Ladies of the House

by Lauren Edmondson

  “Yes, I’m actually really excited,” I told Wallis as we began our walk up the hallway stairs. An earlier version of me might’ve been inclined to downplay my expectations, but I was going to try to follow my sister’s example and rip up those tendencies by their poisoned roots.

  “Me, too,” she said. “I’m just over the moon for you. I just wish I were as brave. And...well, you see the world for what it is, Daisy. You’re not floating around believing if we just loved harder things will get better. I wish I could be more like you.”

  Her contrite tone, and the fact that she was comparing herself to me unfavorably, gave me pause. “You are as brave as I am,” I said, stopping her on the third-floor landing with a hand to her arm. How could she not see? “Wallis, you were the one who encouraged me.”

  “I just don’t feel—” She cut herself off and began to fidget with her delicate silver necklace. “Ugh, sorry.” She smiled bracingly, stuck out her tongue. “I’m all out of sorts. I’m going to get it together. But full truth, I’m kind of floundering.” We continued down the hall toward Cricket’s, but our pace was slow, our strides tiny, both of us stalling to make sure what needed to be said was said. “I didn’t used to care so much about what people thought of me. But now I do, and, wow, it’s not a great time to have changed. People online are debating whether I’m worthy of contempt or sympathy.” She pressed her hand to her heart. “I just feel very different in some ways. It’s sort of a delayed reaction to everything, I guess. The more time passes, the more I feel like I should be cautious. Especially in relationships, and even at work. But in other ways I feel absolutely the same. I still want to fall in love and agitate for causes I believe in and not care if people call me all the names.”

  “And why shouldn’t you do all those things?” I asked as we arrived at Cricket’s door. I thought of the segment I’d taped that afternoon, and the conversation I’d had with Monica. We’d talked about this exact feeling my sister was describing. How unfair it was that women have to make the choice to be nice or to be powerful. “Don’t let what other people say, good or bad, pressure you into feeling small. The world does that enough to women. I won’t let it happen to my own sister.” I hugged Wallis, who hugged back. “We’re going to live the way we want, and try to do some good in the process. And that will be too much for some people and too little for others. But, you know, this is our story and if they don’t like it, they can go read another one.”

  Wallis grinned. “That’s good, Daisy. I’m going to borrow that one.”

  I remembered those moments many months ago, when we’d held each other in the pew at our father’s memorial, thinking the hardest parts were behind us, thinking the goodbye to Gregory was the end. And it had been terrifying, in the aftermath, when I couldn’t control the story, or the past, or anyone else around me, for that matter. I couldn’t even control my own feelings. I should’ve just opened my eyes and looked at Wallis; she would’ve told me, if I’d only asked, that it was all right to be scared.

  Cricket’s knob was tricky with my nails. I ended up using two hands and my hip to get the door open—I really didn’t want to ruin my paint—but then everyone yelled surprise! and I stumbled into the wall and had to grab someone’s coat to steady myself, and my dreams of a perfect manicure were dashed.

  Shocked out of my wits, I noticed Wallis, jubilant, now beside me. “Happy birthday!” She joined the chorus, throwing up her hands.

  “But it’s not till Monday,” I blubbered.

  Cricket, resplendent in red, emerged from the crowd, took my purse and handed me champagne. “What’s a few days when you’re thirty-five?” she said, kissing me on the cheek. I still was frozen; she had to take me by the arm and pull me into the party.

  Wallis and Cricket had filled the apartment with my friends and yellow and white balloons. Bo, L.K., Miles, Sara, and a few others from the office. Uncle Robert was there, and his wife. My two college roommates—they’d flown from Atlanta. Some of Cricket’s old pals who called me Lovie.

  It wasn’t until my second glass of champagne that I could catch my breath. Wallis turned on music and made sure no one’s drink was empty. They’d been planning this for weeks, she said, immensely proud of herself, and now it was a birthday slash watch party. What could be better? I ate Brie and crackers and crudités and babbled Oh, my gosh repetitively as people enveloped me in hugs.

