What are we talking about in 2013? The Boston Marathon bombing; Lean In; the fiscal cliff, North Korea; Roger Ebert; “I’ve never seen a diamond in the flesh”; Chris Kyle; Snapchat; the Met Ball; One World Trade Center; Danica Patrick; Frank and Claire Underwood; Sandra Bullock; John Kerry; Aaron Hernandez; The Goldfinch; James Gandolfini.
Every day when Ursula wakes up, she checks her work phone (a BlackBerry), then her personal phone (the iPhone 5s), and then she gets on the exercise bike with her iPad and reads four newspapers—the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the South Bend Tribune. She would like to say she reads all four cover to cover, but she doesn’t have time. While Congress is in session and she’s in Washington, Ursula rises at a quarter after five and her mind is still half asleep, so who can blame her for skimming the headlines first? She normally ignores the Metro section of the Post and the Times because the murders and house fires of DC and Flushing, Queens, are low on her list of priorities. But on the morning of October 23, 2013, Ursula intentionally checks the Metro section of the Post because she has heard the most outrageous rumor. She heard from Hank Silver, her former boss at Andrews, Hewitt, and Douglas, that A. J. Renninger is considering a run for mayor of DC.
Ursula feels this must be bad information. AJ—Amelia James Renninger, the six-foot blonde who transferred to the New York office and managed to escape the fate of nearly everyone else in the firm on September 11 by virtue of her eyebrow appointment—is now back in the District, working as a “freelance consultant,” which could mean any number of things. Ursula has heard bits and pieces about AJ over the years, none of it terribly positive. She suffered from PTSD after 9/11 and took a leave of absence from the firm even though they’d moved to midtown, and who could blame her? But then, apparently, she got addicted to something, probably Ativan, and there was a period when she dropped off the grid. She resurfaced back in DC a year or two ago and now she’s entering the political fray.
Mayor of DC? Ursula can’t think of a more thankless job. She remembers that AJ grew up a military brat, her father a lieutenant colonel in the navy, so she doesn’t have a hometown, per se, and Washington is good at absorbing people.
Ursula doesn’t see any mention of the mayoral race in general or of AJ specifically, though her attention does snag on a headline that reads “Baltimore Couple Killed on Beltway.”
…pulled over to change a flat…wife stood beside her husband, presumably to alert oncoming traffic to his presence…both husband and wife hit by tractor-trailer…neighbor confirmed the couple was on their way home from a performance at the Kennedy Center.
It was probably Yo-Yo Ma, Ursula thinks. She had wanted to take Bess but her schedule had been too busy.
And then Ursula sees the names: Cooper Blessing and Katherine (Kitty) Duvall Blessing.
Ursula stops pedaling. Cooper Blessing is dead? And who is Kitty? The newest wife? Ursula rereads the article and only then sees the ages—Cooper Blessing, 73, and Kitty Blessing, 72—and she realizes it’s not Cooper himself but Cooper’s parents. Ursula has met the elder Blessings three times; these were people she knew, or sort of (she’s not sure she could have picked them out of a crowd). They’re dead. Killed on the Beltway.
Survived by a son, a daughter, and a grandson, it says in the last line.
Ursula’s hands are ice-cold. The exercise bike is in the basement of their condo unit, and as Ursula climbs the stairs to the second floor, where the bedrooms are, she wonders how to break the news to Jake.
She’ll wake him up gently, she decides, then hand him his reading glasses and let him see for himself.
She eases onto his side of the bed and studies his face. His hair is more gray than brown now. When did that happen? She realizes that although she sees him every day, she never really looks at him. Long marriages have peaks and valleys, she knows, and while Ursula’s career has been one peak after another, their marriage is surviving solely because of Jake’s steadfastness and his unflappable demeanor. Anyone else would have left her long ago.
When she touches the side of his face, he startles awake. It’s true that she never wakes him this way.
“What is it?” he says.
“I have bad news,” she says. “Here.” She offers him his glasses and points to the headline on the iPad.
Jake accepts the glasses and takes the iPad; Ursula watches his eyes scan the screen. He sucks in his breath and recoils. He drops the iPad, falls back into his pillows. “Oh God.”
“I’m so sorry, honey,” Ursula says. “At first, I thought it was Cooper, our Cooper, who died.”
“It’s Senior,” he whispers. “And Kitty.”
“Were you…close to them?” It embarrasses Ursula that she doesn’t know the answer to this. “I mean, obviously I know they’re Coop’s parents and we’ve been to all those weddings. But did you have a relationship with them beyond that?”
Jake shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Ursula,” he says. “Can you please give me a minute?”
