The First Affair (29 page)

“Yes, you do.” The answer sat between us in the feet of empty space smattered in grubby neon stock stickers.

“Not you, just . . .” She shook her head. “The contrast you provided.”

“Contrast?”

“When you started school it was effortless.”

I went to protest.

“It
seemed
effortless. To me. I couldn’t make sense out of anything. You were so little, but your letters followed right along on the dotted
lines and I—I couldn’t even see which end was up. So yeah, I hated you. How you made me feel. Defective. Broken. I guess I wanted you to feel broken, too. That’s why I was always so—”

“Mean.”

She turned away and blew out, her breath visible in the cold. “So I told you there was no Santa. And that Dad got fired.”

I nodded.

“I wanted to be the one—to see the look on your face. And when Mike dropped you off that one time—”

“What?”

She got so quiet I had to lean forward to hear her. “He looked at you like you were some kind of doll, like you weren’t even real.”

“You knew?”

“The hate seemed so valid by then, Jamie, and I was so fucked up—it’s not like Dad and Mom would’ve taken anything I said seriously. So I talked myself out of doing something about—” She let out a pained breath. “What I guess was, in fact, happening to you.”

The truck pulled to a stop and the engine cut. To my surprise, Erica stepped in front of me, protectively squaring herself. I watched over her shoulder as the door rose open to reveal that we were in a parking lot.

Behind our driver, who was motioning us out, it was still and dark. Normal.

“Is that Nordstrom?” Erica pointed to the building lit up in the distance. He turned.

“Yes, ma’am, it is.”

“Where are we?”

“This would be the Montgomery Mall, Bethesda.”

Erica picked up her bag before walking tentatively to the trailer’s edge. He helped her and then me to the pavement.

“I’ve been instructed to give keys to each of you.” He dug in his pocket, then handed them off. He pointed us to where two cars were parked nearby in the sparsely populated section of the vast lot. “You got a week. You just have to return them to an Avis counter at an airport. I’m supposed to remind you to drive careful because they’re not in your names.” He pulled two envelopes from his back
pocket and passed one to each of us. There was a thousand dollars cash inside each.

“But who sent you?” I asked.

He turned to face the edge of the lot where a sedan parked by the retention pond flicked on its floods. Erica grabbed my arm.

“Who is that?” I asked, my heart leaping maddeningly.

“I can’t say, ma’am, I’m sorry. But your sister has to go right away. Okay?”

“No,” Erica answered. “Not remotely okay.”

“Erica.”

“It could be God knows what—Susan Rutland on a revenge spree. The RNC demanding a pelvic. A sicko looking to expand his basement collection—”

“Or answers.” I stared at the car, trying to make out the driver, obscured by the headlights.

“It’s not him,” she said sternly, but her face betrayed an uncertainty. He’d come to apologize, to cry and tell me he hated himself for what he had done, to let me hit him.

The kid backed up to the cab. “I have to get the rest of my deliveries done or I’m in trouble.”

“Wait!” I tugged one of the hundred-dollar bills from the envelope. “Please. Is it? Is it him?”

He lifted his hands to deflect my gesture. “I couldn’t.” He hopped up and the truck pulled out, maneuvering back onto the highway.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Erica’s voice was uncharacteristically small as we peered into the blinding lights. “There’s nothing stopping you from driving off with me right now—”

“If I don’t call you in ten minutes, call the police,” I instructed, squinting. “85G3RU7. 85G3RU7. That’s the license plate. Say it back to me.” I turned to see she was crying. I went to touch her arm and she jerked it back with that same look Dad had, like she was undeserving of the comfort. I nonetheless took her hand and held it. She gazed down at my grasp, her rigid fingers relaxing. Crying harder, she placed her other hand gently over mine, enclosing it in both of hers. “Let me do this.”

“I can’t.”

“Erica, this isn’t like before. I’m not asking you for anything.”

“But I don’t want it to be that way.” She sucked in air. “I don’t want to make you feel like that.”

“I believe you. But this isn’t coded. I’m telling you to leave. Say it back to me. 85G3RU7.”

Her bottom lip quivered. The rhythmic woosh of the nearby highway sounded like waves. The brisk air had a hint of dampness, of fir trees, of gasoline, of someone’s fireplace. “85G3RU7.”

