Lauren
Everything felt different that fall. We were sophomores now, no longer new to the campus and its rituals. Megan and I were in a different dorm, sharing a suite with two other girls. The word suite was somewhat generous, considering the cramped bathroom and kitchenette shared between the four of us. “I think my bedroom at home is bigger than our entire place,” I complained without thinking one afternoon when it rained and the four of us were cooped up with our musty-smelling coats and boots. Megan only shrugged and said, “Feels like home to me.”
I had a car that fall, too—MK’s hand-me-down Saab that was pushing a hundred thousand miles. The car had been Dad’s idea and Mom’s concession; MK didn’t need it anymore, and Mom must have been tired of ferrying me between campus and Holmes House for holidays and long weekends. Maybe she was too busy, or maybe she was simply loosening the reins a bit, a reward for keeping my head down and staying out of trouble. Megan and I took fewer bike rides and longer drives, winding our way past Connecticut’s woods and lakes, singing along with Blues Traveler at the top of our lungs. Once we saw a red fox down by the river, so brave it darted directly between the two of us. Another time we took off our shirts and lounged in our bras under an Indian summer sun. Only a week later, we got caught in a freak thunderstorm, the clouds rolling in low and black before we made it back to campus. I pulled over to the side of the road and we waited out the rain, buckets of water washing over the windows.
“Do you ever think about getting married?” Megan asked. She had told me about getting together with her old boyfriend over the summer, but her question caught me off guard.
I shrugged. “I guess, a million years from now.”
“Not me. I’m never getting married.”
“What? Sure you will. We all will, eventually.”
“Not me,” she said, rolling down the window a quarter inch to catch raindrops on her tongue. Then, after a beat, she threw open the door and ran into the rain, her jeans and sweatshirt immediately waterlogged. Come on, she gestured through the windshield. I shook my head, laughing, but after another minute I gave in. We danced in the rain until even our underwear was soaked, and dark streaks of mascara ran down Megan’s face. We dried ourselves in the bathroom of a gas station, angling for a spot beneath the hand dryer, and we were still laughing an hour later when we walked into our dorm, shoes squishing.
* * *
I was busy that fall with my classes, including the biology class that had finally caught up with me, complete with its lab requirement and a weekly study group. I was freelancing for the Courier, too, taking the odd shot of visiting speakers and students being recognized for one achievement or another. Megan worked Tuesday nights at the switchboard in the student union building as well as alternating Friday and Saturday night shifts. I usually joined her there on Tuesdays when I got out of my bio lab, sitting cross-legged on the floor directly beneath the counter, so I wouldn’t be visible in case her supervisor passed by. She helped me make vocabulary flashcards and quizzed me relentlessly; it was the only way I passed the random quizzes my instructor loved to hit us with at the beginning of class.
“This is something I will seriously never use in my life,” I whined.
“But we’re becoming well-rounded,” Megan said, parroting one of Keale’s basic tenets. “We know about history, philosophy, political science...”
“Oh, yes,” I yawned. “We’ll be able to talk about anything at dinner parties.”
The phone rang, and I listened as she gave directions to an out-of-town visitor, then some recommendations for places to eat on and off campus.
When she hung up, I said, “That was impressive, Ms. Mazeros.”
She rolled her eyes. “Do me a favor. Tell my supervisor I deserve a raise.”
“You at least deserve an employee of the month plaque,” I said. “It’s outrageous that you haven’t earned wild accolades for the work you do here.”
The phone rang again, and Megan connected the incoming caller to a student’s room.
I secured my flashcards with a rubber band, tossed them into my backpack and retrieved from its depths a half-eaten bag of potato chips. “What are we going to do after we graduate?”
“That’s three years away,” Megan pointed out. “And first you have to pass bio.”
I ignored her. “No, seriously. We’ll travel the world. We’ll get one of those campers and live out in the middle of Arizona or something. We’ll be some kind of fearsome duo, like in Thelma & Louise.”
“You mean we’ll drive off a cliff?”
I reached into my backpack for a water bottle and took a long swig. “It doesn’t have to end that way.”
She fielded two more phone calls and took a sip from my bottle. “I seriously have no idea what I’ll do with myself.”
“You’re not going back to Woodstock?”
“Hell, no.”
I laughed. “Well, I’ve got it all figured out, you know. I’m just biding my time here before I run off to join the circus.”
Megan rolled her eyes. “You could be a special exhibit. The senator’s daughter on a flying trapeze.”
“You laugh, but that’s about the best idea I have.”
Megan said, “We should make a pact. We’ll move somewhere together after we graduate.”
“New York,” I said. “Or London or Paris.”
“You’d have to teach me French.”
“Please. I’d have to teach myself. I took four years of French and can barely read a menu.”
“Pinky swear,” Megan said, hooking her finger toward me.
I laughed. “Is that really a thing?”
“It was all the rage at Woodstock High School. We pinky swore on anything important—not to get the same prom dress, not to sleep with each other’s ex-boyfriends, not to go to the fair without each other.”
“Serious stuff, then,” I confirmed.
“Only the most serious.” She waggled her finger significantly, and I hooked mine through it, and we made it official.
* * *
Holly, one of our suitemates, was dating someone from Yale that fall—a guy named Matt that she’d met at a party over the summer and talked to most weeknights, lying on her bed, staring up at the ceiling. It was driving our other suitemate, Bethany, crazy. “You should hear the two of them. It’s ‘I miss you’ and ‘I miss you more’ and ‘When can we see each other?’ It’s disgusting,” Bethany said, plunking herself down on Megan’s bed.
We commiserated; that was the nice thing about Keale, after all. It was perfectly acceptable to spend a Friday night dyeing each other’s hair in the sink or watching an old Disney movie, or blasting one of Megan’s Nirvana CDs and headbanging until we gave ourselves whiplash. We didn’t have dates to plan, and we got along just fine without men.
Eventually, during one of their nightly conversations, Holly and Matt realized that they each had three single suitemates and began planning a quadruple date—dinner, a movie and then, Holly winked significantly, “We’ll see where it leads.”