He’s in shock, he needs to process this; Ursula gets that. Unfortunately, she has a Judiciary Committee hearing at nine so she needs to skedaddle. She goes the extra mile by bringing Jake his coffee while he’s in the shower.
“I’ll be home around seven, seven thirty,” she says. “Maybe in time for us to go to Jaleo tonight?”
Jake says, “Not tonight.”
“Oh,” Ursula says. “Okay.” She knows she shouldn’t feel rebuffed, but she does. “I love you.”
Jake doesn’t respond. Ursula can see him through the steam of the shower just standing there, letting the water pummel the back of his head. “I love you, Jacob.”
“Okay,” he says. “Thank you. Thanks.”
For reasons that Ursula cannot fathom, Jake doesn’t want to go to the Blessings’ funeral.
“Cooper is your friend,” Ursula says. “You go away with him every year. You’ve known him forever. You’ve stood up at three of his four weddings. You knew his parents. Why do you not want to go pay your respects?”
“It’s going to be a circus,” Jake says. “There will be hundreds of people there. You, Ursula, are a major distraction. I don’t want to create a…sideshow.”
“A sideshow?”
“People will hound you, they’ll ask to take your picture, they will whisper. You attract attention in line at Starbucks. I don’t think it’s fair to inflict ourselves on the Blessings in their time of mourning.”
“So you would go if it weren’t for me,” Ursula says. “You go, then, go alone.”
“I don’t think I can,” Jake says. “It would be tough, emotionally, but also I’m supposed to be in Atlanta on Tuesday. Overnight. I’m meeting with the guy from the CDC. That meeting took me three months to get.”
“Right,” Ursula says. “But this is your best friend’s parents. And it’s not like just one parent who was sick for a long time. This is both at once, suddenly. This is tragic. This demands your attention.”
“I’ll call Coop today and set something up for week after next,” Jake says. “Once the crowds have thinned. You remember what it was like when your dad passed, Sully.” Sully; Jake hasn’t used that nickname in decades, not since they were in high school. He’s trying to butter her up. But why? “You wouldn’t have noticed if one person was missing.”
“Still…” Ursula says. Something about this feels off.
“It will mean more to Coop when it’s one-on-one,” Jake says. “I know I’m right about this.”
Ursula disagrees—so much so that, after Jake leaves for Atlanta, she clears her schedule the afternoon of the funeral and drives to Baltimore.
The parking lot of Roland Park Presbyterian is packed. There are signs directing people to park down the block; church vans will shuttle them to the funeral. When Ursula climbs into one of the vans, she wonders if maybe Jake was right. The other eleven passengers stop talking and gape at her. One surprised-looking older gentleman says, “Senator de Gournsey?”
She gives him a somber smile. Says nothing.
There’s a line to get inside the church. Ursula is impressed by the turnout. All these people, the accumulation of two lives—their friends, their coworkers, their neighbors, the mailman, probably, and the woman from the dry cleaner’s, fellow country-club members, their children’s teachers and coaches, the dog groomer. Ursula works twenty hours a day to ensure that American citizens are free and able to create this kind of community. But she’s jealous too. If Ursula died and her mourners were limited to those who felt genuine love and affection for her, the crowd would be three: Jake, Bess, and her mother.
Funerals are sobering for more than one reason. Everyone must ask: What will people say about me?
Ursula searches for someone, anyone, she recognizes. She attended three of Cooper’s weddings—there was one other, an elopement to the Caribbean somewhere—so surely she will find a familiar face. Cooper’s friend Frazier Dooley, the coffee mogul (Ursula remembers him because Jake pointed him out on the cover of Forbes), is there with his—girlfriend? wife?—who looks less like the punk-rock queen Ursula remembers and more like a proper trophy wife with sculpted arms and a Stella McCartney bag. Money will iron the kinks out of anyone, Ursula thinks somewhat sadly. Standing with them is a kid about Bess’s age, looking handsome but uncomfortable in his suit, blond forelock falling into his face. He must be Frazier’s son.
Marriage material for Bess! Ursula thinks, to cheer herself up. She already jokes about Bess marrying money, which Jake finds offensive.
She waits in line to pay her respects because part of the point of coming—the entire point—is so Cooper knows that Ursula cared enough to show up. It’s only Cooper and his sister receiving people. Ursula studies the sister; she can’t come up with the woman’s name. Maddie is what presents in Ursula’s mind, though she knows that’s not right. And what’s worse is the mortifying memory that seeing Not-Maddie elicits. The bathroom of the country club, Ursula in the throes of morning sickness when she was first pregnant with Bess, back when she thought—no, was convinced—that Bess was Anders’s child. And hadn’t Ursula nearly confessed this to Not-Maddie?
Mallory—that’s her name!