  Miles had brought a date, his contractor, actually, who’d completed his master bathroom renovation on time and under budget. You don’t see that much in DC, laughed Miles, so I knew he was a keeper. Carl, this handy, tall redhead, was a dream, considerate and funny and a lover of all my favorite shows. Uncle Rob said Good to see you, kiddo. Sara updated me on all the latest office gossip. I located L.K., who looked very cute in a stylish black jumpsuit, by Wallis’s makeshift sound system—a phone plugged into a portable speaker. L.K. scrolled until she found her favorite, an ’80s classic rock station; satisfied with the direction of the playlist, she affectionately pinched my arm and leaned close. “Happy birthday, babe. What a great party. I can’t wait to watch your interview, among other things.”

  Her mischievous tone had me asking, “What other things?”

  L.K. wiggled her eyebrows. “I’m here to see if Bo finally makes a move on Wallis. I know July Fourth is still, like, two weeks away, but maybe we’ll see some fireworks tonight. Am I right, or am I right?”

  I could’ve sworn I heard the sound of a latch clicking open. I looked at Cricket’s door, expecting a new guest to stride in. But, no, the click was just inside my head: Charleston, their companionship, his nickname for her, his obvious distaste for Blake—I had thought it had been simple fondness. Wrong. “That tracks,” I said softly, still processing.

  “You truly didn’t know?” L.K. asked. We both glanced at Bo, who, I realized now, had never been far from Wallis’s side at this party. He was dressed rather chic tonight, or at least more put-together than usual, in those sustainable wool sneakers with colorful laces, a tailored pair of jeans, a shirt that wasn’t one size too big. And he was currently beholding her as one totally smitten; I guessed that if I watched for long enough, I might catch his heart thump right out of his chest and land at her feet.

  I was, for the next handful of seconds, positively afloat with possibility. My sister! My friend! And Bo was such a catch. But then: “I don’t think she likes him that way.”

  I’d expected this admission to spear the heart-shaped balloons floating around L.K.’s head. But she was unmoved. “No offense, Daisy, but I don’t trust you when it comes to this.” Then, giddy, she practically squealed, “They’re coming over here!”

  “Just try not to make it weird,” I begged, still spinning.

  “I make no promises. Hi, Wallis!” They embraced, kissed on the cheek. “Amazing party. You look stunning. Right, Bo?”

  “Yes,” said Bo, “to both.”

  Wallis took both compliments gracefully, smiling warmly, and giving me a good squeeze. “Anything for my famous and brilliant Daisy.”

  “I’m famous now, am I?” I asked, laughing at the idea.

  But L.K. agreed with Wallis. “Your story is resonating with people. I know it did with me. Word is you’re going to make it onto The List next month.”

  We all pretended to faint or swoon or fan ourselves exaggeratedly. The List was the silliest thing in DC everyone took seriously, and measured nothing except how germane one was to the current conversation.

  There was a knock on the door, and a familiar face poked through the crack. Miles’s press sec had arrived, and Wallis scampered off to welcome him.

  “Thanks for coming,” I said to Bo and L.K. for probably the fifth time that night. “This is outrageous.”

  Bo was curious. “That someone should throw you a party? You’re an easy person to celebrate, my friend.”

  I smiled. “It’s just unexpected, I guess.”
>
  “Then Wallis succeeded,” he said. “She was sure you were onto her.”

  Wallis had already found the new arrival a glass of champagne, and now was holding forth near the couch, cracking people up. I watched Bo watch my sister, formulating a plan for how to acknowledge it when Bo asked, “How is Wallis?” He cleared his throat. “I mean, she tells me she’s fine, but, according to the polls, it looks like Darley will win. Is she...prepared for when he descends on DC?”

  L.K.’s elbow briefly dug into my side, as if to say See? I did, I saw it, and all that was unspoken in his question. I didn’t want to trick Bo into believing something was there between him and my sister if there wasn’t, but I didn’t want to flatten his hopes, either. So I tried to remember the last time I heard Blake Darley’s name from Wallis. It had been a while. Immediately following his primary win, maybe. “I think she’s on her way to finishing that chapter of her life,” I hedged.

  He nodded, and I saw a hint of pleasure in the curve of his lips. “That’s good.”

