Chapter 6
WILLIAM
“William,” his mother said when she opened the door to her hotel room. “You’re late.”
She was wearing her navy shirtdress. Every day, she wore one of two things: this dress or a white button-up and charcoal trousers.
She owned a week’s worth of each piece, and in the winter, she simply layered a black sweater over them.
They were expensive clothes, and though she cared for them religiously, if you looked closely, you could see where the fabric thinned at the knees and elbows.
His mother was unsentimental, even in her appearance: severe and chic.
Since she was five years old, she had worn her black, now graying hair cropped at the chin.
Among her three polyester-clad siblings, she appeared to come from another country.
“Yeah, I’m sorry, I missed the ferry,” he said.
She sighed, allowing him inside. Her suitcase was already unpacked: her leather jewelry case resting on the vanity, a book at her bedside table.
Fear of Flying. Above the headboard was a painting of a shipwreck, clouds lit by the white light of a storm, men lost in the angry waves.
It made him shiver, a scene of such obvious disaster.
She perched on the ledge of the open window.
Her stress was blatant, and she gnawed at the inside of her cheek.
“How did you get to the island?” she asked.
“I got a ride on a crabbing boat.”
“With Eleanor? You made her miss the ferry as well?”
“I guess she—decided she didn’t want to come, that she couldn’t make the trip.”
The lie was more difficult with his mother, but their family often hid things from one another—his mother their mounting credit card bills, William his poor report cards—and so he held his ground, imagining Eleanor standing at her kitchen stove, overcooking a pork chop. Willing her back to life.
“What?” His mother was standing now. Both hands pulled at the cloth belt of her dress, tightening it around her narrow waist. Her nerves were taut, and he had the familiar feeling of trying to escape blame.
“I don’t know, she just wasn’t there when I arrived, I tried knocking, but—”
“Did she leave a check?”
“A check?”
“Yes, did you see anything left out with my name—”
William remembered—the envelope on the counter, but that had been addressed to Shay.
“I didn’t have my key, so I—I didn’t go inside.”
His mother sat back down on the ledge, covering her face with her hands and taking in a deep breath.
He didn’t understand. He never knew how much money Aunt Eleanor actually had—though, two Christmases ago, after uncharacteristically drinking too many glasses of wine, his mother alluded to a fair amount.
Some stocks she’d purchased in the ’50s, so unusual for a woman at the time.
William’s parents made blue-collar wages, his father a reporter for the Tribune, and so it was this money that had funded his and Shay’s tuition at a private school in one of the city’s wealthy suburbs, which they commuted to from their drafty brick apartment building in Chicago.
Although their parents did nothing meaningful to pursue it, both of them clearly felt they deserved to be wealthy: their father because of the small fortune his family had lost in the Great Depression, and their mother because of her innate refinement, and so they felt oddly comfortable in the world of immense privilege.
As if there were a kingdom that would soon be restored to them.
As a boy, your father was chauffeured to school, their mother once told them in their kitchen, where the cupboards never properly latched.
In the hotel room, he waited for his mother to speak. Her nails were lacquered a dark red, the only color she ever wore. He wondered if she’d ever stop wearing her wedding ring; his father had been dead for four years.
“Is there something—” he began.
“Why don’t you go take a shower?” She pressed her palms to her thighs.
“But if Aunt Eleanor was supposed—”
“William, please.”
He swallowed, trying to remember when he last had a glass of water.
For a family so consumed by wealth, they never spoke of money unless he was in desperate need.
The door to further conversation was shut.
This was how he was raised, always half in the dark, and a part of him knew it was easier this way. He had enough to figure out on his own.
“Where’s Shay?” he asked.
“Some of her friends are taking her out this evening—or, well, as out as you can go here. Katherine and what’s-her-name, the one with the Japanese father?”
“Grace. I didn’t know she still spoke to them.”
“Well, weddings are a time to sweep the past under the rug. Shay has a lot to sweep.”
He nodded, guilt worming through his belly, thinking of the last time he’d spoken to his sister. A night he’d gotten so drunk that he’d said things to her he never should have said.
He remembered when Shay first mentioned Synanon, a month before the engagement party, though at the time he had no idea what she was talking about.
She called him to ask if he remembered the day their father had taken them on assignment to see a nuclear reactor at Argonne.
How he was supposed to drop them at school but kept driving.
And yes, William remembered how they spent the day playing tag on the cold field in front of the lab, splitting a Baby Ruth from one of the scientists’ pockets for lunch.
Shay asked about the tests, if they were all going to explode into a million pieces.
The men just laughed, but when they drove home, their mother was livid.
She waited until she thought her children were asleep to yell.
At the time, I thought it meant he was smarter than everyone else, that he knew enough not to be scared, but that wasn’t it, was it?
Shay had said. They didn’t even believe me when I told them.
That he would take his children there. He assumed she meant a new throng of friends in New York.
Unlike his own, Shay’s life had shape. An apartment with a full set of dishes.
A partner. Law school. It was rare for them to speak of their father, and he felt relieved when she hung up the phone.
“You should get some rest.” His mother was standing, guiding him toward the door.
When he stepped into the hallway, he was suddenly conscious of his hunger. The last thing he’d eaten was that sugar cookie the stewardess had given him, which had crumbled in his mouth like sand. He was not sure if it was that or the pervasive smell of paint making him lightheaded.
“Does the hotel smell like paint to you?” he asked.
“Oh, yes.” She laughed mirthlessly. “Andrew’s family paid to have the whole place spruced up.
I guess it was built in the 1920s for a short-lived campaign to make the island a real tourist destination, and there are a few sailing events every summer that have kept it in business.
But now there’s new paint and flowers in every room.
I’m sure the Pruitts would have hired a whole new staff if they could have. ”
“Very . . . generous, I guess?”
His mother looked over his shoulder, her eyes losing focus.
“Yes, Shay’s chosen well,” she said. “They have more money than sense.”
* * *
He went in search of a meal, but when he reached the first-floor landing, he paused at a familiar voice—Andrew’s mother, visiting the hotel to greet friends or family.
When they’d met before this week, she had been perfectly polite, almost saccharine, but it had felt like a performance, and he wanted to avoid having to speak to her for as long as possible.
The reception area was mostly cleared, the guests retreating to their rooms. A record had come to the end of one side, and William could hear its flickers of static.
“I told him all along it was a foolish decision,” William heard Andrew’s mother say. “I mean, it’s as if she was living with the Manson family. If nothing else, we should have at least waited until her hair grew back.”
“Well, what would he say to that?” another woman’s voice said, one William did not recognize.
“He wouldn’t ever hear of it, but that’s our Andrew. Loyal to a fault.”
She let out an exaggerated sigh, and William turned to retreat back up the stairs, certain he didn’t want to hear anything else. He would eat tomorrow.