Half of What You Hear

by Kristyn Kusek Lewis

  “Disrepair? Oh, come on. I don’t think I—” I turn to Cole, who, maddeningly, isn’t coming to my defense. If this is how his mother reacts to these nothing suggestions, there’s no telling how she’ll feel about some of the bigger ideas we’ve talked about, like completely revamping the menu in the restaurant and adding a Sunday brunch with live music to bring in more weekend business. I glare at him. What the hell?

  “Diane, come on,” Bradley says, stepping in where my husband apparently can’t. “The kids are entitled to do what they want. That’s what we—”

  “Enough!” she says, slicing her hand through the air. “Really.” She adjusts her purse in the crook of her elbow. “I really have to go now. Bradley, I’ll see you at home.”

  After she’s gone, I turn back to my husband. “Cole,” I say. “We’d talked about all of this stuff. Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “Oh, don’t mind her, Bess,” Bradley says. “You know how she gets. I must have forgotten to sneak her tranquilizer into her coffee this morning.” He pats my shoulder as he passes my chair.

  I turn back to Cole, giving him one more chance—it is so infuriating that he still, all these years later, does not have the nerve to stand up to his mother when it comes to me.

  “We just might need to take it a little slower with her, that’s all,” he says.

  Ugh. Here we go. I’ve heard this “treat her with kid gloves” argument a million times before. It’s as if his mother is a wild animal we’re trying to catch, and we have to approach her very, very carefully, not looking her in the eye or making any sudden movements, to avoid getting mauled.

  “I barely said anything,” I say, standing. I’ve had enough.

  He shrugs. “She is who she is.”

  “All right,” Bradley says impatiently, tapping the side of the doorframe with his hand. “Let’s continue this later. Bess, you wanna walk out with me?”

  “Yes,” I say, looking back at my husband before I go, just to be doubly sure he knows how irritated I am. “So glad I stopped by to see you, Cole. This was lovely.”

  “Bess, come on—” he starts, but I walk off before he can continue.

  “So, you headed home?” Bradley says, once we’re out on the front steps. An older couple in windbreakers and thick-soled tennis shoes sit in rocking chairs to our left. Bradley waves and smiles at them, and I follow suit, thinking that I need to get used to the idea of being a hostess once I start putting in more time here. If I decide to start putting in more time here.

  “I am,” I say. “I have a few more hours until the kids are done for the day.”

  “Well, listen,” he says. “Just for the record, I think your ideas are great. It’s not lost on me that you have an expertise that could really be put to good use around here. If you want to, of course.”

  “Oh,” I say, touched by his acknowledgment. “I appreciate that, Bradley. I really do.”

  “You’d be good at it,” he says. “I’m sure of it. Diane, you know, she never wanted to be tied down to the business. She kind of made up her role as we went along, which suited both of us just fine. That’s the beauty of this thing, you can do it however you want.”

  “Well, thank you, Bradley,” I say. “That means a lot to me.”

  “I really mean it, Bess. Do this your way. Hell, don’t do it at all if you don’t want to!” he says. “But don’t let Diane bother you. She’s just never been good with change.”

  “Right,” I say, thinking that that may be true, but I think the problem is more that she’s never been good with me.

  “Well, I’m off—” he starts.

  “Wait!” I say, encouraged by our little heart-to-heart just now. “Can I talk to you about something?”

  “Depends,” he jokes.

  “Another topic,” I say. “Not about the inn . . .” I pause and swallow, suddenly nervous. “Somebody told me something . . . about Susannah . . . I’d never heard it before.”

  “Oh, lordy,” he says, pursing his lips like he has a bad taste in his mouth. “Well, when it comes to her, it could be anything. What is it?”

  I inch a step closer to him and lower my voice. “I’m sorry if I’m overstepping here. I know you two were involved—”

  “Ha!” he interrupts, throwing his head back. “Bess, we were involved over fifty years ago. And I can hardly remember what I ate for breakfast this morning, so . . .”

