Winter Solstice Read online

Page 15


  “It’s Harrison, Harrison Fellowes here, calling from Palo Alto. And I have PJ with me. We just called to say hello and to see how you’re doing.”

  Harrison Fellowes? Palo Alto? PJ? Ava knows she has the ability to put this together… she just needs a minute… and then she thinks, Oh! Harrison! Trish’s boyfriend! And PJ! PJ, the total nightmare child! But wait… why are they calling her? Why are they FaceTiming her? Ava peers at the picture on her screen. Yes, it’s Harrison, and there’s a squirming presence next to him.

  “PJ?” Ava says cautiously. “Hi, it’s Ava.”

  She waits.

  Suddenly there is PJ’s face. Possibly it’s the novelty of FaceTime that lures him in. After all, how strange is it to be able to see someone who is three thousand miles away?

  “Hi,” he says.

  “Hi, Ava,” Harrison prompts.

  “Hi, Ava,” PJ says.

  Ava feels tears welling. She can’t… this is so…unexpected, so… bizarre, really. This must be why Harrison asked for her cell number. He wanted to facilitate this impromptu meeting. It’s ingenious. Ingenious and very, very kind.

  “Hi, PJ, how are you?” Ava has to come up with something else to ask. “What’s new in the world of Minecraft?”

  “Something exciting happened,” PJ says.

  “Oh yeah?” Ava says. “What?”

  “I finished building my roller coaster,” PJ says.

  “Well, all right!” Ava says. “I love roller coasters!” She can’t believe this is happening. PJ is talking to her of his own volition. Maybe Harrison has offered up a wonderful bribe, but Ava doesn’t care.

  At that moment Harrison holds up the camera so that they’re both visible. Ava hungrily scans the background: They’re at home, or in a homey atmosphere. In a den or a library. There are shelves of books behind Harrison and PJ’s heads—and a trophy. Maybe one of Trish’s sailing trophies or a trophy given to Shakespeare scholars. Or a Minecraft trophy. “We called to say hello to you, our friend Ava, and also to invite you and Potter to Palo Alto for Thanksgiving. Trish and I are hosting this year. It’ll just be us, PJ, and a few fellow academics, so it’s sure to be a horrifically boring time, but we’d love it if you would join us. And yes, I do know it’s short notice and airfare will be frightfully expensive, but I know that PJ, in particular, would like to see you and his dad. Isn’t that right, PJ?”

  “Yes,” PJ says. He sounds sincere.

  “Oh,” Ava says. She personally can’t go to Palo Alto. She must go to Nantucket to be with her family, her father. Potter was planning on coming with her, but Ava decides right then and there that he doesn’t have to. Not only does he not have to, he shouldn’t. He should go to Palo Alto and spend Thanksgiving with his son.

  Ava says, “Harrison and PJ, I ask for your understanding when I tell you that I have family obligations elsewhere. So although I really appreciate the offer, I can’t come. But I can assure you that Potter will come to Palo Alto. Okay?”

  “Yes,” Harrison says. “That would be wonderful, although we’ll miss our friend Ava. Won’t we, PJ?”

  There’s only a split second’s pause. “Yes,” PJ says.

  “Well, we’ll call Potter and confirm that he’s free,” Harrison says.

  “Yes, do that. He’s finished teaching at seven,” Ava says.

  “Ah, well, I teach at four, so I’ll try him tomorrow,” Harrison says. “If you see him before I speak to him, feel free to pass on the invite.”

  “I’ll do just that,” Ava says. “Thank you for calling. I mean… thank you.”

  Harrison smiles. He’s such a hero! She can’t believe he orchestrated this!

  “The pleasure was ours,” Harrison says. “Bye-bye, Ava.”

  “Bye-bye, Ava,” PJ says.

  The screen goes blank.

  Ava can’t wait for seven, when Potter is finished teaching his class. He is going to flip when he hears that Ava was invited to Thanksgiving in Palo Alto.

  Or is he? Ava wonders. He may be angry that Harrison, of all people, reached out. Ava never told Potter that she and Harrison had a conversation in the lobby that afternoon, and she certainly didn’t tell him that she gave Harrison her cell. Potter’s obvious first question is going to be How did Harrison get your number?

  Ava’s elation subsides, then morphs into worry. She needs to think about how to handle this.

