judy is a punk
margot. richie, chas, eli, etheline, assorted. margot/eli, margot/richie, margot/everyone.
4350 words. r-ish not really.
summary: a history of margot.
note: also written for an exchange a few months back. pretty proud of this one tbh. random bit of headcanon: jack's girlfriend from hotel chevalier is rachael's little sister, for no real reason aside from that would be awesome.
Margot receives a single letter from Richie while he is away traveling on the Côte d'Ivoire. It reads:
Dear Margot.
I don't have much to say. The sunset off the ocean reminds me of you. I hope you're doing okay.
Sincerely, Richie.
Margot does not respond.
***
Chas is twelve, Margot is ten, and Richie is eight. Margot is reading Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard. She is learning two additional languages. Her parents, if she can call them that, are separating. Etheline has decided to cope by overeducating her children and has, in fact, written a book about their family, the leaps and bounds their juvenile minds have taken under careful tutelage. Everywhere Margot sees her own name, the word "genius" follows. Margot has a sizeable IQ, an impressive vocabulary, and is versed in three languages but the word genius will be infinitely puzzling.
The other word most often linked to her name is "adopted." It's not something she can remember being informed of outside of Royal's customary introduction of his adopted daughter Margot Tenenbaum, the genius. It will take another fifteen years for her to articulate the miserable, knotted feeling in her stomach every time he does it.
Her parents have separated, but are they even her parents at all?
This is all a way of saying that there are blind spots in her extensive education.
***
Margot and Chas are not invited when Royal comes by on the weekends to take Richie all over the city. Royal does not come into the house, just has the cab honk the horn impatiently while Richie scrambles into his sneakers and jacket. Richie always pauses halfway out the door, his hand on the knob, and says, "You could probably come if you wanted."
"I'd rather eat snot," Chas says venomously.
"I have a lot of reading to do," Margot adds. She's reading The Iceman Cometh. She guesses it's okay.
Still, Margot and Chas always go up to the second floor windows to watch Royal ruffle Richie's hair, call him a sweet boy, and drive off. Margot and Chas always scoff in unison and then spend a few minutes staring at the empty street, feeling empty themselves.
Margot reaches over for Chas' left hand and pushes at the B.B. lodged under the skin between his knuckles. He huffs and shakes her off. This is the closest they come to communicating their mutual dissatisfaction.
On the night of Margot's eleventh birthday, she decides Royal is most definitely not her father. It is the very first performance of one of Margot's plays. Etheline deems it delightful. Richie says it's his favorite, and Richie reads all of her plays, including the very esoteric ones. Even Chas gives it a brisk approving nod and Chas is a very difficult critic.
Royal's disinterest is the worst part and Margot cannot forgive it, even as she learns to feign it herself, day after day.
Chas is thirteen, Margot is eleven, and Richie is nine. She's not so sure she needs a father, anyway.
***
Margot is married twice.
She's nineteen when she meets Desmond Winston Manchester XI. They meet in the ocean, Margot drifting lazily in teal waves as Desmond's canoe slips through the water towards her. He is beautiful. His music is beautiful too. His first album is called Dynamite Stick and Margot is half-hidden on the cover, an accident in the photograph. They make love for three days straight before deciding to get married, and then nine days later she gets a letter from Richie and calls the whole thing off. It isn't even a letter about anything in particular. There's just something about Richie's looping signature that makes her want to come home.
She's twenty-seven when she meets Raleigh St. Clair. She loves him, sort of. At first she thinks he's kind of distinguished with his gray hair and black turtlenecks, the wire-frame glasses that perch high on the bridge of his nose. He is supposed to be a genius too. He is twenty-two years older than her, has never been married, and professes to love her wildly. So Margot says okay, and marries him.
Raleigh is always very concerned. He is always prying, always peeping around corners. He always wants to talk.
After a year she purchases her own studio in Mockingbird Heights under the name Helen Scott. She tells no one.
She doesn't complete a single play in the duration of her marriage to Raleigh.
