Chapter 11 Jasmine
Jasmine
Friday morning, reunion weekend
And then, her marriage. She looks at her phone in the gloom to see where Oscar is. She put a tracking app on his phone after he stopped sharing his location, and he hasn’t found it yet. He’s always assumed he’s smarter than she is.
He’s home. Bully for him. Probably feeling like the hero of the year. Slept at home when, for the first time ever, my wife left me in charge of our children with only one nanny! Goddamn! Where’s my medal?
But at least he didn’t sleep at his mistress’s apartment.
Alyssa Cottington, whom Oscar hired after meeting her at some drinks event in the city, is twenty-four years old.
Oscar is fifty-two. She’s a recent graduate from the MBA program at the University of Florida, the first red flag.
Oscar usually only hires graduates (most of them males) from Ivy League schools.
The second red flag is that Oscar’s name is on the apartment lease.
(Does Oscar really think she can’t google this kind of thing?) Third, Alyssa has a personal shopper at Bergdorf Goodman, paid for by Oscar.
Oscar’s firm doesn’t give clothing allowances.
His employees are all expected to look the part on their own dime.
And the fourth red flag is the fact that he booked two first-class tickets to a “client meeting” in Paris. He booked them. Not his assistant.
Her marriage is hanging by a tattered thread. Her daughters’ sense of family, same. Jasmine has got to remind Oscar why he loved her. Rock his world. Make herself look better. Take that body-sculpting hot yoga class. Learn some more sex tricks and up her visits to the dermatologist.
More work, in other words.
Knowing she won’t go back to sleep, Jasmine gets dressed and slips out of the house.
She gets into her car, backs carefully out of her spot and heads down the long crushed-stone driveway.
Such a beautiful place, and still kept so well.
She’s glad Audrey lives here again. At some point last night, Audrey told them she’d lived in Georgia for more than ten years.
But the farm has always been such a part of her identity.
It’s still almost fully dark, the east easing into a slightly less opaque shade of blue. Nothing is open in town, which hasn’t changed much since her last visit here more than twenty years ago. There’s Lola’s Bakery. A newer restaurant, then Luca’s Pizza.
The last time she was in Luca’s was during her last year of college, a reluctant visit home to see Jade.
Of course there was no food in the house, so Jasmine went to pick up a pizza, hoping the cheese and carbs would soak up some of the booze in her mother’s stomach.
As soon as she went in the restaurant, she felt the stillness of recognition, the eyes on her.
That’s the one who caused the accident. The girl with the slutty mother and the drug-dealing brother, remember?
She heard the whispers, and yep, that was her.
Not the class valedictorian, not the only Stafford kid ever to go to Princeton.
No. She was the poor white trash girl who’d almost made good but couldn’t quite pull it off.
The driver on the night Dr. Kate was killed.
Shame, her most familiar emotion, rolls and echoes through the car now at the mere thought.
It was Oscar who saved her from the person she had been.
When it became clear their relationship had staying power, Jasmine did what she hadn’t done with anyone since leaving Stafford.
She told him the truth about her life. Because he was different.
He made her feel safe and fragile and treasured.
For the first time, she wanted to be honest about who she was.
So she bit the bullet and told him about growing up poor, having to take care of her mother and endure her rages, the slaps, the broken glasses and curses, the threat of foster care, Jade’s leering boyfriends, the fear she’d be raped at home.
The hand-me-downs and hunger, her brother’s stints in prison. She left out only the accident.
And Oscar was amazing about it. “What a remarkable woman you are,” he said when she’d emptied her soul.
He handed her his handkerchief, and she wiped her eyes.
“I don’t know anyone who could’ve endured all that and turned out the way you are now.
Honestly, Jasmine. You astonish me in all the best ways.
I’ll take care of you. I’m your shield from here on out. ”
And he was just that. Though every feminist ever would hate to hear her admit it, he saved her, because she hadn’t been able to save herself.
She’d risen, yes, but only so far. Oscar understood the need for her secrecy about the past, the name change, her crushing disappointment at her failure to thrive in her field.
She’d never feel inferior again, he told her.
