Great Big Beautiful Life(20)
Her eyes slice up to mine, and I swear I see something behind them close up, shutting me out. I understand why. But I keep going anyway: “The Fall of the House of Ives.”
She stares at me, shoulders square, a pleasant and unconvincing smile hanging around her mouth.
“You were my dad’s dream interview subject,” I explain. “He mostly did political stuff, and you’d already stopped doing interviews way before he started reporting. But he loved your story, yours and Cosmo’s, from his songs. And he always felt like there was so much more to it than what the press wrote about it.
“Anyway, even before I could read, I loved looking at the pictures in that biography he bought. I loved all your clothes and your shoes and your hats. You were so glamorous and my life had no glamour whatsoever. But it wasn’t just that. You always looked…not just happy, but like you were delighted by the world. The rest of your family, they looked so serious and secretive, but you were just you. Bright and bold and full of life. Especially in the photos with your sister, and with Cosmo. And then when I got older, when I could read it…I hated that book.”
A quiet laugh leaps out of her, her gaze softening. No, glistening. Her blue eyes have dampened, her lashes inky and dramatic.
A small laugh escapes me too. “Turns out my dad hated it too. He just didn’t want to tell me and ruin it. But there was nothing to ruin. It was all conjecture and judgment and—and recycled tabloid headlines. There was this one line, in the chapter about your courthouse wedding, where Dove Franklin wrote that a body language expert suggested you were—”
“Marching Cosmo to his death and he knew it,” she says quietly. “It wasn’t just that they didn’t believe he wanted to marry me. They also blamed me for what happened to him. My family’s cursed, if you haven’t heard.” A shred of a heartbreaking smile flutters over her lips again.
I’d been planning to paraphrase the quote rather than lob it at her like a grenade. But hearing her say it outright leaves me feeling like my chest has been pierced. I swallow hard. “I looked at that picture, and I didn’t understand how I could see something so different.”
Her jaw muscles flex, and after a long beat, she says, “And what did you see?”
“I saw him trying to shield you,” I say, “from everyone around you. And realizing he couldn’t.”
She blinks several times, her gaze dropping to her lap again.
For a moment, we’re both silent. She clears her throat.
“Sorry,” I say softly. “I didn’t plan to start with anything quite that heavy.”
“I asked,” she replies, with a fragment of a shrug. “You answered. That’s how interviews work, as far as I remember.”
“Yes, but I’m not the one being interviewed,” I remind her.
A bit of wryness seeps back into her half smile. “Oh, I don’t know. I think it’s only fair that I get to know you and Hayden too, if I’m going to be trotting out the family’s map to all the buried bodies.”
“And just to clarify,” I say, “when you say ‘buried bodies,’ are we talking literal or metaphorical here?”
Her laugh is damp, but when she speaks, her voice is sure, clear, and bright again. “Why not both?” She leans forward over the table, where both my phone and my backup voice recorder are running, and enunciates clearly, “Let the record show that I winked.” Which she does.
I lean forward too. “She did,” I agree, “and then she dragged a finger across her throat like she was threatening me.”
Margaret hoots out a laugh as she sits back into her chair. “So where were you thinking we’d start?”
“The beginning,” I say. “I want to know what it was like to be born an Ives.”
She takes another sip of tea before returning her mug to its place on the table, right between my phone and my recorder. “I’ll be honest: When you told me you found me online, through those conspiracy theory websites, I figured you’d walk in here and kick off this interview with, Margaret, did you have Cosmo cryogenically frozen to be revived at a later date?”
“That is a popular one,” I agree.
“So Jodi tells me,” she replies.
“You never go looking?” I say. “To see what people are saying?”
She snorts. “You obviously didn’t grow up in a family like mine. The trick is to try not to see what they’re saying.”
“I think it’s safe to say no one grew up in a family like yours,” I point out.
“No, I suppose not.” Her eyes drift to where my bag sits at my ankles, and her head cocks, recognition writing itself across her face as she spots the book jutting out of it. “Can I see that?”
I half expect her to start tearing pages out of it and ripping them to shreds. But if that will help her feel comfortable opening up, so be it.
I pass The Fall of the House of Ives to her, and for several seconds, she flips through it in silence, her expression stern, until finally, a chortle leaps out of her, surprising me so badly that I jump in my chair.
She shakes her head to herself. “It’s funny. My family was one of the first to figure out that it isn’t news that sells. It’s headlines. Half the time, people don’t read a word past those big, splashy letters, and even if they do, the nuance isn’t what they’ll remember. It’s the simple version that sticks. Simple and salacious, that’s the winning combination.”