Chapter 28
Over the next two days, I completed the fiction that was Garrett’s tax returns. The numbers now satisfied the laws of data distribution, if not those of fact.
Tuesday morning came, and I took my place at the gallery’s front desk, making small talk with tourists and guarding the art. Every time the glass doors swung open, my unfamiliar reflection flashed past in them.
My hair was jet black now, in case the man trailing Hiromi ever saw me again.
With the gallery empty and sunlit, Poker Genome Project felt less mathematical, more Victorian, like the patterned wallpaper in the Lesser Tea Room at Helshire.
But the probabilities were still there, wrapped around me in the weekday quiet.
It was comforting, knowing that every hand I’d ever been dealt was somewhere on these walls.
I remembered one glorious poker game when I was nine, which ended with me beating Aunt Olga, a full house over an ace-high straight. I’d shared my winnings—a pile of sugar cookies—with Sebastian.
My texts to him were still unanswered.
When the gallery was empty, I read a book Arabella had given me, about a therapy cult in last-century Manhattan, a true story of free love and Freudian theory. Ordinaries were preyed on by a cabal of psychoanalysts, who became their saviors, mentors, parent figures.
One of the many reasons Mortons don’t do therapy.
The victims lived together in group homes, pooled their money, fucked each other. All those lost souls, falling under their therapists’ control.
In the end, though, the cult offered only Freudian nonsense. Having killed my own father, I found nothing symbolic in it.
The wisdom of the Mortons was older, plainer, cooler: Give your child a strong hand, a sharp knife, and a big family, then teach them loyalty without care.
A familiar shadow slanted across the gallery floor.
“Jessica, your hair.”
“Faraday. Your hair.”
“Do you like it?” She posed for me, showing off her cream linen suit, leather plimsolls, and a crisp bob, very like Grandmother Elizabeth’s, whose dark red lipstick she was still copying.
The bob, at least, suited Faraday.
I sighed. “We’ve only been separated a week, and you’re dressing like us. Have you missed me that much?”
“Who says I’m here for you? There’s a certain hot uncle of yours I might want to see.”
“Garrett is home today, not an uncle, and kind of funny looking.”
“Fine, then. Lock up or whatever. Let’s go get lunch. I need to hear about your goth hair.”
“Faraday, I work here. What if someone wants to buy the art?”
She frowned, sweeping her eyes across the millions of tiny playing cards—the jagged flushes, the endless pairs, the unsold fours of a kind.
“Well, then,” she said. “What if that someone is me?”
We found a leftover bottle of decent champagne—Faraday promised to buy a piece, as long as we celebrated first.
With the doors locked and the cork popped, I gave her a tour of the exhibit, but she only wanted to talk about Helshire. Where the good parties would be next year. How she was going to decorate her Victorian manor. Finally getting to hang out in the Senior Commons.
“This is us now,” she said in front of the straight flushes. “Unbeatable.”
“The perfect hand. Maybe you should hang them in your perfect house.”
She frowned. “Straight sounds dreary. Flushes sounds toilet.”
I steered her toward the fours of a kind. “Your art should reflect our triumph. First Helshire, then the world.”
“Ugh, the world. It’s so disappointing out here. Uncurated social circles. The lack of gothic architecture. Feeling young and tiny, like being a freshman all over again.”
I smiled. “Remember our room back then? Your stuff everywhere? You kept asking when the cleaners were coming.”
“Like I was the weird one?” She swirled her champagne. “In Intro English, you didn’t even know why Oscar Wilde went to prison. You leaned over and asked me if he’d killed someone!”
“Poets are unstable,” I said.
“Speaking of unstable. Have you heard from your cousin?”
I shook my head.
“He’s being a baby, whatever you did.”
“It’s not about me. Sebastian has a long-standing disagreement with family policy.”
“Strife, among the elegant, compelling Mortons? Don’t shatter my illusions, dear. I just got here.”
“Your illusions are always my priority.” I poured us both more champagne, making sure mine was mostly foam.
“I miss all of you so much, Jessica. Are there any funerals this summer?”
“Sorry, nothing’s on the schedule.”
“But Mother and Oscar Junior are crowding me. And Marlow has been dreadful!”
“He’s being stingy again?”
Faraday shrugged a little. “I’ve had to use a few of those checks, but he doesn’t notice.”
“If Marlow paid attention to details, you wouldn’t have needed us in the first place.”
“Don’t say tragic things, Jessica! I’m glad that all happened—the evil contract, almost losing everything…”
She waited for me to finish the thought, to know without being told.
“Because it brought us closer,” I said.
“Not just you and me.” Faraday swigged the rest of her champagne, held out her glass for more. “You wouldn’t understand, dear, because your family isn’t useless. Signing with the Mortons made me part of something.”
“Of course,” I said, thinking of the last-century psychiatrists collecting broken people, lost souls, looking for a home. “Is that why you’re dressed this way?”
She looked down at her clothes. “Am I appropriating?”
“No, dear. But you don’t have to look like us. We aren’t a cult.”
Faraday’s eyes lit up. “A cult?”
“Just something I’ve been reading.”
“But I know this from Sociology!” She held up a finger to pause me, marshaling her memories. “Are Mortons isolated from contact with outsiders?”
I sighed—a quiz. “Quite the opposite. We’re practically flung at them.”
“Do you believe your leader to be infallible?”
“No.” Grandmother Elizabeth, perhaps. But her predecessor, the indecisive Grandpa Dwight, had been gently forced to abdicate.
“Do Mortons believe the End Times are coming?”