He loved her. They were meant to be. Her honesty, her history, had moved him so much that he asked her to marry him then and there.
He and Beck had been compatible and friendly, he told her, “but you are the love of my life, Jasmine Tate.”
And she was. And he was hers, until things just . . . petered out.
For the past four years, she’s been trying to get them back to a happier place.
But Oscar is now bored with her troubled past. She knows it made her more attractive to him back then, more than a normal, self-sufficient woman would (like Beck).
With her, he wasn’t just a husband, but a savior.
My poor little injured fawn. Daddy’s got you now.
Gross, but come on. It happens all the time.
Why else do men date women young enough to be their daughter (or granddaughter, if you’re Bill Belichick)?
It isn’t because they’re equals. It’s because they’re not.
If it were just her, Jasmine would leave him.
But the girls . . . they deserve stability.
A father, even one who isn’t around that much, is something she never had.
Their lives are safe, and they are loved.
Jasmine does everything her own mother never did—reads to them, tucks them in at night, makes sure they have healthy food and nice clothes and all the material things that make them fit in.
One day, they’ll go out into the world with the status of being Oscar Hahn’s daughters.
If he doesn’t bankrupt himself, that is.
She almost hopes he’s been blowing his money on his mistress, not losing it because of incompetence.
She pulls onto Pomeroy Street, a shabby little dead end illuminated by the lights of the Dollar Tree parking lot on the corner.
There it is—her childhood home. She turns the car off and gets out.
It smells the same here . . . fresh Vermont air with a hint of rotting food.
Against all laws of physics, the house is still standing.
The roof is now covered in a blue tarp. It was riddled with mold when she lived there, the cheap walls soft in places.
The cellar flooded every time it rained.
Imagine if her daughters saw this place. They’d be so shocked, so ashamed, maybe even disgusted. Great, Mom. Thanks for sharing. Why did you show me that? Why do I have to know?
She remembers getting home from elementary school every day, Audrey waving furiously from the fourth row of the bus, the dread she felt walking inside.
Sometimes Cash would meet her at the door, and relief would flood through her.
“Hey, kiddo,” he’d say. “Mom’s sleeping,” which was code for drunk.
“Wanna go to the diner?” She was so grateful for those times. Too bad there hadn’t been more of them.
For reasons she cannot explain, she takes a picture of the house, then gets back in her car and heads for the cemetery. She’s only been here once, just before she left for Princeton, but she remembers exactly where Dr. Kate is buried. She stops the car and goes up the hill.
Katherine Chevalier Porter, MD
Daughter, wife, mother and friend
Beloved citizen of Stafford
A life of laughter and service, missed by all who knew her
Rest in peace, Dr. Kate.
Strange, that Jasmine can still cry over this woman.
When Lydia was born, it was Dr. Kate Jasmine wanted to call.
She had emulated Dr. Kate’s mothering style as best she could, always trying to speak calmly and wisely, asking questions about their day with genuine interest, being warm and welcoming around their friends.
She doesn’t have what Audrey and Dr. Kate had, but she’s done her absolute best, even if it hasn’t had the same effect.
Jasmine puts her hand on Dr. Kate’s headstone. “We all miss you so much,” she says, her voice husky with tears, then walks back to her car.
It’s 6:20. “Siri, call Lydia,” she says, because Oscar is a heavy sleeper and doesn’t know the day-to-day routines of his children. She always wakes the girls, tapping on their doors, then goes in to smooth their hair and coax them awake.
“What?” Lydia answers, her voice heavy with sleep and irritation.
“Good morning, sweetheart. Just calling to make sure you’re awake.” No response. “How was your night?”
“Fine.”
“Good! Did you have fun with Daddy?” What an idiotic question.
“Um, sure, Mom. So much fun. I have to get in the shower. I’m late already. You’re supposed to wake me up at six fifteen.”
“You can always set your phone alarm all by your—” Lydia has already hung up. No questions about how Jasmine is, no curiosity about her mother’s life. With a sigh, Jasmine tightens her grip around the steering wheel. “Siri, call Lucy.”