“I thought one of the perks of being here was the absence of shit like this,” Megan protested, and I had to agree. It sounded like a bad idea.
Eventually Holly and Bethany (who was apparently less disgusted by the idea of a boyfriend once one was suggested for her) wore us down. Megan swapped weekend work schedules, and the guys drove up from New Haven. They were all current economics majors and future MBAs, interchangeable, as far as I was concerned. “Any preferences?” Holly asked, giving us the rundown before they arrived.
“No one shorter than me,” I said.
“No one more of an asshole than me,” Megan said.
We paired off, and at first it was friendly and casual—Holly and Matt and Bethany and Nate in Matt’s car; I offered to drive Megan and Jason and my date, Nicholas. Jason asked if we could listen to rap, which he claimed to love. In the rearview mirror, I glimpsed the whites of Megan’s eyes, midroll. Dinner in Litchfield was a somewhat formal and awkward affair that felt like going out with my parents—a nice Italian restaurant, fussy table linens, a giant round table with a towering centerpiece. Holly and Matt sat snuggled close, and the rest of us made awkward conversations about our majors and hometowns. We were all from the East Coast except for Megan, and after a few jokes about The Wizard of Oz and country music, Bethany chirped, “You know Lauren’s dad’s a senator, right?”
“Seriously?” Nicholas asked. He turned to Matt. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Matt shrugged. “I didn’t know.”
I glared at Bethany. Earlier, when we were jostling for position in front of our dinky bathroom mirror, I’d specifically asked if no one could mention my family.
“That’s not a joke? He’s a real senator?” Jason wanted to know. Previously, he’d been staring at Megan’s boobs—everyone everywhere stared at Megan’s boobs, so this was expected—but now he half turned toward me, his shoulder blocking my view of Megan.
“He’s real all right,” I said.
Jason leaned closer to me, peering at my face. He snapped his fingers. “Mabrey. I thought you looked familiar.”
With Nicholas closing in on one side and Jason on the other, I was beginning to feel claustrophobic. I reached for my napkin, fluffing it out in my lap. “You thought I looked like a fifty-four-year-old man? Thanks.”
“Nah, it’s the pedigree. The...carriage. You know. You looked like someone important.”
“She’s not a fucking racehorse,” Megan said.
“Relax,” said Jason, not looking at her. “I’m allowed to call it as I see it.”
Bethany darted nervous glances between us. “Hey, what do you think about—” she began, but the question was interrupted by the arrival of our food, the servers hovering over our left shoulders. For a few moments, the tension abated as we picked up our utensils and started in on our plates.
Nate asked, “So we’re going to see a movie after this, right? Did we decide what we’re seeing?”
Bethany smiled at him gratefully. “There are three different movies all starting around nine.”
We went through the selections, none of which sounded familiar to me. Nicholas put his arm on the back of my chair. “Did you want to see a movie?”
I shrugged, picking at my ravioli. “I thought that was the plan.”
Jason asked if there was anything else to do around here.
“Not particularly,” I said.
“Well, what do you normally do on the weekends?” He directed the question to me, but Megan answered.
“Sometimes we go cow tipping,” she said. “We sneak out into a field, come up right behind a cow and wham.” She made a gesture with her fork, and a bit of red sauce fell onto the white tablecloth, spreading out like a bloodstain.
I laughed. “She’s kidding.”
Megan shook her head. “I’m not. We’ll take you, if you want.”
Bethany said, “I want to see a movie. I thought that was the plan. But I guess we could split up. You guys could always go back with Lauren.”
Jason and Nicholas glanced at each other, and I wondered if they were considering it. I tried to catch Megan’s eye, to get a read on her. There was something dangerous in her face, a warning sign. She reached for her water glass, the stem clanging loudly against her plate.
The conversation circled back to my dad—if he knew the president, if I knew the president, what we thought about Bill Clinton, whether we thought it was odd that Monica Lewinsky had saved her navy dress. Nate made a joke about oral sex and Bethany laughed, slapping him on the arm.
“These guys in Washington, they have all the perks,” Jason laughed. “Not your dad, I mean. Obviously.”
“Thanks. Obviously.”
Jason seemed to realize he’d offended me. “My dad’s a corporate attorney. He handles all these big clients, like Enron and Exxon.”
Megan said brightly, “You must be so proud of him.”
He half turned back to her, lip curled. “What does your dad do?”
“My dad? I believe currently he’s fertilizing a cemetery.”
It went quiet. Even Holly and Matt noticed the silence and looked up.
“Megan,” I said, reaching around behind Jason’s back to touch her shoulder. She shook off my hand, not looking at me.
“What does that mean?” Nicholas asked.
“It means he’s dead, asshole.” Megan pushed back her chair. “Excuse me. I think I’m going to visit the powder room.”
From the exaggerated way she swayed her hips, I knew she knew that we were watching her walk away.
Bethany looked at me. “I didn’t know her dad was dead. Did you?”
I bit my lip, glancing in the direction of the restrooms. There was a lattice wall dividing the restaurant in half, and I couldn’t see where Megan had gone.
“Does she have a chip on her shoulder or what?” Jason turned to Matt. “Why did you pair me with her, anyway? Nico gets a freaking senator’s daughter, and I get—well, I don’t know what I get.”
“You’re not getting anything,” I told him.
Everyone but Jason laughed, somewhat nervously.
He put his fist down heavily on the table. “I told you this was a mistake. There are plenty of girls at Yale. These ones are just freaks.”
Bethany and Holly jumped on him, their voices loud enough to attract our server, who was suddenly there, asking coolly if he could get anyone anything. Matt jumped in to defend Holly, and I pushed back my chair.
“It’s all right,” Nicholas said, reaching out a hand to stop me. “She probably just needs to calm down for a minute.”
I snatched my purse from the back of the chair. “I’m going to check on her.”
Megan was at the sink, washing her hands. Her cheeks were flushed. “Sorry,” she said. “Look—I’m no good in situations like this. Is there any way you could drop me back in Scofield before the movie? I’ll call someone from there.”
“No way,” I said. “You are not leaving me with those idiots.”