“Now go.”

“Jamie.”

“I will call you in ten minutes.”

With the same fierceness with which she’d kissed my forehead in her apartment all those months ago, she pulled me into a tight hug. “Please don’t die,” she said into my ear.

“And miss our next act?” I clung to her, we clung to each other, and for once that hard force that had always kept our torsos from touching disintegrated.

“Ten minutes, Jamie. I’m starting the clock right now.”

As soon as she drove out to the highway, the sedan started and the lights approached. I thought what I must have looked like, and I ran a flattening hand over my hair. Wiped under my eyes. The car pulled to a quick stop beside me, the window rolling down—

“I’m sorry, I know you were expecting him.”

My mouth hung open. It was the furthest thing.

“Could you get in for a few minutes? Quickly, and then we both should be going. I just can’t risk getting out with you here, okay?” Her blond hair tucked under a baseball cap, her face free of its TV-makeup mask, Brianne Rice leaned over to push open the passenger door for me.

“
You
sent the truck?”

“My nephew works for Urban Delivery. It was all I could think up that didn’t involve anyone else. I wanted to give you the best shot. Please, Jamie. Our time is so limited. Please get in.”

I did and she turned off the ignition, cut the lights. She fidgeted with her keys, her French-tips fingering the ring as she seemed to gather her courage. “I’m sorry I can’t give you more money. I
know it seems like I’m rolling in it, but none of that’s actually mine.”

“I . . . I didn’t expect . . . anything from you.”

“I could never have imagined they’d drag another girl into this. I mean, I
wondered
if there were others, you always do. It’s not like he had a reputation when we met. But watching these last few weeks—I mean, I was thirty-two when he started flirting with me and God knows my world went upside down. But only twenty-one.” She shook her head, her eyes wide with concern. “I can’t imagine.”

“So you did have an affair.” I wanted to know—I didn’t—I felt like I was finding out exactly when and how I would die.

“No. No. Nothing like what you—you’ve described.”

I sucked in my lips, reddening. Surprised I still could.

“There was a connection between us. It was . . . potent. He asked for me all the time. Suddenly I was tagging along for everything. It went on for months, growing, but I was too scared to risk it. Not as a single mom.” She steadied the photo of the boy and his soccer ball dangling from the rearview, her thumb caressing his face before her hands dropped into her lap. “Not that I didn’t want to—I mean, you know, God, I wanted to. It feels good to admit that.” A smile flickered across her tense features. “But then . . . well, Greg had been on the rise since we met, but after his convention speech he was deemed the second coming—and I was fired.” She snapped her fingers, startling me. “Just like that. And his team, you know, they made sure I wouldn’t get another job that chanced having me cross his path again. It was like he wanted to just erase the temptation. I filed a complaint and thought that would be that. When the RNC showed up I was working retail, no health insurance, going into foreclosure.” Her face wrung itself and then she exhaled. “They’re covering my family and friends’ legal bills, paying for my son to go to a good school. I had no idea it would ever get to be this—I’m sorry.”

My stomach clenched. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Nothing. You don’t have to say anything. Listen, Jamie, I don’t mean to be dramatic, but you have maybe until dawn to do
whatever
you need to do before the press is back on you. A waitress or some
gas station guy, someone will call TMZ. It’s going to be a lot for a long time—”

“How long?”

She looked at me, her brow rising. “I had to leave my house in a friend’s trunk to get here.”

“Right.”

“Make the most of tonight, okay?”

“Okay. Thank you.” I went to open the door and get out. I was struck with the memory of the one time, toward the end, when Mike was closing down a library fundraiser car wash, my parents had forgotten to pick me up, and Patty drove me home in silence, almost saying something as I got out of the car, but then only bidding me good night. I bent back down to Brianne. “Have you ever heard from him?”

She gazed past the steering wheel. “Nope.”

I steeled myself—she was the only other person who could tell me. “Did he do it—or was it his people?”

Her face shifted into a sad smile. “I’ve had kind of a ridiculous amount of time to think about that.”

“And?”

“I guess what it comes down to is . . . does it matter?”

