When Life Gives You Lululemons Read online

  “Shit, shit, shit!” sang Matthew.

  “Who wants to watch a movie?” Paul asked. “Benjamin, why don’t you go down to the basement and put on Boss Baby for everyone.” Again, there was a mad scramble as they bolted toward the stairs, and then, seconds later, blessed silence.

  “This can’t be right,” Miriam said, studying the mug shot of her old high school friend. They had overlapped senior year of high school in Paris at the American School. Karolina was there modeling and learning English on the side, and Miriam was forced to follow her parents there on a posting. “Karolina would never do that.”

  “Well, it’s right here in print. Failed roadside sobriety test. Empty bottles of booze in the backseat. Refused to take a Breathalyzer. And five kids in the car, including her own.”

  “There is no way that’s possible,” Miriam said, scanning the story. “Not the Karolina I know.”

  “How long has it been since you’ve spoken to her? Maybe she changed. I don’t imagine things are so easy being in the spotlight, like they both are now.”

  “She was the face of L’Oréal for ten years! The mega-model to end all supermodels. I hardly think she has issues with the spotlight.”

  “Well, being the wife of a United States senator is something else entirely. Especially one who plans to run for president. It’s a different kind of scrutiny.”

  “I guess so. I don’t know. I’m going to call her. This just can’t be right.”

  “You guys haven’t spoken in months.” Paul sipped his coffee.

  “That doesn’t matter!” Miriam realized she was nearly shouting and lowered her voice. “We’ve known each other since we were teenagers.”

  Paul held up both hands in surrender. “Send her my love, okay? I’ll go check on the monsters.”

  Karolina’s number rang five times before sending her to voicemail. “Hi! You’ve reached Karolina. I’m not available to take your call, but leave me a message and I’ll get back to you just as soon as I can. Bye, now.”

  “Lina? It’s me, Miriam. I saw that hideous headline and I want to talk to you. I don’t believe it for a single second, and neither does one other person who’s ever met you. Call me as soon as you get this, okay? Love you, honey. Bye.”

  Miriam clicked “end” and stared at her screen, willing Karolina’s name to appear. But then she heard a scream coming from downstairs—a real pain scream, not an I-hate-my-siblings scream or an It’s-my-turn scream, and Miriam took a deep breath and stood up to go investigate.

  It had barely even begun, and already this year was shaping up to be a loser. She grabbed a now-cold pancake off the plate on her way to the basement: 2018 could take its resolutions and shove them.

  3

  Like a Common Criminal

  Karolina

  “Hey, Siri! Play ‘Yeah’ by Usher!” Harry called from the back of the Suburban. A chorus of cheers went up from the boys when Siri chirped, “Okay, playing ‘Yeah’ by Usher,” and the bass blasted through the speakers.

  Karolina smiled. Never in a million years would she have thought having a car full of twelve-year-old boys could be fun. They were loud and rowdy and even sometimes smelled bad, yes. But Harry’s friends were also sweet and quick to laugh and made an attempt at manners, at least when she was around. They were good kids from nice families, and once again she felt grateful for the move that had taken them from New York—the city of social land mines—to Bethesda, where everyone seemed a little more easygoing.

  Sweet boy, Karolina thought for the thousandth time as she sneaked a look at Harry from the rearview mirror. Every day he was starting to look more and more like a teenager: broadening shoulders, dark fuzz above his lip, a smattering of pimples on his cheeks. But just as often he seemed like a little boy, as likely to spend an hour playing with Legos as texting with his friends. Harry was outgoing and confident, like his father, but he had a softer, more sensitive side too. Right around the time they moved to Bethesda, Harry started asking Graham more about his late mother: where she and Graham had met, what she liked to read, how she’d felt when she was pregnant with him. And always Graham put him off, promising to tell Harry about his mother later. Later, when he was finished with a report he needed to read. Later, that weekend, when they had more free time. Later, during their ski vacation, because his mother had loved to ski. Later, later, later. Karolina wasn’t sure if it was laziness or avoidance or genuine pain causing Graham to put off his son, but she knew Harry needed answers. It took her nearly three days while Graham was at work and Harry at school to assemble all the scattered pictures and letters and clippings she could find, but when she presented Harry with the memory box of his mom, his relief and joy made every minute worthwhile. She reassured Harry that his mom would always be his mom, and that it was okay to talk about her and remember her, and Karolina’s big, strong tween had collapsed into her arms like a kindergartener returning from his first day away from home.

