All of Us and Everything (11 page)

She refused to let him in.

He knocked on the door, insistently, and finally her roommate answered. “What could you possibly want?”

He gave the roommate cash, asked her if she wouldn't mind going out to the nicest restaurant in town and out to a show—on him. “I'd like to bring a friend.” He gave her more money, and she put on her coat and hat and left.

Over the course of the next five hours, Nick tried to talk Augusta into a life with him—an unconventional one, yes, in which she could remain independent but not have to work, if she didn't want to, and have children or not. “I can't have something that I love so much that I would sell out my country if it were in danger. A family with you, Augusta? I'd give up every American secret in history for you. I want to have a life with you, but to protect you too.”

“Marriage is an overrated institution.”

“Then let's do it our own way.”

She said no.

He didn't reappear until the summer of 1969. There at the end of the wreckage of the 1960s, after assassination upon assassination, war, rising death tolls, there had been a glimmer of hope. Human beings had landed on the moon. They'd been thinking of each other all those years, but now stronger than ever.

And when he showed up this time, knocking on the door of a different apartment, one she lived in alone, he didn't say a word. He stood there, gaunt and wrung out. And she didn't say a word either. A moment of recognition flashed between them. They loved each other. They could make each other whole. They had to make it work or they wouldn't survive.

He reached for her and they held on to each other. It was a proposal, an acceptance, a beginning.

Later that night, in bed, she said, “I want a family.”

“I do too,” he said. “We won't do it the normal way. We can do it our way. But don't leave me. Stick this out even though…”

The finest of capillaries in her heart burned. “I'm not going anywhere,” she said, but maybe they both knew they were doomed.

Over the course of the next few decades, he would become a high-level CIA operative, a spy, just as she'd always told her daughters. And she and Nick would have a marriage of sorts—one that remained illicit, charged, covert, and full of longing, a love that would render Augusta isolated and lonesome most of her days, but also it was a marriage that sustained her in small portions. Finally, when it became too much to bear, that winter of 1984, she would tell him that it was over. Her heart simply sighed, and she decided
nothing
was better than a
portion.

Though they were never officially married, she divorced him—through a dead-drop letter. She would get full custody of the girls because Nick Flemming had never had any custody at all.

She cut him off and founded a Personal Honesty Movement that failed. Her oldest daughter accused her of sleeping with strangers, and, as a result, on the subject of their father, Nick Flemming, she went silent.

The last time she saw Nick, he was walking away from her, backward, gliding into a crowd of tourists, a dot of blood still fresh on the pocket of his white shirt.

Esme and Atty would be home at any moment, not to mention Ru and Liv. Ru's flight had already landed, hadn't it? She wondered if Ru and Liv had connected. She worried about Liv's sobriety. Fresh out of rehab, her daughter looked washed out and, at turns, jittery or glazed over. Augusta had tried to send Jessamine to pick up Ru but Liv had insisted. She hoped Ru would drive home though even Ru could be absentminded—the dazed artistic type—from time to time.

The box seemed to be filled with coiled springs. It couldn't be kept shut any longer. It was a tall box, square, heavily lidded, the kind you'd put a bow on and fit under a Christmas tree for a department store display.

Augusta put her hand over one corner then popped the lid.

There were letters—some small, others in business-sized envelopes, folded in half.

Nothing was written on the envelopes themselves—no addresses, stamps, post office markings.

Augusta opened one on top. The seal of the envelope had hitched back together in two spots that easily loosened. She pulled out the letter and lifted it toward the window.

H.,

I haven't heard from you in a while. I know you're not dead, easy enough to look up. At our age, your silence could be worse than death.

Augusta knew what Nick meant—senility.

I've been thinking about you a lot and the old days. It's what people like me do.

She wasn't sure what he meant by
people like me.
Was he like any other people?

Should I update you on A. and the girls still?

This too made no sense, but it made Augusta scratch her neck.

One more time?

The box was full of letters. Were these updates about her and the girls' lives?

Not sure you'll even get this. But here goes.

She didn't care for his chipper tone.

They're doing well. A. keeps starting her movements. An activist at heart. She's still radiant.

Augusta flushed. Her movements began only after she cut Nick off from the family. She was blushing because she felt watched, spied on by a spy—and she'd expressly told him to leave them all alone—but also, she couldn't help it: He'd called her radiant. She closed her eyes, took a cleansing breath, and read on.

And E. is still working at the boarding school. They still live on the pond. Her husband is chair. That worked out well enough. And young A. is a sass box, like I was at that age. I believe she gets her distaste for injustice from me. Remember how I used to find it so damn awful? Who knew I'd wind up an accomplice to it? All in all, I don't know that this boarding school is the best place for them. I thought it would be a safe nest. But it might be too stifling. And you know how I dislike the Ivies. They worship the Ivies there. Luckily, I think young A.'s grades are mediocre enough to keep her out of them. Unlike E., who could have gone anywhere she damn well pleased.

She was gulping the information now. Great swaths. Packed with meaning. She couldn't dissect it all. She said aloud, “He's wrong there. Esme didn't get into any of the Ivies.”

L. is married again. I admire the girl's incredible ability to acquire a life. I don't know what to do with the sadness—except send on gifts, here and there.

Was Liv in touch with Nick? What gifts? Anonymous ones?

R. is making a go of it. Though you know with that one, I stand down, as requested.

Augusta had requested that he leave all of his daughters alone. How had he misinterpreted this as only applying to Ru?

But I worry, you know. I worry a lot.

For an assassin, as that's what he eventually became, he was an exceptional worrier.