She smiled weakly. “I can’t go back out there.”
I laughed. “You know what? Why don’t we just split? They don’t want us there, anyway.”
“They want you there.”
“Well, I don’t want to be there.”
We grinned at each other.
Megan went first, slipping out the bathroom door, keeping behind the latticework and disappearing out the front door. I followed a minute later, and we raced to the Saab like we were skipping out on the bill. Maybe we were; we’d never worked out in advance who was going to pay for what. I gunned the engine in Reverse, and we peeled out of the parking lot.
A mile down the road, Megan asked, “Where are we going?”
“Feel like seeing a movie?”
She shrieked with laughter. “God, no.”
* * *
We ended up at a restaurant somewhere between Litchfield and Scofield—a burger joint with a definite smell of grease in the air.
“This is more like it,” Megan said, sliding into a booth and reaching for a sticky menu.
I grinned. “My kind of date.”
“Like hell it is.”
We ordered Diet Cokes and a giant basket of fries. Megan squirted piles of mustard and ketchup on her plate and swirled the fries through them, one by one, before they disappeared into her mouth.
“Did I ruin everything?” she asked finally.
“Not for me. Holly and Bethany are probably going to kill us, though.”
She tilted her glass and fished out an ice cube, crunching it between her teeth. “I should never have agreed to it. It’s not my scene. Preppy guys, fancy restaurants, everyone’s pedigree on display. It’s so dull and—” She fished for the word.
“Pretentious,” I supplied.
“Right. Give me the Burger Barn every time.”
I understood what she was saying, but I understood, too, that our lives were very different. The Yale guys were annoying, but I’d slipped seamlessly into their conversation. It was familiar and expected, Mabrey-esque.
Megan crunched another piece of ice. “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Aren’t you going to ask me?”
I took a deep breath. “Is your dad really dead?”
She nodded.
“Why didn’t you tell me? I thought you said he was just—gone. I figured he’d moved to a different part of the state. I mean, I didn’t realize that was a euphemism.”
She fiddled with her straw in her glass, bending it backward and forward, stabbing it against frozen chunks of ice at the bottom of her glass. “I haven’t told anyone here. He died the year after I graduated. He had cancer—mesothelioma. It’s from asbestos. It gets into the lining of the lungs.” Her words caught in her throat.
“I’m so sorry. That must have been awful.” I did some mental math, some of the pieces of Megan’s life snapping into place. The “gap year” she’d taken after high school, not at all like the gap years my friends and I had discussed at Reardon, wondering if our parents might fund six months on a catamaran, a winter of being a ski bum in the Alps. Her dad had died, and her mom had started dating someone else, and she’d moved out here.
“That’s not the worst part of it,” she said. “He was dying for so long. He got this diagnosis of eighteen months, but he could hardly breathe at the end. He was going to die no matter what. There wasn’t any help for him, for what he had. There weren’t any treatments, only morphine. It was going to happen anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
A single tear dripped from Megan’s right eye and trailed down her cheek to the corner of her mouth, where it quivered on her lip. She did nothing to brush it away. “I helped him along. He asked me to, and I did.”
I realized I was holding my breath, trying to understand if I was hearing what I thought I was hearing. I had about a million questions, but I didn’t know how to ask any of them, or whether I really wanted to know the answers. Finally, I said, “But he was going to die, on his own?” The last syllable rose into a question, and Megan nodded.
“That’s what I tell myself. That’s about the only way I can handle what I did.” She reached for the metal dispenser and plucked several single-ply napkins out, one after another, and blew her nose.
“Why are you telling me?” I asked finally.
“I don’t know. I was sick of not telling you the truth. And also I thought maybe you should know that about me, in case you wanted to—I don’t know. Rethink things.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Rethink things?”
“Like, find another roommate. Or start hanging around with Holly and Bethany. I won’t be offended.”
“What are you saying? And why would you say it? This doesn’t change anything between us. I don’t think less of you. I feel—I don’t know. Sympathetic. Kind of horrified, but not because I think you’re a monster. Just because you were in that situation, and that’s horrifying.”
She gave me a nervous smile—and I had another flash of understanding, one that told me I was seeing the real Megan, stripped of bravado and pretense. It was how I’d felt seeing my old roommate Erin that morning when she was still asleep, when she was unaware and unselfconscious.
“Okay,” I said, rushing before I could stop what I was about to do. “We’re telling secrets? I have one, too.”
Megan laughed. “What—once you slipped a hundred-dollar bill from your mom’s purse and didn’t tell her? Somehow I don’t think you’re going to top mine.”
“Listen,” I said, and I let the story come, even though some of the details had gone fuzzy. I told her about the summer I’d volunteered at The Coop, about having sex with Marcus on the sagging couch in the employee break room. Megan was still, her eyes wide. I told her how I’d pretended not to know anything about the quart-sized bag of pot in my backpack, how Marcus had gone to jail, what had happened to him there.
“You couldn’t have known that would happen,” Megan breathed. “It’s not like you forced him to sell you the pot. It’s not like you stabbed him in the chest.”
I nodded, my throat tight. “That’s what I have to tell myself.”
We stayed out late, driving the grids of rural Connecticut, not wanting to return to Keale to face Holly and Bethany. Finally, I parked outside our dorm, looking up at our dark window on the second floor.
Megan cleared her throat. “Just for the record,” she told me, “I don’t think you’re a monster, either.”
I smiled. And then, although I thought I knew the answer, I asked, “You won’t tell anyone...?”
She shook her head. “You?”
“Of course not.”
It was dark inside the car, and at first I thought Megan was handing me something—there was the pale flash of her hand, her pinky finger crooked in front of me. We shook with all the solemnity of a blood oath.
Megan
I wasn’t kidding about not being Mabrey material—a fact that was obvious the farther we got from Keale and the closer to her family’s house, the two-hour trip made slower by a wet snowfall and slick country roads. At one point, Lauren overcorrected and the Saab spun out in the middle of an empty intersection, surrounded by nothing but trees. “Well, then,” she said after a moment, and we drove on. The landscape wasn’t that different from the outskirts of Scofield, but the homes we passed were set farther back from the road, the driveways longer and wider.