***
At twenty-seven she gets married and that's also when she starts cheating on her husband, first with Max, the punk behind the counter at the record store she frequents, but later with almost anyone, up to and including Eli Cash.
Eli could be like a brother except for how he isn't. She's known him her entire life, but only in the periphery sense; Margot never made an effort to get to know Eli. No one ever liked him except Richie and maybe Etheline, who was probably just being nice. Eli existed on the fringe of Margot's life like the ants that swarmed the bathroom in the summer, a vague and unspecific irritation. She and Chas liked to crack jokes about Eli, or anyway Chas did and Margot would sort of smirk.
Eli asked Margot to read his short stories sometimes. It started when they were little kids. She was always honest with him, told him that they were okay but lacking in substance or originality. She didn't really care about Eli's writing, but after a while it seemed to pay off for him.
He dedicates his first book, Wildcat, to her entire family. It makes Margot frown. She tears the dedication page neatly from her copy.
***
In the winter of Margot's twelfth year, a combination of numbers and seasons that seems faintly mystical, she and Richie run away together. He is ten, but seems at once older and younger, too sad and too sweet. She does not consider Richie a friend and sometimes she's not sure she should consider him a brother, but she already knows that the feelings she has for him are particular, different than the feelings she has for the rest of her family. If they can be called her family.
She and Richie run away to the African Wing of the Public Archives. They eat crackers for supper and drink milk from Richie's thermos. She reads about sharks at night while Richie dozes, tucked together under a bench in the same sleeping bag. Margot doesn't really sleep, her head on Richie's shoulder as she watches his profile.
The African Wing is her favorite and she knows Richie came just because she wanted to. He doesn't have the same desire to run away that she does. Well, not yet anyway.
They make it two days and two nights before Etheline sends Chas to come get them.
"You kids oughta grow up," Chas huffs, the sleeping bag rolled under one of his arms and Margot's bag under the other. "You can't just do whatever you want."
It only occurs to Margot then that maybe Chas would have liked to be invited.
Twelve is the year she runs away for the first time. It is unsuccessful. Following the attempt she begins smoking in secret, a private act of defiance. She doesn't tell anyone, not even Richie.
There are five locks on Margot's bedroom door and three signs, all of them warnings to keep out. It is important that her secrets belong to her and no one else.
***
Twenty-one finds Margot living in Paris in an apartment on the Rive Gauche with Simone, whom she sort of loves. Simone is a poet. She has short dark hair and a wicked expression. She does not love Margot in return. Margot thinks that's good for her.
They met under a streetlamp. Margot had a cigarette between her lips but nothing to light it with when out of the corner of her eye she saw a hand extended, fingers pinching a flickering match. It brought out the hint of green in Simone's brown eyes. They fell into bed pretty easily after that.
Margot misses Chas' wedding while in Paris with Simone. He will refuse to speak to her for a good six months because of that, but Rachael calls her expressing no hard feelings.
"If I had a lover in Paris, I'd probably stay there too," Rachael says. "I only hope you're having a lot of sex."
Margot stifles a smile and doesn't confirm or deny.
Chas brought Rachael home the Christmas Margot dropped out of college. Rachael was tall, taller than Chas at least, with long brown hair that always seemed to be in her face. She was always twisting it back with a pencil stuck through it, or wrapping her head in a scarf. She smiled a lot and laughed a lot, at extreme odds with the rest of the family, and with Chas himself. But he smiled a lot when he looked at Rachael, so Margot decided to like her and she was never really disappointed.
Rachael was an easy person to talk to, almost too easy, and that scared Margot off a little.
Anyway, eventually Simone gets sick of Margot and they have a big falling out. Or Simone does, all passionate French shouting while Margot passively smokes.
"This is the problem," Simone accuses, pointing at Margot. "You."
Margot can't exactly disagree.
***
Margot runs away probably a total of ten times in her life. It's hard to keep track.