As for retirement, I hate it and it hates me. Mutual disgust. I can't shut down the sense anyway so I'll always be on duty.

She knew that he would always be aware of eyes on him, scanning each room as he entered, knowing who was around him—forever monitoring his threat level.

Hope you're well, old buddy.

NF

Nick Flemming was still out there, keeping tabs on all of them.

She walked quickly to her bedroom window, pulled back the curtain, and looked at the street half expecting to find him as she'd last seen him, the splotch of blood like an embroidered rose on his shirt pocket.

Augusta could hear her flooding pulse deep in her ears. She dropped the letter, took the box, and flipped it over, inverting the stack. The letters now on top weren't in envelopes. They were brittle and written on legal-pad paper. She picked up the first one.

Herc,

I got a call—the one I've been waiting for. And I'm taking it.

I'd make a bad husband, and a worse father. I want to be out there. But, Herc, you wouldn't. Meet A. at the diner, tomorrow at noon. Tell her I love her. Tell her I'm gone. I know you love her, Herc. How many times did you say I don't deserve her? You meant that you deserve her. So do something about it.

Nick

P.S. You thought I took the club too seriously. Now I'll live it.

Well, Jesus H. Christ. She sat on the edge of the bed. She remembered Herc in the diner. Had Herc been in love with her? He'd once said she was different from other girls, sure, but it hadn't been a gushing compliment. He'd been asking if she wanted to be a judge on some bank-robbing panel. He had said he'd do anything for her. She'd assumed he was being chivalrous. Augusta hadn't appreciated the offer. At the time she hadn't labeled it as sexist, but eventually that's how she'd revisited it. Perhaps she'd been wrong all these years. Maybe he'd wanted her to take him up on it because he'd had a thing for her but was too shy to proclaim it and then the moment passed.

She pawed through the stack, ripping open one envelope, scanning the script—skimming—and then the next.

I followed her downtown last Saturday. She tried on wedding gowns. But you said she's not with you. So who's the guy?

There was no guy. She just wanted to see what she would have looked like in bridal white. Had he seen her trying it on through the plate-glass window? She was glad she might have made him feel a charge of jealousy.

In another letter, he wrote,

We're back together, A. and me. I'm setting up a way that we can keep the relationship under the radar and still communicate. It's crazy but it might work. You're the only friend, H., the only one who knows.

Augusta thought of the tattered family flag with its old Rockwell crest of arms that she would pass up the flagpole when she wanted to arrange a dead-drop letter under the boardwalk at their agreed-upon spot.

He explained their years of clandestine visits, babies being born, and growing up.

My God, if I'd known what it would feel like to hold a baby of my own—a brand-new baby—I might have given it all up before I started and got in too deep.

She hadn't been enough but the babies were?

And then she got to the breakup.

I'm gone, gone, gone,
he wrote.
I have nothing.

But his nothingness didn't last. What followed was a detailed accounting of years of spying—not on the enemy, but on his own family.

He'd been to Esme's senior year winter choral program, some of her orchestra performances—
only third-chair clarinet, H., but she's damn good
—an art exhibit where she'd showcased ceramic vases.
I would have bought one but it wasn't allowed.

He'd seen Liv in a geography bee.
She knew Tristan de Cunha. That kid is whip-smart.
He saw her play Emily in her high school production of
Our Town. Choked me up. I could barely stand it. It's how I've lived my life, H. I'm their ghost. Though they don't even know I'm here with them.

He knew about Liv's relationship with that punk Teddy Whistler. Augusta had thrown herself into saving her daughter from that young criminal, and to shield Ru from all the ugliness, but there was no shielding either of the girls. Augusta was sure that something about Liv's relationship with Teddy turned her heart cold somehow, turned her against love. And then Ru had to go and make it all public! Augusta hated airing family issues in public.

And then, here, at the moment when Nick could have done some good, he wrote to Herc that he didn't worry about this kid.
No threat. My Liv has better sense. She's just trying to piss her mother off. Her method is effective.

He was blaming Augusta? Good Lord.

Then she got to a letter he wrote about Esme's college applications—those Ivies he hated so much.
I took care of it. Nothing good comes of the heavy mantle of overachievers and that brand of elitism…I think she'll take the offer to go to UVA. It's really the best place for her.

Did he interfere with Esme's college admissions? Did he have no boundaries?

She found a letter discussing Esme's college boyfriend, Darwin Webber.
He'd make a lousy husband. She's better off without…I think he'll be easy to convince…
Esme had been heartbroken for months, if not years.

He talked about vetting Esme's husband, Doug, and all three of Liv's husbands. Full background checks.

How dare he?

He attended Ru's graduation from eighth grade, giving a valedictorian speech on the space–time continuum and her first-round field hockey game in states, starting as a freshman, but little else.

She found a letter that simply said,
I've been found out. When I see you in person, I'll tell you the whole story, Herc. R. is just like her old man.

Nick was found out by Ru? How? When? The letters weren't dated. Did she actually contact him?

She found a few mentions of Liv.

I try to make her life sweeter. Small things. I don't know why she suffers.

I've given her an inheritance through a recently deceased neighbor she barely ever spoke to—surprising how little she questions the details of good things happening to her.

And in a more recent letter from the last five years, he wrote of all the girls,
Sometimes I imagine showing up at their doors, but I'd never actually do it. Nothing good would come of it—not after all these years. They're no strangers to me. But I'm a stranger to them. That imbalance alone…

She let the letter drift to the floor. She spread her hands wide on the bedspread and then gripped it tightly in two fists. She imagined him on her front stoop, young and tan from the summer of tennis on the clay courts, holding the box himself, his hands wide and sure.