Elizabeth the First Wife Read online

  FX must have talked. I jumped in because I was pretty sure my mother didn’t have a script for this part of the evening, and the way her eyes glazed over with every syllable from the Australian, I didn’t think she had enough composure left to think on her feet. “How kind of you to say that, Taz,” I said, my voice rising in volume to drown out anything my mother might add. “My mother, my father, and our entire family, including my brother-in-law, Congressman Ted Seymour, support the arts and Maddie’s participation in this production. I teach Shakespeare to students like Maddie, and what they learn is that the issues they face in their own lives aren’t new, and they’re not alone in struggling with them. The themes in Midsummer are universal and timeless, as potent today as when the play was written. Rebelling against authority. Expanding your mind-set and your world. Learning about the true nature of love. Shakespeare’s work is both revered and relevant today for a reason: It speaks to all of us, no matter our background or position. We can all learn from the Immortal Bard. Ted Seymour is a great dad. He raised Maddie as a single parent for many years and she’s a wonderful girl. He should be commended for letting her experience Shakespeare up close. Every student should have a summer with Shakespeare.” I concluded the speech with an earnest nod and a brief wave, as if I were a candidate for Educator of the Year. What was that?

  The Girls turned to me with stunned faces. My mother snapped back from her delirium and was clearly not pleased that I had stolen portions of her script for my speech. She gave me the same look I saw when I declared that I wouldn’t be trying out for Rose Queen in 1992: slight disgust at my lack of respect for tradition mixed with a touch of envy for my nonconformity.

  “Hear, hear, Professor Lancaster!” FX proclaimed, stepping up next to me and planting a big kiss on my cheek, then wrapping his arm over my shoulder. “I couldn’t have said it better myself. I fully support Maddie, her father Ted Seymour, and her aunt Elizabeth Lancaster. Elizabeth taught me to love Shakespeare. And she is a woman of exceptional propriety who has uncanny radar for the moral high ground. I’m honored to have had the chance to help pass along the gift of Shakespeare to her niece Maddie. I, too, commend Congressman Ted Seymour.”

  The little crowd of onlookers burst into applause. FX acknowledged his people with a wave and then grabbed my hand and kissed it in a highly theatrical gesture that gave me the willies. Did he have to make me sound like an uptight British headmistress from a PBS miniseries? A woman of “exceptional propriety”? Seriously?

  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Soul Patch Boy with the cell phone camera nodding with excitement. We have got to get out of here, I thought. “I think we’re done here,” I announced to no one in particular and everyone within earshot.

  I gathered up Maddie, my mother, and the Girls and tried to usher them to the door, but Taz wasn’t quite finished. “I’m glad to hear you say that, Elizabeth, because that’s exactly what FX and I told that reporter today. Although I think you said it much more eloquently.”

  I stopped dead in my tracks, with my mother, Dependable Jane, and Funseeker Mary Pat crashing into me Keystone Cops–style. “What reporter?” I said slowly, turning my glare from Taz to FX.

  “What was her name, FX? Bambi?” Taz turned to FX, who was already signing programs.

  “No, Candy. Your friend Candy. From that website, candysdish. com. She gave me her card at that party, so we called her and told her what was happening. Don’t worry, we said lots of nice things about Maddie and Ted. Just trying to be helpful.” FX smiled broadly, waiting for some props or perhaps a doggie treat. It took all the strength I had not to run at him brandishing my clog and beat him with it.

  Taz grinned and said, “What’s done can’t be undone.”

  Just then my cell phone rang. I didn’t even have to look at the screen to know who was on the other end of the line. But I did because, like a wreck on the road, I couldn’t look away. It was Bumble.

  FAKE THE SHAKE

  3 Surefire Lines to

  Get What You Want

  Boys, we know sometimes you want a night out with the guys. Or to get out of doing the dishes to watch the game. Or maybe you remembered the birthday but failed to get a gift—not even a card! Want to win over your girl, no matter what the circumstances? Try one of these three opening lines:

  “Let all the number of the stars give light to thy fair way!”

  Antony & Cleopatra

  “The fairest hand I ever touched. Oh beauty, till now I never knew thee.”

