The Four Ms. Bradwells (20 page)

Ginger’s date to the Crease Ball was another in a long string of Ginger’s
bad choices: a string that had started with a fella who’d graduated from Michigan just before we’d started, who’d stayed in Ann Arbor to study for the New York bar with friends. Ginger had gone to see him in New York twice that fall, both times on fly-backs for interviews with firms, and it looked like the romance was lasting through the separation. But he never did respond to the messages she left before she flew out the third time, and when she showed up at his door, he was entertaining—at 8:30 on a Saturday morning, in boxers and a T-shirt, so it wasn’t like Ginger could pretend that was anything other than what it was. She’d fallen back on pretending she didn’t care, and she went through a whole mess of overnight gentlemen guests that winter before Steven’s brother, a second-year, asked her to the Crease Ball. When it comes to men, Ginger doesn’t have the sense God gave a goose.

Did Ginger’s good luck pearls work well for Mia and Andy? Let’s just say Betts returned to her room to find them hung over the doorknob more discreetly than Andy’s tie would have been. André and I were ready to call it a night by then anyway, so Betts and I shared the last of the wine back in Ginger’s and my sitting room, where the embers had long since gone cold, and she settled in on our sofa. And if it was a little awkward when Ginger’s date woke Betts with that awful fluorescent overhead as he left at four in the morning, well, he didn’t seem to much mind. That toad would have laughed for days about finding Betts on that couch—so he could advertise that he’d taken his big brother’s place in Ginger’s bed without saying so—except that Ginger, to her credit, dumped him before noon that same day, saving herself the humiliation of his dumping her now that she’d slept with him.

F
AITH, IN
A
NN
A
RBOR
on business the next night, fetched us all for dinner at the nicest place in town. She showed up precisely when she told Ginger she would, talking about how nice it was that spring had finally arrived, polite conversation that seemed to irritate Ginger, never mind that Faith seemed more interested in making us feel welcome than in talking about herself. Even the things she said about herself at that dinner were in the context of Betts’s admitting her hope to clerk for the Supreme Court. No women were Supreme Court clerks back in Faith’s day, she told us. Yes, Lucile Lomen had clerked for Justice Douglas in 1944, but there wasn’t a second female Supreme Court clerk until 1966.

“Connections and timing,” she said. “Lucile Lomen’s story is a lesson
in the importance of connections and timing. Ms. Lomen graduated from Whitman College, so I suppose you can guess who else was a Whitman alum? And how many qualified gentlemen law students do you suppose were applying for Supreme Court clerkships when there was a war to be won?

“Connections and timing,” she said. “You girls are going to have both.”

I felt so approved of during that dinner, basking in Faith’s certainty that we would all have lives even more interesting than hers. But the moment we’d climbed from the car and she’d driven off to her hotel, Ginger said, “ ‘You can sure tell it’s spring, can’t you?’ ” in a voice mocking Faith. “She’s such a bitch, criticizing how white my legs are like that.”

Her legs?
Mia mouthed to me behind Ginger’s back.

“She’s always criticizing me,” Ginger said.

We all looked down at our legs in the glow of the streetlight: Betts’s and Mia’s intemperate shades of hosiery tan, mine dark, and Ginger’s, it was true, nearly albino white.

“Your mama doesn’t
expect
us all to be appointed to the Supreme Court, Ginger,” I said finally. “She was just saying some gals of our generation have a real possibility of important court appointments and partnerships in firms that have been historically male.”

“Yes, well, you’re not her daughter,” Ginger said.

A
T THE SOUND
of Ginger’s voice calling out “No sign of the press yet?” and the Chawterley back door banging shut behind us, Mia and Max crane around to have a look at us. Max picks up the newspaper, and Ginger plops down on the hard, hackberry-splattered stone next to him without a thought of the stains she’ll get on her khaki slacks. Her mama’s khaki slacks.

