The First Affair (17 page)

• • •

Back at the house, we didn’t really talk as we waited for Dad to return. Erica moved in fits and starts. She’d set the table, then flip through a magazine or go outside for a cigarette, while Mom and I chopped and prepped to host fourteen people. Rachelle texted me from Tucson that her family had turned down the AC an extra 10 degrees so everyone could wear cashmere. I had nothing funny to reply.

The front door opened and Dad stomped in.

“Who wants coffee?” I asked, my voice going up as if I were singing a jingle.

“Hon,” Mom said to calm him, her hands full of gizzards on the other side of the island. “Why don’t you head upstairs and relax, lie down—we’ll call you when everyone gets here. Jamie, the apples are in that bag—can you peel and core while I do the onions?”

“On it.”

“Erica, you haven’t said a proper hello to Dad yet—give him a hug,” Mom added, brushing her bangs away with the back of her forearm. Erica had gotten in late last night after he’d already taken his Ambien.

Looking like a kid in a school play who’s unsure of the directions, Erica walked over to hug him. They were both visibly stiff. Dad took in the preparations for a moment—“I don’t know why we need to go to all this fuss—it’s my fucking brothers, not the Queen”—before clomping upstairs.

Erica went to pull on her coat.

“Jamie,” Mom continued, “after the apples, tackle the potatoes, and I’ll start the pie crust as soon as I get the corn bread in the oven.” I looked at the mountain of soil-crusted vegetables on the table and for the first time, I didn’t understand why I was doing this by myself when I wanted out of there as much as anyone.

“Hey, Erica, grab a peeler,” I said as she pulled her cigarettes from her leather bag.

“I don’t want to.”

“Well?” Mom asked her, glancing after Dad. “Could you smell his breath?”

“He was holding it.” Erica wrapped her arms around her waist.

“I can’t find my fucking cuff links!” he shouted from upstairs.

“They’re on the dresser!” Mom opened the oven to baste, twisting as the heat hit her face.

“They are not on the fucking dresser!”

“Mom, you don’t do him any favors,” Erica said, searching her coat pockets.

“I’m giving him space.” She wrestled with the enormous pan, sweating.

“Erica.” I held out the peeler, all at once so angry that she wouldn’t just help me.

“Betsy!” Dad called down.

“Jim, I am up to my elbows in bird carcass here! Erica—go find the cuff links.”

“No, she’s going to peel the potatoes.”

“No, I’m not.” Lighter in hand, Erica reached for the doorknob. “I set the table.”

“Was that the deal you made with your sponsor?” I asked. “You’d make it through a whole weekend with your goddamn family without getting fucking loaded, but God forbid anyone asks you to do anything.”

“I need some fucking air,” she shot back.

“Erica, it’s Thanksgiving, can we please just—” My phone interrupted Mom. I glanced over to the counter where I’d left it charging. The White House number.

“Hello?” I grabbed it, tugging the cord out.

“Hey.” His voice was low and tender in that one syllable.
Oh my God.
This was it.

“Hi,” my voice lifted. He’d found me.

“Are you eating?” he asked. “Is this a bad time? I shouldn’t have called, but something about today made me miss you so fucking much.”

I pulled open the back door and stepped two feet out into the building snow. “I miss you, too,” I said because, despite the anxiety he’d put me through, I couldn’t not.

“Who is it?” I heard Mom ask inside. “Who does she miss?”

I curled away over the ice-glazed trash bins.

“It’s Jamie’s boyfriend.”

“Her
what
?” I heard the crash, the sound of the bird slipping across the floor. “Shit.”

“I woke up thinking about you,” he said. “I think it was a dream, actually.”

“You dream about me?”

“Jamie, if you had any idea.”

“Is it too much to get a little fucking help one day a year?!” Dad’s voice stormed into the kitchen.

“Dad, stop fucking yelling!” Erica yelled. I stepped farther away, out of the buffer of the fence, the wind permeating my sweater.

“I’ve wanted to call every single minute since the election,” he said fervently. “Did you notice my tie?”

I heard the back door swing open against the siding. “Jamie Stevenson McAlister, who are you talking to, the fucking President? You get your ass in here
now
.”

“Wait, what did he say—”

“Happy Thanksgiving!” I chirped brightly down the line just like Mom, hanging up on Greg’s question before he could hear one more second.
Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck.