The second time she is fourteen. She takes the bus to Indiana where she finds her supposed real family, people with her eyes and nose and things like that. They live on a farm or something. The whole family is straw blonde and freckled with blue eyes and they all look the same age, somehow. Margot watches them moodily, black eyeliner smeared around her eyes, hair dyed black, fingernails black.
"You sure are real New York, Sister Maggie," one of them says, possibly her father.
"Margot," she says. "My name is Margot Tenenbaum."
But as soon as she says it, something in her falters. Maybe it isn't. Maybe her name is Maggie Scott. Maybe she was supposed to grow up on this farm or whatever with all these people who look like her and maybe if she had, she'd have grown up feeling…something. Anything. A sense of belonging. Something like that.
What she doesn't understand is that there are so many children around. There are so many children, and Margot is the only one who was given away.
She loses half a finger but not much more and when she gets back Etheline wraps Margot up in a hug that does feel like home. Etheline smells so familiar, like dust and the perfume in the cut-glass bottle on her dresser.
"Are you alright?" Etheline asks, the only question she will pose to Margot, who dislikes answering questions. Concern is evident on her face.
"I don't know," Margot says. And Margot, who likes showing affection less than she likes answering questions, steps back in for another hug. Etheline sighs and pets her hair and says her name like it means so many things besides genius and adopted and wrong.
Margot supposes Etheline can be her mother even if Royal isn't her father and Richie and Chas are only sort of her brothers.
But after that they send her to boarding school because of bad behavior, so say her teachers, because Margot is surly and silent and skips class. Boarding school might be better at containing her, and it is – right until she knots her sheets together and slides out the dormitory window.
That's the third time Margot runs away.
***
At fifteen Margot loses her virginity. She comes home late that night and sneaking in the way they all learned to: climbing the gate, swinging it in towards the window, and then hoisting herself inside. She goes up to the top floor, Richie's room, and gets into bed with him still in her coat. He is only thirteen, and lately he feels very young to her. He smiles at her without opening his eyes and then presses his face into the fur of her coat.
"Richie," she says, hushed, "Do you think I'm a bad person?"
"No," he says. "Why would I?"
"I don't know," Margot says, feeling uneasy. "Sometimes I'm not so sure." His face is tucked against her shoulder so they aren't looking at each other, and that makes it easier. "I don't think I feel the way I'm supposed to feel about people."
She slept with a boy named Peter Whitman from one of the college courses she's taking. She honestly doesn't care if she never sees him again. It isn't a negative feeling; it's just nothing. It's indifference.
"I don't think that makes you a bad person," Richie says, his tone a combination of definitive and unsure that is unique to Richie. It's as though he thinks he knows the right answer, but must always leave room for being wrong.
"If you say so," Margot says.
Margot finishes high school early, at sixteen. That same year her first professional production, Static Electricity, premieres at the Cavendish Theatre to glowing reviews. It's a smash. Margot spends a lot of time smoking pot on the roof. Chas moves out, though he still comes around a lot.
Etheline throws Margot a party to celebrate her successes. Needless to say, Royal is not invited and does not attend. Margot's hair is blonde again and she wears a silver shift dress with her loafers and fur. She sleeps with Eli for the first time, a little tipsy on celebratory champagne, and it occurs to her, when she squints, that he looks a lot like Richie. If his hair were darker, if the line of his nose smoothed out, if his eyes were different; if he were a Tenenbaum, he would look an awful lot like Richie.
They do it in her closet because something about that feels confidential. "This doesn't count," she tells him after.
"Okay," Eli says simply. "Hey, would you read something for me?"
***
At twenty-four Margot lets Peter Bradley feel her up backstage before the show. It's part of her publicity tour following Erotic Transference. He's rude to her in front of the camera, demeaning to her work, and Margot tastes bitterness in the back of her throat. She is not forthcoming in interviews so she says very little in response but afterwards in the green room she puts a cigarette out in his sleeve.
