“They’re just kids,” I said.
“I’m here to assist in any way that I can,” he told me. “Think of me as someone who can help you when you run into unforeseen problems.”
Just then, Madison appeared in the doorway. “Don’t you love it?” she asked me. “The polka dots?”
Carl somehow found a way to stand even straighter than he had been, like his bones locked into some unknown posture that not even soldiers could achieve.
I nodded, looking around the house. “Carl,” I said, “what do you think of the polka dots? Do you love it?”
He smiled. “It’s very appropriate for children,” he finally said. “Very . . . festive.”
“Carl likes it,” I said to Madison.
“We need to get you some clothes,” Madison said to me. “Let’s go shopping.”
“Sounds good,” I said, and she linked arms with me and we left Carl standing there, like it was his birthday and not one person had dreamed of coming to his party.
“He creeps me out a little, Madison,” I told her as we walked to the garage.
“I guess that’s kind of his job?” she replied. “Like, he makes people uncomfortable or super comfortable, based on the situation.”
“I don’t think he likes me,” I said.
“Well, I’m not sure that he even likes me,” she told me. “Who cares?”
We drove in Madison’s BMW to Nashville, to a mall where one of the anchors was a Billings Department Store, the B on the building all huge and fancy, the letters golden. She reached into her purse and produced a gold credit card from the store, something her father must have given her. “Everything is free here,” she said, “so get whatever you want.”
There wasn’t much that I wanted. Everything was so delicate and sparkly; I tried on a pair of satin pants and wanted to kill myself. “Madison,” I said, “I’m taking care of kids. I’m a nanny. I don’t need stuff for dinner parties.”
“You never know what you might need,” she said. She picked out a bright green dress, strapless, and held it up to me like I was a doll that she was dressing.
“I don’t have enough boobs to hold that dress up,” I said. I had no boobs at all, which I’d appreciated when I was growing up, and then in high school I got sad about it, and then I stopped caring again.
“I’m buying it for you,” she said. “One fancy thing. That’s it. Now you can get whatever you want.”
I bought six pairs of pretty amazing Calvin Klein jeans in various states of distress and a bunch of T-shirts, stuff that looked comfortable without being trashy. Stuff that, if it caught on fire, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. I bought some tracksuits that were meant for either much older or much younger people, but I loved them, green and silver rayon like I was an assassin. I bought four pairs of Chuck Taylors and a really expensive pair of Nike basketball shoes. I got some underwear and bras, a bathing suit like Olympic athletes wore, and a cool bucket hat to keep the sun out of my eyes. I felt like some mermaid who had suddenly grown legs and was now living among the humans.
Madison found some dude with slicked-back hair who was wearing a crummy suit to follow us around and we weighed him down with stuff. When he couldn’t hold it any longer, he took it back to a register and added it to the total. When I wasn’t looking, Madison picked out some heels and a pantsuit and even some pretty sexy lingerie. I didn’t stop her. I’d take everything. She bought me some perfume called Sense and Sensibility that was in a bottle that looked so much like a dick that I thought it was a joke.
When we were done, she sent me into the mall, to the food court, because I think she didn’t want me to see how much it all cost. Not that I would have cared. Or maybe I would have, Madison so tall and perfect, handing him that gold card, me in my dirty clothes like some orphan. I guess I’d never know how it felt, because not too long after, Madison was standing there, all the clothes already stuffed into the trunk of her BMW, ready to take me back to my new home.
“Tell me about Jasper,” I asked her, turning off the Emmylou Harris CD that was making me crazy, her voice too good to concentrate.
“What do you want me to tell you about him?” she replied. She was barely touching the steering wheel, the car just doing whatever she wanted based solely on her desire.
“What’s he like?” I asked. “No, I mean, I guess I want to know if you love him.”
“You think I don’t love my husband?” she said, smiling.
“Well, do you?” I asked, genuinely curious.
“I guess I love him,” she finally said. “He’s the perfect man for me because he’s very responsible and he treats me like an equal and he’s got his own interests and he lets me do whatever I want.”
“But what’s he like? What do you like about him on a personal level?” I asked, not willing to give up. I thought about my mom’s boyfriends, thousands of them, and how each one had been a mystery to me, why my mom thought he added anything to her life. I thought about my own boyfriends, the way I mostly wanted them to just be in the same room with me, the way I didn’t expect anything from them. I thought about Senator Roberts. The pictures of him that I’d seen made him look handsome enough, silver hair and ice-blue eyes, but old enough that I would have left him for dead.
“He’s intense. He’s not Southern in the way that makes you embarrassed. You know, at Vanderbilt, there was a kind of boy who wore pastel shorts and boat shoes. They wore seersucker, like they were racist lawyers from the forties. I hated them. They seemed like children but they already looked like middle-aged men. I called them Mint Julep Boys, like they missed the Old South because, even if there was horrible racism, it was worth it if it meant that they could be important by default.”
“It sounds like you’re describing your brothers,” I said. Madison sometimes wrote about them, all of them bankers or CEOs. She always said that nothing she did was ever treated by her parents with the same enthusiasm as her brothers’ accomplishments, even though the brothers were functioning alcoholics, all divorced and remarried.
“Yeah, like my brothers. Mint Julep Boys, like they would drink a mint julep on a regular day and they wouldn’t think it was weird. I don’t know. I’m rambling. I’m not talking about Jasper. I don’t know how to describe him. He’s quiet and principled and he’s intense. He understands people and that makes him slightly impatient with them, like they’re too stupid to protect themselves, so he has to do it for them. He’s not funny, but he has a good sense of humor.”
“Why did you marry him?” I asked.
“Because he wanted to marry me,” she said. “He wanted me, and he was older and experienced, and I liked that he’d already fucked up with the heiress and leaving his family. I liked that he was flawed but still principled. I guess that was important to me.”
“I’m scared to meet him,” I admitted.
“I’m a little scared for you to meet him,” she said. “I hope you don’t hate him.”
I didn’t say anything because I was pretty sure that, just on principle, I was going to hate him. I didn’t like men all that much, found them tiring. But I was willing to give him a chance. I was open to new things, I guessed. If it meant living in that house, I could handle talking to the senator every once in a while. I mean, his job required him to serve my interests, since I was a resident of his state. I didn’t vote, but he didn’t have to know that.