• • •

I called Erica and told her I would text her when I got wherever it was that I was going. Checking the time, I pulled up to the service road exit. The traffic light blinked red. One night, or what was left of it. One night to do what I had to. Rolling down the window, I turned up the radio and found my way to the highway that would take me north.

Shockingly, he was still listed at whitepages.com. Redburn Street. Garbage cans were pulled to the end of driveways. Bikes leaned against garages. Easter decorations peppered the dark lawns.

I thought of the girls who were growing up there around him. The ones who came from houses like mine, a little too much chaos, a little too little attention. Sleeping now, or still staring up at glow-in-the-dark stars, trying to make sense of their day. In the morning they’d
climb onto their buses, their lives teetering between unpredictable and diminishing, always on the lookout—yearning—for something to define them. Stupidly, tragically open.

Then I was leaning on my horn in his driveway, leaning with my whole weight until a light went on in an upstairs window. A curtain parted and there he was. I stepped out so he could see me. He jerked back and another light went on as I stormed up their walk. The front door opened. A soft paunch drooped over his boxers as he crossed his arms against his bare chest. His thinning hair was tossed from sleeping.
“Jamie, are you insane?”

“You should get your wife.”

“What?” He squinted at me.

“Patty?” I tossed my head back and yelled. “Patty?!”

Lights went on in the houses around us.

He grabbed my arm, but I yanked it free. “I’ve been led enough for a fucking lifetime, thank you.” The door whipped open behind him and she stuck her head out.

“What’s going on?”

“
Now
you want to know? I’ve finally piqued your attention?”

“Jamie, whatever you think you’re—”

“It wasn’t ‘puppy love,’ Patty.” Their neighbors’ porches illuminated as they peered out of their doors. “I was lonely and he knew it. He’s found a girl in every town. And he’s convinced her it’s something other than his illness that he’s roping her into.”

“Jamie.” Mike tried for his librarian voice but it slipped. “Come inside.”

“You will never.
Never.
Tell me what to do again. Never suggest it, or desire it or manipulate it. As disgusting as the two hundred pages of my testimony are, I gave them. And Susan and Adam and Alison and I have to live with the consequences. The whole fucking country does. But I’ve owned it. I’ve accepted responsibility.
That’s
being a grown-up.
Everything
you’ve said to the American people and to her are a lie. And you and your family have to live with that.”

“I’m going to call the cops.” Mike turned to go in, but Patty didn’t move for him.

“You’re trespassing,” Patty murmured to me, pale as her nightshirt.

“Fucking call them,” I growled, squaring my shoulders. “I’ve spent the last two months going toe-to-toe with the FBI. Call the police. I’ve got a story to tell and, thanks to both of you, I couldn’t be more warmed up.”

She took a step back into their front hall and we both heard the dead bolt click. Mike looked stunned. He tried the handle, called her name, pounded the door. The porch light went off and then the light in the vestibule. Neighbors watched as he became frantic, trying to get back inside what he’d spent God knows how many years defiling.

I left him there.

• • •

It was only a few hours before dawn. I know driving through the night from Maryland to New Jersey and on to Pennsylvania conjures a Tarantino-esque image of me gripping the wheel, a samurai sword on the seat beside me. I had thought wounding Greg required the public. But there was no driving up on that lawn. That lawn wasn’t even his. He didn’t have a cell phone. His mail was opened by others and always would be. Even after he left there, he would have a Secret Service detail until his last breath. I had to get him alone.

Two hours later the sun was orange on the horizon of the abutting fields as I slowed in front of a sagging barn, the only building within proximity of the white clapboard house a ways down the road. A fallow field separated the two structures and there was an inky wood lining the periphery of the property. I got out into the biting air, pulling my hood up and tucking my hands into my sleeves. There were no signs of life from the house, but the government-issue sedan parked across from the drive told me that she still resided there. I locked my car and, hearing a flutter, spun as a fat crow flapped into the sky. I began to walk the frozen crags of mud, stepping over the remains of cornstalks that had been struck down. I watched the house, maybe a hundred yards away, as I made my way diagonally through the field, my heels cracking into the iced water pooled between the trenches. The home was plainly landscaped, a large satellite dish incongruously revealed as the back came into
view. That never made it into the photographs of the President’s childhood home.