Ursula had come very close to confessing that hideous idea to Mallory Blessing, a complete stranger. She had stopped herself just in time because somewhere in her mind’s eye, she saw the trajectory of Mallory confiding in her brother and Cooper then feeling he needed to share the news with Jake.
There’s a hand on Ursula’s back. She turns to see an attractive woman in head-to-toe black Eileen Fisher with a stylish asymmetrical haircut and a chunky statement necklace.
“Senator de Gournsey?” she says. “I’m Leland Gladstone.”
The woman’s voice is brimming with easy self-confidence; she announces her name as though Ursula might recognize it. Does Ursula know Leland Gladstone? The name sounds vaguely familiar. Is she a newscaster? A columnist? Ursula can’t think any further because now it’s her turn to pay her respects.
Cooper sees her and his eyes widen; he checks behind her. “Jake’s not here, is he?” His voice sounds nearly hostile.
Ursula hugs Cooper. “I’m so sorry, Coop. Jake is in Atlanta on business and couldn’t get away. He sends his condolences, of course.”
Cooper nods. He looks overcome, exhausted and beyond exhausted, weary. “Of course,” he says. “Thank you for coming.” He looks past Ursula to Leland Gladstone, and his face softens. “Hey, Lee.”
That’s it, then; Ursula has been dismissed. She feels a tiny bit put out. She is, after all, a United States senator, and she made time for this today. But that, she supposes, was Jake’s point; there are so many people here that no one is special, and to be a special person and expect special treatment is just obnoxious.
Ursula moves on to the sister, Mallory. Whereas Cooper looks tired, Mallory appears absolutely devastated. Her eyes are like empty sockets; probably, she has taken a pill. She squints at Ursula hard, like she’s looking into the sun, and then she checks behind Ursula—looking for Jake, most likely. Because these are Jake’s people, not Ursula’s.
“Hello?” Mallory says in a way that seems very nonplussed. But then she must remember her manners because she offers her stiff, cold hand. “Thank you for coming, Senator.”
“Ursula, please.” She shakes Mallory’s hand, although she wants to give the poor woman a hug. How awful for her, losing both parents in one fell swoop like that. “Jake wanted to come but he’s away on business. He sends his condolences.”
Mallory nods, though it’s not clear that she’s registering who Jake is.
“We’re very sorry, Mallory. Sorry for your loss.”
“Okay,” Mallory whispers. She, too, peers beyond Ursula to see Leland Gladstone, at which point Mallory breaks down and the two women embrace and rock back and forth, wailing. Ursula looks on for a moment and feels nearly jealous. Ursula doesn’t have a single girlfriend she could cry with like that. She never has.
An usher leads Ursula to the second row. She protests, whispering, “I should be in the back. I hardly…” But the back of the church is standing room only; the last available seats are up front. Ursula internally cringes. She hardly knew Mr. and Mrs. Blessing but she’s getting this prime real estate because she’s a senator. Jake was right; she shouldn’t have come. He always knows best. He’s a social genius; he can read people and situations better than anyone she knows. He should be an ambassador. Why is he not an ambassador? Ursula would like to walk right out of the church, but she’s made her bed, so now she has to lie in it; she sits down. The woman who was behind her in line, Mallory’s friend Leland Gladstone, takes the seat next to her.
Leland leans in and whispers, “I have tissues if you need them, and licorice drops. Would you like a licorice drop?”
Ursula is grateful for the kindness, however perfunctory. “Yes, please,” she says. “I’d love one.”
Leland opens a fancy little tin, European maybe, and hands Ursula a frosted hard candy the size of a pea. “I’ve been Mallory’s best friend since childhood,” she says. “I knew Kitty and Senior my entire life. I can’t remember not knowing them.”
“Mallory is lucky to have you,” Ursula says.
Leland gives a dry laugh. “I don’t know about that,” she says. “I’m difficult.”
“Well, then,” Ursula says. “That makes two of us.”
“Can I ask you a question?” Leland says.
“Sure,” Ursula says—but then the organ music starts and everyone in the church rises.
“We’ll save it for later,” Leland says.
At the graveside, Leland links her arm through Mallory’s. On Mallory’s left are Coop and Fray, Fray’s girlfriend, Anna, who looks nothing like the punk rocker Leland was promised, and Link. Leland’s mother, Geri, is on the opposite side of the two graves with her new boyfriend, John Smith, whom she met on Match.com. (Leland wants her mother to make sure that John Smith is in fact this guy’s name because it sounds like an alias, and John Smith has the bland looks and mild manner of someone who’s trying to erase an unsavory past. The last thing Leland wants to see is Geri duped by some scam artist who meets lonely divorcées on Match.com and then takes them for everything they’re worth.) Leland’s father and Sloane are standing behind Leland somewhere. It should be the other way around—Geri was Kitty’s best friend, so she should be standing on the side with the family while Steve and Sloane watch from afar, but Leland won’t say anything.
