The inside of the gelateria was cool and unhurried. An antique fan blew gentle air down on Farah as she paid for her salted caramel in a cup. She thanked the young woman at the counter and took her gelato back outside, navigating her way through the iron bistro furniture until she picked a private table at the far corner of the patio. She sat down under the shaded dapple of a tree and watched people walk up and down the main street of the little New England town. This is where she would be living for the next three weeks.
Farah took it all in as if through a lens for later viewing. She had become accustomed to seeing everything as an unattached outsider, even when she wasn’t behind the camera. It afforded her a powerful sort of invisibility in the world, as a chronicler of the human condition, above and apart from it. It could be lonely at times, but more often it was a comfort to wrap herself in the job, the work, the invisibility.
From where she sat, Farah could see a handmade-jewelry shop, an art gallery and a home goods store. Flowers sat in pots along the sidewalk, and a banner hung across the main street announcing next week’s road race. Distant baroque music was emanating pleasantly from invisible orifices along the street. Well-heeled retired couples, families and chic artist-musician types ambled by. So many unhurried people in this unhurried corner of America.
Who was working? Farah wondered. High school students were working at the gelato place, artsy middle-aged ladies were working in the bespoke shops, and passing men in six-hundred-dollar loafers appeared to be working as they spoke confidently into their cell phones. But still, Farah didn’t see a single person doing a job here that would pay enough to live in this town. It was one of those places, she decided, where the money drifts down from the highest limbs of family trees. It gets made elsewhere and spent here. That was the view from Main Street, anyway.
At least in New York, people are honest about it all. Farah appreciated the honesty of the ambition, greed and raw materialism that turned New York’s wheels. The money in this place (and places like it) was impenetrable and mysterious. No one here behaved like people trying to make money, and that was the difference: the money had already been made. It was now just old money growing new money. It was pretty, but Farah didn’t think it was good. Maybe one day she would make a documentary about that.
Farah took out her phone and punched in her boss Wayne’s number. She needed to touch base with him. So far today she’d gotten an hour’s worth of footage at the golf course—useless, boring footage—and about twenty minutes of Patty’s quest for the perfect cucumber at the farmer’s market. None of it was worth much.
She needed some direction from Wayne because so far this documentary was beginning to feel like a dead end. Save for a few moments of drama—the Senator taking charge of the blackout and the youngest son’s peculiar dinner-table announcement about joining the priesthood—it all seemed too sleepy so far.
She’d worked on enough of these projects to know when something was about to go south. There had been a pilot show they’d done on lobstermen on Cape Cod, which sounded amazing until it became apparent that the sea spray would make almost all their footage useless. After that, there was a documentary about the steelworkers union that everyone was excited about, but none of the men wanted to talk while the cameras were on. You don’t always know what you’ve got until you start filming, but Farah had learned that you have to be willing to admit when you’ve got nothing. Better to cut your losses early than try to sell a stinker after you blew your whole budget.
The receiver clicked on the other end. “Wayne here.”
“Hey, it’s me.”
“Oh, hey, how are things going up there? You getting some good stuff on L.L.Bean’s darker side?”
Farah sighed. “Not even close. Wayne, these people are sooo polished. They’ve been in the public eye too long for this to work. Plus, they’re boring! All they do is golf and garden and do sporty water things.” Farah pushed a scoop of gelato into her mouth. “The worst thing is that they’re really nice to each other.”
Wayne listened.
“They’re polite, and for the most part, it seems like they’re genuinely happy people.”
“Hmm.”
“There’s no way all this niceness is real. There’s definitely some tension surrounding their son Philip, who wants to be a priest. But so far, I haven’t observed any family confrontation, weird habits, hidden secrets or hidden bodies. What should I do?”
Wayne readjusted at the other end of the line, and Farah imagined him putting his filthy sneakers up on his desk, the way he does. “Okay, first, chill out. You don’t need to pin this all down in the first week. Just wait. Be invisible. Keep watching them. And take a deep breath.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“Keep your eye out for anything that hints of family discord or philosophical inconsistency—anything John Bright would want to hide from his constituents. That’s what we want. And it won’t just smack you in the face. These people are too practiced for that. You’ll just get a whiff of something unsavory, and then it’s your job to follow the scent.”