This is a mistake, I told myself. I didn’t belong here, in Lauren’s other life, where the contrasts between the Mabreys and the Mazeroses would be so obvious. I should have gone back to Woodstock and lived like a hermit in Gerry Tallant’s house, where my secondhand jeans and falling-apart boots wouldn’t be out of place.
We came around a bend and I was startled by a horse standing at a fence, its giant unblinking eyes studying us as we passed.
“Does your family have horses?” I asked as we passed acre after acre of fenced pastureland.
Lauren sighed. “Not anymore. When I was younger, we each had our own horse, but there’s no one there to ride them now, especially with Dad in Washington. The stables are still there, though, if you want to see them.”
We each had our own horse. Of course they did. “Are you kidding? I want to see everything.”
Eventually, Lauren slowed, put on her blinker, and we crept down one of those long driveways, the snow smartly cleared to the sides. In front of us, available only in small glimpses at first, was the Mabreys’ house. Lauren grew up here, I thought, taking in the three stories, the crisp black shutters against the white paint, the four towering columns that framed the front porch. On either side of the house, in perfect symmetry, were the type of balconies that seemed straight out of fairy tales, where women would wave their handkerchiefs or let down their hair or simply wait to be rescued. I pointed to a smaller building off to one side, still three or four times the size of the house where I’d grown up. “Is that another house?”
Lauren followed my gesture. “Oh, no. That’s mostly storage, although I guess Hildy does live out there.”
“Is Hildy a horse?”
Lauren laughed, killing the engine. “No, the housekeeper. You’ll meet her.”
In front of the house, the driveway looped into a circle around a towering stone fountain, stilled for winter. “Behind the house is the lake,” Lauren said. “If the snow lets up, we can walk out there later.”
I gaped. “You have a freaking lake? Of your own?”
Lauren said, “It’s Connecticut. There are lakes everywhere.”
I glanced around. There were no neighbors visible in any direction. Everything I could see belonged to the Mabreys. “Oh, sure. Everyone has one.” I unbuckled my seat belt and hopped out, my boots sinking into an inch of snow that seemed somehow softer and more lovely than any snow I’d ever seen in Kansas. Lauren followed, less enthusiastic. Why not? She was used to all of this.
I paused on the porch in front of glossy red doors hung with matching wreaths and framed with massive topiaries. A bronze plaque near the front door read Holmes House, 1852. I turned to Lauren, who was coming up behind me. “The next time you’re in Kansas, remind me to show you my favorite farmhouse turned meth lab.”
The front door swung open before we could knock, and I recognized Lauren’s sister from the framed family picture on her desk at Keale. She had the same dark hair and blue eyes, although hers were pinched closer together, her lips settling naturally into a frown. I remembered what Lauren had told me: Kat’s the good one, the responsible one. And then, in the next breath: you’re so lucky you’re an only child. Balanced on Kat’s hip was a toddler, her mouth rimmed with a purple juice stain. “Do you realize how late you are? Mom held dinner for you, and she’s probably alerted the highway patrol to keep an eye out for your car.”
“Hello to you, too, Kat,” Lauren said, stepping past her and shrugging out of her coat. “There’s a bit of snow on the roads, in case you didn’t notice.”
I followed Lauren’s lead, stepping out of my boots and regretting the crenellated chunks of snow that fell onto the rug in the entryway. I also regretted the socks I’d chosen that morning, feeling festive—red with a jolly Santa on top of each foot, a yawning hole in one of the toes. Lauren hadn’t mentioned that we were in any rush. We’d even stopped for coffee, killing an extra half-hour along the way. When Lauren didn’t introduce me and her sister didn’t acknowledge my presence, I held out a hand. “Hi. I’m Megan.”
“I’m Katherine.” Her skin was cool, the diamond of her wedding ring winking under the light of the overhead chandelier. “This monster is Lizzie.”
“Nice to meet you. Hey, sweetie.” I reached out a finger, and Lizzie hooked it with her stubby baby fingers, showing surprising baby strength.
“Watch out,” Katherine warned. “Once she latches on, she never lets go.” She adjusted Lizzie on her hip and the two of them wandered off, Lizzie’s hand reaching forlornly over her mom’s shoulder.
I looked up, breath caught in my throat. Mom would never believe this. The chandelier was like a tiered wedding cake, a thousand tiny prisms catching the light. Two curved staircases led to the next floor, their banisters dripping with green branches. It was like stepping into a Christmas carol—the “boughs of holly” and all that. In front of us was a tree that was easily fifteen feet tall, glistening with gold lights, its branches tied with gold bows—large on the bottom and tiny on the top. I tried to imagine someone standing on a fifteen-foot ladder, tying the bows with such precision.
“That tree is amazing,” I said, which was every kind of understatement.
“My mom tends to go a bit overboard with Christmas,” Lauren said. “There’s probably a tree in every room.”
I laughed, thinking it was some kind of joke. Only later, when Mrs. Mabrey gave me the grand tour, did I realize it wasn’t an exaggeration. Every room of the house had a tree, each decorated with its own theme—tartan ribbons in one, pink and white hearts in another. Even the guest bathroom on the second floor had a three-foot tree next to the vanity, with the faces of dozens of owl ornaments watching me as I peed.
“Ready?” Lauren asked. “It’s time to run the gauntlet.”
“Your sister seems nice,” I said, my voice echoing off the marble floor.
Lauren grabbed my arm, the suddenness of her movement nearly knocking me off balance. “Don’t fall for it,” she whispered. “We all seem nice at first.”
* * *
Lauren’s mom appeared in winter-white pants and a matching sweater with tiny pink pearls sewn into the collar. Her handshake was businesslike. “I’ve heard so much about you,” she said.
I glanced at Lauren, wondering which of my stories were appropriate for someone who looked like a queen. And if this were a fairy tale, I understood my role—the poor urchin in from the cold, who had to sing for her supper. “Your house is beautiful,” I said.
