Fly Away Home (37 page)
Authors: Jennifer Weiner
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Literary, #Political, #Family Life, #Contemporary Women
“Without going into details,” Richard said, “I can tell you that Benjamin Franklin had it right with regards to the charms of the older woman.”
“So why, then?” All the lightness and high good humor was out of her voice. Why, then? Would he even have an answer?
He exhaled, running his hands over his head, a gesture she’d seen him perform thousands of times, when he was irritated, or tired, or stalling for time. “I think I was flattered, more than anything else. Flattered that a young girl like that would be interested.” He looked down, sighing. “Tell you the truth, she reminded me of you a little bit. And that made me feel young.”
“So was it worth it?” she asked.
Closing his eyes, Richard said, “Of course not. I lost you, I lost the girls’ respect, I lost my reputation, I lost everything I’d worked to build since I was twelve years old and decided I wanted to be president.”
“You were eleven,” she reminded him. She was trembling again, shocked at how simple it was to slip into her old role as the institutional memory of their marriage, the one who kept track of the anecdotes and in-jokes and the vacation photographs, the curator of the family history.
“Well, I was twelve when I figured out that wasn’t going to happen. And if I’d known being in office was going to be this much work …” He looked down, giving Sylvie the chance to see new threads of gray in his hair, and that his bald spot, the one that he despaired of, had gotten bigger. Politicians worked until they dropped, running for office, even for president, into their eighties and holding those offices until they were dragged off the public stage (occasionally after they’d collapsed on top of them), but in the world of regular people, there were plenty of men who’d retired at Richard’s age.
“I screwed up,” he said.
“Yes,” Sylvie agreed. “Yes, you did.” Even as she was saying it, she felt that old spark, that familiar connection, the sense that they were playing on the same team, that she wanted what was best for him and he wanted what was best for her.
“It was stupid.”
“Yes. It was.”
“I think of what I threw away, and I just feel sick. Sick and sad.” She nodded. She knew about sick and sad. “I know you’ll probably never be able to trust me again …” He rubbed at his hair again. “Will you come home?”
Sylvie waited before giving him the answer she’d arrived at on the drive down. “I don’t think I can come back to New York. Not yet. And I have to tell you, Connecticut feels like home to me now.”
He nodded, as if this news did not surprise him. “Is there anything I can do to change your mind? We can do counseling, if you think that would help.”
Sylvie couldn’t imagine the two of them sitting in front of some stranger talking about their feelings.
“Or, if there’s something else I can do … if there’s any way I can convince you how sorry I am …”
He gazed at her, chin tilted slightly down, eyes looking into hers. Always the politician, she thought, a little amused, a little disgusted. And always, still, her Richard. He’d gotten a haircut in the past week or so, and there was an eyelash that had fallen off and gotten stuck high on his cheek. She pressed her fingertip against his skin and pulled until the eyelash came free. “Make a wish,” he said, and she closed her eyes and blew and thought,
I want my family back
.
“You miss the lashes?” Richard asked while her eyes were still closed, and she smiled. Richard had always been vain about his lashes, which were unfairly long and lush (Lizzie had inherited them; Diana had not). Once, when they were dating, Richard had gone as Elvis to a Halloween party, and Sylvie had convinced him to let her put mascara on his lashes. “You’re so pretty,” she’d said (she’d had, at that point, a few preparty glasses of wine). Richard had looked at himself in the mirror, turning his head from side to side, batting his lashes like a parody of feminine flirtation. “Well, what do you know?” he’d said, and smoothed the glistening pompadour that Sylvie had helped him shape. “I am.”
Sylvie refolded her napkin and slipped it back into the tote bag. She had thought about a speech she might deliver during her drive, so she was prepared. “I’m not sure what I want right now. It feels good to be by myself.”
“Can I see you? Up there? I miss you.” Richard rubbed at his forehead. “Nobody else laughs at my jokes.”
“Not Joe Eido?” she asked, even though she knew what he meant, and that it was more than laughing at jokes. After all their years together, they shared a common dialect, the language of the marriage, shorthand references, the abbreviations and bits of shtick they’d do. Whatever he’d done, whatever he’d become, Richard was the one who knew what she liked on her pizza, and where she liked to be kissed. She wondered if he knew that those were her happiest memories—not their wedding, certainly not Diana’s wedding, which had been an expensive, overblown affair with the bride corseted into her three-thousand-dollar gown, cursing in the ladies’ room because her groom had gained ten pounds between his last tuxedo fitting and the wedding night and now he was busting out of his cummerbund. Not that first victorious election night, not the inauguration, down in Washington, where she’d held the Bible and the girls had held his hands. Her favorite times were the ones she’d spent just sitting with him in their den at the end of the day, with a cup of tea for her and a bottle of beer for him, half-watching whatever was on the TV, half-reading whatever book or magazine was in her lap, talking about what they’d done that day, what they’d do during the week, and the weekend ahead.
So that’s that, she thought. They’d talk. Maybe it could be a start. Feeling exhausted from the adrenaline rush and the driving—and, as always, his closeness—she began packing up the remains of their lunch, sliding the dirty dishes and used silverware into a plastic bag she’d brought, setting out the Thermos of coffee and the dessert she’d packed. Richard poured coffee for her and a cup for himself.
“These are really good,” he said, eating a magic bar.