I eye the gooey step, my back to Chawterley, the water of the Chesapeake stretched out before me as far as I can see.

Ginger bumps her shoulder against Max’s, a suggestion that he should move on over a little to give us more room. He closes the gap between Mia and him which is, I expect, what Ginger has in mind. It strikes me that Ginger
did
get Mia and Andy together, that maybe the failure of their marriage has something to do with the way Ginger introduces Mia to fellas now.

The stone is cold on my feet. I, too, am barefooted this morning. My feet look veiny and callused. My nails would benefit from a pedicure, but where would I find time to sit still long enough for that? I campaign in conservative, closed-toed pumps that will offend no one. How my feet look is not a priority.

Max is the freshest of us this morning. He’s still in baggy-kneed jeans but his shirt has been visited by an iron, and a small nick at one of his smile lines suggests scraps of toilet paper staunching bleeding, like William taught Willie J and Manny to do, and will teach Joey soon enough. It might be Max has even exercised already this morning, although he doesn’t much look like the exercising sort. On the whole he looks surprisingly dapper, even in eyeglasses that are goofier than Ginger’s without seeming very different.

Cleans up nicely, I decide, although the ironed shirt makes me think
married
.

Ginger said divorced, though.
A fella who irons
.

“Go ahead and show it to her,” Ginger says to Max, and she nods her head sideways at me. She curls her red-nailed toes. “If we had one bar of cellphone reception out here, her campaign manager would already be screaming at her.”

“Wasn’t sure whether I should bring it,” he says, “but nothing much is ever achieved by sticking your head in the sand. Or in the marsh grasses here, I s’pose it’d be.” He hands the folded newspaper across Ginger to me.

The secretary of state smiles above the fold as she shakes hands with the Australian prime minister, a familiar face I can’t put a name to for my life. The good voters of the Georgia 42nd don’t much care about U.S. relations with Australia; they care about jobs and health care, poverty, and drugs on our streets.

“Everybody on this island knows this is nonsense,” Max says.

I open the newspaper to the full front page and there it is:
QUESTIONS RAISED ABOUT SUPREME COURT NOMINEE’S PAST
. In the photograph, a bare-necked Betts stands between that Jonathan adviser fella and Mia at the Hart Building door.

No photo of me, I see, feeling the flush of shame at being so self-absorbed, but also relief. I wonder where the pearls are, Ginger’s black pearls that Betts took off.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Questions were raised about a death that occurred at an isolated summer home on the Chesapeake Bay when Supreme Court nominee Elsbieta Zhukovski was visiting thirty years ago, drawing uncertainty into a Court appointment that, until late in yesterday’s confirmation hearing, was expected to be uneventful and swift …

I skim the text: no mention of me. Again, a selfish thought, but there it is. The article details only the indisputable truth (this
is
the Post):

David Charles Humphrey III died in 1982 of a gunshot wound in an incident believed at the time to have been the result of an accidental discharge of his own hunting gun. His family confirmed the day after the death that Mr. Humphrey had been hunting, and shotgun cleaning rods and solvent were found on a table beside the body. The deceased, a highly regarded new partner at the prestigious law firm of Tyler & McCoy at the time, was said to have been in good spirits, giving no reason to suspect suicide.

In good spirits, that much was surely true: spirits as in Trey’s preferred brand of scotch. No one had said a thing about Trey’s drinking after his death, though; Faith never did mind drawing attention to herself in the name of a good cause, but she wasn’t one to air dirty family laundry in public.

It was a 12-gauge shotgun. Faith had pointed that fact out: her nephew Trey shot himself with the same sort of gun Ernest Hemingway had used. He’d fancied himself a Hemingway type even if he was a lawyer, even if he was only hunting ducks rather than big game.

Humphrey was experienced with guns, but no suggestion that the death might have been other than accidental was raised at the time.

A representative for the senator released a statement confirming that the question had been raised to him as the result of a post on WOWD: Washing Out Washington’s Dirt.

