The Hidden Family

Pause. “About one point nine million dollars left.”

“Miriam?”

“Yes, Paulie?”

“As your legal advisor I am telling you to shut the fuck up and get a good night’s sleep. You can sort out whether you’re going to write the article tomorrow—but I’d advise you to drop it. Say you’ve got stomach flu or something. Then you can take an extra day over your preparations for the journey. Got it?”

“Yes, Paulie.”

“And another thing?”

“What’s that?”

“Drink your wine and shut your mouth, dear, you look like a fish.”

The next day, Miriam pulled out her notebook computer—which was now acquiring a few scratches—and settled down to pound the keyboard while Paulette took Brill shopping. It wasn’t hard work, and she already knew what she was going to write, and besides, it saved her having to think too hard about her future. The main headache was not having access to her Mac, or a broadband co

“Steve. Who’s this?”

“Steve? It’s Miriam.” She took a deep breath. “About that feature.”

“Deadline’s this Thursday,” he rumbled. “You needing an extension?”

She breathed out abruptly, nearly coughing into the phone. “No, no, I’m ready to e-mail you a provisional draft, see if it fits what you were expecting. Uh, I’ve had a bit of an exciting life lately, got a new phone number for you.”

“Really?” She could almost hear his eyebrows rising.

“Yeah. Domestic incident, big-time.” She extemporized hastily. “I’m having to look after my mother. She’s had an incident. Broken hip. You want my new details?”

“Sure. Hang on a moment. Okay, fire away.”

Miriam gave him her new e-mail and phone numbers. “Listen, I’ll mail in the copy in about an hour’s time. Is there anything else you’re looking for?”

“Not right now.” He sounded amused. “They sprang a major reorg on us right after our last talk, followed by a guerilla page-plan redesign; looks like that slot for a new columnist I mentioned earlier is probably going to happen. Weekly, op-ed piece on medical/biotech investment and the VC scene, your sort of thing. Can I pencil you in for it?”

Miriam thought furiously. “I’m busier than I was right after I left The Weatherman, but I figure I can fit it in. Only thing is, I’ll need a month’s notice to start delivering, and I’d like to keep a couple of generic op-ed pieces in the can in case I’m called away. I’m going to be doing a lot of head-down stuff in the next year or so. It won’t stop me keeping up with the reading but it may get in the way of my hitting deadlines once in a blue moon. Could you live with that?”

“I’ll have to think about it,” he said. “I’m willing to make allowances. But you’re a pro. You’d give me some warning wherever possible, right?”

“Of course, Steve.”

“Okay. File that copy. Bye.”

She put the phone down for a moment, eyes misting over. I’ve still got a real life, she told herself. This shit hasn’t taken everything over. She thought of Brill, trapped by family expectations and upbringing. If I could unhook their claws, I could go back to being the real me. Really. Then she thought about the rest of them. About the room at the Marriott, and what had happened in it. About Roland, and her. Maybe.

She picked the phone up again. It was easier than thinking.

Iris answered almost immediately. “Miriam, dear? Where have you been?”

“Ma?” The full weight of her worries crashed down on her. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you! Listen, I’m onto a story. It’s—” She struggled for a suitable metaphor. “It’s as big as Watergate. Bigger, maybe. But there’s people involved who’re watching me. I’d like to spend some time with you, but I don’t know if it would be safe.”

“That’s interesting.” She could hear her adoptive mother’s mind crunching gears even on the end of a phone. “So you can’t come and visit me?”

“Remember what you told me about COINTELPRO, Ma?”

“Ah, those were the days! When I was a young firebrand, ah me.”

“Ma!”

“Stuffing envelopes with Jan Six, before Commune Two imploded, picketings and sit-ins—did I tell you about the time the FBI bugged our phones? How we got around it?”

“Mom.” Miriam sighed. “Really! That student radical stuff is so old, you know?”

“Don’t you old me, young lady!” Iris put a condescending, amused tone in her voice. “Is your trouble federal, by any chance?”

“I wish it was.” Miriam sighed again.

“Well then. I’ll meet you at the playground after bridge, an hour before closing time.” Click.

She’d hung up, Miriam realized, staring at her phone. “Oh sweet Jesus,” she murmured. Never, ever, challenge a onetime SDS activist to throw a tail. She giggled quietly to herself, overcome by a bizarre combination of mirth and guilt—mirth at the idea of a late-fifties Jewish grandmother with multiple sclerosis giving the Clan’s surveillance agents the slip, and guilt, shocking guilt, at the thought of what she might have unintentionally involved Iris in. She almost picked up the phone to apologize, to tell Iris not to bother—but that would be waving a red rag at a bull. When Iris got it into her mind to do something, not even the FBI and the federal government stood much chance of stopping her.

The playground. That’s what she’d called the museum, when she was small. “Can we go to the playground?” she’d asked, a second-grader already eating into her parents’ library cards, and Iris had smiled indulgently and taken her there, to run around the displays and generally a

And bridge. Iris never played card games. That must mean … yes. The bridge over the Charles River. More confirmation that she meant the Science Museum, an hour before closing time. Right. Miriam gri

Miriam whistled tunelessly between her teeth and plugged her cellular modem card back into the notebook, ready to send in her feature article. Maybe Iris could teach her some useful techniques. The way things were going, she needed every edge.

A landscape of concrete and steel, damp and gray beneath a sky stained dirty orange. The glare of streetlamps reflected from clouds heavy with the promise of sleet or rain tomorrow. Miriam swung the rental car around into the parking lot, lowered her window to accept a ticket, then drove on in search of a space. It was damply cold outside, the temperature dropping with nightfall, but eventually she found a free place and parked. The car, she noted, was the precise same shade of silver-gray as Iris’s hair.

Miriam walked around the corner and down a couple of flights of stairs, then through the entrance to the museum.

Warm light flooded out onto the sidewalk, lifting her gloom. Paulette had brought Brill home earlier that afternoon, shaking slightly. The color- and pattern-enhanced marketing strategies of modern retail had finally driven Brill into the attack of culture shock Miriam had been expecting. They’d left Brill hunched up in front of the Cartoon Network on cable, so Paulette could give Miriam a lift to the nearest Avis rental lot. And now—