  “Guess what?” Nicholas, a lanky lacrosse player with shaggy blond hair, called from the third row. “My dad got us tickets to the ’Skins/Eagles game next weekend. First playoff game. Who’s in?”

  The boys hooted.

  “Hey, Mom, do you think Dad will take me?” Harry asked.

  “My dad said tickets weren’t that expensive,” Nicholas said.

  Karolina forced herself to smile, though the boys couldn’t see her in the driver’s seat. “I’m sure he’d love that,” she lied, and sneaked a peek at Harry to see if he could hear it in her voice. Despite the fact that Harry was passionate about professional football in general and the Redskins specifically—and Graham, as a sitting U.S. senator, could name his seats anywhere in the stadium—father and son had never attended a game together. Every year Graham swore to Karolina and Harry that they’d sit in the owner’s box, fly to an important away game, or invite a bunch of Harry’s friends and get seats on the fifty-yard line, and every year another season went by without the Hartwell boys in attendance. Harry had been to a game exactly once, two years earlier, when Karolina took pity on him and bought tickets off StubHub. He’d been thrilled and cheered like crazy in his head-to-toe gear, but she knew he would have preferred to go with Graham: Karolina had unknowingly gotten tickets on the visitor side, and she couldn’t totally follow who had the ball, and in spite of her best intentions, she kept cheering at the wrong times.

  “Mom! Hey, Mom!” Harry interrupted her thoughts. “There are cop cars behind us with their lights on.”

  “Hmmm?” Karolina murmured, more to herself. She glanced in the rearview and saw two police cruisers with their lights ablaze, so close to the Suburban that they were nearly pushing up against the bumper. “My goodness, it must be important. Okay, okay, give me a second,” she said aloud. “I’m moving over.”

  She was grateful Harry was safely beside her, because she always got nervous when she saw an emergency vehicle in her neighborhood. Their house might be on fire, but so long as Harry was safely in her sight, she could deal with anything. She put on her blinker and eased the unwieldy truck onto the side of the road as gracefully as she could, sending a silent apology to the Crains, who lived five doors down and owned the beautiful lawn her tires were probably digging up. Only the cruisers didn’t quickly pass her on the left, as she’d expected; they too pulled to the side and came to a stop directly behind her truck.

  “Ohhh, Mrs. Hartwell, you’re busted!” Stefan, another of Harry’s friends, yelled as all the boys laughed. Karolina did too.

  “Yes, you know me,” Karolina said. “Going twenty in a residential neighborhood. Crazy!” She watched in the rearview as the officers stood next to her license plate and appeared to type it into an iPad-like device. Good, she thought. They would see the United States government plates that were on all three of their cars, and this whole silly thing would be over.

  But the two officers who approached her window weren’t laughing. “Ma’am? Is this your vehicle?” asked the female officer, while the male cop stood b
ehind her and watched.

  “Yes, of course,” Karolina said, wondering why they’d ask her such a ridiculous question. She was driving it, wasn’t she? “Officer, I really don’t think I was speeding. We literally just pulled out of the driveway. See? We live right back there. I’m just taking my son’s friends—”

  The female cop looked hard at Karolina and said, “I’ll need your license and registration, please.”

  Karolina checked the woman’s face. She wasn’t kidding. Karolina carefully removed her driver’s license from her wallet and was relieved to find the car’s registration tucked neatly in the glove compartment. “I, um, as you may recognize the name from my license there . . . I am actually married to Senator Hartwell,” Karolina said, giving her best smile. She wasn’t usually one to name-drop, but then again, she wasn’t usually being pulled over by angry-looking cops.