Her husband sat before her, under the slate-gray sky, sweating in his plaid shirt and long underwear and wool socks, looking like a man who’d just strapped a heavy backpack onto his shoulders and wanted only to take it off. A ridiculous figure … and yet, still, part of her wanted nothing more than to walk to the other side of the table, put her arms around him, pull his head against her chest, and tell him that he could rest, that all was forgiven. But there was a tiny, icy seed inside of her heart, a place in her mind where that first piece she’d seen on CNN would be playing eternally on a kind of hellish loop. She was different now. Whatever she’d been before, now she was a woman who did not make excuses for Richard, or instantly forgive him, or put what he wanted ahead of everything else.
“So?” he asked her. “So what do you say? You and me again?”
“Big question,” she said.
“Take your time,” said Richard. “As long as you promise you’ll give me a chance.” He reached for her hands again, and she laced her fingers through his, squeezing tightly, not wanting to let go. He was her husband, and she loved him, and they could get through the rest of it. She could have her new life, and he would have his, but they would be together—all that she wanted, all that mattered. “I know I don’t deserve one, and if …” He swallowed, and when he started talking his voice was hoarse. “If things end, then I promise you I’ll be fair. But I want a shot at making things right.”
She nodded, imagining what the coming years might bring. Maybe once he left the Senate he’d join her in Connecticut. Maybe she would go to cooking school, learn to kayak, learn to fish. She would be the mother she hadn’t been when her girls were young, she would do what she could to be there for Milo, and for Lizzie’s baby, when it came. She would take care of herself, not just Richard … and maybe he could learn to take care of her.
They sat across from each other at the picnic table, husband and wife. Cars full of travelers zipped past them on the parkway. “Look!” said Richard, as something light wafted into Sylvie’s coffee cup. Snowflakes flurried down, melting on her cheeks, as Richard, smiling, pointed at the sky.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The book you’re holding in your hands actually got its start ten years ago, before anyone had heard of Silda Spitzer, Elizabeth Edwards, Dina Matos McGreevey, and Senator Larry “Wide Stance” Craig.
Ten years ago, in the spring of 2000, I was a lowly newspaper reporter with a manuscript and a dream, querying agents to try to find one who’d take me on as a client. I’ll never forget picking up the phone at my desk and hearing a tiny little voice saying, “I loved your book! It spoke to me!” (I remember, very distinctly, thinking “How?”)
That book became
Good in Bed
, and the agent who loved it was Joanna Pulcini. She and I worked on the book together for months, cutting and trimming and revising and rewriting, before she started making the rounds of editors. She’d take them out for drinks or lunch and say, in her tiny little voice, “I have three words for you! Good in bed!” Then she’d refuse to say any more, or tell them whether the book was fiction or a how-to guide with pictures.
In May of 2000, Joanna took me to meet the editors who were interested in working with me. All of them were lovely, but one stood out—the one who told us that she missed her subway stop because she was so engrossed, the one who prevailed upon her entire marketing and publicity team to read the thing in a weekend, the one who had the clearest vision of the kind of books I’d go on to write.
That editor was Greer Hendricks, and she published
Good in Bed
in the spring of 2001, and it did well in hardcover and then took off in paperback … and a team was born.
I’ve been lucky enough to work with Greer and Joanna for ten years, over seven novels and a short-story collection, and I can’t imagine that there’s a writer who’s luckier than I am to be with such dedicated, smart, funny, hardworking, visionary, lovely women. I hope we’ll be a team for many years—and books—to come.
Other women I’m blessed and lucky to have in my writing life—Judith Curr at Atria and Carolyn Reidy at Simon & Schuster, who believed in me from the beginning, and Meghan Burnett, my unbelievably good-natured and hilarious assistant, who’s unfailingly friendly and diligent and doesn’t bat an eye when, for example, I ask her to look up the lyrics of all twenty-two chapters of R. Kelly’s “Trapped in the Closet,” and then sing them. I’m also grateful to the wonderful Terri Gottlieb, who takes care of my girls and makes my writing life possible.
Love and thanks to my thoughtful and generous first readers: Curtis Sittenfeld, Elizabeth LaBan, and Bill Syken.
Marcy Engelman, my genius publicist, is the best workout partner and dining companion in all of New York City. I am by far the least famous and important person she works with, but she never makes me feel that way. I adore her, and Dana Gidney Fetaya, a Marcy in training, and Emily Gambir.
My thanks to Joanna’s assistant Alexandra Chang, Greer’s assistant, the unflappable Sarah Cantin, Nancy Inglis, copy editor to the stars, who knows that, after all these books, I still misspell
tee shirt
and don’t know how to make my computer do ellipses.
I’m grateful to everyone at Atria who works on my books: Chris Lloreda, Natalie White, Lisa Keim, Jessica Purcell, Lisa Sciambra, Craig Dean, Rachel Bostic, and Jeanne Lee, who has much better taste and a better sense of what book covers work than I do.
My love and thanks to the good people at Simon & Schuster UK: Suzanne Baboneau, Julie Wright, Ian Chapman, Jessica Leeke, and Nigel Stoneman, who gave me the Jackie Collins treatment in London and Dublin.
A special shout-out to Jessica Bartolo and her team at Greater Talent Network, who set up speaking gigs so that I can leave the house in grown-up clothes, spend the night in a nice hotel, and tell stories about my gay mom.
Thanks to my family, as always, for the love, support, and material: my husband, first reader, and traveling companion, Adam; my daughters, Lucy and Phoebe; my mom, Frances Frumin Weiner, and her partner, Clair Kaplan; my sister Molly and my brothers Jake and Joe. Finally, thanks to all of my friends, near and far, on Facebook and on Twitter, for making me laugh, for helping me feel connected, and for reading the stories I tell.