“Absolutely not. We plan on being around for many, many generations.” As long as humanity exists. As long as the sun burns.
“Voilà!” she exclaimed. “Not a cult.”
“Thanks for clearing that up. What do you think of the fours of a kind? The best possible hand that is neither straight nor flush.”
Faraday inspected the array of cards before us.
“Still not me. Do you have anything that isn’t math?”
I took her into the back office, where Garrett kept pieces from old exhibitions. Artworks that hadn’t sold, but in which his affections were still invested.
I showed her a still life—pale grapes and persimmons in a pile. “Rotting fruit, for Victorian ambience.”
“Ruination doesn’t make for a party vibe.”
“Something modern, then. This is by Z, the graffiti artist. That’s his birth certificate name, by the way.”
“Do you have anything in…special someones?”
“Ah,” I said.
Faraday took my hand, her eye alight. “Have you done the deed yet? Are you still smitten? Do you have pictures?”
I took a moment to answer. Part of me had hoped Faraday would forget my slip in the Dining Commons. But a smaller, quieter part had been itching to tell her about Hiromi. This was the kind of interaction Uncle Wolfie couldn’t teach.
“We’ve only had a couple of conversations.”
“Conversations? Goodness. Are you going to be friends?”
“Not as such. She’s going to take me to dinner.”
“On a motherfucking date?” Faraday let loose a laugh. “Another first for Jessica Morton!”
I couldn’t argue. My traditional meal with sexual partners was breakfast.
“So there’s been zero hanky-panky?”
“A sweaty hug,” I said. “The holding of hands.”
“Jesus, this is priceless.” Faraday finished her champagne and waved her glass for more. “Tell me—what’s this girl like?”
“She’s an artist.”
“Big family? Only child? Youngest? Eldest?”
“An orphan—she says so in her socials. But that’s all I know.”
“My family was the first thing you asked about!” Faraday looked stunned for a moment, then shrugged it off. “All that matters, I guess, is how does she make you feel?”
I poured us both more champagne, letting the question bubble in our glasses. The spark in Hiromi’s eyes as she sifted through hard candies and sharp pieces of metal. The smell of her sweat, the taste of bitter lemon.
And Arabella’s warning too.
“Like a hunter,” I said.
Faraday breathed out a dramatic shudder, then pointed at an artwork on the wall. “What’s that?”
“A light box.” I reached for the switch. “Prepare yourself.”
As the transparency flickered to life, Faraday gasped a little.
It was a self-portrait of the photographer, who wore a gray wig and a twisted smile. Crawling on her face was a horde of ants, spiders, and millipedes. It wasn’t clear from her expression whether she knew the bugs were there.
“I love it,” Faraday said. “I want it.”
“Twelve thousand.”
“Perfect for the house,” she said. “If we ever get to live there.”
I took her hand. “Why wouldn’t you, dear?”
“It’s Salinger. Yesterday, I told him he can’t live in the house, and he didn’t take it well. He’s threatening some sort of lawsuit.”
“Ridiculous. He wasn’t even going to pay rent.”
“But it’s too late to get a dorm room, so he’s homeless. My fault, he says.”
“Nothing to worry about, dear. Aunt Minerva will get him a room.”
Faraday looked at me, her eyes fluttering. After all she’d seen of the Mortons’ power, it was our sway at Campus Housing that left her speechless.
“Consider it done.” I patted her head. “But I’m still not living with you.”
“The room’s taken. That’s the thing—he changed his mind.” She looked away from me, the pale skin of her neck flushed with pink.
It fell into place.
“Sebastian.”
“He called on Thursday,” Faraday said. “He hates it, living all alone in Albany. He’s realized that next year, he wants to live with friends.”
I didn’t say anything. Friends.
“I had to say yes, of course,” she went on. “It was my idea in the first place. But it seemed polite to ask you if it’s okay…again. Especially since you’re fighting.”
“It’s fine, Faraday. With Sebastian in your house, you’ll have an amazing year. The parties! The scandals! And he’ll have forgiven me by midterms.”
“Can I ask what you’re fighting about?”
“No,” I said.
“Of course not. Can you at least tell me why the hair?”
“Garrett wants me to look more artsy. It was blue last weekend.”
“Hah.” The sound was half-hearted.
“Sebastian still loves me,” I said. “It’s just family stuff.”
“And I’m not really family.”
“You will be. It happens slowly, dear, a little every day. The longer you’re part of us, the more you see of our ways, the more you’ll understand.”
“Of course,” Faraday said, trying to look as if she believed me. “Twelve thousand, you said?”
We sat on opposite sides of Garrett’s desk, and she pulled one of Gertie’s checks from her breast pocket. It was folded in half, wrinkles pressed into it, like she carried it everywhere. Marlow’s forged, florid signature crowded the lower-right corner.
Faraday took out the fountain pen that Grandmother had gifted her.
“By the way,” she said, printing the numbers carefully. “Something funny happened on the way here. One of Dad’s old business partners was on my train.”
“And when he saw you, he went to a different carriage?”
“Yes, just like your aunt promised. At parties, at restaurants, even on the street one time—they vanish whenever one of us appears, even if it’s just Oscar Junior.” Faraday hesitated. “But this time, it was kind of scary.”
“How?”
“On his way past, he stopped and gave me this…look.”
I spoke firmly. “What kind of look? Describe it in detail.”
“Like he was disgusted with me. Like I was something on the bottom of his shoe.” Faraday put down the pen. “Like I was nothing.”
I reached out and pulled the check away.
“Don’t worry, dear. We’ll fix that too.”