  When Potter calls after class, he sounds weary. Ava forgot that it’s midterms, so he has papers to grade for two classes and an exam to administer to a third. He says, “This is why I want you to move in with me. So you’re here when I get home.”

  Ava smiles. She loves that he wants more of her. “You’ll be fine. You need some sleep.”

  “I won’t be able to see you until Friday. I’m coming there for dinner?”

  “Yes,” Ava says. “No! Wait! I forgot Friday is my mother’s last broadcast. We’re going to the studio. There’s going to be champagne in the greenroom after the news, then Drake is taking us to dinner at Upland. Not just us, but Lee Kramer, who heads the studio, and his wife, Ginny, who is the editor of Vogue, and Darcy, my mother’s former assistant, who is flying in from Atlanta. And Roger, her wardrobe guy, and a few of the producers, and Raoul, my mother’s driver, and his wife. There will be twenty of us, I think.”

  “Just tell me when and what to wear,” Potter says. “Vogue sounds intimidating.”

  “You’re not intimidated by anyone,” Ava says—except, of course, his own son. Around other adults, however, he shines. She can introduce him to anyone—lowbrow or highbrow—and he always fits in. She brought him to Margaret and Drake’s wedding, where he knew no one but Ava and Margaret, and he did so well that now he is basically part of the family.

  Family reminds Ava of the FaceTime call from Harrison and PJ. Clearly Harrison hasn’t reached out yet; Potter would have mentioned it. Should Ava tell him? She decides to follow her gut and think about it overnight. She’ll tell Potter tomorrow if he doesn’t mention it first.

  The next day Ava gets a call from Bart saying he wants to use his Acela tickets and come to New York for the weekend. With Allegra Pancik!

  “Wow!” Ava says. “So are you two a thing, then?”

  “Yes, we are a thing,” Bart says. “I took her out to dinner last Friday night, and I’ve seen her every day since then, and I want to surprise her with a weekend in New York. I didn’t tell her where we’re going, but I asked her to take off of work.”

  “Okay!” Ava says. She hasn’t heard Bart sound this animated since last Christmas, when he was still high on his newfound freedom. She’s happy for him, but the protective big sister in her wants to advise him not to move too fast or get too serious too quickly. Girls Allegra’s age can be flighty, shallow, and opportunistic. Allegra is very pretty and, if Ava remembers correctly, she has a wild streak; she’s the polar opposite of her serious, quiet sister. “Do you two want to stay at Drake’s apartment? Because if so, I can set that up.”

  “I don’t want to seem like I’m showing off,” Bart says. “I want to get a hotel room. Something nice, too. I have my checks from the government saved up. Do you have any recommendations?”

  “Let me research it for you,” Ava says. “And you and Allegra should plan on coming to Margaret’s last broadcast on Friday night. Dinner after—Drake is paying, so you can save at least part of your government checks. It’s a group of people. I’ll add you and Allegra to the list.”

  “That would be beyond amazing,” Bart says. “Thanks, sis.”

  Ava finds Bart a room at the Warwick New York on Fifty-Fourth and Sixth for a very reasonable rate, and she adds Allegra and Bart to Drake’s guest list. She is busy with all the details, and so she doesn’t have time to talk to Potter about the FaceTime call with Harrison and PJ, and Potter doesn’t mention it so Harrison must not have called yet. But Thanksgiving is only two weeks away, and Potter will need to book a flight. She worries that Harrison has reconsidered the invite, or that perhaps
she misunderstood and she was supposed to be the one to pass the invite along.

  She’ll broach the topic over the weekend, she decides. After things have calmed down.

  Margaret’s final broadcast is a big deal, despite Margaret’s wish that it not be made a big deal. A story runs at the bottom of the front page of the Times on Friday, and Margaret’s photo is splashed across the front of the New York Post with the headline ANCHORS AWAY. There’s also a piece in Time magazine and a spread of Margaret’s best outfits in Women’s Wear Daily.

  Margaret’s only nod to the occasion is that she has chosen, for the first time ever, to wear black on the air. She looks beautiful and Ava tells her so.

  Margaret says, “Will your father be watching, do you think?”

  “He wouldn’t miss it,” Ava says. “You know that.” Mitzi might space that it’s Margaret’s last broadcast—or to her it might fall into the category of inconsequential—but Kevin and Isabelle will be there to remind her.

  Ava gets choked up from the instant Margaret signs off. There’s a compilation of Margaret’s most memorable moments over the years.

