by Ruthie Knox
“But May hasn’t your vision, nor has Ben. They seem like lovely people—I’m not disparaging them—but from what you’ve told me, your sister is spending most of her time getting ready to fail at being a children’s book illustrator instead of telling her agent where he can shove it and doing what she knows is what she wants. She’s afraid, and it’s getting in her way. I’ve just seen Ben’s restaurant, and you’re right. Everything you’ve said about it is right. They’re afraid to fail in business. You’re not.”
“No, I’m just afraid to fail in every aspect of my personal life.”
“You’ve no reason to be. You were a rubbish spy, and you misunderstood some aspects of your family’s situation, but you came to New York and accomplished an enormous amount in a very short time, not to mention made me fall in love with you.”
“Winston—”
“Hush. I’m not finished.” It was easy to silence her. Easy to tell her what he wanted, finally. “I want you to keep failing. I want you to be fearless and impulsive, and to follow your instincts, invest in Ben’s restaurant, open a gallery for May, and become a New York businesswoman. I want you to reclaim your dogs and fly with me to London to meet my mother, and I want to purchase furniture in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, that will be our furniture, and buy a car, and meet your mother. I have to assume, somewhere in there, we’ll make an utter hash of things. But I trust you—I trust us—to find our way back from failure. I think we can learn together.”
Allie stared at her hands in her lap, leaving him in limbo, uncertain whether he’d done the right thing in taking his brother’s advice. Perhaps he ought to have taken things more slowly, instead of rushing in like a right tosser.
But looking at her, dressed in velveteen Technicolor, her hair enormous, he couldn’t feel anything but pleased he’d said it, because it was absolutely true. Every word.
“There’s not a thing wrong with the way you are, Allie Fredericks. You’re the most interesting thing to happen to me in all my life.” Her head rose, color high in her cheeks. “I’d like to spend my life with you, as much of it as you’ll have me. I think—”
“Oh my God, Winston, shut up.” She was unbuckling her seat belt, clambering across the car into his arms, rubbing her cheek against his, so he didn’t feel wounded by her silencing him. He knew he’d been pushing it. “Give me a chance to catch up, jeez.”
He kissed her instead, quite thoroughly, until her lips were pliant and her body had begun to relax. “Catch up later,” he suggested. “There’s no rush.”
“I think you just planned out the next, like, fifty years of our lives.”
“We’ll make a list,” he suggested. “Sort ourselves out. It won’t be a problem.” He kissed her neck, found a spot behind her ear that caused her to make a very satisfying squeaking sort of gasp.
“We are pretty good at list making,” she conceded.
“We’re incredible.” He dragged his thumb over her nipple, causing it to form a highly satisfactory peak beneath her clothes. She hadn’t worn a bra today.
“Incredible might be pushing it.” She scraped her fingernails over the nape of his neck and pulled him in for another kiss, deeper and more intimate.
“No one has ever made more outrageous lists.”
“Well, I’m kind of an outrageous girl.”
“I’ve noticed.” He found a zipper and lowered it in order to explore just how outrageous Allie was willing to get behind tinted windows.
“You don’t even know all my moves yet.”
“Show me one?”
She showed him several. They fogged the car windows.
Afterward, Allie asked to borrow a piece of paper and a pen so she could begin a new list.
Chapter 24
They’d turned the Brooklyn Bridge into a boat.
Allie knew nothing about boats, but she thought it was meant to be like the tall ships that visited Green Bay in the summertime, a schooner or a brigantine, with the iconic stone columns in the middle of the East River transformed into its central mast, reaching skyward, and banks of sails in white, orange, and blue puffing out with the breeze off the water.
Allie couldn’t stop looking at it. It was completely stunning—the scale of it, and more than that, the way it seemed to have appeared from nowhere as if it had always been.
It was the work of years, a masterpiece produced by makers with thousands of hours’ experience in art, design, showmanship, planning.
