, she also hated them, especially that impossible Jenny.

  12

  Finals had already started back at Carlisle. Jenny was desperate to study on the flight from Las Vegas to Boston, but she couldn’t set her mind to it, so troubled was she by what she’d witnessed of Aubrey’s home life. Or lack of one. Brenda Miller had been living in an SRO motel, in a single room with a hot plate and the bathroom down the hall. Aubrey said she hadn’t known how bad things had gotten, or she would’ve found a way to send her mother more money. (How? Aubrey had nothing.) Brenda Miller’s bank account had been overdrawn, and any valuables sold or pawned already, which, looking on the bright side, meant there wasn’t much work to be done to sort out her things. Aubrey took a couple of old photographs and an ugly, crocheted afghan that she said had sentimental value, to remember her mother by. Her pretty sister Amanda, hostile and hard-eyed and impatient, took nothing, though Jenny privately suspected Amanda had pocketed anything valuable before they arrived.

  There was no money for a funeral. Aubrey had none, obviously. Amanda, who drove a Mustang and had awfully nice clothes for a cocktail waitress, claimed to be flat broke. As far as Jenny could tell, Amanda would’ve been happy to leave her mother’s ashes in the trash can outside the funeral home. But Aubrey insisted on having some sort of ceremony. So at ten o’ clock that morning, with the mercury already at eighty-five and the desert sky a harsh blue, Jenny and the two sisters rented a rickety motorboat at a lake about an hour from the city, a place Aubrey said her mother had loved. Aubrey and Amanda didn’t know any prayers, so Jenny recited the Twenty-third Psalm while Aubrey and Amanda took turns reaching into the plastic bag and tossing handfuls of gritty, gray ash into the water. Aubrey sobbed all through their makeshift memorial and all the way to the airport, where Amanda waved a curt good-bye, obviously relieved to see the back of them. Jenny got the feeling Aubrey and her sister wouldn’t speak again for a very long time, if ever.

  Now, at thirty thousand feet, Aubrey was passed out, eyes shut, mouth open, in an exhausted sleep. She had thanked Jenny constantly, proclaiming her tearful gratitude, saying Jenny and Kate were her only family now. The responsibility of that weighed on Jenny’s mind, simply because she knew it was true, and Kate wasn’t bloody likely to shoulder her half of that burden.

  But maybe Jenny was wrong about that. Their flight had been delayed, first by air-traffic congestion in Las Vegas, and later by a blizzard at Logan Airport that kept them circling for an hour until the runway could be plowed and de-iced. By the time they landed, the last bus back to Belle River had left without them. Jenny looked at her watch when they got to baggage claim and started to panic. Her econ exam was the day after tomorrow. She needed to get back to school fast, but there were no good options. She could call an expensive car service. She could roust her parents from their warm bed and ask them to drive for hours in the middle of a snowstorm to rescue her. Or, she could sleep in the terminal tonight, in which case she wouldn’t make it back to campus till tomorrow afternoon and be too wrecked to study. That was her reward for being a good friend to Aubrey.

  “Look, there’s Kate!” Aubrey said, taking off toward the automatic doors.

  “Where?”

  Kate’s bright hair stood out like a beacon in the gray-faced crowd waiting on the other side of the glass doors. By the time Jenny caught up, Aubrey was sobbing in Kate’s arms.

  Jenny met Kate’s eyes over Aubrey’s heaving shoulders. “I didn’t know you’d be here,” she said. The words came out sounding accusatory.

  “I thought you could use a lift,” Kate replied. “I borrowed Griff’s Jeep. It’s four-wheel-drive.”

  Kate looked tired and pale. Outside the plate-glass windows, the snow fell steadily, and Jenny felt a tentacle of forgiveness creep into her heart. It was no small undertaking, driving from Belle River to Boston, and back, in weather like this. A ride home in time for a decent night’s sleep beat the hell out of camping on the floor of the terminal, using her suitcase for a pillow, and being too exhausted to study the next day. It was hard to stay mad at a person who’d drive four hours in a snowstorm to rescue you from a fate like that.

  “Thanks, that’s really nice of you,” Jenny said, somewhat grudgingly, since Kate was still that same arrogant bitch who’d knowingly slept with her ex. She half expected a nasty retort. Kate was doing this for Aubrey, not for Jenny, et cetera and so forth. But Kate smiled in delight.