Uzi is born that night. It's kind of strange. Margot returns to her hotel to find half a dozen messages waiting from her mother and for a minute she's afraid someone has died. But instead it's the opposite.
Margot takes the bus to the hospital and has three cigarettes in quick succession before going inside and upstairs. Rachael and Chas are asleep, her in the hospital bed and Chas slumped in the chair beside her. They're holding hands. Etheline is overcome with pride and happiness, eyes shining. Royal is not present. Richie stands at the large window looking into the nursery, his hands clasped behind his back and sunglasses on. Margot goes to stand next to him.
"It's funny," Richie says. "Chas having kids."
She nods.
"But he'll be a good dad," Richie adds.
"Sure," Margot says.
Margot is certain she doesn't want children. She's not sure what she would do with one. Richie would probably be good at it, but she suspects he probably won't have any either. Richie never has girlfriends, so it's not like there's opportunity.
Margot goes back alone early the next morning. She looks in at Chas' baby, who already has a mop of dark hair though no other distinguishable features. It seems the Tenenbaums only have boys.
"Hi." A girl steps up next to Margot, a petite brunette with a pixie haircut. She wears a gray peacoat. "I'm Rachael's sister. You probably don't know me; I skipped the wedding."
"Mm," Margot says.
"I was in Africa," Rachael's sister continues. "With my boyfriend. Jack. This baby thing's crazy, huh?" She taps the glass, getting a harried look from one of the nurses. "Couldn't pay me. But Rach's good at this kind of thing, I guess. She's very responsible."
Margot particularly dislikes this kind of small talk and always finds she has little to say in return. She looks at Chas' baby and doesn't feel very much in the way of anything. That's been her problem her whole life, she thinks. Where she should feel love there's only indifference. Where she should feel guilt there's only impotence.
"I skipped it too," Margot says belatedly. In the glass she first sees the reflection of her and Rachael's sister, both of their expressions unreadable, and just beyond them the newest Tenenbaum. "I was in France."
Richie once told her she wasn't a bad person, but Margot suspects he is not an unbiased critic.
***
Chas is thirty-six, Margot is thirty-four, and Richie is thirty-two. They aren't children anymore. They aren't geniuses anymore either. They exist in a post-genius fugue, three disasters who had once been rather promising.
It is the day of Etheline's wedding to Henry Sherman. She looks beautiful in ivory, touching up her makeup in the mirror. Margot lounges barefoot on the windowsill gnawing on her nicotine inhaler. Margot's mother has had many suitors since the divorce, but Henry is the only one Margot ever liked.
"What did Raleigh mean the other day?" Etheline asks without turning to look at Margot, her voice light.
"You'll have to be more specific," Margot says.
There is a very obvious pause and then Etheline says, "About Richie."
Margot's teeth dig into her tongue. She says, "You'd have to ask Raleigh what he meant."
Margot doesn't feel guilty about any of the people she's been with, not really. Maybe that's bad. The only person she feels guilty about is Richie, and she's never been with him, not once, not at all.
The worst she's ever felt was hearing about him in the hospital. Every time she thinks of the jagged marks on his wrists she wants to cry, wants to wrap him in her arms and apologize for nothing, for doing nothing, for always making herself feel nothing.
She clears her throat and swallows. "You don't think Richie will do it again, do you?"
"I hope not, sweetheart," Etheline says gently. Then, "I'm worried about you too, you know."
"I'm fine." The reply is immediate, but her stomach twists a little, pleased by the concern and embarrassed about it. "You shouldn't worry."
Etheline rises so she can come closer and press a kiss to Margot's forehead. "I'm going to anyway," she says. "You don't have to talk to me, but you should know that you can."
Margot doesn't know if Etheline knows about Richie – about how Margot is in love with him even though it's gross and wrong. She wouldn't put it past Eli to have sent over a note or something. Margot swallows past the tightness in her throat and only nods.