  Margaret in a biker jacket, T-shirt, and jeans doing a 60 Minutes segment on Sturgis.

  Margaret in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, her hair plastered to her head from the rain.

  Margaret surrounded by American servicemen in Fallujah.

  Margaret in Paris after the shooting at Charlie Hebdo, in Rome when Pope Francis was elected, in London after the subway bombing, in Washington during Obama’s first inauguration.

  Margaret with tears streaming down her face as she embraces one of the mothers of the Sandy Hook Elementary victims.

  Margaret with Melania Trump at Mar-a-Lago, years before Melania was the First Lady.

  Margaret with Queen Elizabeth, the Dalai Lama, George Clooney, Beyoncé, Hillary Clinton, Muhammad Ali, Ralph Lauren, Jennifer Aniston, Bruce Springsteen, LeBron James, Stephen King.

  Margaret at Ground Zero, standing in front of the wreckage of One World Trade Center, holding an American flag, wearing an I Love NY T-shirt over her dress.

  There is champagne in the greenroom once Margaret is finished, and the mood is joyous. Margaret herself seems ecstatic.

  She says, “I may just let myself get drunk tonight.”

  Ava drinks three glasses of Dom Pérignon on an empty stomach, after which she feels very light-headed. Drake instructs everyone to take taxis down to Upland, which is on Park Avenue South. They have a private room, he says.

  The network has surprised Margaret with a white stretch limousine. Raoul, Margaret’s driver, is also enjoying his first day of retirement, and so there’s another chauffeur and plenty of room in the limo for Margaret and Drake, Ava and Potter, and Bart and Allegra.

  When Margaret sees the limo, she balks for an instant. Then she grins. “You know who I never got to interview? Liberace.”

  There’s more champagne in the limo. Ava accepts a glass from Drake—it’s Cristal—and Allegra says, “I feel like I’m in a rap video.”

  “You know who else I never interviewed?” Margaret says. “Snoop Dogg. Of course, he belongs to Martha now.”

  The party atmosphere continues at the restaurant, Upland, one of Drake’s new finds. There are jars and jars filled with Meyer lemons suspended in liquid, and Ava becomes mesmerized by all those lemons—fifteen or twenty lemons per jar, and shelves and shelves of jars, two whole walls of shelves. Thousands of lemons sacrificed themselves for the decor of this restaurant, Ava thinks, and she may have said this out loud, because Potter says, “We’d better get you something to eat.”

  In the private room there are high-top tables, a full bar, and long tables of food: kale Caesar, artisan pizzas, platters of pasta with exotic sauces.

  “I’ll have more champagne,” Ava says.

  People make toasts: Lee Kramer from CBS; Darcy, Margaret’s former assistant; and Drake. Ava can’t remember what anyone says, but she cries quietly through each toast. Her mother is such a phenomenal person. She has achieved so much. She is an idol, an inspiration, a national treasure.

  Ava is too drunk to make a toast. She will come across as a weepy, sentimental mess.

  But then Ava gets an idea. She speaks to the bartender, who calls in one of the restaurant’s managers, and Ava makes her request. Turns out, they can accommodate her halfway. They have a cordless microphone and a small amp, but no piano. As they set up the microphone, Ava double-checks the lyrics on her phone.

  Potter sweeps Ava’s hair aside and kisses her neck. “What are you doing?”

  “Oh, nothing,” Ava says. She chimes a spoon against a glass, and the room draws silent. Ava is a little nervous about singing without accompaniment, but then she reminds herself that, just as being the most intelligent, gracious, poised, and articulate woman on the planet is Margaret’s gift, music is Ava’s gift. She can sing drunk or sober, with a piano or without.

  This song has long been one of Margaret’s favorites, even when it wasn’t popular to admit it.

  Ava doesn’t bother with an introduction; she simply starts singing, her voice pure and true.

  “Thanks for the times that you’ve given me,

  The memories are all in my mind.”

  It’s the Commodores, “Three Times a Lady,” and by the time Ava finishes, everyone in the room is either singing along or crying. Some are doing both. Even the bartender.

  When Ava and Potter finally leave the party—it is well past one in the morning—Margaret hugs them each good-bye.

  To Ava she says, “Sweetheart, that was a beautiful tribute. I didn’t deserve it, but I will never pass up the chance to hear you sing.”