“Dad, are you drunk?” Erica asked as I scrambled inside, snow on my head and shoulders. That was it, the call. How would I—

“How dare you? This is
my
home.” Dad, standing in the middle of the kitchen, slapped his chest.

“Jamie has a boyfriend?” Mom asked, maybe trying to distract us, scooping flour into a bowl.

“And he’s married,” Erica added.

“Erica’s living with Peter,” I retaliated.

Dad flash boiled. “You sicken me,
both
of you.” He glared at us, spit flecking the corners of his mouth.

“
You’re
sickened?” I demanded, furious at what he’d just cost me.

“
Enough
. You know what’s wrong with you girls?” His eyes darkened flat. “You think the rules don’t apply to you.”

• • •

I don’t remember the rest of the fight, some self-protective part of my brain knocked me out like a salamander, only that it escalated until I found myself, eyes sobbed swollen, on a half-empty flight back to D.C. I couldn’t handle the possibility that Dad was drinking again, what it would do to Mom, our family finally splitting apart before I could build a new one for myself like Erica had done. Instead I focused with disproportionate intensity on the fact that Greg had called, had been about to offer me my job back, and that I’d have to wait until Monday to be sure Jean would be manning her desk.

“Oval Office, Jean Hargrove speaking,” she answered as Rachelle rolled her wrist to prompt me, our bagels sitting between us on Gail’s dining table.

“Good morning. This is Jamie McAlister. I’m returning the President’s call.” After much back and forth, we decided I should just say it.

“He’s busy now, but I will make sure he gets the message.”

And then that was played—the move we’d spent three days rehearsing. And I was back to waiting.

• • •

By hiring myself out for odd jobs on TaskRabbit and starting a dog-walking service I made almost a thousand dollars, plus what I saved because I didn’t have to fly home during the most expensive week of the year. Erica refused to get on a plane until Dad admitted he was
drinking again, so, confirming my fears, she ended up in St. Barts with Peter’s family, where he proposed. And when I suggested spending Christmas with friends from Vassar in Virginia and waiting to come home until January when the flights were cheaper, Mom raised only the most perfunctory of objections.

The day of New Year’s Eve, I’d been teetering between two sets of resolutions. In one, I went to the airport, slapped down my nearly maxed credit card, and boarded the next flight to anywhere; in the other, I dug in for the rest of Greg’s administration—waving at motorcades, waiting on rope lines, reminding him of us in small ways until he was done, potentially free, and only then would I know unequivocally. I stepped off Gail’s elevator, hearing music on the other side of the apartment door. He’d been full of surprises—maybe—my heart sped at the savory scents . . . and, was that jazz? Oh my God, he’d brought dinner and a tree and—

“Jamie?”

I froze in the entryway. “Gail?”

“Well, that explains the mess,” she called out with a pointed pleasantness that always brought to mind a stewardess at the end of a hellacious flight. “I would’ve texted, but I assumed you’d be with your family through the New Year.”

“Oh God, I’m so sorry.” Heat rose in my frozen cheeks. “I left early this morning. I’ll clean this all—” Rushing in, I lunged for a bra I’d hung to dry on the kitchen doorknob.

“Thank you.” Her back to me, Gail opened the oven to three racks of foil containers.

“I had to work this week, so it didn’t seem worth going all the way home just for the day.”

“Yes, DOHS.” She lowered her glasses to review the caterer’s instructions.

“It’s just an internship, actually. Still job searching—”

“You have plans tonight? Because I’d invite you, but the table only seats ten.” She retied her lavender silk robe.

“Of course! No, I have a party, actually, so no worries.”

Rachelle was skiing with her family in Tahoe, so we’d been planning to text at both midnights. Instead, I went to the movie
with the longest running time that was reachable by Metro, part of a Terrence Malick retrospective. While Malick took me, and three other people, through every shaft of sunshine that could hit the earth against a sweeping symphonic accompaniment, I felt myself aging. I turned out the lights on the year, no clearer on which path to take, and with a gnawing feeling that I was wasting something, some part of myself that might slip away without ever being properly utilized.

• • •

“Jamie?”

“Yes?” I sat up out of a dead sleep.