  Wow, I think. Bradley’s memory of their romance is a stark contrast from the way Susannah’s carried on about it to me. “I know, I know, which is why I feel silly saying anything, but . . .” I shift my weight from side to side, trying to find just the right words.

  “What is it?”

  “Do you think there’s any truth in the rumor she had something to do with what happened to her friend?”

  “Her friend?” he says. “You mean Henrietta?”

  I nod, feeling sheepish now. “Yeah.”

  “Oh, who knows?” he says, pulling a pack of cinnamon gum from his pocket and offering me a piece. “I certainly never bought all that.”

  “And you and Henrietta were friends?”

  “Oh, sure,” he says. “You know, town this small . . . It was horrible when she died. Real sad.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “But you’ve seen by now, Bess, how rumors fly around here. People just like to talk. Whether it’s true or not really doesn’t seem to matter much.”

  “I’m definitely beginning to see that,” I say.

  “And you thought the gossip mill was bad in Washington!” he says, reaching out and patting my shoulder.

  “Yeah,” I say, thinking that if almost anyone else said that to me, I would take it personally. “I sure did.”

  “How is she, anyway?” he asks.

  “Susannah?” I say.

  He nods.

  “Honestly, between us, she seems pretty lonely,” I say, thinking of our conversation that morning, how she kept tearing up. “I feel kind of sorry for her.”

  “Mmm,” he says. “You know, Bess, I’ll be honest with you. She’s always kind of been that way. Sort of a lonely person, with the way her family was.”

  I watch as he folds his gum wrapper into a tiny rectangle. “I could tell she was feeling nostalgic today,” I say. “She told me a bunch of old stories.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Mm-hmm,” I say. “I heard all about how the two of you used to go to the swinging bridge. And about you tossing the coins in the fountain.”

  “Oh, my goodness!” He chuckles and gazes out toward the road. “Cricket . . .”

  “Cricket?” I say. “You call her that?”

  “Oh, it’s just . . .”

  “She told me about it!” I say, putting my hand to my chest. “The nickname from her dad!”

  “Yeah . . . I guess . . .” He looks at me for just a split second before he looks away. I’ve never seen Bradley, unlike his wife, get ruffled about anything—he’s steady as the beat on a metronome, one of the many reasons I’ve always found him so easy to talk to. But if I’m not mistaken, watching him now . . . he’s flustered. And rather than make me uncomfortable, it’s endearing, almost . . . adorable, discovering this part of him that I’ve never known anything about.

  “She enjoyed telling me about all of it,” I say. “I could tell.”

  “Well,” he says, clearing his throat and pulling his Greyhill Grain and Feed ball cap out of his back pocket and squeezing it down onto his head. “It’s good that you’re there for her to talk to.”

  “You mean that?” I say, genuinely curious. “Because I’ve wondered what you thought about this whole thing. Diane clearly doesn’t like it.”

  “Don’t worry about her.”

  “I just worry about what . . . ,” I start. “I know that people around here aren’t particularly fond of Susannah, and I don’t know, with me being new, and now I’m spending time with her . . . Do you think it’s a bad idea?”

  “It probably won’t help
you around here,” he says. “I’ll be honest about that. But people will give you the benefit of the doubt. And if they don’t, let me tell you, as someone who’s lived here my whole life, you just can’t worry about it too much.”

  “Okay. I just don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable,” I say, hoping he realizes that by anyone, I mean him.

  He reaches around me, hugging my side. “You’ll be fine, girl,” he says. “You will.”

  “All right,” I say, remembering what Susannah said about him earlier, how he made her feel so good about herself. “I’m sorry if this is weird for you, that all this stuff from your past is coming up. I didn’t anticipate it.”

  He laughs as he starts down the front steps. “Ancient history, Bess,” he says, waving goodbye over his head as he walks away. “Ancient history.”

  Thirteen

  I’m spying.

  I didn’t mean to, but I am.

  I came into the kitchen intending to make a cup of tea, but then I heard the girls talking through the open window over the sink. I am standing crouched over the basin, lifting my head just above the windowsill every few seconds to sneak a peek at Livvie and her friend Lauren, who came home with her from school today. I twist around to check the time on the clock on the stove. I told her mother, when we emailed the night before, that I would drop Lauren off at Bully’s, where she works in the bakery department, around five thirty.

