Medium Rare, page 11
I don’t feel guilty. Between the demands of my job and my literary pursuits, conventional wisdom might accuse me of providing a “chaotic” home environment—goodness knows my mother-in-law has—but despite the state of the bathrooms when the housekeeper’s sick, never having snacks in my bag, and a total inability to feign interest in fire trucks; despite having—until Virginia—not the slightest interest in children more generally, in a way I do still consider myself a natural mother, an intuitive one. What I lack in that selfless form of love manifest in laundry I more than make up for in the selfish one. I love my sons the way I love myself, the way I love my own existence, my capacity to create—even as I value their distinct humanity, their own dazzling creativity, their independence (Montessori!). I’ve always, since the moment of their births, had close, individual bonds with them, borne of the things I can share honestly, without a shred of orthogonal resentment, with active joy. Generous physical affection, excellent take-out, naps. Blake and Saint-Exupéry. Sartorial delight. Now: basketball. I’ve found, you see, for all my shortcomings, and all their wildness—with a combination of planning and luck, skill and randomness—my own way to tame them, and they me.
Still, you can see how Virginia’s pull would have formed another data point in the alarming trend I was coming to associate with Raleigh—that is, her unprecedented capacity to alarm me. It gave her the sort of inflective Midas touch for me that drove everyone else to cling to Phil. That helping Raleigh through motherhood’s early days gave me unusual access to his story was a boon, to be sure, but, in retrospect, proximity to Raleigh herself was the goal and the catalyst, the reason I volunteered for the sort of labor I’ve historically so adroitly resisted.
And so when Phil was out of town, and even sometimes when he wasn’t, I’d often head to Arlington after picking up the twins from school, bearing whatever Raleigh happened to need that day and dinner from Whole Foods. We’d eat on the sofa while Virginia slept in my arms—or screamed. She had a howling, powerful voice, louder and more insistent than I remember Tate’s or Percy’s being, her vitality so urgent I could see it pulsing through her even as she slept. I had the sense, in the serious, rapt knowingness of her gaze—giant eyed, piercing, already somehow feminine—that she truly possessed the dangerous gift her father merely postured; that she was, in this way, plus in the amount of time I spent with her, more my child than his.
By the time the boys’ school let out mid-May, Virginia was no longer a newborn and Raleigh herself had healed enough to be anxious to get out of the house. I’d already taken a week off to respond to initial edits from my agent while filling the childcare gap between school and camp, and we decided, more or less on a whim, to escape both the paparazzi and any further debt to Adrienne by decamping to my family’s place in Maine. It would be more than large enough for the five of us, especially with my parents still in New York until Memorial Day.
* * *
—
Maine is the last vestige of real New England. Its coastal charm still has a rough, puritan authenticity about it, unlike the famous, flexing peninsula and islands to the south, which social media and money have increasingly transformed into a sort of cedar-shingled Disneyland, the hedges too straight, the hydrangeas too blue, often so overrun with people wanting to be seen there as to verge unenjoyable, a matte cesspool of mimesis increasingly discernible from the glittering Hamptons only on style’s flimsiest nuances. Not that my parents’ meandering Victorian wasn’t exquisite in its own way, but its shabby chicness was not contrived. It was shabby. My father had, even in my childhood, an air of rotting luxury about him, a last-scion-type vibe, and this was reflected in the aesthetics of all our family’s properties, though the wildness of Maine made it particularly true of that one. There was no pool, cess or otherwise, despite the finicky plumbing.
It was rustic enough I worried Raleigh might be disappointed, or worse still, uncomfortable, but we managed brilliantly. Late May in Maine is like late March, early April in Washington, and the landscape teemed with the refreshing possibilities of spring. We watched a couple of Phil’s appearances on television, but skipped more of them, passing the days on the lawn, the rocky beach, eating premade lemon pasta salad from the co-op. Percy and Tate had recently stopped napping and went to bed early enough for us to enjoy quiet sunsets from the veranda—reverse sunsets, more precisely, which were often, somehow, more beautiful for their subtlety, lavender and yellow over the Penobscot Bay.
For all my truth-telling, we talked with a candor I’d never before experienced. About fame and money, social media, child-rearing. I asked about her maximalist approach to appearance, what she felt it gave her, who exactly it was for, and learned it stemmed from politesse.
—Making an effort shows you care, said Raleigh.
—Care about what, though, patriarchal standards?
—It’s no more patriarchal than “the natural look,” Cassandra. It might even be less so.
She was right.
—You’re right, I said. But please know you don’t have to make that particular kind of effort for me.