Mrs. Mabrey nodded. “Would you like to see the rest?”
I followed her carefully, placing my feet exactly where hers had been, in order not to intrude any more than necessary. Mrs. Mabrey had no doubt given this tour dozens of times before, and I was one of the least important people to be on its receiving end. Lauren trailed behind us, inserting comments that vaguely contradicted whatever her mother said. There were multiple living areas on the first floor, although I couldn’t tell what they were for, exactly, or when they were used—rooms with white couches, rooms with stiff chairs angled toward each other for conversation, a room with a grand piano, another with a few love seats facing a bay window. It reminded me of touring a mansion on my fifth-grade field trip, where my class had traipsed obediently through the rooms, careful to stay behind the rope boundary. Everything in the Mabreys’ house had the same sterile quality—there were no shoes kicked off by the couch, no stacks of unopened mail, no mugs of coffee growing cold. We passed the kitchen and an informal dining room, then a formal dining room, then separate offices for Mr. and Mrs. Mabrey. A woman wearing black pants and a black sweater came out of one of the offices carrying a wastepaper basket that held a single crumpled sheet of paper.
“Thank you, Hildy,” Mrs. Mabrey said, not missing a beat. “I did also notice a handprint on the door about knee height. I suppose that’s what life’s like with a toddler.”
“I’ll take care of that,” Hildy said, and disappeared down a hallway. I had a feeling—maybe not irrational at all—that I should be following Hildy.
There were five bedrooms on the second floor, and Mrs. Mabrey pointed to their closed doors one by one—Lauren’s room, Michael’s room, Katherine and Peter’s room, the guest room that had been commandeered by Lizzie and the double-door suite at the end of the hall leading to the Mabreys’ bedroom.
“There are more guest rooms on the third floor. Hildy has made up one of them for you,” Mrs. Mabrey said, starting for the next staircase.
“It’s okay,” Lauren said, and to me, “You can sleep on my daybed.”
“Are you sure? I mean, you probably get sick enough of me at school.”
“If you get annoying, I’ll kick you out,” Lauren assured me.
I grinned. “Thanks.”
Later, when some unseen hand had brought our bags from Lauren’s car, I flopped onto the daybed with its floral comforter and tried to imagine Lauren growing up here, in a house where a speck of dirt must have been cause for alarm. Even her room didn’t look like her—the bedspreads too childish, the dresser and vanity too fussy. On the wall, there was a framed cross-stitched monogram of Lauren’s initials, and one shelf held a few tiny knickknacks, relics from family vacations—snow globes, tiny models of the Eiffel Tower and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. They might have belonged to a stranger. Where was Lauren the teenager girl, with her posters of boy bands and snapshots of friends? I remembered what she told me about Marcus dying, and how her parents had kept her at home that semester. I couldn’t think of anything more depressing than spending months alone in this room.
Lauren was digging around in one of her bags for a hairbrush, and I watched her swipe the brush in even strokes until the ends of her hair fluttered with static.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “Where do you hang out?”
She gestured with the hairbrush around the room. “You’re looking at it.”
“No, no, no. I mean, where do you hang out? Where do you lie around in your underwear eating out of a box of Wheat Thins? I can’t picture anyone actually sitting on all those white couches.”
Lauren tossed the brush on top of her bedspread. “Well, there is one place that my mother consistently leaves off the official tour. Come on, we’re going down to The Dungeon.”
I grinned. “Is that where your father tortures his political rivals?”
“Something like that.”
Lauren led me down a flight of stairs, across the house to the kitchen, then down another flight of stairs off the pantry. I was going to need a map to find my way back.
“MK and I used to call this The Dungeon,” she said, flipping on a light switch. Fluorescent bulbs hummed overhead, illuminating a cavernous space made gloomy with a lower ceiling and about an acre of dark wood paneling. I blinked, taking in a dated kitchenette with a polished wooden bar, large seating area and a pool table. The carpet beneath my feet was inch-and-a-half shag, much like the carpet I’d grown up with in Woodstock. There were two windows at the back of the house, but you had to be seven feet tall to see out of them. Light from a fading winter sunset filtered through.
“Whoa,” I said, taking in the three mounted deer heads, their antlers polished and menacing. Then I stooped to pet the rug on the floor, which appeared to be a massive bear pelt. “Is this thing real?”
Lauren shrugged. “I guess. My mom is always threatening to get rid of it. Actually, she’s been talking about remodeling this whole space as a guest suite. Can you imagine what this would look like covered in a million yards of white beadboard?”
I ran my hand over the green felt on the pool table, then stopped curiously in front of some built-in shelves that held not books but every board game imaginable—Clue and Risk and Monopoly and dozens of puzzles, some of the boxes never opened. Then I returned to the plaid couches, plopping down in front of the only modern touch in the entire space—a giant television. “This’ll do,” I announced. Lauren laughed, reaching for the remote.
* * *
Senator Mabrey and Michael arrived the following night just as we were sitting down to dinner at a massive table set for eight. I tried not to stare at Senator Mabrey, although he was as close as I’d come to royalty, dressed in a navy suit and striped tie, which he was unknotting as he came through the door. Michael was a younger version, sleeves rolled to his elbows, a swagger to his walk.
“Traffic,” Senator Mabrey apologized, planting a kiss on his wife’s temple. “What did we miss?”
“Dinner, almost,” Mrs. Mabrey said stiffly. Lauren had warned me about her mother’s sense of punctuality—five minutes early was still considered late; five minutes late was unconscionable.
He bent to kiss Lauren’s head, then Katherine’s, and shook hands with Peter. He took in the empty seat that would have been Lizzie’s. “Where’s my girl?”
Katherine sighed. “I had to put her to bed. She was exhausted. And she was exhausting me, too.” But Lizzie was still there in the form of a gray plastic receiver, which occasionally emitted a baby-sized gurgle or sigh transmitted from the upstairs monitor.
“And you must be Megan,” Senator Mabrey said, patting me on the shoulder. “I hear you’ve come along to keep Lauren in line. Welcome, welcome.”
“Well, it’s a tough job.” I winked at Lauren across the table.