  I take another look at the girls. Livvie sits straddling the bench next to the picnic table on the back patio, leaning on one elbow, watching as Lauren draws a curved line along her page of notebook paper. Somehow, when she curls her pencil up before she pauses, the line materializes into the top of a dolphin’s back.

  “You should totally be an artist when you grow up,” Livvie says.

  “I totally plan to,” Lauren jokes back, smiling as she catches Livvie’s eye.

  “What should I draw next?” Lauren asks.

  Livvie shrugs. “I don’t know,” she says, taking a sip from her water bottle. “How about a mermaid, to go with the dolphin?”

  Lauren nods, her eyes widening a little at the sound of an idea she likes. “Okay,” she says, starting to draw. “Wait! I have an idea! I’m going to make it, like, an evil mermaid!”

  Livvie looks away, toward the back of the yard, where a squirrel is hopping along the rocking limb of one of the elms. I can tell that she is starting to tune out. She has that vacant, spacey look she sometimes gets at dinnertime, when Cole and I are talking about something grown-up and boring or Max starts going on about the intricacies of whatever sci-fi book series he’s currently engrossed in.

  My eyes fall back on Lauren’s page. From what I can tell, it has morphed into a full-fledged sea battle scene, the mermaid with a pitchfork like the one carried by Neptune, the Roman god of the sea.

  “So which evil sea witch should this mermaid go after first?” Lauren asks.

  Livvie sighs, considering the paper. “I don’t know.”

  “What?” Lauren says, lifting her pencil.

  “Nothing,” Livvie says unconvincingly.

  “Let’s make it Brittany,” Lauren says.

  “Whatever,” Livvie says, a surliness in her voice. Uh-oh.

  Lauren turns in my direction, and I feel my heart jump, thinking she’s seen me. I duck down, my eyes level with a bottle of Mrs. Meyer’s hand soap.

  I hear Livvie sigh. “You know she’s really not that bad,” she says.

  Lauren laughs.

  “What?” Livvie says.

  “Do you hear yourself? Have aliens taken over your brain? Earth to Livvie! Earth to Livvie!”

  “Whatever.”

  “Did you eat something weird at lunch?” Lauren jokes. “Was the pizza radioactive? Maybe it fried your brain.”

  “Come on,” Livvie says. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Fine,” Lauren says. “If you’re so desperate to be friends with them.”

  Friends with them? This is new.

  Livvie gasps. “You know, you saying mean stuff about them isn’t any better than the way that they act.”

  Attagirl, I think. Stand up for yourself.

  “Give me a break,” Lauren says.

  “I just don’t want to be on anyone’s side, okay?” Livvie says. “Why can’t I just be friends with everyone?”

  Yes! I think, wishing I could run outside and hug her for the way that she is handling herself.

  I peek back over the windowsill. Lauren shakes her head. “You’re so naive.”

  “Naive is not a word I would use to describe myself,” Livvie says, a sudden haughtiness in her voice that sounds too affected and beyond her years, like makeup on a little girl’s face.

  Hmm.

  “Anyway,” she says, rising from the table. “Let’s go in. It’s getting cold.” I take a quick step toward the refrigerator and open it, pretending to look for something.

  “Hi, girls,” I say. “Everything good? You guys want a snack?”

  “Nope,” Livvie says, walking past me toward the front hall. “We’re going upstairs.”

  “Okay,” I say, watching them, Lauren behind Livvie, her notebook clutched to her chest. “Let me know if you need anything.”

  “Yup!” Livvie yells, already midway up the stairs.

  Max comes into the kitchen, his hair hanging in his face.

  “Hey, bud,” I say, reaching to push it out of his eyes before he weaves away from me.

  “I’m starving!” he says, leaning over my shoulder to look into the open fridge. “What are you up to?”

  “Me?” I say, putting my hand to my chest, pleasantly surprised. “You want to know about me?”

