“I’m seriously worried about you, Julia. You used to be much more political.”
“I think you’re confusing me with my mother.”
A couple of women Julia knew from town came over to say hello. Julia did introductions, but it was plain that nobody would remember anybody else’s name. They did little kissy things, jewelry jangling, and moved on.
Astrid watched them go. “They’re afraid I’m moving in.”
“Why would that bother them?”
“Too many of us move in and they’d have to move out.”
Julia colored, surprised into defending the Landing. “People aren’t like that here.”
“White people are like that everywhere.”
Astrid wanted to pay for brunch, probably to show off her platinum American Express card, but Julia explained that all charges went to a member’s account. Astrid tried offering cash for her share, which Julia politely refused, wanting to be in Astrid’s debt as little as Astrid evidently wanted to be in hers.
They stood on the front step, forcing diners of the paler nation to excuse themselves in order to gain entrance, a game Lemaster, at odd moments, also liked to play. Off to their right, sloping smoothly white, was the finest golf course in the county. Astrid’s flight, a puddle jumper from the Elm Harbor airport, left at four.
“We have the same problem in Ladybugs,” said Astrid, as if resuming an earlier conversation. Only it turned out she was. “At the convention in Dallas—you weren’t there, were you?—several of us offered a resolution critical of this Administration and its record. Not taking sides in the election—that would of course be illegal for a not-for-profit—but moving as close to the line as we could. Telling the truth about what has been happening in this country, and letting the Sister Ladies decide how to vote. Do you know what happened? They would not even bring it to the floor. They let it die in subcommittee. Laurel St. Jacques gave a speech about how the tradition of the organization was that we stand outside of politics. As if tradition is an argument. The older women, the ones who have been around forever, all nodded and cheered and clapped. All except Aurelia Treene, the writer—you’ve met Aurie, right? No? Well, Aurie is a gem. She has to be seventy-nine, eighty, something like that. She’s been a Ladybug, oh, fifty years. She lived in Harlem in the old days. She’s known some of these clubs since they were founded.”
Julia tried to say that she knew Aurie Treene, displayed autographed copies of her novels back home on the bookshelf, had met her through Granny Vee when still a child. But Astrid was listening only with her mouth.
“Aurie knew your grandmother. She said this has long been the curse of the best of us, and is therefore the curse of our clubs. The sororities, the fraternities, the social clubs, all of them. The best of our people reach a certain level of success, and they decide that they have moved beyond politics. One reason they become so devoted to the clubs—Aurelia said this—is because it lets them express solidarity with the community without actually having to do anything about it. They can congratulate each other on their achievements, and leave the striving for justice to those they have left behind.” During this monologue they had descended the steps. They were crossing the street, because no smoking was allowed on club property, even outdoors, except the golf course. The gutters were thick with slushy runoff. “And Aurie said something else, Julia. She told us that the worst offender of all, the club that in the old days used to have the most successful men, but the men least likely to do anything to risk their standing, was the Empyreals. Lemaster’s club,” she added unnecessarily, with an angry little bark of laughter. “The Empyreals might not be important any more, but I guess that’s one tradition they’ve stuck with, huh? Not getting involved.”
“They’re just clubs, Astrid.”
“Nothing is just anything,” she shot back, like a divinity school professor explaining Heidegger.
“What I mean is, nobody expects the Boy Scouts to be in politics. The chess club. The…the scuba diving association. People need space to relax.”
“But they are not permitted to relax for a living. Not in such times as these.”
Julia held her tongue. Arguing with Astrid was like arguing with Lemmie: the two of them stored up zingers by the bushel. Including zingers that possessed no zing.
“You’re a good woman,” Astrid assured her as they strolled toward the town beach. A sprinkling of fresh snow glistened in the noonday sun. A scattering of gulls had lingered for the season and were feeding on the sidewalk. “Lemaster could learn a lot from you.”
“I’ve learned a lot from him.”