Michael pulled out the chair next to me, finishing my thought. “...and it takes a team to do it.”
“Ha-ha,” Lauren said. “And this is my hysterical brother, MK.”
“Or you can call me Michael like everyone else in the world does,” he said, taking his seat and unfolding his napkin in one singular motion. I followed his lead, smoothing my napkin over my lap.
“What’s MK from?” I asked. “Are those initials?”
He grinned, revealing the same straight white teeth as Lauren’s. No money had been spared on dental hygiene in this family, that was for sure. “No—it’s just what Lauren called me when she was about two years old. She used to call herself Lolo. Did you know that?”
I raised an eyebrow in Lauren’s direction. “Lolo?”
At the end of the table, Mrs. Mabrey shifted, her impatience palpable. “Let’s get started, shall we?” I was already learning that her questions were never really questions, since she had already determined all the answers.
Senator Mabrey said, “Let’s say the blessing.” On cue, everyone joined hands, until we were a wide, connected circle, with my hands clasped by Michael on one side and the senator on the other. It was a brief, nonspecific prayer about food and family and country, but it was hard to follow, nonetheless, since I was actually touching a senator. He ended the prayer with an emphatic “Amen!” which was echoed less enthusiastically by two or three other voices. Across the table, the baby monitor emitted a sharp cry, and Peter adjusted the volume downward, so that Lizzie’s voice was only a thin wail.
Michael was still holding my hand, which he brought to his lips in a formal, courtly gesture. “Charmed, I’m sure.”
I laughed, disentangling myself.
“Could you please be less disgusting?” Lauren asked. “Some of us don’t want our appetites ruined.”
I watched them carefully as the meal progressed, looking for cues about what silverware to use, and when to reach for seconds. Michael’s left arm bumped against my right arm one or two times too many to be considered accidental. On my other side, Senator Mabrey was asking about my classes, my time at Keale.
I couldn’t imagine that my literary theory classes would sound that interesting, so I told him about the poli sci course I would be taking with a new professor, Dr. Miriam Stenholz.
He nodded. “I’ve heard that name. She’s an advocate for women in politics.”
Michael gave a little snort next to me.
“So you’re a political science major?” Senator Mabrey asked, turning a more interested face in my direction.
“No,” I corrected quickly. “English, actually. That’s just one of my required—”
“God, not another English major,” Michael groaned.
“Michael,” his mother said sharply.
“Well, what are you going to do with an English degree? Teach?” His eyebrows were raised, forming two points in the middle.
My cheeks felt hot. “Maybe.” I hadn’t fully answered the question for myself yet, but I’d romanticized the profession, admiring my professors in their tweed jackets with leather elbow patches, their shoebox-sized offices filled with stacks of student papers and books with yellow sticky notes curling over the edges.
“It’s a noble profession,” Senator Mabrey said, silencing Michael. “Without teachers, where would any of us be?”
I smiled, although it seemed like a soundbite, a line from a speech delivered to the teachers’ union. It was hard to imagine a world where the Mabreys wouldn’t be successful, education or not.
“Katherine taught for a few years,” Mrs. Mabrey said, and the pendulum swung to her end of the table. “It was at one of the best preschools in the area. Mothers were registering their babies before they were even born.”
Peter said, “Lizzie’s going there next fall, when she’s three.”
There was some talk about teacher-student ratios and rising tuition, and I had the distinct feeling that we weren’t talking about the same kind of teaching, at all. Under the table, Lauren kicked me, and I kicked her back.
“Hey,” Michael said, indignant. “Are you playing footsie with me?”
“No—I’m sorry.”
Lauren stifled a laugh. “Watch yourself, Megs.”
At the other end of the table, there was a distinct squawk from the baby monitor, and a brief argument between Katherine and Peter about whether to let Lizzie cry it out or go check on her. Eventually, Katherine excused herself and disappeared. A minute later we heard her voice on the monitor, cooing, “What’s wrong with my baby girl now? What’s wrong, hmm? What’s wrong with little Liz—” Peter turned the volume dial again, and her question disappeared.
“Yeah, Megs,” Michael said. “Watch yourself.”
* * *
The days before Christmas were a blur of errands that needed to be run, cards opened and cataloged. Every time the Mabreys’ doorbell rang, it was a harried-looking delivery person with a cellophane-wrapped gift basket from one constituent or another. In between trips to town, Lauren and I escaped to The Dungeon, watching cheesy holiday movies on the big-screen TV and helping ourselves to the liquor cabinet.
“See, this isn’t so different from Mazeros holidays,” I said, gesturing to our shot glasses of Bombay Sapphire. “Except our liquor of choice is Bud or Coors.”
Lauren grimaced. “I’ve never understood the allure myself. I mostly fake drank at Reardon.”
“The allure is that it’s cheap, and you can get hammered pretty easily,” I explained.
“Well, yeah. That part I get.”
I wandered over to the bookshelf lined with board games and pulled down a puzzle. The picture on the front of the box was of a quaint little cottage, surrounded by snow, lit by a few cheery lamps. It was the sort of thing I would have found romantic and idyllic before visiting the Mabreys. Now I wondered if the people in the cottage were poor, and if the gas lamps were a sign that they couldn’t pay their electricity bill. I held up the box for Lauren. “What do you think? Feel like a puzzle?”
“Knock yourself out,” she said.
At some point in the afternoon, Michael would join us, fresh from a kickboxing session at the gym or lunch in town with his dad—a “schmooze session,” he called it.
“Who are you schmoozing?” I asked, imagining men in an oak-paneled room, smoking cigars and drinking from brandy snifters.
He grinned. “Anyone with money and an interest in politics.”
“What kind of law are you studying?” I asked him one afternoon, when the puzzle was about half-completed. I’d spent half an hour trying to find a missing edge piece before turning my attention to a clump of fir trees.
“Criminal,” he said, opening a bottle of Corona. “Want one?”
I shook my head. Lauren said, “Sure, hit me.”
I was trying one odd-shaped piece in a dozen different places. “So you’d be what? A prosecutor or a defense attorney?”
