Silver Girl (44 page)

Meredith sat on her bed and took a stab at writing a statement. She pictured herself marching out to the end of Connie’s driveway to face the eager reporters; this would be the juiciest news since OJ drove off in the white Bronco. She imagined her face and graying hair on every TV screen in America. She couldn’t do it.

But she wrote anyway.

I have been informed that my husband, Fred Delinn, who is serving one hundred and fifty years in federal prison for his financial crimes, had been conducting an affair with our decorator, Samantha Champion Deuce, for over six years. This news has come as a profound shock. I had no idea about the affair, and I am still ignorant of the most basic details. Please know that I am hurting, just the way that any spouse who discovers an infidelity hurts. My husband’s financial crimes were a public matter. His infidelity, however, is a private matter, and I beg you to respect it as such. Thank you.

Meredith read her statement over. It was… minimalist, nearly cold. But would anyone be surprised by this? She had an opportunity here to say that she’d known nothing about Freddy’s financial dealings. Should she add a line?
Clearly, my husband kept many secrets from me.
But that felt too confessional.
I knew nothing about Freddy’s Ponzi scheme and nothing about this affair.
I didn’t know Freddy was stealing everyone’s money and I didn’t know he was romancing Samantha Deuce, our best friend.

I didn’t know Freddy.

“Jesus!” she said, to no one.

She took the statement down to the kitchen where Connie and Dan and Toby were still gathered around the table, finishing up plates of golden brown, cinnamony French toast.

“The
Post
is going to have a field day with this,” Connie was saying. Then she saw Meredith and clammed up.

Meredith waved the paper at them. “I wrote a statement,” she said.

“Read it,” Connie said.

“I can’t read it,” Meredith said. “Here.”

Connie read the statement, then passed it to Toby. Toby read it, then passed it to Dan. When they finished, Meredith said, “Well?”

“You’re too nice,” Connie said.

“The guy’s a bastard,” Toby said. His face was bright red—from the sun or from anger, Meredith couldn’t tell. “Why don’t you just align yourself with the rest of America and come right out and call the guy a bastard? If you aren’t tougher on him, people are going to think you were conspiring with him.”

“Is that what
you
think?” Meredith asked.

“No…” Toby said.

“I’ve been holding my tongue because that was how I was raised,” Meredith said. “I don’t feel like spilling my guts all over the evening news. I don’t want the
details
of my
marriage
popping up across the Internet. I don’t even want to make this statement. I think it’s crass.”

“Because you’re a repressed Main Line snob,” Toby said. “You’re just like your parents, and your grandmother.”

“Well, it’s true my parents never battled it out on the front lawn,” Meredith said. “They didn’t hurl their wedding china at one another. But, for the record, I’m not ‘repressed.’ You know damn well I’m not ‘repressed’! But I also didn’t spread my love and affection around the way you’ve apparently spent your life doing. And the way my husband did.”

“Hey, now,” Connie said. She put a hand on Meredith’s arm.

Toby lowered his voice. “I just think you need to sound angrier.”

“At who?” Meredith said. “You know what I thought when I met Freddy Delinn? I thought, here’s a guy who’s rock solid; this guy isn’t going to ditch me so he can go off sailing in the Seychelles. You, Toby, you made Freddy look like a safe bet.”

“Oh, boy,” Dan said.

“But I never lied to you, Meredith,” Toby said. “You have to give me that. I was insensitive when I was nineteen years old. I was possibly even worse than insensitive when I saw you a few years ago. I know I hurt you and I’m sorry. But I never lied to you.”

Meredith stared at Toby, then at Connie and Dan. “You’re right,” she said. “He’s right.”

“The statement is what it is,” Connie said. “It’s a statement. It’s classy and discreet, worthy of Annabeth Martin.” Connie cut her eyes at Toby. “And that is a
good
thing. So, are you going out there to read it now?”

“I can’t,” Meredith said.

“You can’t?”

“I want
you
to read it,” Meredith said.

“Me?” Connie said.

“Please,” Meredith said. “Be my spokesperson. Because I can’t read it.”