Her mother must have been on the bridge all night long with Justin. She must have broken out the job into sections and steps, secretly put dozens or even hundreds of people to work in secret, staged materials, sourced equipment, provided detailed instructions and blueprints.
Allie found it easy to imagine her mom, snippy and dictatorial, compressing her mouth at people, lasering them with her eyes, weighing them down with midwestern disappointment so they had no choice but to do exactly what she wanted, her way, on her schedule.
She’d made this. Nancy Fredericks of Manitowoc, Wisconsin, and her old friend from art school, had transformed the Brooklyn Bridge into magic, and Allie didn’t know what to do with the awe she felt, the extraordinary swelling pride that made her heart so big she’d spent half an hour just crying and hugging people—her family, Winston’s family, Jean, complete strangers, everyone completely out of their minds with delight.
Winston put his hands on her shoulders, and she sighed. “My mama did that.”
“They’re saying it cost millions.”
“My mama.”
“You’ve a very distinguished family.”
She turned to grin at him, her arms full of flowers. “I do, don’t I?”
Ben had been right—things fell apart and came back together again in a new shape. And she had a very distinguished family.
They stood among the crowds on a granite terrace in Brooklyn Bridge Park, and from every angle more people streamed in. They’d walked past television crews, food trucks, big movie-size screens all over the park showing different angles of the bridge-ship, showing the crowd, showing the roped-off part of the pier that served as a stage and the number of minutes left before something would happen on it. Four minutes and counting. And everything festooned with flowers—real flowers, freshly cut, in vibrant color against concrete and fabric and the open sky. Allie’s armful of blossoms seemed insignificant by comparison, though she and Winston had bought out two different flower vendors of their roses and lilies, her mom’s favorite.
Allie held onto them anyway, because she wanted to put them in her mother’s arms, a tribute to the woman who had brought her here, given her everything she had, and made this morning possible.
May came up with Ben. She had mascara smeared across her cheekbone, and she’d worn a white sundress with a corset-style bodice and the big full skirt that Allie had sent her in the mail last year and forgotten all about. She looked beautiful. Allie reached for her sister’s hand.
“It feels so hopeful, you know?” May said. “With all the stuff going on in the world, to have this, all these people here, and everyone so happy. I can’t stop smiling.”
“They’re saying there’s just as big a mob on the Manhattan side,” Ben said. “Did you see Bea’s video?”
Allie had. Beatrice had been out since before the sun came up, and she’d brought a camera crew of film students with her, as promised, shooting short films and interviews, posting them on social media. Bea’s film of the sun coming up to reveal the ship had gone viral and become one of the first things thousands of Americans had clicked on in bed this morning.
May squeezed her hand. “We’re going to do it,” she said. “Let you invest in the restaurant, and expand. The whole thing. I know I kind of freaked out when you tried to tell me about it before, but this morning we talked about it, and it just seems right.”
“You’re sure?” Allie looked at Ben. “I’m going to be up to my elbows in your business. You’ll have to let me make decisions and everything.”
“I’m sure,” Ben said.
“But I don’t want you to manage my art stuff,” May said. “If anyone’s going to help me launch my career, I want it to be her.” She was looking at the bridge.
“Yeah, good call.” Allie tightened her hands around the flowers just to squeeze something. She thought about Nancy Van Der Beek running a May Fredericks gallery, and it gave her the same feeling she got when she was closing a good deal.
Ben leaned close and said something in May’s ear. She kissed him, grinning against his mouth, and said, “I’m going to make Ben hover over people and look menacing in the hope we can score somewhere to sit. My feet are killing me.”
The stage area was at ground level, with wide granite steps above it where the lucky had managed to score a seat.
“All right. Text if you need to find us later.”
“Yep.”
The more of New York arrived, the harder it became for Allie to keep track of all her people. She’d lost her dad an hour ago and could only assume he was where he wanted to be, with his corsage in a box, his pleat-front chinos and sport coat and the tie he wore to the nuclear plant’s Christmas parties.
