I. Akta Lakota Museum and Cultural Center (website), http://aktalakota.stjo.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=8750.
II. John Kelly, “Those Carved Faces on the Q Street Bridge? Meet the Real Person They’re Based On,” The Washington Post, January 31, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/those-carved-faces-on-the-q-street-bridge-meet-the-real-person-theyre-based-on/2018/01/31/61a66fca-05f6-11e8-94e8-e8b8600ade23_story.html.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Billy is sweating, his shirt sticking to his back; it is days before Christmas and the weather channel signals a code orange. Billy feels the raw whoosh of cars passing by as he trails the edge of the sidewalk along Massachusetts Avenue—before the galas, the fundraisers and salons, the things this town tries so hard to cultivate, to make them feel important, to make them feel enough, to make them feel worth the weight of the world on someone else’s shoulders.
Billy approaches the gates of the Russian ambassador’s residence. He wobbles. He waits. He turns around to see if anyone—the Washington Post, the Daily Mail, that jealous no-name twentysomething who writes a Washington gossip blog—is following him. Instead of reaching for the bottle, the drug one last time, Billy makes a deal with himself: if his friend Stan answers, he won’t do it. He won’t do it. Stan would never betray him, right? He would never have released the video—on behalf of his father, on behalf of Russia.
Accustomed to lone helicopters flying overhead, Billy hears the sound of a government chopper churning in the polluted air, catching his attention for once. He looks up, then wraps both his hands around the Russian gates in front of him. Where are the guards? Where is my buddy, Putin 2.0? Where is Stan? Billy lifts his head: a lock and chain hold the metal gates together. He turns his back, holds his hand to his forehead like he’s saluting the sun; he hears Bunny’s voice like a whispering ghost, catching him in this righteous stillness: Why are you so afraid of the dark, Billy? He is not what she says he is: She doesn’t understand me, and she never will.
An old white man approaches Billy with his chocolate Labrador puppy, all floppy paws and wobbly limbs. The white man: blue polo, yellow khakis, brown loafers, a walking Brooks Brothers mannequin. “We finally kicked those bastards out, eh? No one left to let you in, they’ve abandoned it—heel, Bailey! Heel!” The white man pulls the puppy away from Billy, who takes a few steps backward. Billy lowers his face to the ground, pulls his hoodie up over his head.
“Thank God, send all the bastards home!” The man cackles, an annoying laugh.
Billy doesn’t understand what he means by this. What the fuck is he talking about? Where did everyone go?
Billy is unsteady, his mouth dry, his head light. He tries to speak but stutters, for Billy hasn’t said a word to anyone in days. Waking up to the shame, the family name smeared, his legacy ripped from underneath him, and overwhelmed by the steps it would take to fix it, heal it, change it, bury it—to not become it. It is too much. Swallowing feels like a razor slicing through his guts, where the truth lives, day after day. He is a boy who cannot see the other side of disruption. He sees only his shadow, distorted from the bright sun and propelling clouds, shaking in the dead grass.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Meredith sits before her computer screen fingering her cigarette, gazing every so often out the window—at the tulip poplar tree which is no longer there, only its phantom. She holds her phone to her ear listening to Chuck give her online banking directions for a separate account. Sunlight hits the side of her face, forcing her to hold up her hand like a shield. For all these years, the tulip poplar blocked the rays.
“Hold on,” Meredith tells Chuck as she walks to her cherry-colored balloon curtain, kneeling on the floral love seat to tug at the cord, releasing the curtain’s fold down the window. On the shelf next to her, her mother’s white debutante gloves rest atop Sally Bedell Smith’s biographies of Queen Elizabeth, Princess Diana, the Kennedys, William S. Paley.
“Okay, what’s the log-in?” Meredith taps on the keyboard, throws on her tortoiseshell glasses to get a better look at the numbers. “Oh my God, Chuck.” She can’t believe the enormity of the number that she’s looking at. “Will this get leaked to the press?” she asks, concerned.
“The transaction of assets will be estimated, but nothing personal,” Chuck tells her.
“And the Bankses’ will? Has it been settled?”
“Most of it was for Audrey—a couple hundred grand has been liquidated for a few cousins, but it’s been dispersed, and contracts have been signed. It’s done. None of the threatened lawsuits against the Bankses’ side were credible.”
“And what about us?” Meredith asks.
“Mer, the government—local and state—didn’t have enough money and resources to prove it in court. The families don’t have a leg to stand on—it’s getting thrown out. I’m comin’ home.”
“Oh, thank God,” Meredith says, exasperated.
“Just get Bunny under control, will you? I’m wiring the five hundred grand I told you about into her trust now—with a limit on what she can take out monthly. It’s time for her to learn how to respect money,” Chuck says.
“I made her psychiatrist appointment to get her on the medication we discussed. We can talk tonight. When does your flight get in?”
“Around nine.”
“See you tonight, darling.”
Meredith has known since childhood that a seed of sin plants itself long before its money grows. That once it’s been planted, there is nothing you can do to determine where the roots will go, whether or not they will rot or flourish generation after generation. Most won’t know until the