  The male officer furrowed his eyebrows. “Ma’am, have you been drinking?”

  Karolina was vaguely aware of the boys going quiet with this question, and her mind flashed back to an hour earlier, when she’d deliberately opened a bottle of Graham’s outrageously expensive cabernet that he’d been buying by the case lately. Harry and his friends had been polishing off pizzas, and of course she’d known she’d be driving them home shortly, so she’d had half a glass. If that. She hadn’t even wanted it, really, but it had been satisfying to open the bottle and know that it would likely go bad before Graham got home from New York. He’d asked Karolina to join him for a New Year’s dinner at a friend’s apartment in Manhattan, but Karolina didn’t want to leave Harry behind on New Year’s Eve. She’d been upset that he’d gone without her, although she wasn’t completely surprised.

  Summoning her most dazzling smile and her most direct eye contact, she said, “Officers, I have children in the car. I assure you that I have not been drinking. I didn’t think I was speeding either, but I suppose it’s possible. If so, I’m very sorry about that.”

  At the mention of children, the male officer took his flashlight and began walking the perimeter of the car. He didn’t seem to care that the light was shining directly in the boys’ eyes. Karolina could see them all squint.

  “Mom, what’s happening?” Harry asked, sounding nervous.

  “Nothing, honey. I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding. Just let them do what they need to do.”

  With this, the male officer called to the female officer and gestured to something with his flashlight. They exchanged looks. Karolina felt her heart do a little flip-flop, though there wasn’t a reason in the world she should be nervous.

  “Mrs. Hartwell, please get out of the car. Slowly,” the female officer said.

  “Excuse me?” Karolina asked. “Why on earth would I get out of my car? I’m not even wearing a coat—”

  “Now!” the male cop barked, and it became immediately clear that this wasn’t a routine traffic stop.

  Karolina jumped out of the driver’s seat so quickly that she didn’t bother to use the running board, and as a result she twisted her ankle and had to grab the door to keep from falling.

  The officers exchanged another look.

  “Mrs. Hartwell, we have observed both reckless driving and empty bottles of alcohol in the backseat of your vehicle. Keeping your arms down by your sides, please walk in the middle of the street for a distance of approximately twenty feet. Our officers are stationed down the road, so there will be no oncoming traffic.”

  “Wait—you found what? In my car? You must be mistaken,” Karolina said, trying not to shiver. “My husband is going to be livid when he finds out about this!”

  The female officer gestured toward the very road Karolina lived on, now slick with rain, and motioned for her to walk. Immediately and without thinking, Karolina wrapped her arms around her chest to keep warm in her too-flimsy silk blouse and began to stride confidently toward her house. If there was one thing Karolina could do better than nearly anyone else on earth, it was work a catwalk. But what she hadn’t expected was seeing her neighbors’ doors and curtains open, their familiar faces squinted toward her, recognition dawning on their features as they realized who was performing a field sobriety test like a common criminal on their beautiful, quiet street.

  Is that Mrs. Lowell? Karolina wondered, seeing an elderly woman peek out behind a crisp linen curtain. I didn’t realize she was visiting now. I can’t believe she’s seeing me like this. Karolina could feel her cheeks start to color despite the cold, and somehow she must have missed the small pothole in the road, because the next thing she knew, she’d stumbled and nearly fallen.

  “Did you see that?” Karolina said to the officers, who were watching her closely. “We’ve been telling the town forever that this road is badly in need of repair.”

  They gave each other that look again. Without a word exchanged, the male cop approached Karolina and said, “Ma’am, you’re under arrest for suspicion of driving while under the influence. You have the right to remain—”

  “Wait—what?” Karolina shrieked, before noticing that Harry had stuck his head out of the Suburban’s window and was intently watching the entire scene. “Under arrest?”

  “—silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to . . .”