***
Rachael dies in the height of summer. Margot is thirty-three. Ari and Uzi are seven and nine, respectively. Uzi is quiet and reserved. He likes to read. He didn't think much of The Cherry Orchard, which Margot lent to him. She understands. Ari is much more forceful. Sometimes he sort of reminds her of Royal, but mostly he just reminds her of Chas.
The boys look pale and drawn in their black suits. Standing on either side of Chas, they look like diminutive versions of him: Chas throughout the years, so to speak. Chas declines to speak at the service and he refuses any help in the planning, though Etheline is forced to step in when he loses it at one of the caterers.
Afterwards they invite the funeral-goers back to the house on Archer Avenue. Rachael was cremated so there wasn't a casket or anything, but her ashes are in an urn on the mantle and Margot finds it unnerving. Chas and the boys will have to take it home with them at the end of the night. Margot remembers Rachael once joking, "Scatter my ashes at Saks Fifth Avenue!" but she doesn't think they're going to do that.
Margot finds Chas upstairs in the ballroom. Her own face stares down at them at least twenty times on one of the walls. Diversification of subject was not one of Richie's strong suits.
"Mom wants to know if you've eaten," Margot says by way of an introduction. "Or if you'd like to eat."
Chas does not respond. Margot sits beside him. She reaches over to prod the B.B. between the knuckles of his left hand, then lightly smoothes her finger over his wedding band. Chas does not flinch so Margot, who is not normally demonstrative, slips her hand into his.
"She knew how much you loved her," Margot says. "And I think she was really happy. I mean, she always seemed happy."
"She was really mean before six a.m.," Chas says.
The corner of Margot's mouth lifts a little and at the same time her heart breaks. "Most people are," she says. "We can probably agree on that."
Chas releases a long, slow sigh and, surprising her, turns to lean his forehead against her shoulder. Tentative and a little uncertain, Margot raises an arm to put around him.
"I'm sorry, Chas," she says softly.
"Everyone's sorry," Chas says. He sounds worn-out. They sit there for who knows how long and eventually Richie finds them. Silently, Richie moves to a corner of the room and puts on the record player. The Velvet Underground fills the room as Richie comes to sit on Chas' other side. No one says anything else and it seems alright, or as alright as it can get right now.
***
"What you did," Margot says, "With the investigator. I didn't like that."
Raleigh gives her a look that might be incredulous if it wasn't so sad. Most of all, she'd always liked his sad eyes; Richie had sad eyes too. "My dear, you can hardly –"
"I don't like that either," she interrupts. "'My dear.' I know I was wrong but you were wrong too. So I thought you should know."
"Alright." Raleigh looks down at his hands, smoothing one over the other. He picks up his pen and signs his name, unintelligible as always, on the dotted line of the divorce papers. "Alright."
Margot is thirty-five. She has been married and divorced twice. She doesn't intend to do either again, and that's a relief.
***
Chas is nineteen, Margot is seventeen, and Richie is fifteen. She and Richie lay on the floor of the ballroom with Bob Dylan on the record player. One of Chas' Dalmatian mice has made a home in the half-empty snack box they brought up with them.
Margot and Richie lie facing away from each other with their heads side by side, interlocked like puzzle pieces. Her cheek is against his cheek, which is a little scratchy with the beginnings of stubble.
She considers telling him about Eli Cash, who she slept with again without quite meaning to, but Margot isn't very good at confessions and anyway, she thinks it might crush him. Richie's low, burning sweetness has begun to shift into melancholy lately. It makes her very upset but it's not like there's anything she can do about it.
"I love you, Margot," Richie says suddenly. Margot stills. Then –
"I know, Richie," she says. She turns her head to kiss his cheek but he turns at the same time so instead she ends up kissing him on the mouth, upside down. It's very quick and very dry but it zings sharply down her spine and Margot knows that isn't the right way to react to kissing your brother. Probably you shouldn't be kissing your brother in the first place.
She sits up and changes the record.