Kitty and Senior are dead. That’s all that matters.
The silver lining—and yes, Leland does know how egregious it is that she’s managed to find a silver lining at the funeral of her best friend’s parents—is that Leland now has Senator Ursula de Gournsey’s cell phone number and e-mail address. Ursula has graciously agreed to be interviewed for Leland’s Letter. Leland can’t believe it. It’s such a coup! She wants to tell Mallory, but naturally, it will have to wait.
After the burial, there’s a reception at the country club. It’s a reception worthy of Kitty Blessing—passed hors d’oeuvres (Leland recalls how much Kitty loved gooey Brie and chutney on a water cracker) and a buffet for three hundred that includes carving stations of ham and prime rib. There’s a chamber quartet and an open bar. It’s quite lovely and Leland marvels that Cooper and Mallory managed to arrange all this. She wonders if perhaps Kitty left the staff at the club pages of instructions and a blank check in case of her and Senior’s untimely demise. At least twice, Leland scans the room expecting to see Kitty. But that’s the thing about death—Kitty is no longer. Kitty and Senior are gone, they’re never coming back, and how is that possible? The rest of the world continues, the club is exactly the same, the Deckers and the Whipps are here—they’re talking with Geri and John Smith; no doubt they want to check out the new guy—plus every single person Leland and Mallory and Cooper and Fray knew growing up. All still alive, drinking white wine or bourbon or crisp martinis, plucking tiny crab cakes off passing trays, smearing Bremner wafers with Brie, willfully ignoring the fact that someday they, too, will die and everyone will cry, then hit the raw bar.
Ursula de Gournsey is not at the reception. She had a four o’clock meeting back at the Capitol, she said. The mere phrase back at the Capitol made Leland’s nipples harden. She loves powerful women.
Leland had realized, sort of, that Cooper’s friend Jake, whom Leland had dinner with decades ago on Nantucket, was married to Ursula de Gournsey, but that still didn’t prepare Leland for finding the woman standing in front of her in the receiving line. UDG may not be the most powerful woman in politics—there’s Hillary, Palin, Pelosi, and Feinstein—but she is certainly a media darling. Luckily, Leland has always been good at thinking on her feet. Leland’s Letter, tens of thousands of subscribers, ninety-eight percent women, eighty-five percent college-educated, meaningful content across a wide spectrum, would love to interview you, let my readers get a woman-to-woman understanding of you, wouldn’t take much time at all, a concise phone call, I’m not interested in wasting anyone’s time, not yours, not mine.
The no-time-wasted line seemed to secure Ursula’s interest. Sounds good, she said. Here’s my contact info. Hand on Leland’s arm. And thank you for being so kind to me.
“Would you please get me another?” Mallory asks as she hands Leland her empty martini glass. “Dirty. As dirty as Bridger will make it, plisssss.”
“And how about some water, Mal?” Leland says. The reception is winding down. Steve and Sloane are—weirdly? miraculously?—driving Geri and John home. The loss of the Blessings has apparently softened her parents’ utter disdain of each other and now they’re all chummy. Or maybe not. Maybe Geri just wants to smooch with John Smith in the back seat to prove some kind of twisted point.
“I’ll drink water later,” Mallory says. “Right now, I’m drinking gin.”
Leland obliges, asking Mr. Bridger the bartender—he’s been at the club for so long that Leland remembers him making her Shirley Temples—for a dirty martini. “Really dirty, Mallory said, whatever that means.”
Mr. Bridger shakes his head and says, “Damn shame.” He means the Blessings, not Mallory’s drink order—she thinks. When Mr. Bridger hands Leland the cloudy drink with three olives speared on a toothpick, he says, “You ever get married?”
“God, no!” Leland says with more gusto than she feels. She must be a little tipsy as well because she adds, “I was a lesbian for a while, you know. Now I don’t know what I am.” Lonely is the answer, Leland thinks. She’s lonely. She would be self-conscious about this except for the fact that both Mallory and Cooper are single too. Cooper is four times divorced. Four times! And Mallory just never got married. She had a baby with Fray, but Mallory and Fray weren’t a couple for even five minutes. Mallory dates guys on Nantucket, or at least Leland thinks she does. It seems odd. Mallory is so pretty and so smart; she would be a catch for any man. Leland thinks back to herself and Mallory playing records in Leland’s bedroom, stuffing socks into their bras and singing into their hairbrushes. Is there something wrong with them?