“There’s a call for you on my line.” Standing in her nightgown, Gail pointed me to her room, where the stark winter light shone in. “Jean Hargrove.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” I rushed to pick it up. She followed me. “Hello?”

“Hello, Jamie.”

“Happy New Year,” I said as Gail stood in the door, peering at me with her arms crossed.

“The President has requested that you come in this afternoon regarding a DOHS matter.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Very well then, dear, we’ll see you at two p.m.”

“Thank you.” I hung up. “Sorry, it was my work. They prefer the security of a landline.”

Gail returned to her bed, picking up her iPad.

“They must not have been able to reach me on my cell.”

She plumped her pillow before nestling in.

“I, uh, have to go in.”

“Jamie.”

“Yes?”

“I’ve been delighted to have you stay here while you work.” Her demeanor was disjointedly casual, given the severity of her tone.

“Thank you. I really appreciate it.”

“However, I don’t think it’s a good idea for your work to come
here
. Do you agree?”

Mortified, and a little afraid, I emphatically nodded.

“I’ll be needing your room soon.”

• • •

The Currier & Ives journey to the White House did little to lull my panic about pending homelessness. I texted Rachelle,
“Lena told her a friend of a friend, but she MUST know who Jean is.”

“Evicting you has nothing to do with Greg and everything to do with your tampons on her counter. Put it out of your mind and GO ENJOY YOURSELF!!!! That’s an order.”

Determined to try, I crossed his threshold as Greg pushed back his desk chair to walk right over, beaming.
Oh
, I thought, almost letting myself slump like a marathoner being wrapped in one of those foil capes,
I’ve been right to believe in him, in this, in us.
“I love your no-poinsettia-left-behind policy.”

He laughed.

“So, um, congratulations,” I added, as Rachelle and I had planned.

“Thanks.” He bowed, hands in the pockets of his khakis. “Can I take your coat?”

“Boy, they put you right to work, huh.” He laughed as I unbuttoned it, my hand going to the scarf ring I was finally able to show off. (And making that work in a casual Sunday, hot reunion kind of way required a level of thinking that should have been a marketable skill.)

“Nice.” He noticed.

“Sir?” Jean interrupted from the doorway. “I’m going to get some lunch. Would you like anything?”

“We’re good. Thanks, Jean.” He turned back to me as the door to the outer office clicked shut. “You have no idea how incredible it is to see you. I have something for you.”

“You do?” My hands clasped beneath my chin.

He cocked his head, his blond bangs flopping. “Yes.”

“Thank you!” I threw my arms around him. “I’m going to work really hard, I promise. It’s going to be so awesome to be back—”

“Oh.” He pulled away. “No, I meant a present.”

“Oh.”

“Come.” I followed to his desk, where he tugged a folded shopping bag from his drawer and handed it to me.

“I have something for you, too,” I admitted, trying to regroup. What was this? Had he not been calling on Thanksgiving about the job?

“Let’s do it by the tree.”

I raised my eyebrows suggestively, to his obvious delight.

“The exchange.” He grinned.

“Of course,” I said as he dropped to the red velvet skirt’s edge.

“You first,” he instructed, and I opened the bag to find a wrapped box. As I tore the paper, I saw the Lenox, Massachusetts, address printed under the shop’s name. I’d read that they’d spent the holiday at a friend’s estate in the Berkshires. Did he sneak away just to shop for me? I lifted the top to find a white plaster tile of a large bow. “Oh, it’s beautiful . . .” I bought time.

“It’s from Edith Wharton’s house.”

“The Mount?”

“A reproduction of one of the wall tiles. You had mentioned you were a Wharton fan—”

“No! No, I am. Thank you!”

“Someday you can put it in your home or use it as a doorstop or, I don’t know. It seems silly now.” He circled his arms around his raised knees.

“Well, while we’re seeming silly—here.” I withdrew the trove of gifts I’d been collecting since election night. A 1930s photo of the stud pup Leão, who was responsible for bringing the Portuguese water dog back from extinction. A copy of Richard Russo’s
Straight Man,
a satire of institutional power struggles. A pair of cuff links in the shape of bicycle wheels that reminded me of his stories about the high school summer spent biking over the Rockies. And finally, another tie. Navy, with a tiny motif of raccoons—like Franny’s fur coat.