***
After their father's funeral, Margot and Richie return to the studio in Mockingbird Heights, which they now share. He sits in a chair pushed slightly away from the little kitchen table. He sighs. Margot comes to put her arms around him, to hold him against her chest. His hands settle on her lower back. His hair is beginning to grow back but Margot is getting used to Richie without it. It's so easy to see his face now.
"I told Chas we would take Ari and Uzi to a museum or something this weekend," Richie says.
"Alright," Margot says. "Maybe the African Wing of the Public Archives."
She feels Richie smile. Richie's smiles are tender and infrequent, have been since they were teenagers, and it makes her grip him tighter. She loves him, always has and especially now. It feels odd to admit that to herself, but there are probably worse things to feel. Richie pulls away enough that he can look up at her and Margot sinks down to sit on his lap. He kisses her and she kisses him back, winds herself around him.
They haven't slept together, whatever anyone else thinks. Margot figures it's a matter of time but she is content to wait for it. She's spent half her life running away from Richie and it's good to stand still now.
She is writing a new play. It's about running away. It's called Loneliest Paradise. It takes place on a ship. Margot finds she doesn't really care if it does very well. Right now it's enough to be doing something new, and enough to want to do something new.
Margot and Richie curl up together in a bed that belongs to both of them. A record plays in another room. Her typewriter is on the small card table in the corner and a collection of racquets lean against the wall. Margot doesn't believe in cheap sentimentality and she is a proponent of deep denial but even she would be hard-pressed to call this place anything but home.
And that really is kind of nice, honestly.
margot. richie, chas, eli, etheline, assorted. margot/eli, margot/richie, margot/everyone.
4350 words. r-ish not really.
summary: a history of margot.
note: also written for an exchange a few months back. pretty proud of this one tbh. random bit of headcanon: jack's girlfriend from hotel chevalier is rachael's little sister, for no real reason aside from that would be awesome.
Margot receives a single letter from Richie while he is away traveling on the Côte d'Ivoire. It reads:
Dear Margot.
I don't have much to say. The sunset off the ocean reminds me of you. I hope you're doing okay.
Sincerely, Richie.
Margot does not respond.
***
Chas is twelve, Margot is ten, and Richie is eight. Margot is reading Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard. She is learning two additional languages. Her parents, if she can call them that, are separating. Etheline has decided to cope by overeducating her children and has, in fact, written a book about their family, the leaps and bounds their juvenile minds have taken under careful tutelage. Everywhere Margot sees her own name, the word "genius" follows. Margot has a sizeable IQ, an impressive vocabulary, and is versed in three languages but the word genius will be infinitely puzzling.
The other word most often linked to her name is "adopted." It's not something she can remember being informed of outside of Royal's customary introduction of his adopted daughter Margot Tenenbaum, the genius. It will take another fifteen years for her to articulate the miserable, knotted feeling in her stomach every time he does it.
Her parents have separated, but are they even her parents at all?
This is all a way of saying that there are blind spots in her extensive education.
***
Margot and Chas are not invited when Royal comes by on the weekends to take Richie all over the city. Royal does not come into the house, just has the cab honk the horn impatiently while Richie scrambles into his sneakers and jacket. Richie always pauses halfway out the door, his hand on the knob, and says, "You could probably come if you wanted."
"I'd rather eat snot," Chas says venomously.
"I have a lot of reading to do," Margot adds. She's reading The Iceman Cometh. She guesses it's okay.
Still, Margot and Chas always go up to the second floor windows to watch Royal ruffle Richie's hair, call him a sweet boy, and drive off. Margot and Chas always scoff in unison and then spend a few minutes staring at the empty street, feeling empty themselves.
Margot reaches over for Chas' left hand and pushes at the B.B. lodged under the skin between his knuckles. He huffs and shakes her off. This is the closest they come to communicating their mutual dissatisfaction.
On the night of Margot's eleventh birthday, she decides Royal is most definitely not her father. It is the very first performance of one of Margot's plays. Etheline deems it delightful. Richie says it's his favorite, and Richie reads all of her plays, including the very esoteric ones. Even Chas gives it a brisk approving nod and Chas is a very difficult critic.
