“Not seriously.”
“Paige,” Franklin explained, “is spending some time here at the Spectator after school to earn extra credits toward her grade in English.”
Paige rolled her eyes. “He makes it sound like I volunteered or something,” she said to Anne. “It was do it or die. When my grades in honors English tanked, the Dragon spoke and the parents agreed, of course. I swear people in prison have more choices than I do.”
“The Dragon,” Anne repeated. “That would be your…teacher?”
“No, it would be my grandmother. My teacher is actually okay. Almost.”
“Isn’t honors English a class for students with exceptional talent?” Anne asked.
“I wouldn’t know since I don’t have exceptional talent,” Paige replied dismissively. “Which I tried to tell everyone, but when have they ever listened to me? When has anybody ever listened to me? It’s like I’m expected to turn into Maureen Dowd or Ann Coulter or somebody.”
“Are you into politics?” Anne asked, trying not to smile at mention of the famous female pundits. It was remarkable that Paige even knew their names.
“God, no! One person in the family with politics on the brain is already one too many.” She huffed out a disgusted sound. “That’s all my dad ever wants to talk about and it’s so, like, boring.”
“You know, it occurs to me that Paige’s current project makes her the logical person to give you a tour of the archives,” Franklin said. “She’s organizing a shipment of records that came to me from the estate of a professor at Vanderbilt. Paige,” he turned to the teenager, “would you show Anne around down there while I try and finish this editorial?”
“I guess so.” Paige wasn’t exactly gracious, but she didn’t refuse. As Anne followed her down the hall, she wondered why Paige chose to dress as if auditioning for a role in a horror movie. What she’d read about kids who were into Goth was that they were, for the most part, troubled teens. Certainly, Paige’s bizarre dress, grades that had tanked and open hostility to authority were danger signs. As much as she longed for motherhood, Anne wasn’t blind to the challenges of raising kids.
“How is your mom, Paige?”
“Claire?” A shrug and an exaggerated look at her wristwatch. “Hmmm, probably on her way home from Memphis about now. She goes there at least three times a week. She’s a shopaholic. But when I want something really, like, cool to wear, she flips out. Like my taste in clothes just sucks and her taste is perfect.”
Claire was very attractive and dressed beautifully. Although Anne didn’t know her sister-in-law well, Anne guessed that Paige’s bizarre appearance probably drove her crazy. She wondered, too, what effect it had on voters that Pearce’s teenage daughter seemed a bit out of the mainstream compared to other kids.
“Fashion tastes can be a generational thing,” Anne suggested, seeking a reply that wouldn’t set them at odds at the outset. “I remember trying to convince my mom to let me have a tattoo when I was about fifteen. I just couldn’t understand why she refused to let me do it. It was going to be a butterfly…” With a smile, Anne lifted her hair and pointed. “…right here. Now I’m truly grateful that she put her foot down. Wouldn’t it look ridiculous when I’m all dressed up for a formal event and there’s an insect on my neck?”
“I think it would be way cool.” Paige lifted her clingy little T-shirt beneath the heavy black coat and bared her tummy. Curling around her navel, which had a silver ring in it, was a snake.
“Oops.” Anne covered her mouth to hide her dismay. “Guess your mom didn’t put her foot down fast enough, huh?”
Paige gave another disgusted huff. “I don’t know why Claire is so paranoid about my behavior considering what a real hellion she was at fourteen.”
Anne wondered if Claire knew Paige referred to her by her first name. “How many tattoos does she have?”
“None. And if she had done it, my dad would have forced her to remove it. He doesn’t want any of us to have an original thought or do anything without consulting him.”
“Let me guess. He takes exception to…ah, the way you dress?”
“It drives him wild. But at least I have the guts to do stuff out in the open, which Claire could never get up the gumption to do.”
“For example…” Anne held her breath, not having a clue what the girl would say next.
“Well, she objects to me smoking a few cigarettes,” Paige continued, “while she goes through a pack a day.”
Bad grades, smoking, tattoos, body piercing and what else, Anne wondered, feeling sympathy for “the parents.” “Maybe she’s trying to help you avoid making the mistakes she made.”
“And maybe when she quits, I might listen. And how about Dad throwing away those smelly cigars? No way, Jose. Anything he does is fine.” Paige threw open a door revealing steep stairs. “The archives and stuff are down here,” she said, taking the stairs with surprising grace in her clunky boots. “Over there on those shelves is the stuff I’m working on that came from that old professor who croaked. Good luck trying to figure out the rest of what’s in here.”
Along with the archival material boxed and stacked to the ceiling, pictures of significant happenings in Tallulah lined the walls of the long and narrow room. The light was bad, air circulation poor and the dust thick enough to clog the sinuses. Anne didn’t wonder that Paige was grumpy if she spent much time alone down here.
Studying the wall of pictures, she instantly recognized a photo of John Whitaker posing with a past governor. This was definitely the place to fill in the gaps about Buck’s family before interviewing Pearce.
Paige looked around, wrinkling her nose. “Pretty bad, isn’t it?”
“I would say that we have our work cut out for us,” Anne said. “We’ll just think of it as a treasure hunt.”
“Huh?”
“Going by these photographs, there’s probably oodles of stuff about your dad’s family here…and since I married into it, I’m pretty curious, too.”
Paige looked around as if viewing the place from a different perspective. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.” Anne looked at her, expecting a question about the archives.
“What’s it like being married to somebody like Uncle Buck? I mean, besides being famous and the Jacks star pitcher, he’s like, really hot. Isn’t it exciting just being his wife and getting to be with him every single day?”
Anne smiled. “Sounds like you see that as a wonderful life.”
“Well, sure. At school, all the boys want to be like Uncle Buck. They want to know all about him. I get a lot of that because I’m his niece.” She made a face. “I know it’s not about me.”
“But you do like baseball?”
“Sure, don’t you?”
“I’ll tell you a secret. Just because I’m married to a man who plays baseball doesn’t mean that I have to love the game, too.”
“But you go to the games. I see you on TV when they show special people in the stands, wives and all.”
“I go because Buck’s fans expect to see his wife at the games. And besides, I’ve learned to appreciate many aspects of baseball. But when I met Buck, it was a different story. I was a reporter and I knew next to nothing about sports. I wrote human interest pieces for the features section of the paper.”
“Then how did you ever meet him?”
“I was assigned to cover a Special Olympics event and Buck