Michael snorted, passing an open bottle to Lauren.
“Oh, please,” she said. “He’s trying to follow in Dad’s footsteps. The law degree is just a stepping stone.”
“You mean politics?”
Michael forced a lime down the neck of his beer and watched the resulting fizz. “It’s the family business, after all.”
“Check your soul at the door,” Lauren said. She took a slug of beer and set the bottle by her foot, where it balanced unevenly on the shag carpet.
“Are you kidding? It’s called making a difference in people’s lives.” He announced the words like they were a newspaper headline, or the title of a research paper.
Lauren rolled her eyes at me. “My brother, the humanitarian.”
“Well, it’s true. The economy, national security, balancing the budget...” Michael reached down for a piece of the puzzle, tried it unsuccessfully in two different places and abandoned it on the edge of the table.
“I suppose it has nothing to do with fame and fortune,” Lauren said.
Somehow Michael had drained half the beer already, and he sat back, as relaxed as a guy vacationing on a beach. “Those are the fringe benefits.”
I shifted positions on the carpet, my knees protesting.
Michael nudged me with his foot. “What are you—Republican or Democrat?”
“Independent,” I said automatically—which was true. I’d gone so far as to register before losing interest in the process, and I hadn’t voted before leaving Woodstock. As far as I knew, sample ballots had been arriving at Gerry Tallant’s house in my name, and my mother had been throwing them away.
Michael scoffed. “Being independent is a waste of time. This country will never go for a three-party system. We’re too ingrained in our beliefs.”
“Eighteen months of law school, and he’s already a cynic,” Lauren commented. A commercial came on television and she reached for the remote, flipping between channels, settling on something just long enough for me to register what we were watching before flipping onward.
“Hey,” Michael said, nudging me again, the ball of his foot rolling over my thigh. “I’m in charge of the summer internship program at my dad’s office. You should apply. We have at least a dozen spots to fill. We’ll even take an Independent.”
I looked up. “In Washington, DC?”
Michael laughed. “That’s where his office is, so yeah.”
“What does an intern do?”
“Grunt work,” Lauren said, at the same time Michael said, “You get to learn how the whole political process works, see some legislation in action, show student groups around Capitol Hill, that kind of thing.”
“It sounds interesting,” I said.
Lauren laughed. “No, it doesn’t.”
Michael’s foot was still on my leg. I shifted to another position, and his foot dropped to the floor. “I’ll send you a link to the application, then.”
“What about you?” I asked Lauren. “We could apply together.”
“I’d rather eat glass,” Lauren said, getting to her feet. She’d forgotten about the beer, which toppled onto its side, liquid spilling in a golden stream. She swore, hurrying to the bar for a roll of paper towels.
“It’s settled, then,” Michael said. He reached over my head as if he were a giant and I were a child, and somehow, he spotted the missing edge piece that had eluded me.
* * *
Christmas came and went—big dinners that left us gorged and listless, followed by mindless hours of watching TV and playing Chinese checkers in the basement, our limbs draped over the ends of the plaid couches. I watched Lizzie when Kat and Peter were busy, taking her outside to make snow angels on a crisp afternoon and playing hide-and-seek with her in the living room, behind the white couches where no one ever sat. On Christmas morning, I joined the Mabreys when they opened their presents, smiling as embarrassing mounds of gift wrap and tissue paper were discarded and missing my Christmases with Dad and Mom, our ritual of hot chocolate and cinnamon bread. I’d always felt spoiled by them, the only child of loving parents. Now, watching the Mabreys open gift after gift, an impressive stack of sweaters and scarfs and boots and electronics piling up next to each of them, I realized that “spoiled” was relative. Lauren’s big gift was a laptop, which she immediately freed from its packaging with a tool from Michael’s keychain.
“Megan,” Mrs. Mabrey said, passing a wrapped box over Lizzie’s head.
“Really? For me?” I slid a finger carefully beneath the ribbon, working it around the edge of the box, then under the tape.
“Open it already!” Michael called, and I remembered how my mom had always exclaimed over the waste of using wrapping paper only once. She would save the tissue, flattening it out and refolding it, then tucking it away in a giant Tupperware container in the garage. I worked the tie free and opened the box.
It was a raspberry-colored sweater, the wool soft between my fingers. I draped it over my body like the clothes for a paper doll. “Thank you—this is so generous. Everything has been so wonderful, and this—”
“You’re very welcome,” Senator Mabrey said, at the same time Mrs. Mabrey said, “It’s nothing.” But it wasn’t nothing to me. It was probably the most expensive thing I’d ever owned, including my old Celica.
“Okay, okay, enough of this,” Lauren said, abandoning her laptop for the moment. “Everyone open their gifts from me at the same time.” I already knew what they were—black-and-white portraits, matted and framed back at Keale. Earlier this week, we’d wrapped them together in the Mabreys’ basement, scraps of wrapping paper and ribbon collecting at our feet.
Lauren had captured them when they weren’t looking—Katherine out on the boat at their summer house, her parents sitting side by side on a porch swing, Michael leaning against the railing of a gazebo, Peter in the boat, a fishing rod aimed over the side. Only Lizzie had been caught head-on, her mouth open in a goofy smile, her hair a dandelion tuft around her head. There were oohs and aahs and general murmurs of appreciation. Lizzie said, “That’s me!” and ran to each of us, shoving her picture in our faces.
“There’s one for you, too,” Lauren said, handing me a horribly wrapped package, this one clearly her own handiwork.
It was a picture of the two of us, taken in our dorm room, the corner of my class schedule visible where I’d taped it on the wall. I remembered that fall afternoon, rain cooping us up indoors. Lauren had held the camera at arm’s length, and we’d alternated poses from serious to smiling to tongues out, as if we were in a photo booth at a carnival. She’d framed one of us smiling, our heads tilted together, one of my curls brushing her cheek. Only now did I notice that we were mismatched—Lauren had the blue eyes that matched my blond hair, and I had the dark eyes that matched hers.
“Don’t you two see enough of each other already?” Michael said, snatching the frame from my grasp.
