Page 41 of Our Last Vineyard Summer

Her daughters avoided her gaze, and cursing under her breath, Virgie wished she could disappear. “James, you were supposed to go home.”

“Betsy begged me to hide in the closet.”

From outside, she heard Charlie’s voice: “Lovely to see you, Mr. Ambassador.”

“Don’t move!” Virgie held up a finger like it was a pointed gun.

Relief flooded through her, and for a moment, she felt as though she might shed tears. Virgie rushed into the bathroom, reapplied her blush and Chanel lipstick, grinning to extinguish the possibility of emotion. It was time to play her part. Downstairs, she slid her feet into heels and motioned for Pamela to ready the steak Diane.

“Hello, darling.” Virgie airily emerged from the screen door into the dusk of eight o’clock and leaned in to give her husband a kiss. She sensed his hand graze her back, and she stiffened, even as she portrayed herself breezily. “I’ve missed you.”

He patted his hair to the side, much of it out place from the wind. “We had to land in Boston because of weather, and I didn’t have a way of calling. I took the first ferry I could.”

She smelled gin on his breath as she handed him a fresh cocktail with lime. Had he had a drink at the ferry terminal too? “Come, let’s relax.”

Virgie examined her husband then. It was a longtime joke that Washington was the Hollywood of ugly people: nerdy, bookish menwho grew up to be powerful, few of them attractive like Charlie. His was the face of a politician you’d see in a film. A well of energy—sometimes he barely got five hours of sleep—but he was memorable to all who met him. She used to think she was drawn to him for those classic good looks, but they were a bonus. It was how Charlie looked at her, like he’d done just now, with tenderness and curiosity, how he treated her like he was lucky to be with her, not the other way around. It made it impossible to hate him.

The couples sat on opposite sides of the polished dining room table, Pamela serving soup with hands that trembled under the tureen. Charlie barely registered the woman, other than thanking her for his serving, acting as though a housekeeper always served him his dinner. The husbands immediately traded niceties about how much the ambassador was doing to improve the relationship of the two countries’ defense teams. Within minutes, it was clear why the dinner was happening. The ambassador wanted Charlie to earmark money in an upcoming spending bill to revive the Skybolt missile program, canceled two years before due to waning interest in Cold War efforts.

The ambassador set down his soup spoon. “Obviously, this would be fruitful for other reasons too. I will certainly refer you to Dan Corning, who already agrees with you on trade relations. I’m sure you know how deep his pockets are. He said he might have more property on Nantucket for you.”

“Ah, but my heart is on the Vineyard.” Charlie grinned at Virgie, then dabbed his mouth with a napkin. Virgie wondered what property he was referring to.

Mr. Knight tapped a single finger on the gleaming tabletop. “I’m sure you realize that real estate is the cleanest way to move funds.”

Virgie rose from her seat and entered the kitchen, hoping to avoid overhearing anything else. Every lunch or dinner she and Charlie had with people these days seemed to end in a request or a trade. Charlie called it the business of politics, but Virgie told him it was no differentfrom taking bribes. “I wouldn’t let lobbyists or their minions think they have a hold on you,” she’d told him that spring.

He’d fumed, pacing at the foot of their bed. “Politics aren’t as pure as you’d think. You want to get that childcare subsidy bill passed, right?”

As if she didn’t know that politics were a messy muck of egos and power trades, and still, she’d wanted to believe that Charlie would function above it. “You haven’t even introduced the childcare subsidy bill.”

Later, she and Charlie would say good night to the Knights, and she would force him to look her in the eye. Would he go through with it and earmark money for Russell Knight’s Skybolt program? Sadly, she wasn’t certain he’d tell her the truth. He’d say no, but then she’d find out later at a women’s luncheon when someone crassly mentioned the latest egregious (and deeply buried) earmark allotments. “To silly spending,” Patti Johnson once toasted. Her husband was the speaker of the house. “It’s really no different from me hiding how much I spent on the latest Chanel suit.”

As Virgie helped Pamela add sprigs of fresh rosemary to each plate of steak Diane, the guests continued to talk. Inhaling deeply, her hands still trembling, Pamela accidentally dropped the entire bundle of parsley into the mashed potatoes. She fished it out, and Virgie looked up to find the woman’s face balled up like a fist, her eyes sprouting wet in the corners. Virgie reached for a hand towel and tossed it to the woman, whispering, “What is it, Pamela?”

The woman dabbed her nose. “I’m sorry. I just… You make me realize what a failure I’ve been to my son.” Pamela’s frail center fell against the back of the cabinet like her stomach was in pain, but she kept talking. There were more tears. “All these important people in there discussing important things. You told me you’re nothing but a mother, Virgie, but you have so much power in your voice you can’t even hear it anymore. It’s made me realize that I never even had a chance in life.”

“A chance at what?” Virgie lifted two plates off the linoleum countertop, unable to connect the dots. What had triggered this much emotion in her?

She rubbed her nose. “A chance at doing something that matters.”

“But you do matter. You matter to James, and you matter to me.” Virgie’s voice was patient, but she nodded to the doorway, making clear it was time to serve.

Pamela straightened the crisp eyelet apron. “Oh, Virgie. I had dreams too.”

She paused before lifting the other two dinner plates, balancing them on her palms and recomposing her face. Together, they entered the dining room in a procession. No one would notice Pamela was crying because she was invisible, nothing but a housekeeper.

Virgie set down a plate in front of her husband, the ghostly echo of Pamela’s words in her mind.

You have so much power in your voice you can’t even hear it anymore.The question for Virgie was: What would she do with it?

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The sound of the buoy bell wrestled her awake. Charlie wasn’t in bed, and Virgie rose feeling uncertain about what the day would bring. Last night, she’d fallen into her pillows when the Knights left around ten, Pamela rousing a sleeping James and urging him outside to her rusted Buick while Charlie wrinkled his brow at the scene as he stood on the front porch smoking a cigar. She wasn’t sure what time Louisa stayed up with her friend, but it must have been late since they were still asleep. Aggie and Betsy were gone from their rooms, their coverlets kicked to the bottom of their beds.

Virgie padded downstairs into the sunny kitchen, where she slumped into the banquette and stared out the window to the water.Senatorialwas not at the dock. They’d gone sailing. Charlie must have woken them. A wonder that he got Aggie out of bed, since getting her up these last few weeks had grown so challenging that she’d been tempted to douse her with cold water.

Pamela’s outburst the night before only solidified Virgie’s feeling that if she did not empower her girls, they could end up feeling as hopeless as James’s mother. They would be aimless and directionlessand filled with a self-hatred that took over everything they did. They would be like Virgie’s mother.

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