Nobody, least of all Charlotte, expected the momentum to be so strong two years later. Her department head now clearly resents her absence, which isn’t surprising since she’s never exactly been Charlotte’s biggest fan. What’s been harder is the change in Jason’s attitude. He seems to hate how much she’s gone, but he won’t come right out and ask her to stop taking these gigs, Charlotte suspects, because of the money they bring in. For an hour onstage, she can now earn five figures. It feels almost illegal, a stupid amount of money for something so small. The first time it happened (Google offering her eighteen thousand dollars for a breakfast seminar), they celebrated with champagne. Now Jason barely acknowledges her when she rolls her suitcase out to the car.
“If anything, I beg Birdie to spend more time with me!” she says. “And you’re talking out of both sides of your mouth! Two minutes ago, you told me to give her some space. Now, you’re saying to spend more time with her. Which is it, Jason?”
He turns. “You’re right, you’re right. You spend plenty of time with her,” he says, in a condescending tone she hates. Like he’s talking to a fool. “But if you’re so worried about what she’s up to, you could ask her instead of checking Instagram or Snapchat or whatever.”
“Got it,” she says. “Because teenagers are so forthcoming with their parents about what they’re actually doing and feeling and thinking. Especially when they have their first boyfriends.” She pauses. “Boyfriends who are a year older.”
“Oh, come on!” He groans. “It’s not like he’s twenty-five and sneaking her into bars. He’s fifteen.”
“It makes a difference. And his fam—”
“There’s nothing wrong with his family,” he says. “I’ve known Finch since high school.”
“Going to the same parties with Tucker’s dad twenty-five years ago doesn’t mean you know them. I’ve seen the mom around, Jason. They’re not our kind of people.” Charlotte bites her tongue, thinking about the rumor that Stephanie told her about Dayna, Tucker’s mom, that she goes around town bragging about all her conquests on Capitol Hill when she first moved to DC after college, as if sleeping with a congressman from Florida is on par with bedding George Clooney.
“Then why the hell are we having dinner at their house tonight?” He starts down the hall and Charlotte follows, watching as he turns for the stairs.
“Because they invited us!” She groans, her frustration taking over. “Because our daughter is dating their son!”
He turns, his hand on the banister, his face scrunched up like he’s in a commercial for migraine medication. “Why are you yelling? What are we even fighting about? Tell me, Charlotte! You’re the expert!”
She wipes her hands over her face. He’s been throwing this expert word at her lately, knowing how much she hates it. “Stop it, Jason,” she says, closing her eyes for a moment and taking a deep breath. Outside, she hears the sound of a car door slamming. Birdie. “Why do we fight over every goddamn thing?” she whispers, saying it as much to herself as to him. “Why do we even bother?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t—”
The door opens.
“You’re still in your pajamas!” Charlotte says, compensating for the tense atmosphere with too much enthusiasm.
“Hey, Mom!” Birdie says, smiling and sleepy in a Yorktown tennis T-shirt and flannel pajama pants, closing the door behind her. Her backpack slides off her shoulder and onto the floor behind her. “Hey, Dad!”
“How was it?” Jason says. “Did you girls have fun?”
Charlotte goes to her, wrapping her arms around Birdie’s blanket of long, unbrushed hair. Sometime last year, Birdie passed her in height. Charlotte inhales her daughter’s familiar scent; residual hair product, fruity bubble gum. And, this morning, the faint scent of maple syrup. Steph must have made pancakes.
“Yeah, we had a good time,” Birdie says. “We went to La Moo and then watched a movie. An old one. Hannah’s mom said you’d know it. Ferris Bueller?”
“Danke Schoen!” Charlotte hears Jason sing behind her, imitating Matthew Broderick. “Darlin’, danke schoen!”
“Oh, God, Dad!” Birdie laughs, shaking her head.
“What?” He feigns innocence, smiling at her in a way he hasn’t smiled at Charlotte in months. Can he just turn it on and off that easily? she asks herself, knowing that it’s a stupid question, because if there’s anything she’s an expert at, it’s faking a good mood.
“Please, Dad, just get all of your embarrassing behavior out of your system before tonight,” Birdie says, letting go of Charlotte and starting down the hall toward the kitchen. Charlotte watches her, thinking of Tucker’s Instagram. Has she tasted beer before? she wonders. She had, by the time she was Birdie’s age, but that was a different time and place.
“Tonight?” Jason jokes. “What’s tonight?” He glances at Charlotte and his expression straightens.
“Dad!” Birdie yelps. “Stop!” She laughs again.
“I’m gonna go change and mow the yard,” he says, starting up the stairs.
Feeling calmer, Charlotte follows Birdie into the kitchen, and clears her throat. “Are you hungry?” she asks her daughter, who’s disappeared into the pantry. “I can make you something.” She reaches for her phone on the counter, taps a familiar dance with her fingertips across the screen. Her bunny picture has 31,437 likes.
Two
The North Arlington section of the city, where Jason and Charlotte have lived since their wedding day, is full of ramblers, the mid-Atlantic term for what Charlotte always knew as ranch houses, as well as bungalows and the ubiquitous Broyhill Colonials that were marketed to families after World War II. For decades, the landscape stayed basically the same, minus the occasional 1960s split-level or orangey-brick 1980s Neo-Colonial. But now, in North Arlington on any given day, and on any given street, there is the inevitable sound of a bulldozer gnashing its way through an old house’s foundation, or the clink of hammers nailing together an addition. The colonials, like Jason and Charlotte’s, grow appendages; two stories out the back and the sides, more space to accommodate the needs (and desires) of modern young families who have been steadily swarming into these hills for the past twenty years, lured by the excellent public schools and proximity to DC. The ramblers get replaced with six-thousand-square-foot behemoths built out right to the edge of the property line (no need for a backyard, of course, when the kids are too busy at practice and/or padding their college résumés). Space is precious and real estate is competitive and expensive. The conversations at PTA meetings, on the soccer sidelines, next to the potluck table at neighborhood block parties: Are you digging out the back? Total reno? How many times were you outbid before you got your place? Homes go under contract, inspections waived, before they hit the market. The real estate agents all drive luxury cars. The builders make a killing.
Finch Cunningham took over his father’s construction business right after he graduated from Hopkins, and pulling into the circular drive in front of the Cunninghams’ home, Charlotte recalls the stories she’d heard when they built the house a few years ago. Unable to find a piece of land large enough to accommodate their wishes, they talked the elderly residents of three adjacent lots into selling, the rumor being that they gave the families a million each in cash. An airy stucco mansion, the Spanish Colonial style a nod to Dayna’s upbringing in Montecito, California, went up on two of the lots. A turfed, regulation-size sports field for Tucker was built on the third.