But I leaned over and gave Lauren a one-armed hug. “I love it,” I told her.
She beamed.
On New Year’s Eve, we went to a party just down the road at the home of one of Senator Mabrey’s major donors. I borrowed a black dress from the back of Lauren’s closet, one she’d worn to see a play on Broadway. The only fancy dress I’d ever owned was for the winter formal my junior year of high school—teal green and covered with about a million sequins that kept falling off when I danced. Lauren’s dress was more sophisticated than anything I’d ever seen in the Junction City mall, one-shouldered and silky, the hem riding up on my thigh.
“Do you think it’s too obscene?” I asked, gesturing across my chest, where the fabric stretched tight.
“Yes,” Lauren laughed. “And it’s perfect.”
We drank too much champagne and danced together in a gigantic ballroom, twirling and dipping while Lauren’s parents and their friends looked on, amused. Kat and Peter left early, carrying a sleeping Lizzie wrapped in a soft blanket. Michael, Lauren and I left at eleven, claiming we wanted to watch Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. In his car, Michael cranked up the heat and said, “Let the drinking begin.”
We ended up in The Dungeon, where Michael lined up tequila shots on the bar and we threw them back, laughing and sputtering. On television, musicians I didn’t know danced on a soundstage, and the camera panned over a shrieking, shivering crowd.
“Dick Clark looks like someone’s dirty old grandpa,” I observed. Maybe because of the tequila, this struck Michael and Lauren as hysterical. We drank to that observation too, and then Lauren collapsed onto one of the plaid couches with a belch.
Michael took a pool stick off the rack on the wall and rubbed the tip with a cube of chalk. “Anyone up for a game?”
Lauren groaned. “I can’t even stand up.”
I kicked off my borrowed heels, the toes stuffed with tissue. “I’m game. I haven’t played pool in forever, though.”
“Billiards,” Michael and Lauren corrected.
Lauren flopped onto her side, stretching out her long legs. “The Mabreys don’t play pool, Megan. That’s way too conventional.”
“Provincial,” Michael agreed, gathering the balls from their netted pockets.
Lauren yawned. “Cheap.”
“Please,” I said, rising to the occasion. “I’ll tell you what, Michael. You play billiards and I’ll play pool, and winner gets default bragging rights.”
“You’re on. But first—” He turned in the direction of the bar and returned a minute later with two long-necked Coronas.
“Ah,” I said. “Good idea.”
“Of course, I’m leaving in the morning, so I’ll have to do all my bragging tonight,” he said, handing me a bottle. I accepted, draining a couple inches in a long slug. I already felt loopy, and I wondered if it would be easier to sleep in The Dungeon tonight or crawl up two flights of stairs in Lauren’s dress.
“Where’s mine?” Lauren whined from the couch.
With one hand, Michael untucked his dress shirt from his waistband. “Please. You’re going to be asleep in five minutes.”
Lauren yawned, not denying it. “Be careful, MK. Megs will go all Kansas on you.”
We played a warm-up round, taking sloppy shots. I hadn’t played since the summer when I was fourteen, too young to have a job or friends with cars. That summer, Dad’s cousin CJ had been evicted from his rental, and our garage had provided temporary storage for his pool table, golf clubs and hunting rifles. Dad had taken the opportunity to teach me every shot he knew from a lifetime of pickup games in bars. I had loved the satisfying smack! as the cue ball whacked a striped or solid, sending it flying into other balls, other pockets.
Maybe it was because of the nostalgia that I let my guard down. Or more likely, it was because of the tequila, plus the three Coronas I drank while Michael beat me handily in the first game, and by less of a margin in our second game, when it was clear the alcohol was getting to him, too. He weaved his way unsteadily around the table, leaning against the wood-paneled wall for balance, brushing against me in a way that might have been deliberate or accidental.
When he beat me the second time, he set down his stick and came up behind me, his breath suddenly on my cheek. “Bragging rights,” he reminded me. I felt his erection bulging against my hip and half turned, glancing over my shoulder at Lauren. She was asleep on the couch, the dark mass of her hair blocking her face. She would have been horrified if she were awake, throwing a cushion at Michael, demanding he keep his hands off me.
“Hey now,” I said, trying unsuccessfully to sidestep him. Michael’s mouth loomed close, his breath as beery and unwelcome as my own. I braced myself for the kiss before it came, meeting it with pursed lips. My hands on his chest were a preventive measure, a barrier to keep him from coming closer. “We’re drunk,” I laughed, scooting out of the way before it could go further. And then, not knowing what else to do, I’d dodged his outstretched arms and headed for the stairs. It was a relief to find myself alone on the main floor, away from the stale, overheated air of The Dungeon. By the time I was in my pajamas and under the covers in Lauren’s room, I was congratulating myself for avoiding a disaster, the kind of bad decision that ended up with the two of us in Michael’s room, whispering drunkenly, my nylons rolled down, Lauren’s silk dress pushed up to my hips. And then what? In the morning, would I have had to do the walk of shame down the long hallway past the closed doors of Lauren’s sleeping family members? Would I have had to sit across the breakfast table from Mrs. Mabrey’s disapproving glance? It was unthinkable.
If it had been anyone else, any other boy after any other party, I would have told Lauren everything about it, dissecting the kiss, analyzing it from every angle. I was aware—keenly, even in my drunken, spinning-ceiling state—that Michael Mabrey was a good catch. He was attractive in a Kennedy-esque way, with dark hair and a lanky body made for noncontact sports like golf and downhill skiing. Plus, he was smart. If he hadn’t been her brother, Lauren and I would have analyzed that, too, ranking him for sexiness and future prospects.
But because it was Lauren, and because it was Michael, I never said a word. By the time Lauren and I stumbled downstairs in the early afternoon, searching for coffee, Michael was already gone.
That spring when I was trying to find a summer job that would keep me away from Woodstock, I thought about contacting Michael, reminding him that he was going to send me an application for the internship position in his father’s office. But I was smart enough to realize that the offer hadn’t been a serious one, the way his drunken kiss hadn’t been serious, either.