“Is there something wrong with us?” Leland asks later. They are in the Blessing house, in the “library,” which Kitty decorated like an English hunting lodge; there’s a print of a dead pheasant over the stone fireplace and an antique branding iron with the initials CB on the hearth next to a pair of leather bellows. Mallory and Leland are alone, sitting on the deep suede sofa. There’s a wet bar in the room so they can continue drinking at a brisk pace and there’s also a closet where Senior kept his stereo, a turntable, and his vinyl collection—Neil Sedaka, the Beach Boys, the Spinners. Mallory has put on the Beatles’ Revolver. Night has fallen early, as it does in late October. Mallory lit a fire, and there’s a lamp with a rosy shade in the corner. It’s cozy; they’re alone. Coop took Link to see Free Birds. He wanted to think about something else for a while, he said.
“Something wrong with us?” Mallory says.
“We never got married,” Leland says. “Fifi and I were together ten years, but…”
“Would you have married her if you could have back then?” Mallory asks. She’s down at the end of the sofa, her stocking feet resting on the coffee table. She’s drinking Tanqueray and tonic, because that’s what’s in her father’s bar.
“Fifi isn’t the marrying type,” Leland says. Even saying the woman’s name makes her throat ache.
“But she is the maternal type,” Mallory says.
Yes, Fifi now has a child, a son named Kilroy—conceived via sperm donor—who’s five. Every once in a while, Leland will see Fifi at literary events with Kilroy in tow, and Leland always leaves immediately. She yearns to have a conversation with Fifi but she refuses to be the one to initiate it. She can’t believe Fifi hasn’t called her or texted her to say congratulations on Leland’s Letter. Surely, she must know about it? Her friends and colleagues must be reading it? Leland has decided to just wait. Someday, Fifi will realize that she loves Leland and has always loved Leland. “I believe Fifi will be back in my life someday. Everything works out the way it’s supposed to, in the end.”
“Do you believe that?” Mallory asks. “Do you think my parents were supposed to be mowed down on the side of the road like…like possums or raccoons? Because that’s what they ended up as, you know, Lee. Roadkill.”
“It’s time for you to go to bed,” Leland says. “It’s been a long day. Where are the pills Dr. Roche gave you? You’re taking one and so am I.”
“I’m not ready for bed,” Mallory says. She sounds like she used to when she was nine years old and Senior and Kitty were enforcing their strict bedtime—eight o’clock on weeknights and nine o’clock on weekends. Leland started sleeping over here in third grade, though they would more often stay at Leland’s house because Leland had the downstairs rec room and the hot tub and the garage fridge filled with soda, plus Steve and Geri let her stay up as late as she wanted. But when Leland and Mallory entered high school, the pendulum swung back the other way and they would more often sleep here at the Blessings so they could see what Cooper and Frazier were doing. Fray had kissed Leland for the first time in the den of this house while they watched Flashdance.
Leland had forgotten about that.
“There’s something I want to tell you,” Mallory says, sitting up straight now. “It’s a secret. A real secret, the kind that nobody knows except for me and one other person.”
Leland knows she should stop Mallory from divulging a secret while completely blotto on the night of her parents’ funeral. What is Mallory about to say? That Kitty was having an affair with Mr. Bridger? That Senior was wanted by the FBI for tax fraud? Something about Cooper and one of his four ex-wives? They could hold an entire symposium on what’s up with Cooper.
“What is it?” Leland asks.
“You have to promise not to tell anyone.”
“I promise.” Leland says this in good faith, but, come on, they’re forty-four years old, so by now they realize that no secret in the history of the world has ever been successfully kept. The truth always comes out. Or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe there are millions, indeed trillions, of secrets that get buried in dark, rectangular holes like the ones Kitty’s and Senior’s coffins were lowered into.
“I have a Same Time Next Year,” Mallory says.
Leland repeats the sentence in her brain, hoping it will make some sense. Nope. “Excuse me?”
“I have a person in my life,” Mallory says. “A man whom I see one weekend per year. Like in the movie Same Time, Next Year.”
Same Time, Next Year; Leland vaguely recalls it. Maybe Geri had it on one long-ago Sunday afternoon; maybe it was rainy and there was a chicken roasting in the oven for supper. Maybe Geri asked Leland to come watch with her for a minute and maybe Leland was young enough that she obliged her mother rather than running upstairs to listen to the weekly countdown on 98 Rock as she finished her homework or write notes to pass to her friends the next morning in the hallway. Maybe she came in a third of the way through—the man, Hawkeye from M*A*S*H, was wearing a wide-collared jacket and a string of beads to indicate that he was a new-age enlightened man of the 1970s. Maybe Geri had explained the premise—this seemingly normal, suburban-looking couple meet for a fling one weekend per year over the course of decades, and as the times change, so do they.
