The List (21 page)

“Well, to be honest with you, no.” She unraveled herself, headed to the kitchen, and
motioned for me to follow. I sat in a tall rush-seat chair and watched as she tended
a pot of tea.

“I danced with Hugh Hefner at the Playboy mansion and expensed the whole trip when
I was a journalist. It was fun. It wasn’t this eternal flame of mediocre copy and
no joy that you have to keep up.”

“
Mediocre
seems like the wrong word,” I said, crumpling up a mint leaf and putting it in my
nose. It felt like a green bug, but I saw it as a cheap alternative to aromatherapy.

“Well, it’s not going to be your best. You’re moving too fast. And you’re not on drugs
like Jack Kerouac and company.” She turned and looked at my bloodshot eyes squinting
at her. “Or are you?” she asked. “I wouldn’t judge you too harshly. You can tell me
these things.”

I loved how my mother claimed to be fine with potential
annoyances such as drug addiction as long as she knew they weren’t true. In reality,
she would have flipped out and threatened to do an honor killing. When she found a
six-pack of Zima in my closet in high school, she cried and said I had disgraced the
family name. Then again, maybe she was just disappointed in my crappy choice of alcoholic
beverages. If there had been a case of Château Margaux under my pile of cardigans
instead, she might have saluted my sophisticated palate.

“I’m not on drugs,” I assured her. She took a seat and crossed her freckled legs.
I got my freckled legs from her. “I’m just so tired,” I said. And with that statement,
the tears started to pour down my face. Curled up on the high chair, I cried like
you can only do with your mother. It felt good.

When she finished smoothing down my hair and wiped the rivers of mascara off my face
with a perfectly folded linen napkin, I was happy that I was home. I didn’t care that
I had given up New York and free haute couture and seven hours of sleep a night. I
had someone to wipe off my puffy, tired face. I would have preferred if it was Sandro
Pena, but for now, I was happy to have my mom.

I was still leaning against her when my father walked through the kitchen with his
reading glasses on his head.

“Adrienne. Your sister sent new pictures. Come and have a look.” He didn’t comment
on the fact that I was a tear-stained mess, which I kind of appreciated. I gave my
face a final wipe and followed him.

In a nook on the landing between the first and second floors, I sat next to my dad
on a wide cashmere sofa as he pulled up a slide show on his black, rubber-coated laptop.
The first picture was of Payton standing in front of a palatial white house. Not tacky,
but not exactly understated—which was basically how most people would describe my
sister, too.

“Look, here she is on the top of her new Range Rover.” He opened a photo of my sister
sitting in a white dress on the roof of the car. “The whole roof rolls back like the
top of a tuna can for better views. They had it customized.” He clicked the arrow,
and the next bright picture filled the screen.

Payton’s hair was curled and golden blond, her skin was evenly tanned, and she still
had the same haughty look on her face. There was no denying that she looked absolutely
gorgeous against the backdrop of South America. Then I remembered the time she convinced
me to eat trash on Christmas morning, and I hated her all over again.

“Doesn’t she look like Grace Kelly?” my father said, going to the next shot.

I could still hear her voice. “On Christmas, we all eat out of the trash as a way
of remembering the starving children of the world,” she said, handing me an apple
core covered in hamburger remains. She grinned and clapped her hands while I ate it,
then told everyone I ever met for the next five years that I ate trash. Years later,
when I was vacationing in Thailand, I bought an enormous knife, which I told the vendor
was to cut off my sister’s tongue. He gave me a discount.

I looked at her picture again. “Grace Kelly? Without the crown or the talent,” I replied.

“Oh, Adrienne. You two were always fighting,” said my dad, pointing out the obvious.
I rested my chin on his gray head. It smelled like old man pomade and the comfort
of home. “Are you still mad because she was always trying to kill you when you were
younger?”

“Younger? She put a live raccoon in my bed on my eighteenth birthday. You had to call
pest control.”

“That was pretty creative, you have to admit,” he said, chuckling proudly. “She always
had a really funny side to her. That
great dark humor, like Woody Allen. I don’t know why she had to up and move to Argentina,
but I guess Buck had grand plans.” This again. The way my father talked, I was pretty
sure I would wake up one morning and my entire family would be living in Argentina
without me.

