“What?”
“That was the guy’s name. I hope he got fired. But it’s out there, Rachel. Still. It’s like this big cloud, or this thing that’s going to fall on me. I can’t bear for Hamish to know, even though it was before I met him. I’m so ashamed. I’m ashamed in a way I wasn’t when it was going on, and I was plenty ashamed then.”
“Bert didn’t tell Mama any of this, did he?”
“No. He was my lawyer. He can’t tell. I made sure of that.”
“Mama’s pretty sophisticated in her way, Michelle. She would be okay with it, now that we know the story has a happy ending.”
“Does it?”
“It does,” she said, putting her hand on her sister’s stomach. “Everything will be fine, Michelle.”
To her amazement, Michelle burst into tears. “I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve any of it. If you knew, Rachel-”
“But I do know, Michelle. You just told me. It will be okay.”
And it would be, Rachel thought, putting her arms around her sobbing sister. Everything always worked out for Michelle. No, not everything. She had never known their father, not really, and it must have been hard, growing up in that household, to be indentured into the family practice of Keeping Up Appearances. It was funny how things worked out. Linda had become a professional spinner of stories. Rachel had become almost pathologically honest, with one vivid exception. And now Michelle was Bambi Junior, finding a man who promised her the world. Maybe this one could deliver it.
Please, Rachel prayed to the god she didn’t believe in. Please let Michelle have her happy ending. And she felt better about herself. Bad fairies want to do the right thing. It’s just so hard sometimes.
Hamish Macalister III was born four weeks later. When the nurse came out, she handed Rachel a piece of paper with the exact time, 20:02, the numeric rendering of the date, 6-12-6, and his weight, 8-13. “For the lottery,” she explained. “A lot of people like to play the time, date, and weight.”
Rachel thought that was hilarious, someone instructing Felix Brewer’s daughter to play the lottery. Yet the next day she went to a Royal Farms and placed several straight bets: 2002, 6126, 813. This is what my father did, she thought, standing in line, waiting for her chance to play, as uncertain and tongue-tied as she might have been ordering a meal in a foreign country. How do I word this? What is the custom? Am I holding everyone else up? At the last minute, she added a Powerball ticket and found she enjoyed fantasizing about that big jackpot for a few days. Had her father sold people joy, after all? Was there something noble about the way he made his money? Because while it was disappointing not to win, it wasn’t unexpected, and the daydreams had been lovely, worth a few dollars. Where else could you buy a dream for two dollars?
And perhaps it was the haze of her lottery dream that carried her forward, because the next time she visited her new nephew, she asked Hamish Junior for a loan, so she and Joshua could adopt a child from China. It was not the first time that Rachel had asked someone for money. But she was keenly aware that it was the first time she had asked for herself.
The agency told them it would be eighteen months. It was more than five years before they brought home Tatiana, a twenty-month-old girl who required two cleft palate surgeries. On an unseasonably cold March day in 2012, the Brewer family gathered in the hospital to keep Rachel and Joshua company during the second, simpler surgery-Bambi, Michelle, Linda, Hamish, although not Henry, who couldn’t get the day off. Linda’s girls were in school, but Noah, now twenty-five, skipped work, a testament to all those Friday night suppers, Linda’s insistence that family was primary. Michelle and Hamish’s two children were there, too; Helena had followed Hamish III by less than three years.
The Brewers took over the waiting room, but it was such a happy scene, compared to much of what happens in hospital waiting rooms, and they were such gracious, lovely people that the hospital staff indulged them, even Michelle’s constant use of her cell phone, which wasn’t officially permitted. (She said she needed it so Helena could play Monkey Preschool Lunchbox, although Helena was happy moving beads along the wire paths of a children’s toy.) It seemed natural when Bert arrived, old family friend that he was, still natural when he took Bambi aside for a hushed conversation. Bert had been taking Bambi aside for hushed conversations as long as her daughters could remember.
It was unnatural, though, when Bambi came back to them, picked up her purse, and said: “I must be going.”
Rachel couldn’t leave that be. “Is something wrong? Has Nana Ida-” The old woman was still alive at one hundred one, improbably. Or quite probably, given her tendency to hold on to anything she had, whether it was money or years. She likely had her own shoeboxes of condiments.
“No. I mean-it’s not for you to worry about.”
“Mother.” Where once only Linda and Rachel would have spoken in unison, now Michelle added her voice. Marriage, motherhood-she was part of the club.
“Well, it’s the strangest thing. But it seems that the police want to talk to me.”
“What?” But only Linda and Michelle asked this question.
“It’s nothing,” Bert said. “They’re just spinning their wheels. But if we go now, on our own, it will be over sooner and we can put it behind us.”
“What?” Linda and Michelle repeated. Rachel tried to make eye contact with her mother, but she wouldn’t look at her.
“Oh, don’t be so obscure, Bert,” Bambi said. “Girls, it looks as if I might be arrested.”
“For what?” Linda asked.
“The death of Julie Saxony.”
“It’s bullshit,” Bert said quickly. “She’s not going to be arrested. They want to ask her a few questions. It won’t take long at all.”
“Oh, no. It shouldn’t take long at all because I’m going to confess. Does Tubby still write bonds, Bert, or is he quite out of the business?”
“Mama.” Rachel wrapped her arms around Bambi. It was less a hug than an attempt to hold her in place. Bambi gently removed one arm, then the other, much as she might have peeled a clinging toddler from her. She used to do just that when Linda and Rachel were very young, and Bambi and Felix headed out to the club, over the girls’ protests. Their father was home so rarely in the evenings, it was a double blow to watch him come home and head out again, their mother at his side. They would wrap themselves around his legs and their mother would peel them off, one arm, one leg at a time, laughing all the while.
No one was laughing now.
“Tatiana will be fine, Rachel. I’ll be fine. I promise you that everything’s going to be okay.”
And with that, she was gone.
Tell Me
July 3, 1986
Saks. Why had she said Saks? She was flustered, too flustered to lie. “I’m going to Saks,” she told Chet. Why? he had asked. In a mild, curious way, but they were fully booked for the holiday weekend and they were doing dinners for the guests, testing out Chet’s recipes.
“To buy bras,” she blurted out. Why? Why did she say bras? Perhaps she thought the very word, “bra,” would keep him from following up. But Chet was not a man who was easily embarrassed.
“Is this urgent?” Teasing her. “You’re dressed to impress, I see.”
“It’s just that the ones I have are all too big.”
“Yes,” he said gravely. “That is a problem.” And then he let it go, although he asked her to make a stop at the restaurant-supply place and she agreed, because what else could she say? They had a teasing rhythm, not quite brother-sister, more like a boy who has a crush on an older girl but knows it won’t go anywhere. It had developed very quickly, a by-product of their mutual animosity toward Bambi Brewer, who, Chet reported, had nickel-and-dimed the catering company to death over costs for Michelle’s bat mitzvah. Julie, in return, regaled Chet with stories about Bambi’s extravagances during the marriage. Not that Felix had ever told her such stories, but he told Tubby, who told Susie.