  From across the room, Wallis held out her hand to beckon him over. “Help me get people arranged for the viewing, Bo? I think it’s time to turn it on.”

  Bo looked at me, apologetic, and I gave him a shove forward. “By all means,” I said, grinning. “Go.”

  As he walked away, L.K. did a little shimmy of excitement.

  * * *

  I stood in the back of the room with Wallis and Cricket as my interview played, and tried not to dwell too much on how weird my voice sounded, or how my blazer was higher on one shoulder than the other. Guests piled on the sofa and the arms of the chair and cross-legged on the floor where the coffee table normally would go.

  “As a wise friend once put it, women feel the need to either apologize for or deny the behavior of men we love,” I was saying to Monica, recalling my late-night chat with the Judge and Aunt Jane in Charleston.

  “That’s my daughter!” whispered Cricket, proud.

  “That’s the game many women have to play, though,” said Monica. “To get ahead, or to get approval, or to just stay alive.”

  I remembered this next part. I’d been so taken by the conversation that I’d briefly forgotten the lights, the stage makeup, the video and the tape. “Exactly. I’m guilty of playing that game myself.” I thought here of Cricket and Wallis, the pain we’d been through. “I felt my only option was to cover up my father’s behavior. I didn’t think there was another way that would allow me to keep my family afloat. I know other women, too, have been convinced that they have no good options in the wake of a man’s bad behavior. Because, if we draw attention to it, history tells us what will happen—we’ll be blamed for being complicit, for being permissive, for being too dumb to see him for what he was, or for somehow encouraging him to act that way in the first place.”

  “So, how do we escape this cycle?” Monica asked. “How can we change the future?”

  “Sharing our lived experiences is one option, though I know how challenging this can be. It absolutely was for me.” Here I paused. “It was my sister, actually, who helped me evolve. She demonstrated, time and again, that being vulnerable and opening up isn’t a sign of weakness. It’s a sign of strength, of trust in oneself and empathy for others. I want to embrace this new approach now, for myself and for my family. And, maybe, for women who’ve been persuaded that it’s best to stay quiet. Because I have to ask this question—best for whom?”

  I glanced at Wallis, hoping she’d be pleased to hear this, but she had gotten a notification on her phone, and was now absorbed with something on Instagram. Shit, I saw her mouth.

  I scooted closer to her. “What is it?”

  “Daisy,” Wallis whispered, moving her phone to her chest to hide her screen. “Have you seen it?”

  “Seen what?” Cricket asked, leaning in.

  “Why don’t you just tell me, Wallis?” I said, beginning to fear. “What do I need to see?”

  Wallis motioned for us to follow her into the kitchen, then reluctantly held out her phone. I stared down at a black-and-white picture of a diamond solitaire on a ring finger.

  “Who is that?” Cricket asked, peering over my shoulder at the social media post. “Is that? Oh. Oh, no, is that someone who Blake...?”

  “No,” I said, finally able to process what I was seeing. I gripped the counter. “No, it’s Ari. It’s Atlas’s girlfriend.” She’d tagged her location as London. Under the photo, this caption: WHIRLWIND! Then heart emojis. So many hearts.

  “She’s in London.” Wallis, stating the obvious. “Did he really propose to her?”

  “He texted me this morning,” I managed. “He told me that he wanted to talk when he got back.”

  “Oh, Atlas,” Wallis murmured.

  A few minutes earlier, I’d been drinking champagne, feeling like I maybe had it together, feeling grand about it all. Now, all I could do was croak the first thing that came to mind. “Wonderful,” I said.

  “You have to say something,” said Wallis. “He loves you, I know he does.”

  “I agree,” said Cricket. “Stand up and yell I object!”

  “I won’t,” I said. “If he loved me, that ring wouldn’t be on her finger.”

  “If he knew how you felt—” said my mother.

  “Daisy is right,” said Wallis. “No, Mom, stop making that face and listen. Daisy is right. Atlas has made his choice. Why is it up to Daisy to tell him he’s wrong?”

  We heard applause from the other room, and the sound of a commercial. My segment had concluded. I pushed my sister’s phone away, left the kitchen. My heart was ruined, but it wouldn’t do to abandon our guests, who were rising from their seats, patting me on the back, high-fiving, telling me bravo.