  Henry VIII

  “The brightness of her cheek would shame the stars, as daylight doth lamp.”

  Antony & Cleopatra

  CHAPTER 19

  I’ve only been scared for my life twice. The first was Lollapalooza 1994, when I made the mistake of thinking it would be great to be in the front row for the Beastie Boys’ set, requiring hours of time on my feet in the hot August sun without food or drink. By the time Mike D launched into “Fight for Your Right to Party,” I was lightheaded, nauseous, and in danger of being trampled by the fully hydrated Beastie Boys fans rushing the stage. My friend Lila Montoya-Hidalgo picked up on my panic (maybe it was the gasping for breath and my high-pitched cry of “Help!”) and cleared a path to the edge of the crowd before I was sucked under a carpet of combat boots. “She’s going to puke!” Lila warned in her British-by-way-of-Bogotá accent, as she cleared a path using her vintage Bermuda bag as a machete. I made it out alive, barely. It took me a good hour to convince the medics that there had been no drugs of any sort involved.

  Lila was a good friend, I thought. I really should have kept in touch after she graduated from Duke, married that DuPont, and moved to Delaware to a town my mother assured me was “not as dreadful as it sounds.” I knew that if anybody in Delaware lived in a decent zip code it was a DuPont and Lila, but that was the sort of response my mother didn’t appreciate, so I kept it to myself. All I know is Lila saved my life that day, and I vowed to look her up on Facebook.

  If I survived this day, that is.

  What had been a small local controversy only two days ago was now part of the crawl on Good Morning America: FX Fahey Defends Racy Midsummer as Part of the “Fabric of Life.” (Early in his career, FX had appeared in one of those long-running cotton ads, a daily source of pain post-divorce, as they often ran during the soaps my grandmother and I watched. Publicly, he was still in my doghouse for talking to Candy, but privately, I had to laugh at his homage to the famous campaign.) Once the national media had picked up Taz and FX’s interview at candysdish.com, the situation had spiraled beyond the capabilities of my mother, the Girls, and me to control anything.

  Reinforcements were arriving from Pasadena. They were setting up a tactical headquarters in Ashland over Fourth of July weekend. Their mission was to create the impression that Ted was an excellent father, Maddie was a grounded and well-educated daughter, and the whole controversy was nothing but a mountain out of a molehill. All of those things were true, but that didn’t mean they were easy to prove in the eyes of the press. Or so Bumble had warned me.

  The public debate now covered every angle, from Ted’s fitness as a father to public funding of the arts to the appropriateness of teaching the more bawdy Shakespeare plays in public schools. In other words, pundits from both sides of the aisle and in the middle were involved, and the cable news chatter was deafening. And right there in the middle of it all was Taz Buchanan, who was certainly relishing his role as rebel director and defender of the arts on every TV talk show I happened to catch last night. I was convinced it was Taz’s plan from the get-go to stir up controversy for this production. Once FX au natural was out, he found another innocent to use: Maddie. It infuriated me, but my theory muddied the waters so much that I kept it to myself. Maddie first; that was my mantra.

  I watched as the entirety of Team Ted, including Ted himself, deplaned at Ashland Airport. That former career in real estate development came in handy under circumstances like this, when flying commercial would ju
st be tedious. Private is the only way to go to the middle of nowhere on a holiday weekend, I imagined Bumble informing Ted as they planned the logistics. Watching Bumble and Ted, or as I’d come to think of them, the Macbeths, make their way down the stairs in matching crisp navy blue outfits and expensive accessories, I felt a surge of resentment that shamed me a tiny bit. They were a walking Coach ad. What were they doing here? This was supposed to be my summer of writing and snacking and finding myself. Alone. Now, one by one, my family was invading, and even though it was partly my fault, I didn’t appreciate it. Although I must say, Bumble and Ted looked rested and ready, as if this was the fight they’d been gearing up for all their lives. Clearly, the Macbeths ruled.