  “What are roomies for? C’mon, I’m parked in the short-term lot.”

  On the ride home, Jenny sat in the backseat with her head lolling and her eyes closed, drifting in and out of sleep. In her lucid moments, she eavesdropped on Aubrey and Kate’s conversation. They say eavesdroppers never hear good of themselves. That was a myth. Aubrey told Kate in detail about all the ways Jenny had helped out in her moment of need, and to Jenny’s surprise, Kate joined in the praise. Jenny was smart and together and a loyal friend, Kate gushed. Nothing fazed her. They were lucky to have her in their lives. Hey, maybe Kate suspected Jenny was awake, and was saying sweet things in order to get back in her good graces. But still. Jenny dozed off, feeling generous toward Kate. When she awoke, they had just crossed the New Hampshire border. The world outside the windows was white and desolate, and Kate was steady at the wheel.

  “I’m sad for my mom,” Aubrey was saying. “She had such a hard life, and now it won’t get better. I always thought someday, things would finally be right between us, but now it’s too late.”

  “I think a lot about my mom, too,” Kate said. “What would she be like now? What would I be like, if she’d lived? It’s not just that she died too young, but she left me too young. I needed my mother.”

  Jenny wondered whether, if Kate hadn’t lost her mom at a young age, she would be a better person now. Maybe she wouldn’t take other people’s things, or lord it over them, or ruin their self-confidence. Kate’s relationship with her father and stepmother was dismal and wrenching. Jenny liked to think Kate had things easy, but maybe that wasn’t entirely true.

  “We’re orphans,” Aubrey said.

  “I’m not. There’s still Keniston.”

  “Technically, my father is still alive, too. But I have no idea where, so he doesn’t count. And your dad disowned you, so he doesn’t count, either.”

  “He didn’t exactly disown me,” Kate said defensively. “He held back my trust payments. I mean, yeah, that’s outrageous, but it’s Victoria’s doing. He’s under her thumb. I feel sorry for him, the old fool.” Kate’s condescending tone couldn’t hide the hurt she obviously felt at her father’s disloyalty.

  The windshield wipers swished against the melting snow as they drove on. It got quiet inside the Jeep, and Jenny melted a little, too. She liked to think of herself as a fair person, and it seemed only fair to forgive Kate. As jealous as she might be over Lucas, the fact was, Jenny broke up with him before Lucas and Kate even met. Maybe Kate had lorded her conquest of Lucas over Jenny, but she did that in retaliation for Jenny saying mean things to her first. Ultimately, Kate wasn’t so bad. Her life was harder than it looked from the outside. Jenny decided to cut Kate some slack, at least for now.

  * * *

  The three of them made it through exams, and the new term began. The weather was icy and bleak. Jenny trudged on, fighting a cold and the winter doldrums, while Kate and Aubrey gave in to the gloom. Jenny watched with dismay as they partied every night and slept through classes, ate mounds of junk food for days on end, then ate nothing at all. Their hair looked greasy and their sheets smelled of sweat, and it seemed to Jenny that they would fail out of school if somebody didn’t intervene. So she took to scolding them, which accomplished nothing except to make them close the door to Kate’s room and ram a towel in the crack when they smoked weed. At least it was an improvement over smoking in the living room. Jenny tried not to care about their decline. If they couldn’t be bothered to help themselves, why should she kn
ock herself out trying to help them, when she was so crazy busy?

  In addition to five classes and four extracurriculars, Jenny worked fifteen hours a week in the provost’s office. It wasn’t one of those mindless work-study jobs, like checking IDs at the gym or signing out books in Ogden Library, where you sat on your butt in your sweatpants, schmoozing cute guys. It was clerical work, and demanding. The bosses noticed every typo. You had to wear office attire. You couldn’t be late or trade hours with other students even if you had a big paper due. But the job gave her access to inside information and face time with important people in the administration. It would be killer on her résumé and hopefully earn her a letter of recommendation. So she stuck with it. No question, though, it added pressure, and contributed to how fed-up she felt with her roommates lately.

