“Rat’s doo-doo,” Penaloza said.
ii
The woman who’d laid Penaloza low was of course none other than my darling Marietta. And you’re probably sufficiently familiar with her by now to know that she was very proud of herself. When she got back here to L’Enfant she gave Zabrina and myself chapter and verse of the whole escapade.
“Why the hell did you go there in the first place?” I remember Zabrina asking her.
“I wanted to cause some trouble,” she said. “But once I got there, and I’d had a few glasses of champagne, all I wanted to do was fuck. So I found this girl. I didn’t know who she was.” She smiled slyly. “And neither did she, poor sweetheart. But, I like to think I helped her find out.”
There’s one footnote to all of this, and it concerns the subsequent romantic career of the senator’s daughter.
Maybe a year after the Geary wedding, who should appear on the cover of People magazine, there to announce her membership of the Sapphic tribe, but the radiant Meredith Bryson?
Inside, there was a five page interview, accompanied by a number of photographs of the newly uncloseted senator’s daughter. One in the window seat of her house in Charleston; another in the backyard, with two cats; and a third of her and her family at the President’s inauguration, with an inset blowup of Meredith herself, caught looking thoroughly bored.
“I’ve always been interested in politics,” she averred in the body of the piece.
The interviewer hurried her on to something a little juicier. When had she first realized she was a lesbian?
“I know a lot of women say they’ve always known, somewhere deep down,” she replied. “But honestly I didn’t have a clue until I met the right person.”
Could she tell the readers who this lucky lady was?
“No, I’d prefer not to do that right now,” Meredith replied.
“Have you taken her to the White House?”
“Not yet. But I intend to, one of these days. The First Lady and I had a great conversation about it, and she said we’d be very welcome.”
The article twittered on in the same substance-free manner for several pages; I don’t think anything of any moment was said from beginning to end. But after the talk of White House visits I couldn’t help but imagine Marietta and Meredith in Lincoln’s bedroom, doing the deed beneath Abe’s portrait. Now there was a picture the sleazehounds would have paid a nice price to own.
As to Marietta, she would not be drawn out any further on the subject of the senator’s daughter. I can’t help wondering, however, if at some point down the line the fate of L’Enfant and the secret lives of Capitol Hill won’t again intersect. This is, after all, a house built by a president. I won’t argue that it’s his masterpiece—that’s surely the Declaration of Independence—but L’Enfant’s roots lie too close to the roots of democracy’s tree for the two not to be intertwined. And if, as Zelim the Prophet once claimed, the process of all things is like the Wheel of the Stars, and what has seemed to pass away will come back again sooner or later, is it unreasonable to suppose that L’Enfant’s demise may be caused or quickened by the order of power that brought it into being?
IX
So now you know how Rachel Pallenberg and Mitchell Geary became husband and wife—from their first meeting to the vows at the altar. You know how powerful a family she had entered, and how possessive it was; you know she was in love with Mitchell, passionately so, and that her feelings were reciprocated.
How then, you ask, does such a romance fall from grace? How is it that, a little over two years later, at the end of a rainy October, Rachel was driving around the benighted streets of Dansky, Ohio, cursing the day she’d heard the name of Mitchell Geary?
If this were a work of fiction I could invent some dramatic scenario to explain all this. She’d step into the house one day and find her husband in bed with another woman, or they’d have an argument that would escalate into violence, or he’d reveal to her in the heat of an angry exchange that he’d married her for a bet with his brother. But there was nothing like that in their lives: no adulteries, no violence, and certainly no raised voices. It just wasn’t the way Mitch dealt with things. He liked to be liked, even when being liked meant avoiding a confrontation that would be to everybody’s good. That meant turning a blind eye to Rachel’s discomfort if there was the least risk of stirring up something unpleasant. His former empathy, which had been so much a part of what had enchanted her about him, disappeared. If she was unhappy, he simply looked the other way. There was always plenty of Geary family business to justify his inattention; and of course the inevitable seductions of luxury to soften Rachel’s loneliness when he was gone.
It would be wrong to claim that she was not in some fashion complicit in all of this. It became apparent to her very quickly that her life as Mrs. Mitchell Geary was not going to be as emotionally fulfilling as she’d hoped. Mitchell was wholly devoted to the family business, and as she had no role in that business, nor wanted one, she found herself alone more often than she liked. Instead of sitting Mitch down and talking the problem through—telling him, in essence, that she wanted to be more than a public wife—she let his way of doing things carry the day, and that soon proved a self-fulfilling prophecy. The less she said the harder it became to say anything at all.
Anyway, how could she claim the marriage wasn’t working when to the outside world she’d been given paradise on a platter? Was there anywhere she couldn’t go if she wanted to? Any store she couldn’t shop in until she was tired of saying I’ll take it? They went to Aspen skiing, Vermont for a weekend in the autumn, to enjoy the turning of the leaves. She was in Los Angeles for the Oscar parties, in Paris to see the spring collections, in London for the theater, and Rio and Bali for spur-of-the-moment vacations. What did she have to complain about?
The only person in whom she could confide her growing unhappiness was Margie, who wasn’t so much sympathetic as fatalistic.