Connie got a strange expression on her face. In high school, every time Meredith had been sick, or at early diving practice, Connie had jumped at the chance to do the readings at morning chapel. She had been sick with jealousy when Meredith gave her salutatorian’s speech at graduation. Something like 90 percent of Americans were afraid of public speaking—but not Connie.

“Me?” she said. “Your spokesperson?”

“Please,” Meredith said. It would be better to have beautiful, serene, red-haired Connie read the statement. America would love Connie. People would see that Meredith did have someone who believed in her. But most important, Meredith wouldn’t have to do it herself.

“Okay,” Connie said, standing up.

“You’re not going out like that?” Dan asked. Connie was still in her filmy nightgown and robe.

“No,” Connie said. “I’ll wear clothes.”

A few minutes later, Connie was dressed in a pair of white linen pants and a green linen shirt and flat sandals. She looked like an ad for Eileen Fisher. With the paper in hand, she walked straight out to the end of the driveway, for the weirdest press conference ever. Flashbulbs started going off. Meredith closed the front door behind her.

Meredith wanted to watch Connie from the window, but she was certain she would be photographed if she did. So she sat at the oval dining table with Toby and Dan, and waited. She imagined all of the people across the country who would hear Meredith’s words come out of Connie’s mouth.

Well, for starters, Ashlyn would see Connie on TV. Had Connie thought of this? Leo and Carver would see Connie. Gwen Marbury would see Connie, Amy Rivers, Connie’s friend Lizbet, Toby’s ex-wife in New Orleans, Dustin Leavitt, Trina Didem, Giancarlo the doorman, Julius Erving. Everyone in America would watch the footage. Samantha herself would watch it. Possibly even Freddy would watch it, on a TV in prison.

And what would he think?

A few minutes later, Connie stepped back into the house. The reporters, far from dispersing, were yelling things. What were they yelling?

Connie looked pink and winded, as if she had just finished a foot race. She was perspiring.

Dan said, “How’d it go?”

Toby said, “Water, Con?”

Connie nodded. “Please.”

They all trekked into the kitchen, where Toby fixed his sister a glass of ice water with lemon.

“Why are they yelling?” Meredith asked.

“Questions,” Connie said. “They have questions.”

Meredith thought, They
have questions?

Connie said, “Mostly, they want to know if you’re going to divorce him.”

“Divorce him?” Meredith said.

“Leave him.”

“Leave him?” Meredith didn’t get it. Or she thought maybe the reporters didn’t get it. The man was in jail for 150 years. He was never getting out. Maybe people thought Meredith would move to North Carolina, would visit him every week, would lobby her congressman and pray and wait for ten or twelve years for possible conjugal visitation rights. Meredith and Freddy making love in some tin-roofed trailer. Maybe that was what Meredith had envisioned for herself. But no—Meredith had envisioned nothing of the sort. The present was so overwhelming, she’d had no energy or imagination for any kind of future, with or without Freddy.

Would she divorce him?

She didn’t know.

She was Catholic, she believed in the sacrament of marriage, she believed in the vows—till death do us part. Her parents had remained married, and her grandparents. She and Freddy would never live together as husband and wife again, so what would be the point of getting divorced?

Across the kitchen, she and Toby locked eyes.

The point of getting divorced was that Meredith would be free to get an annulment and marry again. Start over.

The notion was exhausting.

“I can’t answer any of those questions,” Meredith said. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Connie hugged Meredith so hard, Meredith nearly tipped over.

“It’s going to be okay,” Connie said. “I think the statement worked, or it will work, once they realize it’s all they’re going to get.”

“So you didn’t say anything else?” Meredith said. “You didn’t answer for me?”

“It was hard,” Connie said. “But I just stood there with a plastic smile on my face. ”

“We should see what it looks like on TV,” Toby said.

Connie jumped at this idea, and Meredith couldn’t blame her, though Meredith didn’t want to see the statement broadcast on TV; she wanted three more Ativan and a dark bedroom. She wanted to talk to Freddy; her throat ached with the need.
Tell me everything. Tell me who you really were.

Toby and Dan and Connie went into the sitting room and turned on the television. Meredith lingered in the hallway, not committing to watching, not committing to hiding upstairs. She was dangerously close to the front door; anyone might see her through the sidelights. She stepped into the sitting room. She heard Connie reading her words:
Please know that I am hurting…
She saw Connie on the screen, looking natural and calm and poised. The channel was
CNN
. The banner at the bottom of the screen read:
Meredith Delinn spokesperson, Constance Flute, responds to the news of love affair between Freddy Delinn and the couple’s decorator, Samantha Deuce.