  The words were familiar, of course. So many police procedurals she’d watched with Graham, and nights of Law & Order marathons in her single days, but who knew they actually said those things in real life? Was this actually happening? It seemed so surreal: one moment she was just another mom driving home her son’s friends, and the next she was being escorted into the backseat of a police cruiser.

  “Wait, excuse me! Sir! Listen please, I can’t just leave the children in the car!” Karolina called as the car door slammed closed. She was alone in the backseat, entirely cut off from the world with a thick layer of presumably bulletproof glass.

  The officer’s voice came through some sort of speaker. “Officer Williams will look after your son and his friends and ensure that everyone gets home safely. I’ll be taking you to the station now.”

  The engine started, and with it, the sirens went on. She couldn’t hear Harry, but she could see that he was screaming “Mom” and trying very hard not to cry. Hand against the window, she mouthed to him, “Don’t worry, everything’s fine,” but Karolina knew he couldn’t see. With lights and sirens blaring in the quiet night, the cruiser pulled away from Karolina’s son.

  “How dare you!” she screamed at the officer, before noticing a camera with a blinking light mounted in the corner right above her window, but the officer didn’t so much as glance up. Never in her life had she felt so completely helpless. So totally alone.

  • • •

  They hadn’t allowed Karolina a phone call until nearly two hours after she’d been arrested. Was that even legal? she wondered, trying to keep calm. At least the woman officer had come by the holding room to tell Karolina that Harry and his friends were all home. The parents of the boys had each come to the station to retrieve their sons, and when Graham didn’t answer his phone, Harry had suggested they call his grandmother Elaine, who had swept in to take Harry back to her house. Karolina was relieved that Harry was safe, but she was filled with dread at the idea of retrieving him from her mother-in-law.

  “My husband isn’t answering,” Karolina said to the officer overseeing her phone call.

  He was slumped over a desk filling out paperwork. He shrugged without looking up. “Try someone else.”

  “It’s almost midnight on New Year’s Eve,” Karolina said. “Who am I supposed to call to come pick me up in the middle of the night from the local police station?”

  With this, the officer looked up. “Pick you up? No, sorry, Mrs. Hartwell. You’ll be staying here tonight.”

  “You can’t be serious!” Karolina said, nearly certain he was joking.

  “Strict orders from above. All DUIs have to sober up for at least five hours before they can be released. And we only
do releases between the hours of seven a.m. and midnight, so I’m afraid you’re out of luck.”

  “Do I look drunk to you?” Karolina asked him.

  The officer glanced up. He looked barely old enough to buy beer, and the blush that spread across his neck didn’t help. “Sorry, ma’am. Those are the rules.”

  She dialed the only other number she had memorized. Trip, who was their family lawyer and Graham’s best friend, answered on the first ring.

  “Lina? Where did you say you’re calling from?” he asked groggily. Leave it to Trip to be asleep before midnight.

  “You heard me, Trip. The local drunk tank at the Bethesda County Jail. Sorry to wake you, but I figured you’d understand. I tried Graham, but he’s nowhere to be found. Surprise, surprise.”

  Trip and Graham had been roommates at Harvard Law and best men at each other’s weddings and were godparents to each other’s children. She’d always thought of Trip as almost an extension of Graham, an extra set of eyes and ears, an acceptable substitute, a brother figure. Usually they shared a warm, mutual affection. But tonight she didn’t even try to mask her displeasure that she was talking to Trip and not Graham.

  “Can you please get me out of this hellhole?” she whispered into the phone. “They said they won’t let me out of here until morning, but that can’t be possible.”

  “Sit tight. I’ll call a few people and get this sorted out,” Trip said with reassuring confidence.

  “Hurry, please.”

  But either he didn’t hurry or there was nothing he could do, because Karolina didn’t speak to Trip again until he showed up to bail her out at seven the following morning. Without Graham.

  Trip read her face immediately. “Graham wanted to come, of course. I was the one who advised against it.”

  Karolina took a seat in one of the plastic chairs next to Trip. Her entire body ached from lying on a bench in the holding room—not a cell, exactly, more like an outdated boarding gate at an old airport.