Cassie never mentioned the express bus from New York City to Middle Valley. Of course, why would anyone take the express bus from New York City to Middle Valley?
Well, dear reader, I have my reasons. They are threefold.
For starters, it’s a place to hide for three hours, pretend the world doesn’t exist, move between cell towers and claim (plausibly) that I “didn’t see the message.”
So when the lawyer calls to tell me darling Daniel wants us to “come together and negotiate” for the fourth time this month, or darling Daniel calls and whimpers about reconciliation for the 14th time or how this divorce will ruin his career, I can honestly say I was engaged elsewhere – in the trees, on the highway, with the old woman to my left playing solitaire on her tray table who smells (delightfully) of powder and stew.
It is the place, I hope, to clear my head and think.
The second benefit is that no one here knows my name. Jill Cunningham, First Lady of New York, means zilch to the pothead sitting in the first row, bopping his head, deafening himself with his Beats headphones and some terrible banger tracks.
Here, I am not the woman in the power suit standing beside “the next Mayor of New York City,” who left a six-figure corporate PR job to serve as a professional ribbon-cutter-slash-emcee.
Here, I am not the one who met and became dazzled by the most openly ambitious politician New York City has ever seen while working as a waitress at her dad’s bar.
No, to this crowd, I’m just a middle-aged white chick (Do I look middle-aged? Probably. Who am I kidding?) with a Yankees hat pulled down low, Tina Fey glasses, and a graying ponytail poking out the back.
“You look familiar,” the old lady next to me finally says. “Are you on TV?”
Well … sorta.
“No,” I tell her and smile. “Where do you think you’ve seen me?”
She counts three cards, turns them over, and considers the hand in front of her.
“Oh, hell, I don’t know,” she says, placing a three of hearts on a four of spades. “You just have … that look.”
“Oh, okay,” I say, smiling yet again. “I’m Jill.”
She nods. “Carla. My pleasure.”
“What’s taking you to Middle Valley?” I ask, genuinely curious.
She smiles. “The grandkids. Got four of ‘em – two of each. All straight-A students. Amazing. Can’t stand their father, though. Don’t know what the devil my daughter ever saw in him, but what the hell? He paid for the ticket.”
She turns toward me, a puzzled look crossing her face.
“You’re sure you’re not on TV?” she asks.
Sigh. “Well, I have been, yes. You might have seen me around the city, yes.”
“Ah, of course! You’re that Secret Shopper lady on the channel 7 news, aren’t you? Where she goes and picks out the best grapes, or the best plums, and tells you where to find the best deals?”
I shake my head. “No, ma’am. No, that’s not me. It’s fine. I do look a bit like her, I suppose.”
“Oh you do, dear. You absolutely do!”
I nod as I reach into my bag and pull out a pair of headphones for myself – a signal, I’m hoping, that the conversation can end there.
Of course, this brings me to my third reason for being on the express bus from New York City to Middle Valley: the media.
When you’re the wife of the Mayor of New York City, everyone in the world seems to think that your text messages, your emails, your schedule, the contents of your garbage, your coffee preferences (cream and sugar?), your drink order, your shoe size, your bra size, your fitness level … your very existence belongs to them.
So it is here, on this bus, where I begin to take it all back.
The further we get from the city, the better I feel. There’s traffic, but not Manhattan traffic. People, but not Manhattan people. Noise, but not Manhattan noise.
The quiet. I think that’s what I yearn for the most. Cassie raves about how still the evenings are along River Road, how, if you sit on a bench and listen, you can hear the water lapping against the riverbank – even in the middle of the day, she says. There are always pockets of silence around, she tells me. You just have to know where to look.
All of this stands in direct contrast to the fact that I am being picked up from the bus and taken to Mrs. McMurtry’s by a young chauffeur named Bentley who drives a Bentley. How New York is that?
About Mrs. McMurtry. I can’t tell if Cassie loves or hates the woman. Bitsy is her name, I believe. (All I can conjure up in my head is the character from Sex and the City, Bitsy von Muffling played by the glorious Julie Halston, who actually did emcee Daniel’s last fundraiser, but I digress). Bitsy invested in the Riverside, of course, so she’s no fool. She knows a hard worker when she sees one. Apparently, she has her hand in every pie in town, Cassie says.
The idea of crashing at the local gadfly’s home for a bit is a little off-putting, to be sure. I’m not destitute. But I know nothing of the area, and Cassie can’t have me at her place. I’ll think of her like a tour guide, I guess. My own personal Middle Valley Zagat Guide.
And, of course, like most things in this world, it won’t be forever.
I open my eyes to realize I had dozed off and, in fact, we were pulling into Courthouse Square, in the very heart of Middle Valley, my new home.
I scan the sidewalk around the bus stop. A young man in a red cap stands, leaning on a lily-white Bentley. He’s holding a handwritten sign:
Cassie’s sister Jill
No last name. No “First Lady of New York City.”
Just Jill.
Sounds about right.