Bea had been flitting in and out with her cronies, Jean was somewhere nearby with his mom and the niece who lived with them, and Chasity had brought some entire crew of extended family that included her own mama, her boyfriend, brothers and sisters, and too many children and babies to keep track of. Nev and Cath had gone over the bridge so they could see the rigging and sails more closely, Cath practically out of her skin with excitement, talking about whether they could get Justice and Nancy to do something with the V&A, complaining about how women artists never got their share of credit because of sexism and child-rearing and it was about goddamn time she did something about it.
Two minutes left on the clock. A worker came onto the stage and set up a microphone stand, tested it, and walked off.
Winston put his arm over her shoulder and drew her close to his side. “Are you nervous?”
“I think I’m excited.”
“This is a big day for you.”
She glanced at him. He’d worn a cream summer-weight linen suit with a crimson pocket square to match her dress. He’d asked her specifically this morning what color she would be wearing, very formal despite being buck naked with his dingle dangling, having just stepped out of the shower.
She’d chosen that moment to tell him she was pretty sure she’d fallen in love with him.
“It’s a big day for both of us.”
The timer counted down to zero. The speakers, which had been blasting ocean-themed music all morning, cut out. A man walked onto the roped-off portion of the terrace. Allie could see him, small in front of her, huge in one of the screens between her and the bridge. He had thin sandy hair and big glasses. She recognized him from Pulvermacher’s.
“I’m Justice,” he said, and the crowd went absolutely bonkers.
He waited patiently for the noise to settle down. “I’d meant to tell you,” Winston said in her ear, “I met with him yesterday.”
“I thought you canceled.”
“I phoned to cancel, but his agent was adamant that Justice wanted to see me. So we had a beer together at Pulvermacher’s. He’d like to meet you.”
“He said that?”
“I’m not sure how he found out you’d been staying with me, but he had. He asked me to tell you.”
Allie inspected Justin on the screen. She thought it was possible his mouth looked a little bit like hers, and also his ears.
This information felt neutral, and mostly okay. He wasn’t her dad, but he’d had something to do with the making of her, just as her mom had something to do with the making of him, and of all of this.
“I’ll put it on the list,” she said.
Eventually the crowd quieted enough for Justice to resume speaking. He thanked everyone for coming, introduced the piece, and gave credit to his sponsors and to various city and harbor authorities for cooperating with the project, which he said had been over ten years in the making.
Then he said, “There’s someone I’d like to introduce you to. She’s not someone whose name you know, but she’s inspired me for a long time. Nancy, would you come up?”
He was looking off the camera, and Allie scanned the terrace. For a minute nothing happened. A woman walked out, whispered something in Justice’s ear, and disappeared.
Then, at last, Allie’s mom walked onto the terrace.
She wore the same suit she’d bought for Allie’s wedding, but she looked different on the big screen—brisk, efficient in her movement, powerfully self-possessed.
“This is Nancy,” Justice said to the crowd, rather than to her mother. “She’s been in town helping me get this all ready for you, just like she’s helped me many times before.” Her mother gave a tight smile. The crowd had gotten loud again, not as interested in listening if Justice was only thanking underlings.
Allie realized her mouth was as tight as her mother’s.
An assistant handed Justice a small box, which he opened. “In recognition of thirty years of service, we’d like to present you with this token,” he said.
Allie couldn’t see what he was holding until the camera zoomed in and she caught a view of it on the big screen: it was a watch.
A gold watch. The Harry Winston.
Allie watched her mother’s body knife itself into the posture she used when she and May were doing something she didn’t approve of, and she knew Justice had fucked up. She felt it in her body.
A gold watch for thirty years of service. Introducing her as “Nancy,” his helper. As though she was a railroad employee and he was the railroad.