I skim through a short list of people who have denied authorship of the anonymous blog: the chief of staff for a New York congressman, a prominent Washington hostess, the White House press secretary, of all
people. I flip to the continuation of the article on page eight, and there it is: a second photograph, the four of us escaping on the boat. Our backs are to the camera, but the caption below the photo identifies me as Helen Robeson-Weils and, just in case there might be another Helen Robeson-Weils around somewhere, describes me as the Democratic state senate nominee for the Georgia 42nd. It leaves no room for doubt that I am the second woman from the right, standing over the “Wade” in the fancy blue
Row v. Wade
, which is easily readable in the photograph. My conservative Republican opponent will have a field day with that.

This will cost me the election, just when my children are old enough that I’ll finally have time to do things properly rather than forever sticking my skinny fingers in leaky dikes. It won’t take the Georgia papers any time to find that I, too, was at Chawterley when Trey died, that if his death was suspicious they ought to suspect me even before they suspect Betts.

I still have William, though; I still have Joey at home and Willie J and Manny and Gem not so far away, and I’m not even entirely sure how much I
want
to win this election, how much it’s something I’m doing for Mama, something I’ve found the courage to reach for not on my own but because of Maynard’s and Faith’s confidence in me. What this mess means to me is nothing compared to what it means for Betts. Her Isabelle graduates from Yale Law School this spring, and hasn’t lived at home in years. And a Supreme Court appointment is something Betts has been working for since about the beginning of time.

“Betts hasn’t seen this yet?” I ask.

“The blog doesn’t even mention Cook Island,” Mia says. “It just talks about him being shot at the Conrad summer home.”

I take a look back at the article. Did I miss that part?

“It doesn’t?” Ginger says, and Mia, too, looks surprisingly surprised given that she’s the one who said it.

“ ‘The Conrad summer home in Maryland,’ ” Max confirms.

Mia says, “If we all hadn’t lived together in law school, I doubt anyone would have connected it with Betts. Ms. Drug-Lord-Bradwell is still sleeping. I vote we let her sleep.”

“All the long day,” I agree.

“All weekend,” Mia says.

“All year,” Ginger says. “Shit.”

I sit beside Ginger, staring out at the endless waters of the Chesapeake,
wanting to say the words aloud: This is my fault. Y’all need to quit trying to protect me. It’s time for me to step up and own the truth. We were all in the wrong place at the wrong time, it’s true. But we did the wrong thing.
I
did the wrong thing. And here it is now.
Ira dei
. God visiting his wrath down on us all because of my sin.

GINGER

THE CHAWTERLEY BACK STEPS, COOK ISLAND
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 9

T
HE TOP OF
Max’s arm is warm against mine as I lean into him. How many times did the two of us sit on these hard stone steps together, trying to make sense of all the things kids have to sort out on their way to growing up?
Doing all the little tricky things it takes to grow up, step by step, into an anxious and unsettling world
. I ask him how his kids are doing, and as he answers Laney glares. She wants me to tell Mia that Max is divorced, but what I say is, “Your son must get the science thing from his mom.”

You hoard your friends
, Laney is forever telling me.
You stick friendship in your pocket like a lone dollar bill that, if lost or given away or even spent on something precious, will leave you without
. She thinks friendships multiply when shared, and maybe they do for her. It doesn’t occur to her that the wreck that will result if Mia gets involved with Max will take out my friendship with him, too.

The four of us stare out across the water, clear sailing and a clear view of the house for any damned reporter in a boat. Is that something on the horizon? I squint into the early sun. Wipe my glasses on Max’s shirt (which provokes a halfhearted protest from him) and then squint again. It’s not the ferry; that only runs in summer. I push back the sudden hope it’s the girls. But Annie and Iz aren’t coming; we told them not to. Any minute now the phone is going to ring, Annie saying she got my message.