  Thank you, was my mantra, and I said it again and again. Aw, thanks.

  Wallis and Cricket trailed me out of the kitchen; someone found the remote and turned off the television. Wallis clinked her glass, inviting everyone’s attention, and made a lovely toast in my honor. Afterward, L.K. said she’d send me the video of it. More surprises—party hats with daisies on them, a sheet cake with my face on it. It was the picture that had appeared with Atlas’s article.

  Cricket sliced me a corner, and while everyone else waited to be served, I ate my part of my forehead in my mother’s dark bedroom, where I’d slunk off to check my phone. There had been a text from Atlas waiting for me:

  I’m so sorry I couldn’t be at your party. Were you surprised? Hope you’re having a ball. You deserve all the champagne and cake in the world. Save me a piece, will you?

  Alone with the coats and purses, I cried tears that were both happy and sad because I felt both whole and empty. Eventually, someone called my name from the living room. I left my phone on the dresser, used the side of my plastic fork to savor the last bit of blue icing, then went back to my party.

  Forty

  Though I was no longer officially employed by Miles, there were some loose ends to tie up before I walked away for good. A few days after my birthday, I commuted to the Hill one last time to turn in my credentials and pick up my last box of pictures and trinkets. Though L.K. wanted to throw me a goodbye party, I’d politely refused, done for now with parties, but I delivered cards to those who I was closest with, gave hugs to all the rest, and my newest contact information to everyone. Beginning next week, they could find me at The Daylight Project in Arlington.

  “I’m going to be keeping you and Miles accountable,” I said to Bo, before he and Miles dashed off to a full day of events in Maryland. As expected, Bo became chief of staff as easily as one stepping off an escalator. This was his floor. He strode confidently, knowing exactly in which direction to head.

  When I was at the front desk, exchanging final bits of gossip with Sara at lunchtime, a few high school interns tentatively approached. Would I mind, they wondered, giving them a tour of the Capitol? These interns, all
young women, had seen my name in the press. Of course, I said. With the Senate now adjourned for recess, they wouldn’t be missed around the office. And it would be a farewell, of sorts, to a place that I knew well and loved—and a good distraction from Atlas.

  The truth was I’d thought about him almost constantly since the news of his engagement Friday. Now that he was getting married, I was not only bidding goodbye to the last, loitering hope we might be something more, but also to our friendship as it had been. Marriage can reconfigure a life; I might as well predict that Atlas’s priorities would necessarily change once he had a wife.

  A wife.

  The day following the party, Wallis and Cricket had checked on me only to discover me lying atop my covers, bent like a bug in death. Wallis had knelt before me, just as I’d done for her all those months ago, the space between us crumpled, and then I was crying on her shoulder, unable to hold it in anymore, hating the sounds I was making, but forgiving myself for my tears. There, she had said to me, so quiet I barely heard. Better.

  After a while—I don’t know how long—Cricket took a book from my shelf and placed herself in the small chair reserved for clothes not quite dirty enough for laundry, and began to read aloud about Matthew and Marilla and Anne. Wallis curled around me on the bed.

  At different times, they went upstairs, retrieved snacks, more pillows, an additional blanket, the heating pad. I was never alone. I was fed caramel popcorn, orange juice. Wallis brought me my contact case, my solution. On Cricket read, for hours; eventually her voice became white noise, and I was able to rest.

  Their efforts had not been in vain. Though I still wasn’t myself, I did feel fortified enough to put on makeup and tackle my to-do list. And this tour I could also manage.

  On the tram over to the Capitol Visitor Center, it felt as though I was walking through a storm. Not a particularly violent one, but that of an insistent, cleansing rain. Everyone I knew, and many people I didn’t, greeted me like we were already midconversation. What a wild story, they said. I sensed some of them wanted me to exhibit shame. Others, it seemed, were expecting me to chat as candidly as I had to Atlas and to Monica, deconstructing, reviewing, retelling, even joking. I was aware I was still a spectacle, but the trauma I might have felt months ago never surfaced. Whatever they thought about me, finally, was not the same as what I thought about myself.