“Were you able to see Andrew and the kids?” Ramon asked.
Ramon knew how close Alex was to his younger brother, Andrew, who was a corporate lawyer in D.C. “I checked into the Ritz yesterday,” Alex said, “but ended up staying the night at his house. Johnny is a bit confused and thinks Uncle Alex is about to become president, but I will say they were happy to see me.”
Andrew’s son, Johnny, was in the first grade and was just aware enough of government positions to confuse a lower-court judicial appointment with being elected President. His twin sisters were only three, and still thought of Uncle Alex as the man who taught them how to sing “The Itsy Bitsy Spider.” To this day, they placed their fingertips together to act out the song the second they laid eyes on him.
“Johnny may have a crystal ball,” Ramon said. “It wouldn’t surprise me at all if you ended up President someday.”
As they made their way up the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and across the Triborough Bridge, Alex reviewed the paperwork he had been given by the Senate Judiciary Committee to complete for his confirmation hearings. The day had been a whirlwind of activity he never could have dreamed of, ending with a meeting in the Oval Office with the President himself and the other judicial nominees. Alex only wished his parents had lived to see it happen. The President had welcomed them all collectively with a joke: “You may come to regret this honor once you see the hoops you’ll be jumping through.”
He hadn’t been kidding. The questions in these documents would take him days to answer, touching on everything from his roommates in college to his thoughts on the most influential Supreme Court decisions in United States history.
He had read all the questions twice when he flipped back to the second page in the packet. The information requested here was relatively straightforward biographical information, but one section gave Alex pause. At the top of the page, he was asked to list contact information for anyone with whom he currently lived. After that, he was asked to identify spouses, ex-spouses, children, parents, and siblings.
None of this would be difficult for Alex. He was a bachelor who lost his parents at a young age. He had one live-in employee, Ramon, and an adult brother with his own family.
But the third question on the page was a catch-all: “Please provide biographical information for any individuals who serve a role similar or comparable to those listed in parts (a) and (b), above, regardless of legal affiliation or formal definitions of family (such as intimate partners, part-time roommates, financial dependents [whether or not adopted], etc.).”
I can only wish that I could write, “Wife: Laurie Moran Buckley, Stepson: Timothy Moran.” Even thinking it was painful. Once again he asked himself if he lost Laurie by pressing her for a firm commitment before she was ready.
This is my fault, he thought. I told Laurie I would wait as long as necessary, and then I pushed her away, forcing her to experience a “freedom” from me that she never asked for.
He tucked the papers back into his briefcase, praying that something would change before he had to submit his answers.
24
It had been a long day. Anna Wakeling took a deep breath as she opened the door to her Park Avenue apartment.
From inside she could hear the voices of her two children, seven-year-old Robbie and five-year-old Vanessa, coming from the living room. The aroma of a baking chicken made her realize she had skipped lunch in the office. Thank God for Kara, she thought. She’s a marvelous cook.
In the living room Vanessa and Robbie were playing word games with their longtime nanny, Marie. Both jumped up when they saw her and enveloped her in hugs.
One boy, two years older than the one girl, just like Carter and me, she thought. But her children’s lives had been nothing like her own childhood. In the beginning Carter and I attended public schools in Queens, she thought. I could count on one hand the number of times our mother had relied on a babysitter. Robbie and Vanessa, in contrast, had a nanny, and next year Vanessa would be joining Robbie at one of the most elite private day schools on the Upper East Side.
In the beginning Dad treated us differently, Anna thought, taking Carter to building sites, showing him architectural drawings of new projects. But I was smarter. I wanted to learn everything Dad was talking about. I begged him to let me tag along. It wasn’t long before he realized I had it all over Carter.
Unlike her parents, Anna tried so hard to treat her children equally, not like “the boy” and “the girl,” the way she and Carter had been so frequently stereotyped. She never wanted Robbie to feel entitled because he was a boy, and she never wanted Vanessa to feel limited because she was a girl.
25
From the doorway Kara announced, “Dinner will be ready in fifteen minutes, Mrs. Browning.”
Anna kissed the top of the heads of her children. “Okay, guys, let me get into some comfortable clothes. I’ll be right back,” she promised. She made it upstairs to her dressing room to change into jeans and a sweater and pulled her long hair into a loose ponytail at the nape of her neck.
Peter had spent the late afternoon in his home office. She stopped there to tell him she was home. He stood up and gave her a quick kiss. “I like you in jeans,” he said approvingly.
“It feels good to be in them, but Peter, I’m worried. Do you think we made the right decision today? I mean, to get involved with that program?”
“I don’t think we had any choice,” Peter said, his voice troubled. “If we don’t give our side of the story, Ivan could make up anything he wanted, and we’d be left having to respond after the show aired. At least this way, we’ll have a chance to shoot down what he says during the actual production.”
Anna nodded. They’d run through the same calculation this morning after their meeting with the producer and her assistants. “What if my mother really was planning to cut us out of the will?”
“As her executor, wouldn’t she have told me that?” Peter asked. “After all, she went over the terms of her will with me after your father died.”
Peter had refused to discuss his mother-in-law’s plans for her will with the police, citing client confidentiality. He had taken the same approach with the television producers this morning. But he and Anna had no secrets from each other. “If Virginia had been planning to change her will, she hadn’t even mentioned it to me. On the other hand,” he said, “she did assure me that if she ever decided to marry Ivan, she would have him sign a prenuptial agreement.”
“But did she ever say anything about leaving money to charity?”
Peter took her hands in his. “Why are you so worried about this, sweetheart?”