Maybe Geri had said, It sounds like a heavenly arrangement, actually.
“Wait a minute,” Leland says. “You do?”
“I do. And I’m in love with him. I’ve always been in love with him. But it’s contained, like in a hermetically sealed box. It has never leaked out into real life. It’s come close. But yeah, me and him, one weekend a year, for a long time now. And nobody knows but me and him. And now you.”
“Why are you telling me?” Leland says. She’s not sure there’s such a thing as a relationship that exists in a hermetically sealed box. “Was he at the funeral?”
“No.”
“Does he know about your parents?”
“He must.”
“He must?”
“I’m telling you because I need to confess,” Mallory says. “I know it’s stupid, but a part of me believes…” She scrunches her eyes up and emits a couple of throaty sobs. Poor Mal. They’re sitting in the library with their drinks in Senior and Kitty’s house but Senior and Kitty are in coffins in the ground. Leland leans over and puts an arm around Mallory’s back.
“It’s okay, Mal,” she says.
Mallory shakes her head. She’s all clogged up. Leland hurries to the powder room for tissues. She’s been a half-hearted friend to Mallory since the beginning, always believing for some reason that she was superior and therefore didn’t have to try as hard, but now she wants to make up for it. If Mallory feels like she has to confess about her Same Time Next Year, then fine. Leland will accept the information without judgment.
Mallory mops her face with a tissue, gets in a couple clear breaths, composes herself somewhat. “Part of me believes that what happened to Kitty and Senior is my fault. Because of this thing I’ve been doing.” She pauses. “The other person, the man…he’s married.”
“Well, yeah,” Leland says. “I figured. Otherwise…I mean, if he weren’t married, you two would just be together all the time. Or more frequently. But whatever, Mal. What happened to your parents was a random, stupid, senseless accident. It doesn’t have anything to do with this other thing. I can assure you of that.”
“But you can’t assure me.”
Leland takes her friend’s hand. “Tell me about him. If no one else knows about him, then you must have a bunch of pent-up stuff you’ve been waiting to share.”
“Not really,” Mallory says. “In some ways, there isn’t enough to share. He comes every year, we do the same things, we have a sort of routine—the things we eat, the songs we listen to—and then he leaves.”
“You don’t call him?” Leland says. “You don’t text him?”
Mallory shakes her head.
“I find that hard to believe.”
“It’s even harder to do than to believe,” Mallory says.
“And you see him every year? What about Link?”
“He’s always with Fray when this person comes,” Mallory says. “It’s at the end of the summer.”
Leland is starting to picture it: A sun-soaked weekend, just Mallory and her mystery dream man in that romantic cottage on the beach. They make love and feed each other fresh figs and sing along to the Carpenters and then he leaves; Mallory stands in the doorway, blowing him kisses. They flip the hourglass over again.
It sounds like a heavenly arrangement, actually.
“Still, it’s amazing, right, that you’ve never missed a year? Does his wife know?”
Mallory shakes her head. “His wife…I can’t even get into everything about his wife.” She drops her voice. “She came to the funeral. By herself.”
“She…what?” Leland says. And suddenly, she pulls away from Mallory, just a few inches, nothing dramatic, but she needs space. The wife came to the funeral alone. Every year for a long time now. How long? Since the beginning, when Mallory inherited the cottage? Leland hadn’t planned on asking the guy’s name because she wanted to respect Mallory’s privacy and also because she’d assumed it was someone she didn’t know.
The end of summer.
Leland racks her brain to remember her visit that first summer. They had surprised Fray, that she remembers, and she and Fray had nearly hooked up. Cooper was there, and his friend from Hopkins, Jake McCloud. What does Leland remember about Jake? Aaaaarrrgh! Very little. If he hadn’t ended up marrying Ursula de Gournsey, he would have been erased from Leland’s memory forever.
But he had ended up marrying Ursula de Gournsey.
Who came to the funeral by herself. Why? Why had she been at the funeral without Jake when Jake was the one who was friends with Coop? “Is it Jake McCloud?” Leland whispers.
Mallory releases a breath.
“Oh my God, Mal.”
“I know.”
“Mal.”
“Believe me, I know.”
“In the spirit of full disclosure…” Leland says.
Mallory looks up.
“I sat with Ursula at the service. I was shocked to see her, obviously. And this might sound horrible—no, it definitely will sound horrible—but I got her e-mail and her cell phone number. I asked her if she would do an interview for Leland’s Letter and she said yes.”
“Oh, Lee.”
“I’m sorry, I had no idea. But yes, I am that friend who took full advantage of your parents’ funeral to further her own career. It’s just…I didn’t know.”