  To Potter she says, “I hope we see you next weekend, but if not, we’ll see you on Nantucket at Thanksgiving.”

  Ava opens her mouth, but no sound comes out.

  When she and Potter climb into the back of the taxi, Ava says, “I have something to tell you about.” She is so drunk she has no idea if this sentence makes any sense. She should wait and tell Potter tomorrow. But she’s too drunk to keep her mouth shut. She has leaped off the proverbial cliff; there’s no way to unleap.

  “What is it?” Potter says.

  “Thanksgiving,” Ava says. “We’ve been invited to California.”

  “What?” Potter says. “Invited to California? By whom?”

  “By Harrison and Trish,” Ava says. “Oh, and by PJ.”

  “What?” Potter says.

  Ava starts laughing. She’s not laughing because anything is funny. She’s laughing because she has already messed this up. She went at it backward. How is she supposed to explain things in reverse?

  “I can’t go,” Ava says. “I have to be on Nantucket with my father. But you…” Here she attempts a playful punch to Potter’s arm. “You should go. You need to go.”

  “To California,” Potter says.

  “We were invited,” Ava says. “By Harrison and PJ. And by Trish, too, although that was more…implied, I guess you’d say.” Is that right? Ava wonders. She occasionally mixes up imply and infer.

  “I think you’ve had a little too much to—”

  “No!” Ava interrupts him. “I mean, yes. I have had too much to drink, most definitely, but this is real. This is really real. On Tuesday afternoon Harrison and PJ FaceTimed me…”

  “What?” Potter says.

  She can’t be derailed. “… and they invited us to California for Thanksgiving. I told them I can’t go because my father is dying, but I told them you’d be there. I promised you’d be there. Harrison was supposed to call you himself. He was going to call on Tuesday night, but you were teaching and then he had to teach at four. I thought he said he was going to call you, but now I think maybe I was supposed to pass the invite along.”

  “How did Harrison or PJ get your number?” Potter asks.

  “Did you hear me? I promised them you’d be there. So tomorrow morning we need to book you some flights.”

  “Ava,” Po
tter says.

  “I gave my number to Harrison,” Ava says. “He asked me for my number when he and Trish showed up that day and Harrison and I went down to the lobby with PJ.”

  Potter doesn’t respond. He’s no longer looking at Ava; instead he’s looking out the taxi’s window at the blocks of Park Avenue South rushing past. Grand Central looms in front of them.

  “Harrison said he had an idea, something that might help things with PJ. I wasn’t even sure what he was talking about, but now I know he planned on FaceTiming me with PJ and pretending like Harrison and I were friends so that PJ would feel less threatened.”

  “I can’t believe this,” Potter says. “You gave Harrison your number. Because stealing my wife wasn’t enough. Now he wants to steal away my girlfriend. Who, I would like to point out, is far more precious to me than said wife ever was.”

  Revisionist history, Ava thinks. Even so, she feels a surge of joy at the declaration.

  “It wasn’t like that,” Ava says. “Harrison felt sorry for me because PJ was being so difficult.” Ava pauses. Potter can’t deny that his son was difficult. “And his plan worked. When they called me, PJ talked to me. He said hello and good-bye, and he told me he built a roller coaster on Minecraft. He talked to me, Potter. Harrison got him to talk to me.”

  “Harrison,” Potter says, “was overstepping his bounds. This is none of Harrison’s business. What is he doing other than confusing my child? You’re Harrison’s friend and that’s okay. You’re my friend and that’s not okay? Do you see how warped this is?”

  Ava has a hard time coming up with a rebuttal that won’t insult Potter. What she wants to say is that PJ trusts Harrison; whether Potter likes it or not, Harrison has influence. Harrison’s endorsement matters and Ava needs it.

  Instead what she says is, “I grew up with divorced parents. You’ve only known Kelley and Mitzi and Margaret and Drake since they’ve been best friends. It wasn’t always that way. There were lots of years when Mitzi hated my mother, and do you know who those years were the hardest on? Me and Paddy and Kevin. It’s hardest on the kids, who have to split allegiances, who overhear one parent they love and trust talking badly about another parent they love and trust. Kids feel the animosity, they sense the competition, envy, and judgment. I don’t think that divorce necessarily ruins a childhood, but a bitter divorce can. We are the adults, Potter. We can choose to be agreeable. Now, I’m not saying we will ever be best friends with Trish and Harrison…”