“You are his wife, Julia. You are closer to him than anybody in the world. You have to make him see sense.” A pause, as a terrible idea struck her. “Or does he want this man to be re-elected? Working in the White House—that was just service to his adopted country, wasn’t it? Not service to the President?” She seemed to have rehearsed this argument a lot, probably with Washington friends whose judgment she had to avoid. “Surely Lemaster is not a supporter?”
Julia chose not to touch that one. “He’s your cousin, Astrid. Ask him.”
“He claims to be neutral.” A hissing sound. “As if neutrality is possible.” Rubbing her face as if in exhaustion. She was not accustomed to opposition. “Fine. If he’s not a supporter, he could prove it. He could help.”
“Maybe he just doesn’t like to play dirty,” said Julia, zipping her parka tightly against the frosty air.
“It’s not dirty. It’s doing what’s necessary.”
“Astrid—”
“Or we could go around him.” Astrid linked her arm through Julia’s and put her mouth close to her ear. Now they were down to the point of their walk. “I mean, all the secrets could get out without Lemaster necessarily being the source. He wouldn’t even have to know it got out.” A confident throaty smoker’s chuckle as, with her free hand, she waved her cigarette. “And he certainly wouldn’t have to know how it got out.”
Julia said, distinctly, “I don’t know the President’s secrets, Astrid.”
“We have to defeat this man. For the sake of the country.”
And if Senator Whisted wins, you probably get to be White House chief of staff, don’t you? Aloud she said: “Even so, I don’t know any secrets. Until yesterday, I didn’t even know there were any secrets.”
“Well, there are. We’re sure of it.” We: the good guys again. “Scrunchy used to tell Lemaster everything. And Lemaster tells you everything.”
Julia’s turn to laugh. She kicked through a snowdrift in her high boots. “If that’s what you believe, Astrid, you don’t know your cousin as well as you thought.”
“He would have told you this. It’s too juicy to keep to himself.”
There are only so many times you can deny a proposition truthfully before you begin to doubt your own story. “Lemaster doesn’t tell secrets, Astrid. Period. That’s why he knows so many. He believes nothing is more important than our honor.” She shook her head, feeling oddly pathetic. She decided not to tell Astrid that she and Lemaster were going to the White House for dinner on Tuesday; although she must already know. “Lemmie always says you have to assume anybody you tell a secret will tell as many people as you told.”
“Honor?” Astrid echoed, her voice tinged with the skepticism we reserve for the discovery of a hitherto unsuspected vice.
“Loyalty. Keeping your word even when it costs. That kind of thing. Lemmie will take a head full of secrets to the grave.” Julia searched for a way to drive her point home, a way Astrid would appreciate. Thoughts of Kellen and the mirrors intruded again, and again she shoved them away. “Look. Maybe he knows Mal’s secrets, too. He’s known them both for like thirty years. Did you ever think of that? Lemaster keeps Scrunchy’s secrets, and he keeps Mal’s. That seems fair.”
But Astrid was not so easily deflected. “It isn’t the same. One man wants to save the country. The other is destroying it. Fair has nothing to do with it. There is only one mo
ral course: you protect one man and try to stop the other.”
(II)
THEIR WALK HAD TAKEN THEM to the parking lot for the town beach, small and white like the Landing itself, and, by common consent, the most picturesque and dramatic in Harbor County. Julia, as conflicted as her famous mother by the competing tugs of the exclusivity of the Clan and justice for The People, had always felt a secret dirty thrill, a delicious frisson, at the thought that residence in the Landing gave the family access to the beach about which others merely fantasized. Bathers from other towns were always trying to sneak in. Kwame Kennerly, the most popular local host on what was called in the trade urban radio, was constantly railing against the “segregated” beach. Before whatever happened to Vanessa happened, the family used to walk here after church on Sunday, even in midwinter, when the sand was hard and the water a defiant gray that secretly thrilled and frightened Julia with its implicit endorsement of eternity.
Thirty years ago, Gina Joule had drowned here.