  Next down the stairs was Suki Kim, the new campaign communications director, looking as if she’d just come from the set of a hit political drama in which she played a campaign communications director. She weighed about eighty pounds and was wearing impossibly high heels. Her assistant Rob was loaded down with computer equipment and a bad haircut. They may not be relatives, but their presence reminded me again of how out of my league my own family was. I seemed to be the only person who didn’t have “people.” Even my mother had the Girls.

  Then, inexplicably, my father got off the small jet, wearing a blazer and a white floppy tennis hat and carrying a briefcase. My father? What help could he possibly provide? He squinted into the sunlight and located me in the distance. At least he waved with genuine affection, then pointed behind him at the next passenger down the stairs, my sister Sarah, solo. No kids, no husband, just a canvas bag filled with books and a yoga mat, no doubt.

  Last off was Rafa. He was wearing sunglasses and absorbed in his phone as he made his way down the stairs, a feat that impressed me. I couldn’t help but notice that his hair was a little mussed, which in retrospect, seemed like a tiny thing given the dire circumstances of the political situation. Watching him make his way toward me, white shirt gleaming, I tried to hold my nerves in check. Skype did not do this man justice, I thought.

  How had this happened? How was it possible that all these people needed to be here because of me? Oh, right, because I wanted to remodel my kitchen. I considered yelling “I’m gonna puke!” and running from the tarmac but realized at some point, I was going to have to face the music. And my family. Plus I was wearing my sheath dress, so I was never going to be more ready than now.

  Bumble waved and brought her hand to her mouth, shouting over the engine, “We’re here. Wherever the hell that is.”

  My sisters were the first to reach me. “Wow, nobody told me that everybody was coming,” I said, hugging Sarah fully and Bumble carefully so as not to wrinkle her pressed pinstriped shirt. “Well, everybody except Pierce DeVine and your hairdresser, Bumble.”

  “Pierce is in Montecito and my hairdresser’s afraid to fly. I asked her,” she responded, and I was pretty sure she was telling the truth. Sarah chimed in that the girls were at camp on Catalina and Steven’s annual snorkeling trip with his college buddies was scheduled for Fourth of July weekend because the one divorced guy made the arrangements, so she figured why not come to Oregon? “Hey, Bumble offered a private jet and a room at the best hotel in town. How could I say no?” Sarah squeezed my hand a bit, and I knew she would have come if she had to fly in the middle seat and sleep in a tent.

  Then, because the two minutes of small talk had taken two minutes too long, Bumble inquired about the distance to the hotel and the running time of the “play we have to freaking sit through.” Somebody’s taken her hormone shots today, I noted but kept to myself. “It’ll take twenty minutes to get to the hotel, and the play is three-plus hours long.”

  “For God’s sakes.”

  Bumble was about to blow a gasket when Ted greeted me with a rush of assurances that everything was going to be okay and told his wife to put on a happy face. He said he was looking forward to taking in a show. I’m pretty sure the last time he’d sat through five acts of Shakespeare was never.

  My father, who’d been waiting for his rolling bag even though the ground crew was in charge of luggage, pecked me on the cheek and said, “Good to see you Elizabeth. I hope you have an HDTV. Breakfast at Wimbledon!”

  After Bumble introduced me to Suki and Rob, she asked, “Where’s Maddie?”

  “Working,” I lied. Maddie had begged me to go alone so she had a few more hours to be with Dylan, “Before the curtain comes down and I’m forced to go home on that stupid plane.” I trumped up some book research and gave Maddie a grocery list to kill a couple of hours. To the assembled crowd at the airport, I announced, “We’re carrying on here, as directed. You picked a great weekend to come to Ashland. Big Fourth of July celebration here! A real parade, games in the park, there’s even a reading of the Declaration of Independence. And then, of course, there’s the Midsummer matinee and then fireworks, so, you’ll be very busy tomorrow. But, Maddie and I would love it if everybody came to our house for dinner tonight. And of course, Suki, Ron, and Rafa, we’d love to have you as well. You’re…like family.”

  Finally, my eyes locked with Rafa’s for the first time since his arrival. He’d pushed his sunglasses on top of his head and was staring back at me. His expression was unrevealing but not uninterested. Was that a glint in his eye? I held his gaze for an extra moment, hoping to match his confidence. Maybe all was not lost and at least we could be Skype friends again. Then I realized how pathetic that sounded, even in my own brain. “So…backyard get-together tonight at my place?”