“But you know now,” Mallory says. “So, please…”
Please what? Leland wonders. Mallory doesn’t say anything else. Her head falls back against the sofa and her eyes close. Leland considers trying to get Mallory upstairs to her childhood bedroom but it feels like an impossible task. She covers Mallory with the deep red chenille blanket that has lived in this room for as long as Leland can remember and then she succumbs to the allure of the other half of the sofa.
So, please…what? Leland thinks as she falls asleep.
Leland wants to do an extended interview with Ursula de Gournsey, but because of the situation with Mallory, she decides it’s best not to dive too deeply into Ursula’s life. Instead, she features Ursula in her Dirty Dozen—twelve questions, some rapid-fire and fun, some provocative. Turns out, this suits Ursula better, anyway. She doesn’t have time for Leland to do a detailed profile.
Twelve questions is a lot, Ursula says. She hopes they can blow through them in thirty minutes, forty-five tops.
“Or I could e-mail them to you?” Leland says. “So you have time to mull them over?”
“It’ll go straight into the black hole,” Ursula says. “This isn’t constituent business or legislation, which makes it personal, and my personal business gets triaged last. Let’s do this now. Go ahead.”
1. Gadget you can’t live without?
There’s a pause on the other end of the phone.
“Do people ever say their vibrators?” Ursula asks.
“All the time,” Leland says.
“That’s not my answer,” Ursula says. She sounds nearly offended, as though Leland were the one who suggested it. “I was just wondering.”
My BlackBerry.
2. Song you want to hear on your deathbed?
“Let It Be.”
3. Five minutes of perfect happiness?
“Cool-down after a good, hard run on the treadmill,” Ursula says.
“Do you want to think about that answer a little longer?” Leland says. “Maybe mention your husband or your daughter?”
“Oh,” Ursula says.
Sixty-degree day, blue sky, fifty-yard-line seats, cashmere sweater and jeans, sitting between my husband and daughter, Notre Dame versus Boston College.
4. Moment you’d like to do over?
Accepting money from the NRA.
Brave answer, Leland thinks. This interview is looking up.
5. Bad habit?
Correcting people’s grammar.
6. Last supper?
“I don’t understand the question,” Ursula says.
“What would you like your final meal to be?” Leland says.
“You mean before I die?”
“Yes.”
“People are interested in this?”
“Very. It’s a little more in depth than just asking your favorite food. You get to pick a meal.”
“Oh,” Ursula says. “Cereal, I guess.”
“Cereal?”
Rice Krispies with sliced banana and skim milk.
7. Most controversial opinion?
“Men are not the enemy,” Ursula says. “I realize that’s going to be very controversial for your readership. But what I’ve found in Congress and in my professional life in general is that men want women to succeed. It’s the women who are cloak-and-dagger.”
“Hmmmm,” Leland says. She’s not overjoyed with this answer. The whole basis of Leland’s Letter is that women can learn and grow from the experiences of other women.
“I hope that changes by the time my daughter, Bess, is grown,” Ursula says. “When my mother was young, she was focused on helping my father succeed. That was her job. And then in my generation, our generation, women became focused on their own success. The logical next step is that women will become not only supportive of one another but vested in one another’s success.” She pauses. “But we aren’t there yet.”
Women have to support each other, be vested in one another’s success. Men are not the enemy.
8. In a box of crayons, what color are you?
“Black,” Ursula says.
“Black?”
“My father used to say I was as serious as a heart attack,” Ursula says. “Plus, you outline everything in black. It’s a hardworking color.”
“Right, but—”
“I’m not going to say yellow or pink or purple. My answer is black.”
Black.
9. Proudest achievement?
“Being elected to the United States Senate is probably too obvious,” Ursula says. “I would bring up the welfare-reform bill, but that would put everyone to sleep.” Ursula pauses. “I guess I’ll say my marriage.”
Leland jumps like she’s been poked in the ribs. “Your marriage?”
“Yes. I’ve been married for sixteen years, but Jake and I have been together for over thirty years. Honestly, I don’t know why he stays with me.”
Leland waits a beat. Move on to the next question! she tells herself. But does she? No. “You’re an intelligent, accomplished woman.”
“I’m a witch at home. I’m demanding and ungrateful and I have to schedule in family time, though that’s the first thing I cancel when things get busy. I’m aware that if I don’t start having some fun with my daughter, she’ll grow up either hating me or being just like me or both. And yet I have this idea that if I stop working, even for an hour, the country will fall apart. People throw around the word workaholic like it’s no big deal, like it’s maybe even a good thing. But I suffer from the disease. I’m a workaholic. I’m addicted to work. So, yeah, I’m not sure why Jake stays, but I’m grateful.”
My sixteen-year marriage to Jake McCloud.