The two women crossed the snowy parking lot beneath the low slate sky, Astrid still whispering reasons why Julia should get her husband to share whatever dirt he was hiding on Scrunchy. Today’s guard, a pimply boy, watched them incuriously. Julia offered a saucy wave, because it was always possible that he was somebody who would be offended if she failed to recognize him. He was opening a box of fudge wrapped in Vera Brightwood’s trademark green ribbon, and unless he ate less of it, the pimples would be with him for a long time. Paying a kid to guard the beach in winter struck her as a waste of money, but somebody was here twenty-four hours a day, a tradition that went back to the war—by which the town’s old-timers meant World War II—when workers from the ship foundries then located a couple of towns away used to spill into the Landing to eat lunch by the water. A lawsuit challenging the town’s policies was currently pending in the state’s highest court, the plaintiffs—including Kwame Kennerly—represented by several professors from the law school. Julia, torn afresh between her egalitarian pretensions and her innate snobbery, was not sure how she felt about the prospect of the beautiful beach, so splendid in its isolation, suddenly teeming with humanity.
Astrid, having exhausted abortion and the war, was going on about energy policy and alternative fuels, when the pimply boy stepped from the booth.
“Residents only,” he snapped, raising a hand.
Julia swung around, hands on hips, head tilted back, for she never felt quite as Clannish as she did around Astrid. “I beg your pardon?”
“Beach is closed to the general public. Residents and their guests only.” He tapped the shiny red-white-and-blue sign in case she was deaf. Usually the guards only dozed. “Town ordinance.”
“I am a resident. I’ve been coming to the beach for six years.”
“Residents and guests only,” he repeated, as if she had missed the point.
“Did you hear me?”
“The beach is closed.” His tape seemed to have wound back to the beginning. “Town ordinance.”
Julia’s face burned. She could not believe she was suffering this humiliation in front of Astrid, whose half-smile suggested that the contretemps was proving her point. A moment ago, in full view of the two women, a teen with two dogs had strolled unmolested past the guard post. A white teen. “Listen to me, young man—”
“Residents and guests only. The beach is closed.”
Her cousin-in-law had a hand on her shoulder. “This is why we have to get that man out of the White House. So shit like this will stop.”
“Wait.” Julia looked past the guardhouse, across the empty parking lot, down to the cold, smooth slope of sand, and the frothy, inviting water beyond. In her imagination she felt the chill. She was a Veazie, and would not accept defeat; looking the boy in the eye, she realized that she need not. “I know you,” she said quietly.
“Town ordinance. Residents and their—”
“You’re Petey Wysocki, aren’t you?”
This shut him up. The pimply jaw gaped. “Uh—”
“I’m Julia Carlyle. Remember me? I taught you eighth-grade general science.”
“Oh. Uh. Uh.” Like a man lifting a heavy weight. “Right. Right! How are you, Mrs. Carlyle?”
“I’m fine, Petey. I’m fine.” Smiling in memory, because she had liked Petey, for all his struggles in the classroom.
“How’s your family?” she asked now, still smiling. “Didn’t I hear your sister got married?”
He blushed, pleased that she remembered. “Yeah, and she’s working on her second kid. Can you believe it?”
“That’s great. Give her”—a search of those endless mental lists as Astrid looked on, impressed—“give Doreen my best. And your brother, ah, Mikey. Tell Mikey I said hello.”
“I will.”
“And your parents, too.”
“I will, Mrs. Carlyle. I will. Thank you.”
“Thank you, Petey,” she said, and moved toward the perfect sand. Despite the season, she might even take off her shoes and socks, roll up her pants, and go up to her ankles in the frigid water.
“Wait, Mrs. Carlyle.”
Julia turned. “Yes, Petey?”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Carlyle. I still can’t let you on the beach.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Even if I know you? It’s still residents and their guests only.” He tapped the sign. “Town ordinance.”