“Here’s one of her and Buck,” said my dad, smiling with pride. Buck was lifting Payton
up like he was about to carry her over the threshold. “She’s lucky to have found love
so young. It seems to get harder when you get older.”

I was about to ask him if he’d like to offer me some cash so I could freeze my eggs
and tattoo the word
spinster
on my arm, when he pulled up a close-up shot of Buck’s smiling face and my mood softened.

My sister’s husband’s name was actually Tim Johnston, but everyone called him Buck.
He was a linebacker for the University of Michigan in the late nineties, and in his
first ever game wearing blue and gold, he was thrown out in the second quarter for
kicking the Michigan State quarterback in the gut. Hence Buck Johnston. The name stuck,
and even though fifteen years had passed since his freshman fall, his weight and ability
to crush things had stuck, too.

From the second we met, I preferred Buck to my sister. He never put live animals in
my room. My sister was born to inflict cruel and unusual punishment, whereas Buck
got that all out of his system by bashing wide receivers in college. Their future
children were going to have a hoot of a good time.

“Assure me again that we’re related,” I said to my father as we looked at a picture
of Payton and Buck staring down a family of ocelots.

“I’m afraid that’s the dirty truth,” he said, setting the photos to slide-show mode.
“But she’s off living her life now, and
you’ve given yours up to come back here. She’s the adventurer, and you’re our little
homebody.”

Screw my mom drying my tears—I had to move. I had to start pushing drugs on the side
and save up the rent money. Or maybe I could covertly sell a horse on eBay. How did
one ship a horse? Was there a flat rate? Whatever, I would figure it out.

Unable to bear the slideshow, I looked at my phone. I had missed two calls from James,
the man who had escorted me out of the Hay-Adams when I was sick. Having been preoccupied
by dreams of a toothy Latin American man who had promised his mind, body, and soul
to my despicable, adulterous colleague, I had forgotten that I was going out with
James that night. But when I saw his name on my phone, a slight shiver ran down my
spine, reminding me that I was still a sexual being, despite the
Capitolist
’s best efforts to kill off my libido. I kissed my father on the cheek and headed
back to my animal quarters.

It was a beautiful May day and the air was getting warmer; I no longer had to run
between the barn and the house. Instead, I just walked lazily and let the too-long
grass get my feet wet.

“You buzzed?” I said as sexily as I could when James picked up the phone.

“I did. Am I still seeing you tonight? You sent me your address when I begged for
it but nothing else. Maybe you just want me to mail you a letter? Anyway, I hope I
am seeing you,” he said. In the background I could hear traffic. A fire truck roared
by, and then there was the syncopated sound of chanting, a group protesting something
or other. “Sorry about the noise,” he said. “I’m driving around Dupont Circle with
all the windows down. Liberals, everywhere. I hope you can hear me. Are we still on
for tonight?”

“Do you mind picking me up?” I asked sweetly.

He laughed loudly over the sounds of the city. “You mean do I mind driving for two
hours before we even get to the restaurant? Because you live on some plantation?”

“Something like that . . . ”

“For you, of course I don’t. I’ll just pack some flares and an emergency meal.”

“Comedy is not your strong suit,” I said, laughing despite my best effort not to.

By 7
P.M.
, my hair was curled, my eyes were brightened with some black-market potion I bought
online in Canada, and my underwear was small and French. I went out and sat in the
hammock by the fenced-in pasture to wait for him. The sun was starting to set and
Jasper and two other white horses were busying themselves with the art of doing nothing.
I was pretending to watch them when James’s car pulled up the drive.

“Why hello there! You didn’t tell me that we’re practically neighbors,” he said, stepping
out of his car in a dark beige suit jacket and jeans.

“Sorry, did it take long?” I asked.

“Thirty-eight minutes. I drove fast.”

Thirty-eight minutes? He drove at Autobahn speed.

Looking around at the gas lampposts and the white horses grazing near the barn, he
whistled like a man looking up a girl’s skirt. “This sure is beautiful.”