“It’s a trade-off,” she said. “And it’s been going on since the beginning of time. Or at least since the first rich man ever took himself a poor wife.”
Rachel flinched at this. “I am not—”
“Oh honey.”
“That’s not why I married Mitch.”
“No, of course it isn’t. You’d be with him if he was ugly and poor and I’d be with Garrison if he was tap-dancing on a street corner in Soho.”
“I love Mitch.”
“Right now?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, sitting here right now, having said all the things you’ve just said about how he’s neglectful, and doesn’t want to talk about feelings, and soon, sitting right here right now, you love him?”
“Oh Lord . . .”
“Is that a maybe?”
There was a pause while they thought about what she was feeling at that moment. “I don’t know what I feel,” she admitted. “It’s just that he’s not . . .”
“The man you married?” Rachel nodded. Margie refilled her whiskey glass and leaned forward as though to whisper something, though they were the only people in the room. “Sweetheart, he never was the man you married. He was just giving you the Mitch you wanted to see.” She leaned back, waving her free hand in the air as though to swat a swarm of phantom Gearys out of her sight. “They’re all the same. Christ knows.” She sipped her whiskey. “Believe it or not, Garrison can be charm personified when it suits him. They must get it from their grandfather.”
Rachel pictured Cadmus the way he’d been at the wedding; sitting in his high-backed chair dispensing charm like a benediction.
“If it’s all a performance,” she said, “where’s the real Mitch?”
“He doesn’t know anymore. If he ever did, which I doubt. It’s sort of pitiful when you think about it. All that power, all that money, and there’s nobody home to use it.”
“They use it all the time,” Rachel said.
“No,” Margie replied. “It uses them. They’re not living. None
of us Gearys are. We’re all just going through the motions.” She peered at her glass. “I know I drink too much. It’s rotting my liver and it’ll probably kill me. But at least when I’ve got a few whiskeys inside me I’m not stuck being Mrs. Garrison Geary. When I’m drunk I give up being his wife, I’m somebody he wishes he didn’t know. I like that.”
Rachel shook her head in despair. “If it’s so bad,” she said, “why don’t you just leave?”
“I’ve tried. I’ve left him three times. Once I stayed away for five months. But . . . you get into a certain way of being. You get comfortable.” Rachel looked uneasy. “It doesn’t take long. Look, I don’t like living in Garrison’s shadow, but I like living without his credit cards even less.”
“You could divorce him and get a very nice settlement, Margie. You could live anywhere you wanted, anyway you wanted.”
Now it was Margie who shook her head. “I know,” she said softly. “I’m just making excuses.” She picked up the whiskey bottle and poured herself another half tumbler. “The fact is, I’m not leaving because somewhere deep down I don’t want to. I guess maybe what’s left of my self-esteem’s wrapped up in being part of the dynasty. Isn’t that pathetic?’ She sipped on her drink. “Don’t look so appalled, honey. Just because I’m too screwed up to leave, doesn’t mean you can’t. How old are you now?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“That’s nothing. You’ve still got your life ahead of you. You know what you should do? Tell Mitch you want a trial separation. Get a few million in your pocket and go off to see the world.”
“I don’t think seeing the world’s going to make me happy.”
“All right. So what is going to make you happy?”
Rachel thought it over for a moment. “Being with Mitch the way he was before we got married,” she finally replied.
“Oh Lord,” Margie sighed. “Then you know what? You have a big problem.”
X
Some of Mitchell’s old charm returned, albeit briefly, when he talked with Rachel about their having children. More than once he rhapsodized about how blessed their kids were going to be: the girls beautiful, the boys all studs. He was keen to start a family as soon as possible, and he wanted the brood to be large. In fact, Rachel got the unwelcome impression that he wanted to make up for Garrison’s relative lack of productivity (Margie having borne one child only: a girl, now eight, called Alexia).
But the act of love was welcome, even if it was in service of Geary productivity rather than pleasure. When Mitchell was close to her, his hands on her body, his lips against hers, she remembered how she’d felt when they’d first touched, first kissed. How special she’d felt; how rare.
He wasn’t an inspired lover. In fact Rachel had been surprised at how gauche he was in bed; almost shy, in fact. He certainly didn’t act like a man who’d reputedly bedded some of the most beautiful women of the day. She liked his lack of sexual sophistication. For one thing, it matched her own, and it was nice to be able to learn together how best to pleasure one another. But even at his best, he left her wanting more. He didn’t seem to understand the rhythms of her body; how she wanted to be held tenderly sometimes, and sometimes fiercely. When she attempted to express those needs in words he made his discomfort clear.
“I don’t like it when you talk dirty,” he said to her after one of their lovemaking sessions had ended. “Maybe I’m just being old-fashioned, but I don’t think women should talk that way. It’s not . . .”
“Ladylike?” she said.
He was standing in the bathroom door, tying the belt of his robe. He made a little fussy business of it so as not to look at her. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s not ladylike.”
“I just want to be able to say what I want, Mitch.”
“You mean what you want when we’re in bed?” he said.
“Isn’t that allowed?”