Royal's disinterest is the worst part and Margot cannot forgive it, even as she learns to feign it herself, day after day.
Chas is thirteen, Margot is eleven, and Richie is nine. She's not so sure she needs a father, anyway.
***
Margot is married twice.
She's nineteen when she meets Desmond Winston Manchester XI. They meet in the ocean, Margot drifting lazily in teal waves as Desmond's canoe slips through the water towards her. He is beautiful. His music is beautiful too. His first album is called Dynamite Stick and Margot is half-hidden on the cover, an accident in the photograph. They make love for three days straight before deciding to get married, and then nine days later she gets a letter from Richie and calls the whole thing off. It isn't even a letter about anything in particular. There's just something about Richie's looping signature that makes her want to come home.
She's twenty-seven when she meets Raleigh St. Clair. She loves him, sort of. At first she thinks he's kind of distinguished with his gray hair and black turtlenecks, the wire-frame glasses that perch high on the bridge of his nose. He is supposed to be a genius too. He is twenty-two years older than her, has never been married, and professes to love her wildly. So Margot says okay, and marries him.
Raleigh is always very concerned. He is always prying, always peeping around corners. He always wants to talk.
After a year she purchases her own studio in Mockingbird Heights under the name Helen Scott. She tells no one.
She doesn't complete a single play in the duration of her marriage to Raleigh.
***
At twenty-seven she gets married and that's also when she starts cheating on her husband, first with Max, the punk behind the counter at the record store she frequents, but later with almost anyone, up to and including Eli Cash.
Eli could be like a brother except for how he isn't. She's known him her entire life, but only in the periphery sense; Margot never made an effort to get to know Eli. No one ever liked him except Richie and maybe Etheline, who was probably just being nice. Eli existed on the fringe of Margot's life like the ants that swarmed the bathroom in the summer, a vague and unspecific irritation. She and Chas liked to crack jokes about Eli, or anyway Chas did and Margot would sort of smirk.
Eli asked Margot to read his short stories sometimes. It started when they were little kids. She was always honest with him, told him that they were okay but lacking in substance or originality. She didn't really care about Eli's writing, but after a while it seemed to pay off for him.
He dedicates his first book, Wildcat, to her entire family. It makes Margot frown. She tears the dedication page neatly from her copy.
***
In the winter of Margot's twelfth year, a combination of numbers and seasons that seems faintly mystical, she and Richie run away together. He is ten, but seems at once older and younger, too sad and too sweet. She does not consider Richie a friend and sometimes she's not sure she should consider him a brother, but she already knows that the feelings she has for him are particular, different than the feelings she has for the rest of her family. If they can be called her family.
She and Richie run away to the African Wing of the Public Archives. They eat crackers for supper and drink milk from Richie's thermos. She reads about sharks at night while Richie dozes, tucked together under a bench in the same sleeping bag. Margot doesn't really sleep, her head on Richie's shoulder as she watches his profile.
The African Wing is her favorite and she knows Richie came just because she wanted to. He doesn't have the same desire to run away that she does. Well, not yet anyway.
They make it two days and two nights before Etheline sends Chas to come get them.
"You kids oughta grow up," Chas huffs, the sleeping bag rolled under one of his arms and Margot's bag under the other. "You can't just do whatever you want."
It only occurs to Margot then that maybe Chas would have liked to be invited.
Twelve is the year she runs away for the first time. It is unsuccessful. Following the attempt she begins smoking in secret, a private act of defiance. She doesn't tell anyone, not even Richie.
There are five locks on Margot's bedroom door and three signs, all of them warnings to keep out. It is important that her secrets belong to her and no one else.
***
Twenty-one finds Margot living in Paris in an apartment on the Rive Gauche with Simone, whom she sort of loves. Simone is a poet. She has short dark hair and a wicked expression. She does not love Margot in return. Margot thinks that's good for her.
