In front of an audience such as this, she can go on autopilot. Lu never prepares her speeches ahead of time but works from a menu of discrete topics, which she can arrange in endless forms depending on her audience. This group wants heartwarming empowerment, so she talks about work-life balance, the challenges of being a woman in public office, especially a single parent. That went well, she thinks, as she tries to rush out without seeming to rush out. (Sure enough, her brownie was gone. So it goes.)
But as she moves through the kind, smiling, congratulatory women, a younger one blocks her way. Lu, still on autopilot, extends her hand, but the woman, whose suit looks like a cheap knockoff of the rag & bone suit that Lu is wearing, keeps her arms crossed on her chest, a bad sign unless she’s chilly-and it’s not cold in this room. Overheated if anything.
“That’s a bit disingenuous, isn’t it? Describing yourself as a single mother.”
“I don’t know what else you would call me,” Lu says. “I am a single mother. My husband died.”
She chooses to speak bluntly as a rebuke to the young woman’s borderline rudeness. In another situation, she might have used the more genteel “widow” or said that Gabe had “passed away.”
“And left you millions, right? So you can afford to send your children to private schools and you have help.”
“My husband’s money was left primarily in trust for our children and I administer those trusts. I live with my father and the housekeeper who cared for me when I was young. In the village of Wilde Lake, in my childhood home. I have a babysitter, a college student, who takes my children to school and picks them up in the afternoon because I work at least twelve hours a day. It’s not a particularly high-flying lifestyle.”
“But you don’t have to work, right? So are we returning to that model in which public service is only for those people who don’t need the salary? What am I supposed to take away from your story? I’m thirty, I have a three-year-old and so much college debt that I can’t ever see getting out from under. Your earrings probably cost more than I make in a week.”
Alas, they did, although they’re not showy in that way. They are vintage rose gold, from a flash-shopping site. On Saturday nights, Lu likes to have an extra glass of wine and shop the no-return sales on certain websites for the thrill of it. Yes, she’s crazy that way. Buzzed shopping is her biggest vice. Second biggest.
“They’re used,” Lu says. “And I bought them at 50 percent off. I’m sorry if my personal experience doesn’t speak to you. But I think the point is that women, whatever their challenges, benefit from networking and support. I’m so sorry-I really do have to go. Thank you for having me.”
“Does your office have an on-site child-care facility?” the woman calls after her.
Back in the office, trying to catch up on all the things she might have done while she was sharing cheery anecdotes about work-life balance, she sighs and says to Della: “I guess the day can only go up from here.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Della says. “You have that meeting with a community watch group tonight, the one that’s worried about cemetery vandalism.”
“Maybe there will be cookies.” She thinks of the strident young woman who seemed so angered by the fact that Lu did not “have to” work. Yet Lu feels she must. And while she would never say the words noblesse oblige out loud, is it the worst thing in the world when a public official doesn’t need the paycheck? The building in which Lu works, the Carroll Building is-she assumes, she has never thought to question it-named for one of Maryland’s first U.S. senators, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, an immensely wealthy man.
Also a slaveholder who disapproved of slavery in principle-yet never freed his own slaves. A man of his times, as they say. But aren’t we all? Lincoln freed the slaves-but he believed they should go back to Africa. And the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t free the slaves in Maryland because the Old Line State fought, however reluctantly, for the Union. The despot’s heel is on thy shore, the state song begins, and everyone tries to pretend they don’t know the despot is Lincoln. Then again, almost no one sings the state song, whose tune was stolen from “Oh, Tannenbaum.”
Oh, Maryland.
Lu sighs, resigns herself to an afternoon of e-mail and phone calls, then heads out to the community meeting. There are no cookies. There is nothing to eat at all. I should have stopped at Five Guys, she thinks. Then a bad accident on I-95 leaves her stuck in traffic, listening to the rebroadcast of a local NPR show, where Davey Robinson is one of the panelists. He’s still talking about marriage equality, more than two years after Maryland voters approved it overwhelmingly. Hey, if Ben Carson can toy with the idea of running for president, why can’t Davey Robinson dabble in politics? It is almost 9:30 when she arrives home and begins foraging in the refrigerator for something she can pretend is a reasonable facsimile of a meal. She has lost five pounds since taking office. She has missed too many dinners, attended too many luncheons with iceberg lettuce salads, thin slivers of salmon, one cherry tomato, a dessert that is always whisked away before she eats it. She checks her cell, on mute since she walked into the meeting at the synagogue. Mike Hunt has called. Three times.
“Took you long enough,” he says. “You allergic to good news or something? At least-I think it’s good news.”
“What?”
“The Rudy Drysdale case? Remind me to heed your hunches. They found his DNA on that spread. His and nobody else’s. Down near a corner, like he, um, cleaned himself off after. Or maybe just a few drips-”
“I’m eating, Mike.” Or about to be, if she can find something edible. Whatever Teensy has prepared-pork, chicken?-has aged poorly, congealing on the plate in an unappetizing sauce.
“This late? That’s a bad habit. Anyway, it’s something to throw into the mix.”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t necessarily help. I mean, there’s definitely no sign of sexual assault. His DNA could confuse jurors.”
“I think she walks in on him. While he’s-taking care of himself. He freaks.”
“You mean he broke into her place to masturbate?”
“Or he breaks in, thinking’s he found a vacant place to spend a night. It’s the holidays. She’s got no trees, no lights. Looks like a safe bet. Maybe that’s why he’s lurking, sizing the place up. But he screws up, picks a place where someone’s not away. She comes home and he’s got, you know, one hand full. She screams, he freaks out. She’s between him and the door. He panics. What’s the defense going to argue, that she brought him home for consensual sex? That he broke in to sleep there, found her dead body, then stayed to jerk off? That he broke in before she died, jerked off and left, then reset the thermostat on his way out because he’s worried about climate change?”
“I’ll worry about the defense’s case,” Lu says, a little curt. Her mind is racing. A jury will love the DNA because juries love DNA. But they might get stuck on it, too. The presence of semen doesn’t make it a sex crime, and there’s no need to alter the charge, anyway. She’s already got murder one. But she should go ahead and tell Fred now, not make him wait for discovery. Because if Drysdale wants to confess now, she’s fine with it. She told the cops to test the bedspread, it’s her legit victory. Oh, yes, she’ll welcome a confession, but not to a lesser charge. It will be murder one or nothing; the only negotiation will be on the length of his sentence. Under those circumstances, the win goes into her column, no asterisk.