A few more monosyllables drifted into the mic, the crowds closest to the stage made some confused murmuring, and her mother shook her head sharply, put her hand over Justice’s and pushed the watch away.
No one in the crowd could have understood what had happened.
“Oh my God.” May appeared at her side. “Mom is sooo pissed.”
Allie looked at her mother, smart and fierce, her hair huge in the humidity, and instead of feeling sorry for Justice, she felt anger boil up inside her, too. She wanted to stamp her feet. Push through the crowd around the stage and grab the mic and set history straight. Kick Justice and every single arty hipster in the crowd in the shins.
Winston was rubbing a soothing circle on her back, and her anger was such that she wanted to smack his hand away.
This should be her mother’s moment.
Then there was a scuffle in the crowd, and she watched as Bea and a group of other college kids elbowed their way toward the ropes. Bea held her camera high and was shouting something.
Shouting and pointing her arms, signaling to a scrum of people around one of the cameras.
Allie watched as the ruckus got her mom’s attention, got Justice’s attention. He looked sad and pouting. Beatrice was close enough now to grab Nancy by the elbow and pull her into close conversation.
Allie watched her mom nod and smile, looking up at the screen.
Allie looked, too. Beatrice’s face had appeared there, a hundred times larger than life. Rainbow hair, sun-kissed cheeks, perfect straight English teeth. She beamed. “Are we live?”
“Bloody hell,” Winston said. “She’s—what’s she done?”
“She’s taken matters into her own hands,” Allie replied.
“She’s—was this some sort of guerrilla maneuver? How’s she even—”
Allie squeezed his arm. “I’m sure she’ll tell you later. I suggest, for now, you just enjoy it.”
“Good morning, New York City!” Bea said. “I’m Beatrice Chamberlain. I’m a documentary film student at NYU, and I’m delighted to inform you that I have just now been granted the exclusive opportunity to interview Nancy Van Der Beek. You all know who Justice is, but none of you know Nancy, and you absolutely should. Because for thirty years Nancy Van Der Beek has been the mastermind behind Justice.” The came
ra panned back, fitting Beatrice and Nancy both into the frame. “They say behind every great man is an even greater woman. What do you think, Nancy? Is that you?”
Nancy laughed—a perfect midwestern mom laugh that combined a scraping of humility with utter control. “Well, I guess that sounds about right, Beatrice.”
She sounded like the president. Like the queen of the world. Allie couldn’t stand it.
“So tell me, how have you contributed to the project of Justice’s career over the years? I understand the persona and secrecy were your ideas?”
Allie watched the crowd watch Bea interview her mother in front of everyone. She listened to her mother’s answer, and memories came rushing back. When she was in third or fourth grade, her mother messing with black cloth for hours at the kitchen table—that was the year she was describing to Bea, when she’d spent every spare thought she had trying to source the right textiles and plan the draping of the Statue of Liberty in black. Or the time when Allie wanted to buy a historical department store building in Manitowoc and Andy McMullen on the City Council had blocked her, telling her that he was the only one who could approve the sale. How her mom, angry, sat her down and told her, Don’t suck up to that man. If he gets you where he wants you, he will never let you do anything in this town without going through him. Andy McMullen doesn’t have any power over you, Allie, and you can’t let him take it.
She’d thought at the time that her mom didn’t think much of her. That her mom thought she was fucking up. But now she understood that her mother was simply trying to keep her from making the same mistakes she’d made. To give her the power she believed she deserved.
When the interview ended, with Bea promising more extensive footage and information on her YouTube channel, Neville and Cath came running over.
“Did you see Bea?” Nev was panting, grinning.
“Yes,” Winston said, and in that yes was so much fatherly pride it made Allie want to blush herself. She settled for kissing him on the cheek while he beamed.
“Where’s Dad?” May grabbed Allie’s elbow to hold onto her while the people pushed them forward, and then she saw him, tall and striding through the people like he’d lived in New York forever, making his way toward the terrace.
