Young, glamorous, wealthy, well educated, fluent in several languages, beautiful, a mother, a wife, a former career woman; she set fashion trends with her hair, her simple sleeveless dresses and her little pillbox hats; she was devout, refined, self-possessed. When interviewed, she spoke intelligently about art, music, history, and literature. The press even published a list of her most recently read books.
Adele greedily turned the pages of the magazines, devouring details, willing the First Lady into existence right beside her. Sometimes, Adele spoke aloud to her; sometimes the two women communicated only through their thoughts.
“Where should we go today? What do you feel like?”
Often, they strolled together, barefoot, on a New England beach, clad alike in pedal-pushers and loose, long-sleeved cotton shirts. Adele’s stout limbs grew long and tapered beneath these clothes; her large bust shrank, her plump upper arms became slim. She listened to the surf crashing at their feet and filled her lungs with salted air, thinking that it was good to get away to this type of life once in a while, to experience a bit of it, at least.
Other times, she and the first lady stood poised together at a reception in the White House, elegantly attired in white designer gowns and elbow-length gloves. Adele wandered through the crowd, recognizing faces of presidential aides, television journalists, and Hollywood stars, enjoying her anonymity, her privileged position as the mysterious family friend who had not been explained to anyone. The puzzled whispers about her identity thrilled her; she wandered the room gorged on her own importance.
One magazine photo showed the First Lady poised for an interview in a fireside wingback chair in one of the elegant sitting rooms of the White House. Honey-coloured sunlight poured into the room through tall windows, spilling over antique American furniture and thick, hand-wrought carpets. She told the American people the story of their own heritage, the details of the carpets and the cherrywood tables and the scenes in the paintings adorning the White House walls. On another page, the cameras even roved over the dark wood furniture of Abraham Lincoln’s bedroom. Adele hovered behind the cameras and the interviewer’s chair, a notebook and pencil in hand, pacing, listening to the interviewer’s questions, ready to prompt her friend with details about White House treasures.
Sometimes, the two women met earlier. Adele witnessed the beautiful young debutante floating down the staircase of her parents’ mansion for her coming-out party; at her private girls’ school the future first lady wore a simple strand of pearls and a pageboy haircut for the yearbook photo. Still another picture took Adele someplace unfamiliar, where she watched the President’s future wife, now wearing short-cropped, wind-blown hair, clinging to the rigging of her then senator-fiancé’s sailboat; and of course, again and again, Adele attended the wedding.
The bride wore her grandmother’s train-length rose point veil, which the wind picked up and tossed into the air behind her, like a mist. The groom wore a morning suit. The two stood on grass, on a sprawling mansion lawn with a simple, split-rail fence in the background. The wind had momentarily pushed the thick hair of the president-to-be down onto his forehead.
Adele was not the maid of honour, she was not a bridesmaid, she was not even a member of the wedding party. None of the family members knew her or even seemed to notice her. She slipped through the crowd like a ghost, finding a spot to stand where her friend’s eyes could find her. When the photographer called for someone to spread the bride’s train out across the grass, a flock of bridesmaids knelt down around the dress and pulled the yards of satin into a wide white fan over the grass. Someone tugged too heartily on the dress, momentarily tipping the bride backwards. The groom reached out and steadied her by the elbow. The bride looked directly, meaningfully at her ghost-friend in the crowd—if she had spread the train, it would never have happened.
An hour after learning of Linda Thompson’s pregnancy, Adele finished the dishes, made a pot of tea, and went into the dining room earlier than usual. She set a place with a teacup and saucer for herself and then brought the pictures out of the buffet drawers and laid them out in their usual semicircle on the mahogany table. She found that she liked a picture of the First Lady standing in the White House dining room above all others at that moment, and so she drew back her own chair, picked up her teacup, sat back, and slipped herself effortlessly into the room.
“I saw your little girl this morning. She’s the sweetest little thing, isn’t she? All those angelic blonde curls. You’re so lucky. It’s such a tragedy, the kind of trouble that young girls can get themselves into these days, isn’t it?”
The light from the elegant White House dining room window poured onto Adele’s dining room table and carpet, enveloping both women. Adele offered cream for their tea, eagerly telling her news, pausing to listen intently to the quiet, mellifluous voice of her companion.
There she sat, statue-still, all afternoon, gazing into the centre of a magazine picture, her eyes bright with emotion, her cheeks flushed pink with excitement. Every so often she would stir, her head would lean to one side, a smile would cross her face, and she would speak into the empty air before her.
At three-thirty that afternoon, the mail slot in the front door clinked sharply; paper hit the hall floor with a soft whoosh, and the President’s wife, her teacup, and her carpets faded away instantly. Adele blinked to alertness and found that her tea had gone cold.
Rising from her seat, she wandered into the front hall, where she found a small white envelope, like one of those bearing invitations, along with some advertising flyers and the phone bill. The envelope was addressed to Cathy. It bore no return address but had a local postmark. Adele stared at it, trying to recognize the childlike printing. To her knowledge, Cathy hadn’t received any mail before, except for the odd birthday card from a school friend. But her birthday was months away.
The contents of the envelope felt stiff between Adele’s fingers. Piqued, she inserted her chubby index finger under the sealed flap and worked it along, rupturing the top crease of the envelope. Inside lay a three-and-a-half-by-five-inch index card with a printed message:
Dear Cathy:
A very precious gift I send to you
One very old, very special Indian head nickel
To bring you good luck always,
Your Secret Admirer
Taped to the bottom left-hand corner was an American Indian head nickel. Adele’s eyes flickered suspiciously over the message, settling on the words “Your Secret Admirer.”
That little Thompson tart had obviously had a secret admirer. And what had Louise De Finca said just yesterday? Bloated with sanctimony, the alto voice of the Italian neighbour from three doors down now rose in Adele’s mind.
Now this might not be what you want for your girl, of course...
Just a day ago, at the shopping plaza, Louise had said something like that, in reference to raising teenage daughters. At the time, the remark had seemed vaguely insulting, but Adele had let it pass because she wasn’t really sure what it referred to. Now she narrowed her eyes at the memory of it.
Louise De Finca’s husband, Angelo, owned a butcher shop on the far side of town. They had four daughters, one of whom was the same age as Cathy. Adele wondered if Louise had known something else the other day, some item of gossip—about Cathy and a boy—brought home from school by her daughter Sandra.
Maybe Louise had been mocking her, having a little bit of private fun. Enraged, Adele stuffed the index card back into its envelope, dropped it on the front hall table, and churned down the hall to the bathroom on her fat legs. She grabbed the can of cleanser from the edge of the sink, knelt down beside the tub, and began shaking green powder up and down its length, talking in a loud voice.
“As if I don’t know what my own daughter is up to. Do you think I don’t know what my own daughter