15. Pageantry

Kevin let out a whoop of joy and rushed Odile, and several other members of my club followed. Enveloped in hugs, she laughed. “So I guess the answer is yes?”

“The question is,” Demetria said, slapping her a high five, “did you show up because you missed us?” We retreated from the helicopter as the pilot set down Odile’s bags, waved farewell, and prepared to take off again.

“Yes,” Kevin said. “We missed you. What are you doing here?”

Odile shrugged. “Production shut down for a few days and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about this place.” She looked at her surroundings and wrinkled her pert little nose. “Bit rustic, huh?”

At least someone agreed with me! I glanced at the other people in the clearing. The younger patriarchs, used to seeing Odile around campus, had lost interest, but their families were still staring and pointing. Any second now they’d start asking for autographs. Poe and Malcolm had disappeared back inside their cabin, but the Gehrys remained on the lawn, watching silently from a distance. Kurt had his hands on his wife’s shoulders; she was in turn holding the hand of her little daughter. Darren stood beside them, hand raised to his brow to shield his eyes from the morning sun.

“Hey, Demetria,” I said, and nodded in the direction of the family.

“Oh, so he is here!” Odile said. “I’d been wondering, as has the New York Times.”

“He’s here, but it’s the first time anyone’s seen him!” Demetria exclaimed. “Let’s go say hi.” She started across the lawn, followed by the other Diggirls, and as soon as he noticed, Kurt nudged his wife as if to encourage retreat toward the house. Mrs. Gehry shook him off and kept staring at our group, and I saw her husband lean over and bark an order at his son before grabbing his daughter by the hand and marching away posthaste.

“Odile Dumas,” Mrs. Gehry said when we arrived before her. “My daughter is a huge fan of your work.” She looked around, but saw that the little girl was no longer standing by her side, no longer holding her hand. “Where? Where did she go?”

I saw that Darren’s arms were outstretched toward his mother, as if ready to catch her.

“Oh, she’ll be so disappointed!” Mrs. Gehry said, wavering slightly. Darren’s hand came closer. “Darren, darling, go fetch her. Tell her the girl from the dancing movie is here.”

“Mom, why don’t you come with me?” he asked pointedly, though he couldn’t take his eyes off Odile.

Odile caught on. “Ma’am, I’m going to be around for a while, so you can just have—”

“Darren!” Mrs. Gehry shouted, though I now noticed that her eyes were unfocused. “Go get Isabelle. What would your father say if he knew how rude you were being?”

“Tell you what,” Odile said quickly, as Darren fought back his blush. “I’ll come with you both to meet Isabelle, how about that?”

“No,” Darren said quickly. “We can’t. Mom, come on, let’s go back inside now. I’ll bring Belle by later.” And with that, he pasted on an expression not unlike his father’s at his most inflexible, grabbed his mother by the hand, and started leading her down the path.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Demetria said.

“My goodness,” Jenny added. “What’s wrong with the wife?”

“Heavy-dose pharms,” Odile said with surety. “It’s really obvious.”

Clarissa nodded. “Antidepressants, maybe?”

“Yeah, but those are like candy.” Odile shrugged. “There’s a lot more going on there. She was stoned.”

“Maybe she’s stoned stoned,” Demetria said. “Prescription marijuana?”

Jenny shook her head. “I couldn’t smell it.”

“Ganja cakes,” Demetria suggested.

“Or roofies,” said Clarissa. “See how she could barely stand?”

“Rohypnol is illegal,” said Jenny.

“So is marijuana,” I said.

“And so is employing illegal aliens,” Demetria finished. “Which, if I recall, was one of Gehry’s biggest hot-button issues. So apparently, the law just applies to everyone else. Not him.”

And yet, seeing his wife and children in that sad state…“I don’t know if I can blame her, whatever she might be on. Their whole world has fallen apart.”

Demetria toed the ground. “I have less sympathy for her, but I really feel for those kids. Darren must be mortified.”

I stared at the retreating pair. Neither of the adult Gehrys seemed in much of a position to provide good parenting, leaving Darren to his own educational devices, and sequestering Isabelle inside. Bet the kids were really starting to miss their usual caretakers. You know, the ones not taking roofies. Or lithium, or whatever it was Mrs. Gehry was on.

Cook emerged from the kitchen and rung the bell on the porch of the main house. Breakfast.

“A bell? This is like a ranch!” Odile exclaimed. “So, fill me in, what’s been going on here?”

“All kinds of scandal,” Clarissa said. “Amy almost drowned, Demetria is going to beat up a patriarch’s wife, our room was trashed by conspiracy theorists, Dragon’s Head broke into the tomb in Connecticut, and Jenny has a crush on Harun.”

“Do not!” Jenny said.

“In other words,” said Demetria. “The usual.”

Odile laughed. “Man, I love this society.”

Darren did not reappear for breakfast, which meant more French toast for the rest of us (except for Odile, who flatly refused to eat carbs). I kept an eye out for him throughout the meal, as the others filled Odile in on the events she’d missed, but the kid never appeared. And as for the other boy of interest on the island, he’d taken a seat with Malcolm and the Myers, and I actually heard him laughing a good half a dozen times during the meal, a sound so unusual that I was surprised everyone in the room wasn’t commenting on it.

Another major topic of conversation was the Gehrys, and what could be wrong with the matriarch of the family. All sorts of theories floated around the breakfast table, but our combined lack of medical knowledge kept us from coming to any firm conclusions.[8]

“She’s definitely self-medicating, though,” Clarissa said. “Maybe she just can’t deal with the loss of status.”

“Being stuck on the island all the time with two kids?” Kevin said. “I’d want to get blitzed every once in a while as well.”

“I doubt she’s just upped the martini intake,” Demetria said. “She didn’t even realize her husband had taken her daughter.” Demetria had grown entirely more subdued since meeting Mrs. Gehry face-to-face. As her work at the Eli Women’s Center gave her a vast store of knowledge about various illegal, mood-altering substances, she had spent the meal telling us horror stories about date-rape drugs. “I just hope that whatever it is she’s using, she’s got a doctor’s note.”

In addition, Odile was fascinated by my little accident on the way over to the island, and quizzed me far more than I liked about what it “felt like” to almost drown.

“But I’m an actress! A student of human nature!” she protested when Jenny told her to cut it out.

“You’re a macabre son of a bitch,” Demetria said with a smile.

Odile’s lips scrunched into a pout. “Fine. If Amy won’t tell me, I’ll have to get someone to hold me under so I can feel it for myself.”

“Since when are you even remotely Method?” Kevin asked, but Odile changed the subject.

“And what about these nutballs on the other island?” she asked. “Did they really trash our cabin?”

“Oh, yeah,” Clarissa grumbled. “Wait until you see it. I hope you haven’t brought anything valuable.”

Odile shook her head. “That’s awful. We can’t let them get away with it.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying,” said Jenny.

“And what I’ve been saying is that it’s not them,” Demetria cut in. “But try convincing Clarissa of that.”