  On a dark afternoon at the beginning of March, Jenny was called in to the provost’s office unexpectedly because both secretaries were out with the flu and the trustees were in town. The gray sky spit snow as Jenny hurried over the icy paths toward Founders’ Hall, her legs freezing in thin nylons. She rode up in the creaky elevator to the dark-paneled provost’s office, where she found Gloria Meyers—the provost herself—waiting for her with her fingers tapping impatiently. The provost was a sturdy woman with steel-gray hair, whose wardrobe tended toward jewel tones and bold earrings. She looked as if she should be nice, like somebody’s artsy grandma, but in actuality she was brusque and intimidating. Before Jenny even had her parka off, the provost was rattling off a complicated series of instructions for assembling the meeting binders. The board of trustees’ meeting began in fifteen minutes. Assembling the binders in time was not humanly possible, but Jenny was afraid to open her mouth and say so, so she simply nodded and walked over to the Xerox machine. The next forty minutes of her life was spent furiously copying documents and inserting them into three-ring binders.

  Jenny loaded the binders onto a cart and headed down the hall to the large conference room feeling like she was going to the firing squad.

  Byron Ogletree, the president of Carlisle, was standing at a lectern at the head of a long table when Jenny struggled through the heavy wooden door, pushing the binders on the cart. Ogletree was a famous economist, and looked every bit the academic with his mane of white hair, goatee, and bow tie. He paused in midsentence and looked at Jenny, which made her freeze like a deer caught in headlights. Gloria Meyers came to her rescue.

  “You hand them out to this side of the table and I’ll do the other,” Gloria whispered, grabbing an armful of binders. “Then take a seat in the back in case I need you.”

  Inside the cavernous room, weak light filtered through ancient leaded windows. Gray-haired, gray-suited men sat around the long mahogany conference table. Jenny was frazzled, and too timid to make eye contact. She didn’t realize she was handing a binder to Keniston Eastman until he thanked her by name.

  At the break, she was put in charge of overseeing the coffee station. The trustees milled about, chatting and laughing. Some left the room to make phone calls or use the bathroom. She was mopping up a spill with paper towels when Mr. Eastman came over to her. He glanced over his shoulder before speaking.

  “Jenny, I need to talk to you, privately,” he said in a low tone, with an urgent air.

  She was too surprised to reply, so she nodded, and kept cleaning.

  “I’m staying at the College Inn. When the meeting ends, I’ll wait for you in the bar there. Come as soon as you can, all right?”

  She said nothing, but he seemed to take that as a yes. The meeting resumed. Jenny spent the second half of it staring at her hands, too self-conscious to look in Eastman’s direction, not hearing a word that was uttered. What did Keniston Eastman want with her? What could he possibly mean by asking her to meet him in a bar? He must know she was underage; she was the same age as his daughter. If an older man invites a girl who’s not of drinking age to a bar, does that signal an improper advance? If Keniston was making an improper advance, what should she do about it? He seemed to her too old and intimidating to be physically attractive, but maybe physical attractiveness wasn’t relevant here. What would be the benefits to her if she said yes to a proposition from Keniston Eastman, or the repercussions if she said no? It wasn’t like Jenny never thought about him. She fantasized about him regularly, but these fantasies were not the same kind she had about Lucas. In her daydreams, Keniston was her mentor. He offered her a job, made introductions, took an interest in her career. She wanted that from him, badly. What if he offered her such things in exchange for an occasional assignation? Would she really turn him down? Or would she say yes? That was a horrifying thought and an exhilarating one at the same time.

  It was four thirty and getting dark by the time Jenny walked through Briggs Gate. Trading the quiet of the Quad for the bustle of College Street, she felt on the verge of something big. The wheels of passing cars had melted the day’s snow into a gray slush that soaked through the soles of her shoes, but she ignored the chill on her toes. The College Inn had pride of place at the corner of College and Main, its elegant brick and limestone façade designed to mimic the look of the dormitories lining the world-famous Quad. In her years growing up in Belle River, Jenny had never set foot in the Inn. It was the hotel of choice for the Carlisle power crowd—parents with fat wallets, Carlisle class of this-or-that returning for reunions or tailgates, visiting scholars on expense accounts. The lobby was old-school. Persian rugs and a brass chandelier, deep leather armchairs. The man behind the reception desk wore an orange-and-white striped tie—Carlisle’s colors—and looked at Jenny expectantly. She felt conspicuous in the down parka she wore over her office clothes, but she squared her shoulders and tried to look confident. After all, she belonged here as much as anybody. Keniston Eastman had invited her.