While Raleigh never abandoned her vigorous skincare regimen, by the end of the week, she was wearing less makeup, allowing her hair to air-dry. Her relaxing beauty practices were independent of mine, tied only to my words, to reallocating her time so we might spend more of it together. It was in these days that I fully, explicitly realized her malleability was born not out of self-abandonment but an active quality: her remarkable, protean positivity. I wondered why I hadn’t noticed this about her sooner; why she’d seemed to me such a fixed sort of woman—the sort of woman I didn’t want to be, that I wanted nothing to do with, aside from defining myself in its opposition. Ours was nothing like the (rare) close female friendships I’d experienced previously, which had uniformly possessed a My Brilliant Friend–type intensity. I didn’t envy her. She didn’t envy me. The mimicry I’d observed had not been her doing, but Crewe’s. Raleigh and I enjoyed each other’s company in its sheer present pleasure, our reciprocal curiosity devoid of that primordial will to copy, the undercurrent that so often defines rapt nonsexual proximity.
I was, however, envious of Phil—in a two-tone, paradoxical kind of way. I was envious of his fame, resentful of the country’s vast, face belief in apocryphal augury; of how even the promise of dollars he didn’t yet have lent him unearned credibility. The way he passed off his cognitive dissonance as paradox. The status and power his false narrative was yielding—the structural advantage of false narratives overall. Not that I wanted quite the same kind of fame he was courting. Stratospheric celebrity melts the wax of mortal wings: It is not only dangerous, but dehumanizing—and a logistical pain in the ass. I was more interested in the middle course, myself. In the sort of authorial gravitas that tends to be a slower burn, that keeps you airborne longer; that would, ultimately, be far more likely to outlive me. I still envied him his celestial position, though, in spite of its inevitable brevity—and even as I understood the higher he flew, the more assuredly he charted my course toward artistic immortality.
My second envy lay in his formal relationships with Raleigh and Virginia, even as they spent more time with me. It was, I thought more than once, extremely inconvenient that Raleigh and I didn’t want to sleep with each other. It might have happened naturally enough that week if either one of us had possessed the remotest inclination. But then, the extraordinary nature of our friendship would have, with sex, been rendered far less extraordinary, been tied implicitly to a quid pro quo that, as it stood, we were free from. You see, by the time we were in Maine, Raleigh had, almost without me noticing, started helping with Tate and Percy as much if not more than I helped with Virginia. She understood the worlds of fire trucks and monsters, of rock collecting and insects, in practical and pedagogical ways I couldn’t touch. Children nearly always listen better to adults who are not their parents, but Raleigh’s word might as well have been the voice of a god for the way they obeyed her—instantly, like she’d bewitched them as she had me.
—Teach me your magic, I begged one night after a particularly efficient bedtime.
—I can’t.
—Why?
—Cassandra, you’re not the only one with special gifts.
She’d said it with a wink, but it chastened me.
—I fear mine have sometimes hurt you, I said.
—Nonsense, said Raleigh. I’ve always known you meant well.
—I’m not sure that’s as true as I’d like it to be.
—You’re proving my point, she said, squeezing my hand, almost mothering me. I love your candor. Where I’m from, it’s a pretty rare trait. And you were right about Phil in college! It did take him a while to grow up, now didn’t it?
—Raleigh—
I was on the precipice of telling her.
—Your discretion has improved by the way, she added. But I shouldn’t have interrupted you. What were you gonna say?
Her eyes: placid. Her smile the same. The reverse sunset; the deep wind chimes. The porch swing’s subtle creak. Your discretion has improved. I hesitated—smiled back at her.
—How are we going to survive without you, after this week?
* * *
—
But it turned out we didn’t have to. The day before our return to DC, Phil called to say he’d be delayed in Los Angeles. Crewe had booked him on Ellen, and his real estate agent had several properties lined up that she expected to move quickly. So Raleigh came to stay with us in Georgetown for a while—to Miles’s pleasant neutrality, and much to my mother-in-law’s indirect appreciation.
JUNE
Phil did not return to our nation’s capital until June, and only then because he had an unmovable appointment—by him at least—with the president of the United States.
It was set to be a consolation-prize, silver-medal-type affair, though Phil would never have admitted as much. He’d been invited after Tony Bennett respectfully declined a White House visit on behalf of the Virginia team, the optics of which would have been impossible after Trump’s behavior vis-à-vis the Charlottesville rally less than two years earlier. Few if any of the players would have deigned to go anyway. Basketball is a famously liberal sport, politically: the polar opposite of golf on the right. But Phil, as an individual—and what are “moderate Republicans” if not individuals—had many fewer qualms about visiting the Oval Office than he’d had about Trump weaseling his way into it. The draw of raw power was simply too great. Phil accepted the president’s invitation with the same gusto he’d shaken the Democratic Speaker’s hand. Phil dressed carefully in the Presidential Suite of the Trump International Hotel, a move he’d sold Raleigh on between the White House visit and the impending sale of their Arlington townhouse. Their equity would cover five or six days in these new environs, not that Phil was paying much attention by this point. Arun’s payment had cleared, and—aside from Virginia’s cries—he was feeling very at home indeed, blending seamlessly into the opulent décor with his now trademark shirt and the darker blue suit he’d had made in Los Angeles expressly for this occasion. Only the red tie set him apart, and not with incongruity, but distinction.
—Is she all right? Phil asked his wife’s reflection in the mirror. How do I look?