  Bumble raised an eyebrow, about to object to my Pollyanna Has a Barbecue in the Middle of a Political Crisis plan, but Ted spoke first. “I think that’s a great idea. We have a little work to do this afternoon, but we’re all free tonight. Besides, that’s all this is, a family visit. Just a normal family visit to check in with my nearly eighteen-year-old daughter. So your plan is perfect, Elizabeth. Thank you.” God bless Ted; he really was a good man.

  Rafa nodded, too. “Sounds great.” I was very pleased with myself. Rafa sidled up to me, speaking quietly. “It’s good to see you again in person. Call anymore of your own press conferences lately? Like while we were on the plane?” he said with a grin, handing me his tablet. There was my little Summer with Shakespeare speech on YouTube, thanks to Soul Patch Boy. “I wouldn’t answer my phone if I were you. It could be CNN. Or, worst of all, Ron and Ben. You’re on the verge of going viral. You’re very good on camera. A natural.” He leaned in closer and whispered, “But I knew that.”

  A thousand watts of electricity ran through me. “I had no idea I was being filmed,” I fibbed, secretly relieved to see that I did look pretty good on camera. The V-neck was a smart choice, very slimming.

  “Obviously, you didn’t know,” Bumble said, looking over my shoulder at the image on the screen. “Or else you’d never have worn that shade of lipstick. Good God, is it frosted?”

  The closest thing we could scare up to a motorcade was a rented SUV and my humble hatchback. Rob was behind the wheel of car one, transporting Ted, Bumble, Rafa, and Suki to the elegant and beautifully restored Ashland Springs Hotel in the quaint downtown area, in full bloom for the Fourth with overflowing planters hanging on every lamppost and American flags over every shop door. Even though it was a holiday weekend and the hotels were booked to overflowing, Bumble had scored a block of rooms thanks to a canceled wedding, because that’s the sort of luck she possesses. Tough break for the bride but good news for Bumble. She and Ted would be in the Honeymoon Suite, of course, with views of the mountains. The rest of the team had their own guest suites and would set up a war room in a conference room where Ted could do TV remotes if necessary. What had Ted called this trip? A family visit? There’s a euphemism for you.

  That left me alone in the car with Sarah and my father, who were also headed to the Ashland Springs Hotel. “You know I hate B&Bs,” my father explained succinctly, and I did. He barely enjoyed making conversation with longtime colleagues before noon, never mind strangers at a breakfas
t buffet. And the last people he ever wanted to talk to were innkeepers—unlike my mother, who used an opportunity like that to pretend to care about local history but really managed to talk about her own family. “I wanted a proper hotel. Your mother can join me if she’d like, but I don’t want to intrude on her girls’ weekend. You know how she feels about those.” He’d learned a lot in forty years of marriage; I’d give him credit for that. Or he was simply afraid of her.

  “I thought about staying with you, Elizabeth, but then I found out there’s a spa at the hotel,” Sarah confessed. “I’m spending the afternoon at the Waterstone, soaking in an Oregon berry bath and having a sandalwood and ginger body polish and massage. I can’t wait.”

  I laughed. “So you’re here for the free room and the spa! Why did you come, Dad? You’re not exactly a fan of theater, spa treatments, or humanity, for that matter. You could have stayed home with your work and your good TV.”

  My father and Sarah exchanged nervous glances. “Well, guess who called me this week?” he said uncharacteristically. He wasn’t exactly a guessing-game sort of person. In fact, when I was a child, he’d often force me to reason out the answer to one of my own questions, and believe me, it was no game. He’d grill me for a full half hour, working my way backward through the logic, before I figured out how a remote control garage door worked or why the air pollution was worse in the summer. It was torture. And he wonders why I didn’t go into the sciences?

  “I can’t imagine who called,” I said, shaking my head and hitting the brakes. One road into town and one road out meant traffic as Ashland filled with eager tourists searching for parking spots. “Who?”

  “Duff Miller. My college roommate. The president of Redfield.”