10. Celebrity crush?
Ted Koppel.
11. Favorite spot in America?
“I should probably pick someplace in the state of Indiana,” Ursula says. “But I already mentioned Notre Dame stadium, and where else is there? Fishers? Carmel?”
“Are those places that inspire you?” Leland asks.
“I wish I could pick someplace magical, like Nantucket,” Ursula says, and Leland flinches again. “Jake loves Nantucket, but I’ve never been. He goes every year for a guys’ trip. I keep telling him I’m going to crash one of these years.”
Oh God, oh God, Leland thinks. Please stop talking about Nantucket.
“I love Newport, Rhode Island,” Ursula says. “But as bizarre as this sounds, I think I’m going to say Las Vegas is my favorite spot. I worked on a case there when I first went into private practice…” Ursula breaks off and Leland assumes she’s just gotten a text or another call but then she realizes, from her wavering tone, that Ursula is overcome. “Those were happy days. Vegas is…crazytown, right? But it’s unapologetically itself, and I appreciated that. I loved it there, for whatever reason.”
Las Vegas.
12. Title of your autobiography?
“Straight up the Fairway,” Ursula says. “That’s in regard to my politics. I’m centrist. People might not agree with all of my stances, but they won’t disagree with all of them either. I believe in common sense and hard work and American capitalism and the Constitution and the equality under the law of every single American.”
“Okay.” Leland is very liberal, just shy of socialist. She doesn’t want to get into a political debate here; however, she thinks that “straight up the fairway” is a compromise and a cop-out. She had wanted Ursula de Gournsey to come across as some kind of Superwoman. But maybe the takeaway for the readers of Leland’s Letter will be this: A woman with real power in Washington is just as self-critical and beleaguered as the rest of us.
Leland also finds herself hobbled by her secret knowledge. Does Ursula de Gournsey have it all? Anyone who reads the Dirty Dozen will see the answer is no. But only Leland knows that Ursula de Gournsey has even less than she realizes.
Straight Up the Fairway.
The Dirty Dozen with Ursula de Gournsey goes live on January 20 in advance of the State of the Union, and Leland waits for Mallory to call in a rage. Mallory didn’t explicitly ask Leland not to do an interview with Ursula, but her “So, please…” had seemed to indicate that she wanted Leland to exercise some kind of restraint. Which she had, because this isn’t an in-depth profile.
No angry call comes. Instead, Leland receives texts and e-mails and Facebook messages and hits on Twitter and Instagram that say: Loved the piece with UDG! LL is taking it up a notch!!
It takes a few days but eventually, the Dirty Dozen with Ursula de Gournsey goes viral. The answer everyone is talking about is “Men are not the enemy.” That line is the subject of an op-ed in the New York Times written by the male governor of Nevada, who agrees that men are not the enemy and that men should not be receiving so much blame for social injustice. (The governor is also thrilled with Ursula’s answer of “Las Vegas” as her favorite spot in the country.)
The Dirty Dozen with UDG and the attendant chatter about it result in a near doubling of Leland’s audience—she’s up to 125,000 readers (one of whom is Ursula de Gournsey herself!) and lures in seventeen new advertisers. Leland’s Letter is now making enough money for Leland to quit teaching and focus solely on the blog.
Still, Leland worries that she has cashed in on her longest friendship for this success. A week later, Leland looks down at her phone and sees she’s received two successive texts from Mallory. She thinks, Here it comes. Mallory will say Leland is opportunistic (she is), selfish (ditto), and ruthless (well, yes).
Leland starts reading the texts with trepidation. The first says, Happy birthday, Lee! I love you!
The second text says, Oops, sorry, I thought today was the 29th not the 27th. I’ll text you on Wednesday!
Okay, Leland thinks. So Mallory isn’t upset about the Dirty Dozen? This is great news because now that Leland has some momentum, she can take Leland’s Letter to the next level. She can lay claim to some cultural influence. She just needs to keep her foot on the gas and not get slowed down by sticky issues like best friends with hurt feelings.
It’s only as Leland is falling asleep that night that she realizes Mallory might not have seen the article. It went viral, but that doesn’t mean it reached every person in America. Mallory is a single working mother on an island thirty miles off the coast. She’s immersed in her school day, her students, Link, the painful and painstaking work of dismantling her parents’ financial and business affairs. She might not spend hours online Googling Ursula de Gournsey the way that Leland Googles Fiella Roget and tracks her every move.
Leland opens her laptop (she sleeps with it; she is that pathetic).
Mallory Blessing isn’t a subscriber to Leland’s Letter. Leland’s first instinct is to be offended. Her own best friend!
She snaps her laptop shut. Actually, it’s a major relief.