“Follow the scent. Okay.”
“Just capture it all. Don’t worry about what it means yet or how it will be pieced together. The writers and editors will do that on the other end. Your job is the same as it always is—follow your nose and be everywhere. You know how to do this, Farah.”
She took a calming breath and another bite of ice cream. She did know how to do this. If she got the right footage, took smart notes and listened to her instincts, she would go back to New York with all the raw material they needed to make this into something great.
“And Farah, you might try befriending them a little, in the interest of blending. Don’t get too close, but you know, make them comfortable.”
“I guess I haven’t really done that yet.”
“And maybe get some fresh air for yourself. Take one of those paddleboards out now and then, because you seem like you’re wound extra tight lately.”
She scooped gelato from the bottom of the cup. “I don’t think I brought a bathing suit.”
“Fine, whatever. But remember this—everybody breaks down eventually. Your senator is overdue for some kind of emotional response since his retirement. If you’re there long enough, they will forget that you’re there, and they will start acting normal. That’s when you’ll get the good stuff. Maybe—God willing—he’s a secret gambler, or he’s into bondage or he’s leaking government secrets to the Russians.”
“One can hope.”
“And remember—we’re just looking for human frailty. It doesn’t have to be explosive. It just has to be genuine. That’s not so hard to get. It will come out eventually.”
She sucked the last drops of gelato from the cup. “Frailty, right.”
“Just be patient.”
“Thank you, Wayne. Promise me I won’t get fired if these people don’t turn out to be interesting.”
“They will be. Everyone is.”
“I don’t know about that. You should see this place. It’s like the opening scene of every horror movie. It’s perfect.”
He rustled papers, signaling the end of this discussion. “Farah, please try to relax. You’re in a beautiful place in the dead of summer. Try enjoying yourself! Put on a pair of shorts, for fuck’s sake.”
“You know I won’t do that. Even for you.”
“You’re the best, Farah. Gotta run to a meeting, though. Good luck!”
“You, too. Thanks, Wayne.”
Farah put her phone back into her pocket and considered the ways in which she did and did not love Wayne. He’d been her boss for four years, and she wanted always to work with him. He was thirteen years her senior, and he was almost certainly a little infatuated with her. She cultivated his infatuation in fairly obvious ways, which afforded her a longer rope at work, but she’d also become a damn good videographer and producer under his guidance. They worked well together. At this point, Wayne was a mentor, friend and a back-burner possibility as a lover—but only on the way back burner. That would be a dumb path to go down, mainly because things were just right as they were now. Farah was glad to have Wayne on the other end of the phone for this project. And she needed him. For the first time since she started this job, she was genuinely concerned about screwing it up.
A teenage boy walked by with a fiddle under his arm. After him came a thirtysomething guy pushing a toddler in a stroller. Both were licking ice cream cones. Wind rustled an American flag above. Jesus, this place, Farah thought.
And then, walking right along the sidewalk with all the beautiful people, appeared Philip Bright.
“Philip, hi!” Farah waved from her table.
He turned, smiled and walked toward her. He was carrying a small shopping bag in one hand with a book peeking out.
“Hey there,” he said. “Glad to see you getting some time for yourself. It’s a nice little village, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it’s really something. You want to sit?” She pointed to the seat across the table and he gladly accepted.
Farah hadn’t really talked to Philip yet. Her focus had been on capturing the group dynamic thus far, and she hadn’t talked with any of the Bright siblings one-on-one.
“So how long has your family been coming here?”
Philip thought for a moment. “Twenty-six years. My dad bought this place a year or two after I was born. He wrote a book about revitalizing local economies around that time, and it hit the bestseller list. They bought the lake house after that. It’s a nice place to visit, but it’s not really my cup of tea,” Philip added, scratching a puffy insect bite on his forearm.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. This always felt like my dad’s turf. What do you think of this place?”
“It’s a little quiet for my taste.” Farah pointed at the bag in Philip’s hand. “What book did you buy?” she asked him.
“Oh, this is a book about soup.”
She laughed.