In the background, Meredith could see Connie’s house.

The banner changed to read:
Meredith Delinn seeking refuge on Nantucket Island.

It was her they were talking about, her life. That was her best friend speaking her words. They showed the house—this very house where they were now watching TV. It was weirdly reflexive.

Connie said, “I look awful.”

Toby said, “It’s not really about you, Con.”

Dan said, “You look great.”

Meredith needed to thank Connie for going out there on her behalf and reading the statement, but she couldn’t find the words.

And then the phone rang.

Toby answered. He said, “May I ask who’s calling?”

Meredith started to shake. She clung to the soft material of her skirt.

Toby put a hand over the receiver. “It’s your attorney.”

Meredith took the phone upstairs to her room. She reminded herself to breathe. She was light-headed; the caffeine from the coffee darted through her like lightning bolts. She felt a pressure in her bowels. But not now, with Dev on the phone. She lay down on her bed.

“Two things,” Dev said. He sounded more chipper than he had earlier. Maybe his coffee had kicked in, too. “I just saw the statement on TV.”

“Already?” Meredith said.

“We have a twenty-four-hour news feed in the office,” Dev said. “Everyone does these days.”

“And…?” she said.

“You could have said more,” he said. “And you could have said it yourself.”

Meredith nodded, though of course he couldn’t see this. “I couldn’t…”

“Because you know what people’s response will be. Is already.”

“What?”

“That you hired someone to do it for you. A spokesperson.”

“I didn’t
hire
Connie. She’s my friend. I didn’t have the guts to do it myself. She offered.”

“I’m just telling you the perception. What people will think.”

“I don’t care what people think,” Meredith said.

“You do, though,” Dev said.

Meredith thought,
He’s right. I do.

Taking pity on her, he said, “But it was better than nothing. You communicated
something.
That’s what matters.”

“The second thing?” Meredith said. The caffeine high was fading. She was suddenly exhausted.

“I spoke to the warden at Butner,” Dev said.

Her bowels squelched. She put a hand to her abdomen.

“He’s looking into it for you,” Dev said. “The phone call.”

Dan had to leave the house to go to work. He asked if anyone was up for steaks that night at his house.

Toby said, “Not tonight, man.”

Meredith said nothing. She was now the fun-sucker Dan had feared she would be.

Connie said, “Maybe. Call later.”

“You guys should go,” Meredith said. Dan was leaving soon for a three-day camping trip to New Hampshire with his sons. And by the time he returned, there would be less than a week left before Labor Day. It was all going to end; there was nothing Meredith could do to stop it.

Connie and Meredith and Toby retreated to the back deck. It was hot; Meredith wanted to swim, but she was afraid if she tried to swim, she would drown. Her limbs felt light and useless. She was a husk. She was a bladder filled with the hot, stinking air of anxiety.

Toby said, “You should divorce him, Meredith.”

“Leave her be, Toby,” Connie scolded. Then a few seconds later, she said, “You
should
divorce him. I’ll pay for it.”

Meredith laughed a sad, dry laugh. She hadn’t even considered cost.

Toby swam. Meredith moved in and out of consciousness. She felt sluggish, then jumpy; the Ativan were exacting revenge. Toby became Harold, Harold had been brutally killed, and it was Meredith’s fault. It was like Meredith had a hex on her, why not blame her for everything, the oil spill in the Gulf, the bloodshed in the Middle East. Why, oh why, had Samantha spoken? Everyone would hate Samantha now, too, her life would be ruined. She must have loved Freddy, must love him still if she was going to allow him to destroy her life. She still had young kids, one of them only ten. Her business would go kaput, or maybe not. Maybe infidelity boosted a decorator’s cachet. What did Meredith know? Samantha was writing a book. Meredith could write a book, should write a book, but what would that book say?
I wasn’t paying attention. I was moving blithely through my days. I accepted what Freddy told me as the truth. I had never been exposed to lying or liars growing up; I didn’t know what to look for.