“Well, it’s not mine. It’s my parents’. But I did grow up here. And now I just squat
in a room above the barn.”

“Your parents still live here?” he asked. His golden curls made him look much younger
than I imagined he was.

“Sure, they’re in the house, in the kitchen. Want to say hi? You already met my father,
after all.”

He looked at me square in the face and said, “I absolutely do.”

“Nah. Another time,” I said, grabbing his hand and heading toward his silver Porsche
SUV.

“Can you see out these windows?” I asked as he opened the door for me. They looked
like they had blackout screens taped inside just in case there was a German air raid.

“I had them darkened a bit,” he said, closing my door and heading to the driver’s
side. “Lots of prying eyes in this city.” He looked out the window just as Jasper
started to trot toward the back hill. “I mean, in the city. The one we now have to
drive thirty-eight minutes to get to.”

As we exited the town of Middleburg, past the small white sign that read “population
976,” James started squinting at the even, hilly road.

“It’s hard to see with this sun setting in my eyes,” he said, putting on a pair of
brown Ray-Bans and pulling the eyeshade down.

“That’s the thing about Middleburg,” I said as we passed yard after yard of perfect
horse fence. “You can actually see the sun.”

“But you can’t do anything,” he replied. “Who cares if you can see the sun? It’s no
fun to enjoy nature in nature. Unless you’re a big hippie, like you.” He laughed and
put his hand on my thigh, then quickly removed it before I could do it for him.

We stopped at the red light by the gas station with the Pegasus wings. The radio was
playing an old Billy Joel song, and I realized that I was kind of excited to be going
on my first real date since I had moved home seven months ago. Starting to feel more
at ease, I looked out James’s deeply tinted window to watch the last of the sun disappear
behind the Chrysalis winery on the hill. I saw the trees trimmed low to show off the
stone buildings and the faint outlines of the rows of grapes. It was only there by
the
gas station that the road was four lanes wide. We pulled up as the light turned yellow,
and James came to a smooth stop. As he fiddled with the radio, a white BMW pulled
up next to us. As it came to a halt, I looked down at the two people inside, already
sure of who I would see.

Senator Stanton and Olivia Campo. He was driving. When she turned to him, I could
see that she was very upset—and not in the cold, aggressive way she was in the newsroom.
Her arms were moving, and she seemed to be trying to keep out of his reach. He grabbed
her face in his hands and gave her a kiss, and she pushed him away forcefully. He
sat stunned while she hit him on the shoulder and opened her mouth wide to yell. Despite
her anger, she looked vulnerable—an emotion I didn’t think she had in her repertoire.
When the light turned green, they had their heads together, and I heard a pickup truck
honk impatiently behind them as James drove us toward the city. Looking in the rearview
mirror, I watched as the white car turned right and climbed the hill toward the Goodstone
Inn.

I couldn’t make small talk after that. I sat in the front seat, quiet and still, trying
to guess what they could be fighting like that about. Maybe they were ending things.
Could Sandro have found out that his wife wasn’t tailing the president to China every
weekend, but was actually the senator’s wanton woman instead? Could he have said,
“Olivia. It’s him or me. Make a choice or I’m running off with Adrienne Brown.” That
last part was unlikely, but suddenly I began wondering if things could have gone south
for Olivia and Stanton and what that would mean for my exposé.

During dinner with James at the Source, I was a nervous mess. I tried to make conversation,
but I kept talking about horses because it was one of the only things I could babble
about without much thought. I gave James an anatomy lesson, even
drawing a foal on a cloth napkin along with arrows and technical phrases. I told him
I had a passion for animal husbandry. At the end of the night, he tucked the drawing
into his blazer pocket, like it was a totally normal first date memento.

James, I decided, despite looking like a Fragonard cherub with a Ralph Lauren charge
card, was a very nice guy. Medium height, medium build, blue eyes, a firm dimple in
his left cheek. He was a little proud, a lot pompous, and way too Washington for me
to swoon over, but he was good company, even for a girl in a neurotic state. And the
lovely part was, he didn’t know me at all, so he couldn’t even ask me if I was acting
weird. Which I was.