  “Ha, ha,” he says. “Yes, you. Are you busy with something? Want to watch a show? Play chess? Something?”

  It’s as if he’s just handed me a rare and precious artifact that he dug out of the backyard.

  “What?” he says.

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “No, but you have this super goofy smile on your face.”

  “Oh . . .” I laugh. “It’s nothing, Max. You just sometimes know exactly what to say without even realizing you’re doing it.”

  “What?” he says, squinting at me as he pulls the wrapper off a piece of string cheese.

  “Never mind,” I say, walking toward the door that leads into the family room. “Let’s play chess. Feels like it’s a good day for you to get smoked.”

  Fourteen

  TOWN & COUNTRY

  “Mouth from the South”

  JUNE 1998

  “I got you something,” she says, greeting me at the door of her apartment. Susannah Lane is holding her hands behind her back like a child playing a trick, but this is obviously not a joke. One of the first things you must know about Susannah Lane is that she doesn’t say anything she doesn’t mean.

  She looks tiny standing in the open doorway, like a doll, the familiar white-blond bob tucked behind her ears. She ushers me into the marble foyer of the Fifth Avenue penthouse she shares with her husband, Teddy, owner of the eponymous investment firm Lane Capital. Her hands are still behind her back. “Here,” she says, revealing the surprise. It is a vintage silver key, with a crown carved into the top that resembles the Imperial State Crown worn by Queen Elizabeth. Attached to it with a pink velvet ribbon is a small envelope. It’s an invitation to Ms. Lane’s fiftieth birthday party, to be held later this month at the Four Seasons. “The theme is Pandora’s box,” she says, raising an eyebrow.

  “Pandora’s box?” I ask.

  “Come dressed as one of your dirtiest secrets. Something that might be dangerous if it got out.”

  It is a fitting theme for one of the city’s most unlikely gossip columnists, a woman equal parts quirk, glamour, and mystery. From her post atop Manhattan’s society scene, she could devote her time to the usual pursuits: philanthropy, international travel, the couture shows. But Susannah Lane is not like other society wives. There’s the gossip column, for one, and
her eclectic mix of friends. She is difficult to define, a fact that she seems to revel in. Says her husband, “Among a pool of swans, she is the peacock.”

  “Why gossip?” I ask her, sitting in the plush living room overlooking Central Park. It is almost noon. Chopin plays softly in the background.

  “I hate that word,” she says, sniveling. “Gossip. It makes what I do sound so underhanded. And what I do is not mean-spirited or conniving.” She laughs. It’s a mellifluous laugh, the kind that’s pleased with itself. “In fact, most of the things that end up in my columns are things that my friends are already talking about. Old news, really. And occasionally, say, when I break the story of a cheating husband? You could say that I’m helping the poor woman who’s married to him. Anyway, it’s harmless girl talk.”

  The subjects of her work might disagree. Take Randall Lloyd, the world-famous restaurateur and, ironically, star of the Food Network’s Family Man series. After Ms. Lane wrote about his affair with a twenty-year-old aspiring model, Lloyd banned the Lanes from all his restaurants.

  Ms. Lane shrugs. “I don’t think I did anything wrong there. His ex-wife is a friend. She’s better off with the son-of-a-bitch out of her house. And as far as his restaurants go, que será, será. I’ve had more inspired meals at the fast-food places on the side of the New Jersey Turnpike.” She smiles. “Listen, I grew up in a small town, and you know what they say about small towns. If there is one skill I honed growing up the way I did, it’s talking.”

  Before Ms. Lane met her famous husband, she was Susannah Greyhill, raised in Greyhill, Virginia, a quaint hamlet in the Shenandoah Valley founded by her great-grandfather Clement Greyhill, who was involved in the formation of the C&O Railway. Susannah’s father, like all the Greyhill men before him, was the mayor. Her mother threw the parties. “Our house was always full of bustle, very busy,” she says.

  “And you didn’t want that life?” I ask her.

  “I wanted something bigger,” she says, the twinkle in her eye competing with the Cartier diamonds in her ears, a gift from Mr. Lane for their tenth wedding anniversary.