“No, really. It’s a book of soup recipes. At the seminary I’ll be attending in the fall, we share cooking duties. I’m not a very good cook, but I thought soup might be a good place to start.”
Farah studied him. “Yeah, it probably is. Casseroles, too. I bet you could really feed a crowd on casseroles.”
“Ah, good thinking!”
Farah wanted to ask him more about these plans. She had no opinion on them, but it was clear from his announcement two days before that they were a source of intense family emotions. She decided to wait for it to unfold when the cameras were rolling.
“Can I ask you a question, Philip?”
He scratched his forearm again, and a tiny bead of blood appeared on the raw skin. He was utterly unselfconscious about it. “Of course. What’s your question?”
“Why did your family agree to let me follow you all around with cameras? I mean, I understand why your dad did. No offense, but politicians rarely say no to things like this. And, to be clear, I’m incredibly grateful that he did agree to it. But what’s in it for the rest of you?”
Philip took a long breath. “To be perfectly honest, I doubt most of us thought very hard about it. There’s a certain amount of transparency that goes along with having a senator father, so it probably didn’t seem all that novel. Maybe my brothers liked the idea of it a little, too. I get the sense that both JJ and Spencer are at career plateaus. And Charlie...” He smiled. “Charlie can’t walk past a toaster without glimpsing at his own reflection.”
“And what about you?”
“Actually, I didn’t agree. I didn’t know about it until I arrived.”
Oh no. Had they forgotten a form or skipped over a legal requirement? This was a lawsuit waiting to happen. Farah wasn’t in charge of these things, but she understood their necessity.
“It’s okay, though,” Philip assured her. “I don’t mind doing it for my dad.”
“Philip, if this was a misstep on our end, I’m really, really sorry. We can make this right.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He waved it away with a hand. “It probably wasn’t anything on your end. I haven’t spoken much with my family over the past few years, and they might have just omitted it. I’ve just been kind of on my own journey. They give me space and I try to be accommodating. It works for us. Families are funny like that.”
“Yeah, I guess they are.” Farah wasn’t sure how to feel about this information. Had Philip’s father intentionally left him out of these discussions? It seemed incongruous with the Bright worldview. It seemed mean.
“I do have one request,” he said, more serious now.
“Yes?”
“May I have a private place, a place where the cameras never go? For prayer, I mean.”
“Yes, of course! I guess no one went over the parameters of this agreement with you, but we have all that stuff worked out. Bathrooms and bedrooms are off-limits unless verbal permission is granted at the time. You can make arrangements for private visits with outsiders if you need to. My personal rule is that kids get special treatment. If one of your nephews has a meltdown, I don’t want to further humiliate him. Let me think...there are a few other exceptions.”
“That’s good, but I’m talking about some outside space. I was thinking maybe that big oak tree in the backyard, the one near the beach. Could that be a no-camera zone?”
Farah liked that tree. It looked good when she panned, and she envisioned it as part of the opening credits for whatever this thing turned out to be. But it was the least she could do, considering. “Of course, yes.”
“Just when I’m under it, obviously. I’ll just need privacy when I’m there doing my thing.” Philip looked deeply apologetic about this modest request.
“No problem. The oak tree is—from here on out—the privacy tree.”
He smiled. “Thank you.”
“It’s the least I can do.” She stood up. “Anyway, I should get back to the house before everyone returns. Where are you parked?”
“Oh, I didn’t bring a car.”
“You walked here? It’s, like, four miles.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, nice day for it. But I’d be happy to accept a ride home.”
“Great, my car’s just up the road.”
They strolled along the sidewalk to her car under the bluebird sky. Philip’s arms swung jauntily at his sides. Farah liked the feel of his height beside her. She liked his openness and the pleasure he seemed to draw from nearly everything. He lacked a certain finesse that the rest of the Brights had mastered, and the absence of it was charmingly genuine.
“Oh, hey Philip?”
“Yeah?”
“Maybe you should look into pasta salads, too. You know, for feeding a crowd. Pasta salads could be good.”
He thought about it and then nodded. “Yes, that’s a great idea. Thank you for thinking of it.”
“No problem.”
They walked mostly in silence after that, under the bright sun, and Farah felt an inexplicable sense of gladness possess her.