  Before the desk clerk could speak, Jenny saw the entrance to the restaurant on her right, and ducked inside. The room was dimly lit and mostly deserted, with rich wood paneling, and a faint tang of cigar smoke in the air. Keniston waved at her from a booth near the back. She took a deep breath and went to join him.

  “Jenny, hello,” he said, with forced heartiness, and shook her hand. She saw again how much he looked like the portrait of his ancestor that hung over the grand staircase in Founders’—the same forbidding profile and heavy eyebrows.

  “Hello, Kenist—I mean, Mr. Eastman,” she said, sliding in across from him and shrugging out of her coat. She felt hot and breathless and slightly ill. If this was really a proposition, she didn’t think she could go through with it.

  “I was surprised to see you this afternoon, but then I recalled you mentioned that you work for the provost’s office,” he said.

  “Yes, sir. How nice that you get to visit for your trustees’ meeting. Kate must be thrilled that you’re in town,” she said, awkwardly.

  This wasn’t feeling like the beginning of an illicit relationship, but even so, she was thrown off balance, being alone with him like this.

  Keniston grimaced. “Kate doesn’t know I’m here. That’s why I asked to speak with you. I’m a bit out of touch with her, and so I wanted to ask you something.”

  Of course—this was about Kate! What an idiot Jenny was, and how full of herself. Her cheeks burned. She was grateful for the dim lighting, so Keniston wouldn’t see her blush, or read in her eyes the ludicrous assumption she’d made. The idea that Keniston Eastman, with his millions and his expensive suits and his pretty young wife, might try to seduce her—little old Jenny Vega from the wrong side of the tracks in Belle River. Who did she think she was? Completely ridiculous. Not in a million years. And thank God for that! Right? She was profoundly relieved—although a tiny bit disappointed to lose her shot at Eastman’s patronage.

  Caught up in her own embarrassment, Jenny missed what he’d just said.

  “—since Thanksgiving, so—”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, faltering. “Can you repeat that? It’s been a long day.”

  “Of cours
e. Forgive my rudeness, just plunging into things. Can I get you a drink?”

  A glass of amber liquid sat before him. Scotch, probably. She could smell its sharp, smoky scent from across the table.

  “I’m not of legal age,” she said.

  “I wasn’t suggesting you order alcohol.” He signaled to a waiter, who came over instantly. “The young lady will have a—?”

  “Diet Coke, please. With lemon,” she said, blushing anew. What a ditz she was.

  Within minutes, her drink appeared, and Jenny sipped the ice-cold soda gratefully as Keniston launched into his tale of woe. She was too distracted at first to realize that he was confiding in her, telling her the private details of his troubled relationship with his daughter. Some stuff Jenny already knew or could have guessed. Kate and Keniston had quarreled bitterly over Thanksgiving and weren’t on speaking terms. Kate had a difficult relationship with Victoria that led her to view Keniston’s efforts at guidance as vindictive attacks. Keniston was terribly worried about her drinking and drugging and spending and cutting class. He wasn’t a monster. He remembered what it was like to be in college, and a certain amount of misbehavior was expected in a normal child. But Kate wasn’t a normal child. Kate was different. She was troubled.

  “I asked you here because I have to tell you something, and ask a favor of you, but this is highly confidential. You have to promise me it will stay between us,” he said.

  “Of course,” she whispered, leaning forward. “You can count on me. I won’t breathe a word.”

  His face was grim. Jenny wasn’t thinking about what he would say, or how he felt. She was too caught up in the drama of being taken into his confidence. Keniston took a swig of his drink, girding himself for the revelation.

  “Did Kate ever tell you about what happened to Maggie Price, her best friend at Odell?” he began.

  “Not that I recall.”

  “Oh, you’d remember if she had. Maggie committed suicide her sophomore year. A beautiful girl, very smart, everything ahead of her. From a prominent family. Her parents were friends of mine. It’s beyond comprehension what they went through. She did it with pills, an intentional overdose. And she left a note. The note mentioned Kate by name.”