—Yes, she’s just…insistent, said Raleigh, lifting up her shirt.
Phil turned like a peacock, begging an answer to his second question.
—And you look very presidential.
* * *
—
It was a mere three blocks to the White House’s East entrance, but Phil took a car, wary of sweating, and intent on the optics besides. You would never see a dignitary arrive on foot. An attractive woman from the Office of the First Lady—more or less the White House equivalent to a Congressional fundraiser—met him past security in the East Wing. She looked a little like Melania, Phil thought, only younger and less beautiful.
—Melanie, she introduced herself, making Phil do a double take, but there was no sign of the First Lady. Welcome to the White House. I know the president is looking forward to meeting you. I’ll be with you for the duration of your visit today, so if at any point you have questions or need anything, please just let me know. If you’d follow me this way?
He did, through a finely appointed hallway alongside the First Lady’s Garden, through the arched Ground Floor Corridor. Melanie permitted a brief stop in the Vermeil Room for Phil to pay homage to Shikler’s portrait of Nancy Reagan (personally I think it makes her look like more of a Goneril), before passing the other ceremonial rooms into the Rose Garden colonnade. She led him up the ramp built for FDR into the West Wing’s side entrance, past the press secretary and into the lobby, where Melanie announced his arrival to another attractive young woman.
—Welcome to the West Wing, Mr. Fayeton, the receptionist said, gesturing toward an ornate cornflower-blue settee. Can I get you something to drink?
—A Diet Coke would be great, thanks, said Phil, now well-accustomed to taking advantage of little hospitality perks without the slightest hesitancy.
Leaning back toward Melanie, he pointed to the Oval Office.
—It is true the president installed a Diet Coke button in there, right?
—It is, she confirmed.
Phil slung a dangling ankle over his opposite knee. When the receptionist returned, he reached across it to claim his beverage, turning to Melanie with a wink.
* * *
—
President Donald Trump was fresh off a state visit to the UK and all hopped up on monarchy—at least blithely impervious, if not properly ignorant, to the irony that the country he led had been founded in direct opposition to it.
—I love having a winner to see me, it’s terrific, just terrific, said Donald, turning to the cameras while he shook Phil’s hand. What, are we gonna do pictures first? Let’s do pictures first. Yeah, we can do the chairs, but I think we also need to do the desk. The queen told me—you know, I was with the queen last week, we had a tremendous meeting, me and the queen—the queen reminded me the desk was a gift, an incredible gift. It was a gift from Queen Victoria. Believe me, we gotta do the desk. You want a desk picture, right Phil? See? He wants one behind the desk. Let’s do the desk.
The press bunched closer together, bulbs flashing as the president took his favorite seat, smiling maniacally. Phil lorded over him to the side, like an afterthought in a matching tie.
—You get it? We got it? Good. Good.
They moved back to the chairs by the fireplace, plunging straight into the pool spray, the reporters shouting questions over one another until the president began to speak:
—Well, I think you all know Phil’s story, why he’s here. It’s incredible, something amazing. He won March Madness, the first person to ever win March Madness. He filled out a bracket, and he won a lot of money. Millions and billions of dollars from Arun Patil—you see? I told you Arun was a loser—but Phil? Very impressive. He’s also worked in government. I’ve heard he’s a Republican. Is that true, Phil?
—Yes, but—
—Tremendous, said Donald, turning to the press. What a classy guy. We’re happy to have him. Very happy to have him here today. What do you think of the Oval Office, Phil? Everybody likes the Oval Office. Everybody.
The din of questions rose again.
—All right, Doug, go ahead.
—Mr. Fayeton, said the reporter, you’ve previously asserted luck had nothing to do with your perfect bracket. I’m curious if you still feel this way?
—I—
—He made his own luck, Donald interrupted. That’s what I always say, I’ve always said that. What they call luck is just hard work—you’ll see if you try it, Doug, believe me. And I think it’s a shame, really. A huge shame. A guy has an incredible achievement, and they say it’s luck. Okay, Brad.
—Thank you, Mr. President, said Brad. I’m interested in learning more about how you approached the selection process, Mr. Fayeton. You went to Virginia, and your father graduated from Texas Tech, correct? How did your personal ties inform your selections?
—I—
—These are really very unfair questions, Brad. Very unfair. A guy does something amazing, and all anyone wants to talk about is his father. No one asks about the queen’s father, by the way. Who cares where his father went to college. Where did your father go to college, Brad?
There was a pause; Brad—everyone—unsure whether the question was rhetorical. But the President waited.
—UMBC, said Brad.
—Never heard of it, said Donald. Go ahead, Kai.
—Mr. Fayeton, did you know Representative Maria Muñoz would be running for the open Senate seat in California prior to her announcement yesterday?
—I—
—What does that have to do with anything? Why would he care that some nobody’s running for Senate? Nobody likes her, you know. Never gonna win. She’s a very nasty woman.
—I asked because Mr. Fayeton attended a basketball game with her, Mr. President, said Kai.
—Lots of people go to basketball games. Many people. Next question. Moses.
