Page 97 of 28 Summers
Later that day, Ursula’s mother, Lynette, calls. Whereas Bess and Jake were both visibly upset about the idea of Ursula running for president, Lynette is elated. “You know your father predicted this when you were seven years old, glued to the Watergate trial. You knew what impeachment was before you knew how to ride a bicycle. I told the girls over lunch at the University Club today and they’re all going to vote for you.”
Great,Ursula thinks.That’s five people.
“I didn’t announce that I was running for president,” Ursula says to her mother, the same thing she said to Bess, to Jake. “I said I wouldn’t rule it out. And I promise that when I do announce, you will not find out fromVoguemagazine. We will have discussed it thoroughly first.”
Jake and Bess had seemed skeptical about this answer; Lynette, disappointed.
Ursula readsLeland’s Letternow because she’s grateful—the overwhelming response to the Dirty Dozen column flipped a switch and Ursula has become intriguing (and maybe even inspiring) to people outside the Beltway—but also because Ursula enjoys it.Leland’s Letteris smart. There are articles about sex and relationships, books, art, music, sports, movies and TV, food and wine, travel. It’s one-stop shopping aimed at American women who want to read about more than just fashion, beauty, and home decorating. Ursula reads a terrific interview with the eighty-year-old poet Mary Oliver; she reads about the French entrepreneurs who rehabilitated the reputation of rosé; she reads about Berthe Morisot’s place among the other (all-male) Impressionist painters in 1890s Paris.
Every single article is fascinating, exhaustively researched, and brilliantly written. Frankly, Ursula enjoysLeland’s Lettermore than theWashington Postand theTimesput together.
Ursula spends the first two weeks of August in South Haven, Michigan, visiting her mother. Lynette de Gournsey sold the big house in South Bend and bought a condo on St. Joe’s River and this beautiful vacation home on Lake Michigan. Ursula is sitting in an Adirondack chair on her mother’s expansive, shady lawn on a bluff overlooking the lake as she opensLeland’s Letteron her laptop. Jake has taken Bess to the Golden Brown bakery for “breakfast” (meaning cookies) and her mother has a “committee meeting” (meaning mimosas with her best friends, Sue and Melissa). The lead article inLeland’s Letterthis week is titled “Same Time Next Year: Can It Save Modern Marriage?”
Ursula clicks on it eagerly. She would love to know how to save modern marriage. If marriage is an “ebb and flow,” then she and Jake are in a long ebb, or possibly a permanent, stagnant swamp. This article was written by Leland Gladstone herself. Leland curates and edits the blog, but she doesn’t do any writing herself. Except, now, this.
…late-night conversation with an intimate friend revealed a shocking secret…this friend, let’s call her “Violet,” has been conducting a clandestine relationship over the course of twodecades that she calls her “Same Time Next Year.” She and her lover meet for one long weekend each year, then they part and do not communicate—no calls, no texts, no e-mails—until the following year rolls around.
At first, I was scandalized. (“Violet” is single, but her lover is very, very married.) However, the more I ruminated upon her confession, the more I think it sounds kind of…heavenly.
Itdoessound heavenly, Ursula thinks. She could only too easily see conducting such an affair with Anders, were he still alive. He might have married AJ, and Ursula would still be with Jake, but she would meet Anders in Las Vegas every spring and they would go to that bar that they went to during the Umbrecht Tool and Die case and sing karaoke. They’d have dinner at the Golden Steer and go dancing at Hyde as they had that one memorable night, then they’d make love in a suite overlooking the Bellagio fountains.
If Anders were still alive and Ursula could pull this off, she would come back to Jake and Bess feeling so…refreshed, so energized, so grateful.
This, too, is a point Leland explores in the article. Is monogamy in long marriages an unrealistic expectation? So many people fail at marriage. What if it’s not the participants but the rules that are to blame? Is it possible that a short, tidy affair like the one “Violet” enjoys is the answer? Violet and her lover meet at the beach somewhere. They sail; they take walks and collect sand dollars; they watch movies; they eat Chinese food and read each other the fortunes from their fortune cookies.
Ursula pulls back like she’s been stung. Reads that again.
Sand dollars? Fortune-cookie fortunes?
Leland’s intimate friend. “Violet” is a made-up name.
Ursula sets down her iPad. She feels like she’s going to vomit. But wait, wait. This is a classic case of Ursula getting ahead of herself—and hasn’t her newly hired life coach, Jeannie, provided Ursula with strategies for coping, and isn’t one strategy with stressful situations to take things slowly and methodically rather than running around like her hair is on fire?
Sand dollars. Fortune-cookie fortunes.
Years and years ago, after Jake left PharmX and contracted that staph infection, Ursula had been hunting through his desk looking for his COBRA information so she could pay the bill for his hospital stay, and she had come across an interoffice envelope that just looked…strange. When she felt it, it was bumpy. She had opened it and found three sand dollars and a handful of fortune-cookie fortunes. Those two things. Only those two things.
Coincidence?
One long weekend per year—Labor Day weekend.
For over two decades—yes, at least.
On the beach—the cottage on Nantucket.
Leland’s intimate friend “Violet”—Mallory Blessing.
Ursula combs through the years methodically, or as methodically as she can under the circumstances. Without even realizing it, she has walked to the edge of the bluff. She needs to catch the breeze. Her arms feel numb, like a doll’s arms. There was the year Ursula went to Newport alone because Jake refused to cancel his trip to Nantucket. There was the year they pushed up Bess’s christening. His own daughter’s christening! He never missed his weekend on Nantucket. It was sacred, he said, his time with Cooper, with the guys. And yet, Jake hasn’t seen Cooper in Washington recently as far as Ursula knows. And then he’d refused to go to the funeral—the funeral where Ursula met Leland and learned that Leland and Mallory had been best friends growing up.
Intimate friends.
Ursula needs to call someone, but who?
Leland?she thinks. No; Leland would, as a journalist, protect her source.
Ursula dials Cooper at work. He’s the current administration’s new director of domestic policy, a huge, demanding job, and Ursula has meant to congratulate him, though the lines between the legislative and executive branches are blurry. But she’s reaching out now on a personal matter, so there will be no ethics breach.
Even so, it’s hard for her to get past his secretary, Marnie; Marnie obviously knows that Ursula is a United States senator and any discussion of business has to be scheduled, which this hasn’t been. Ursula says she’s calling about a personal matter. Her husband, Jake McCloud, went to Johns Hopkins with Cooper; they were fraternity brothers.