CHAPTER 11
PRIVATE DINNER
(I)
“I WONDER WHAT he’s going to ask you to do,” said Julia, smiling at her husband in the mirror as she stood behind him adjusting his collar, although, in truth, it was already lying perfectly. But fixing his appearance was the sort of thing he had been raised to expect his wife to do. As scholar and university president, Lemaster Carlyle was all for the equality of women. In his home, by his own proud admission, he remained a traditionalist; and, whatever else the word implied, it meant that Julia checked his tie and smoothed his collar every morning.
“We don’t know that he’s going to ask me to do anything. I just started a new job. So it’s probably nothing more than a social thing. It’s been a long time since we all sat down together.” But the fierce ambition in his shining brown eyes conveyed a different message.
“Almost a year.”
“Something like that.” He smoothed the vent of his suit, turned this way and that, preening in the mirror. He slung a dark formal coat over his arm. Six months as president of the university, and Lemaster was prepared to move to the next thing. Twenty years of marriage, and he was always prepared to move to the next thing. “I think we’re ready,” he said, and it took her a moment to realize he was speaking only of tonight.
Julia, who never liked the way she looked in evening attire, thought nothing of the sort, but held her tongue. Everything in Lemaster’s closet seemed to fit him perfectly. If she did not cut out the vanilla cherries and cappuccino truffles, nothing in hers would ever fit her again. She made herself a fresh promise to stay away from Cookie’s: it was just the first Tuesday in December, and there remained time to keep the stern resolution she had made back in January. She sat on the bed to put on her pumps and glanced out the window. They were at the Hay-Adams, a hotel she liked for the way its paneled rooms seemed to breathe history on you, although on this trip their choice had really been dictated by proximity to the White House. Even though the Social Office had offered a coveted on-site parking space, in these days of heightened security they would have had to wait forever for the vehicle search; the only reliable way to get there was to walk.
“Just give me a minute to call home.”
“Why?”
Julia was, for a second, stuck on the words. Wasn’t it obvious? “To see if the kids are all right. If they need anything.”
Lemaster pointed to her shiny Isabella Fiore handbag. She owned several nice purses, from several nice makers, because she had been taught that a special evening bag is the mark of a true lady, and, despite her best effo
rts, could not stop trying to be one. “You have your cell.” He patted his pocket. “I have mine. Wendy is no shrinking violet. She’ll call if there’s an emergency.”
“I’d just feel more comfortable—”
Both palms came up, although he was declaring victory, not surrender. “No, Jules, please, don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not trying to tell you what to do. If you need to call, go ahead. We have the time.” A grin. “Whatever you need, I’m on your side.”
Need. She wanted to slap him, and so kissed his cheek.
In the elevator they talked about their afternoons. Julia had lunched with Tessa Kenner, soaking up Washington gossip, astonished at how much blonder she had become. Lemaster had met alums and lobbyists, but most of his work had been by telephone. As they crossed Lafayette Park in the brisk Washington night, Julia tottering on her heels, grasping his arm more for balance than for show, he said, “By the way, I forgot to mention, that detective dropped by Lombard to see me yesterday. Chrebet.”
“What did he want?” Not the lampposts. Please. And not the mirrors. But another part of her knew that Lemaster had never forgotten anything in his life.
“He was wondering—this is going to sound strange—who would have known we were taking Four Mile Road home that night.”
“Why?”
Lemaster shrugged. “Chrebet seems to have some idea that Kellen’s killer might have left his body there intentionally.” Their feet crunched over the salted walkways. “For us to find.”
“What?”
“I pointed out that whoever it was would have to be awfully sure we’d stop. How could anybody know we’d have an accident?” A wintry laugh. “Chrebet said he had to pursue every possibility, no matter how unlikely. Then he misquoted Conan Doyle.”
She clutched his arm more tightly. “But why—I mean, who—”
“I have no idea who. I have no idea why.”
Julia caught the tiny slightest emphasis on the pronoun and felt her fury rise. She stopped watching her feet for a moment. They had almost reached the northwest gate and its guardhouse. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
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