He made an exasperated sigh. “Rachel . . .” he said, “I told you before. You can say whatever you want to say.”
“No I can’t,” she replied. “You tell me that, but you don’t mean it. You’re ready to snap at me if I say anything critical.”
“That’s not true.”
“You’re doing it right now.”
“I’m not. I’m just saying I’ve been brought up in a different way than you. When I’m in bed with somebody I don’t want to be given orders.”
Now he was beginning to annoy her, and she wasn’t in the mood to keep her irritation out of sight. “If you think me asking you to fuck me a little harder—”
“There you go again.”
“—is me giving you orders we’ve got a problem, because—”
“I don’t want to hear this.”
“—and that’s part of the problem.”
“No, the problem is you having a foul mouth.”
She got up out of bed. She was still naked, still sweaty from their lovemaking (he was always the first to the shower, scrubbing himself clean). Her nakedness intimidated him. It was the same body he’d been coupling with ten minutes before; now he couldn’t look at her below her neck. She’d not thought of him as absurd until that moment. Arrogant sometimes, childish sometimes. But never, until now, absurd. There he was, a grown man, averting his eyes from her body like a nervous schoolboy. She would have laughed had it not been so pitiful.
“Just so we understand one another, Mitchell,” she said, her tone scarcely betraying the fury she felt. “I do not have a foul mouth. If you’ve got a problem with talking about sex—”
“Don’t put it on me.”
“Let me finish.”
“I’ve heard all I need to hear.”
“I haven’t finished talking.”
“Well I’ve finished listening,” he said, crossing to the bedroom door.
She moved to intercept him, feeling bizarrely empowered by her own nakedness. She saw him cowed by her lack of shame and it aroused an exhibitionist streak in her. If he was going to treat her like a coarse woman, then damn it she’d behave like one, and take some pleasure in his discomfort.
“Is that all the baby-making we’re going to be doing tonight?” she said to him.
“I’m not sleeping in this room with you tonight, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“The more often we do it,” Rachel pointed out, “the more chance I’ll produce a little Geary. You do know that?”
“Right now, I don’t care,” he said, and walked out on her.
It wasn’t until she’d showered, and was toweling herself dry, that the tears started to come. They were surprisingly inconsequential, given what had just taken place. She made swift work of them, then washed her face clean, and went to bed.
She’d slept alone for many years, and been none the worse for it, she told herself. If she had to do so again for the rest of her life, then so be it. She wasn’t going to beg anyone for their company between the sheets; not even Mitchell Geary.
XI
i
Paradoxically, they’d made a baby the very night she’d ended up sleeping alone. Seven weeks later Rachel was sitting in the office of Dr. Lloyd Waxman, the Geary family physician, with Waxman telling her the glad news.
“You’re in very good health, Mrs. Geary,” he said. “I’m sure everything’s going to proceed along just fine. Did your mother have easy pregnancies, by the way?”
“As far as I know.”
“Well that’s another good sign.” He jotted the information in his notes. “Maybe you’d like to come in and see me again in, say, a month’s time?”
“No instructions in the meantime?”
“Nothing to excess,” Waxman replied, with a simple little shrug. “That’s what I always tell people. You’re a healthy woman, there’s really no reason why this shouldn’t be a breeze for you. Just don’t go out on the town with Margie. Or if you go out, let her do all the drinking. She’s very capable of that. Lord knows, it’ll probably kill her one of these days.”
Rachel had made a tentative p
eace with Mitchell about a week and a half after the argument in the bedroom, but things had not been fully repaired between them. She wasn’t so much hurt by the exchange as she was insulted, and she wasn’t about to kid herself that just because he was making an effort to be conciliatory the opinions he espoused weren’t still lurking behind his smile. As he’d said at the time, they were part of the way he’d been brought up. Such deeply held feelings weren’t going to disappear overnight.
But the news from Dr. Waxman was so rapturously greeted on all sides she forgot about the argument, for at least a few weeks. Everybody was so pleased, it was as though something miraculous had happened.
“It’s only a baby,” she remarked to Deborah one day.
“Rachel,” Deborah said, with a faintly forbidding tone. “You know better than that.”
“All right, it’s a Geary baby,” Rachel said. “But Lord, all this hoopla! And there’s still seven months to go.”
“When I was pregnant with Garrison,” Deborah said, “Cadmus sent me flowers every day for the last two months of my pregnancy, with a little card attached, and the number of days left.”
“Like a countdown?”
“Exactly.”
“The more I know about this family, the stranger it seems.”
Deborah smiled, her gaze sliding away.
“What does that mean?” Rachel said.
“What?”
“The smile.”
Deborah shrugged. “Oh, just that the older I get the stranger everything seems.” She was sitting on the sofa beside the window, and the sun was bright; it made her features hard to discern. “You know how you assume things’ll come clear as you get older? But of course nothing does. Sometimes I find myself looking at the faces of people I’ve known for years and years and they’re complete mysteries to me. Like something from another planet.” She paused, sipped her peppermint tea, stared out of the window. “What were we talking about?”
“How strange all the Gearys are.”
“Hm. I suppose you think I’m the oddest of the lot.”