They met under a streetlamp. Margot had a cigarette between her lips but nothing to light it with when out of the corner of her eye she saw a hand extended, fingers pinching a flickering match. It brought out the hint of green in Simone's brown eyes. They fell into bed pretty easily after that.
Margot misses Chas' wedding while in Paris with Simone. He will refuse to speak to her for a good six months because of that, but Rachael calls her expressing no hard feelings.
"If I had a lover in Paris, I'd probably stay there too," Rachael says. "I only hope you're having a lot of sex."
Margot stifles a smile and doesn't confirm or deny.
Chas brought Rachael home the Christmas Margot dropped out of college. Rachael was tall, taller than Chas at least, with long brown hair that always seemed to be in her face. She was always twisting it back with a pencil stuck through it, or wrapping her head in a scarf. She smiled a lot and laughed a lot, at extreme odds with the rest of the family, and with Chas himself. But he smiled a lot when he looked at Rachael, so Margot decided to like her and she was never really disappointed.
Rachael was an easy person to talk to, almost too easy, and that scared Margot off a little.
Anyway, eventually Simone gets sick of Margot and they have a big falling out. Or Simone does, all passionate French shouting while Margot passively smokes.
"This is the problem," Simone accuses, pointing at Margot. "You."
Margot can't exactly disagree.
***
Margot runs away probably a total of ten times in her life. It's hard to keep track.
The second time she is fourteen. She takes the bus to Indiana where she finds her supposed real family, people with her eyes and nose and things like that. They live on a farm or something. The whole family is straw blonde and freckled with blue eyes and they all look the same age, somehow. Margot watches them moodily, black eyeliner smeared around her eyes, hair dyed black, fingernails black.
"You sure are real New York, Sister Maggie," one of them says, possibly her father.
"Margot," she says. "My name is Margot Tenenbaum."
But as soon as she says it, something in her falters. Maybe it isn't. Maybe her name is Maggie Scott. Maybe she was supposed to grow up on this farm or whatever with all these people who look like her and maybe if she had, she'd have grown up feeling…something. Anything. A sense of belonging. Something like that.
What she doesn't understand is that there are so many children around. There are so many children, and Margot is the only one who was given away.
She loses half a finger but not much more and when she gets back Etheline wraps Margot up in a hug that does feel like home. Etheline smells so familiar, like dust and the perfume in the cut-glass bottle on her dresser.
"Are you alright?" Etheline asks, the only question she will pose to Margot, who dislikes answering questions. Concern is evident on her face.
"I don't know," Margot says. And Margot, who likes showing affection less than she likes answering questions, steps back in for another hug. Etheline sighs and pets her hair and says her name like it means so many things besides genius and adopted and wrong.
Margot supposes Etheline can be her mother even if Royal isn't her father and Richie and Chas are only sort of her brothers.
But after that they send her to boarding school because of bad behavior, so say her teachers, because Margot is surly and silent and skips class. Boarding school might be better at containing her, and it is – right until she knots her sheets together and slides out the dormitory window.
That's the third time Margot runs away.
***
At fifteen Margot loses her virginity. She comes home late that night and sneaking in the way they all learned to: climbing the gate, swinging it in towards the window, and then hoisting herself inside. She goes up to the top floor, Richie's room, and gets into bed with him still in her coat. He is only thirteen, and lately he feels very young to her. He smiles at her without opening his eyes and then presses his face into the fur of her coat.
"Richie," she says, hushed, "Do you think I'm a bad person?"
"No," he says. "Why would I?"
"I don't know," Margot says, feeling uneasy. "Sometimes I'm not so sure." His face is tucked against her shoulder so they aren't looking at each other, and that makes it easier. "I don't think I feel the way I'm supposed to feel about people."
She slept with a boy named Peter Whitman from one of the college courses she's taking. She honestly doesn't care if she never sees him again. It isn't a negative feeling; it's just nothing. It's indifference.
"I don't think that makes you a bad person," Richie says, his tone a combination of definitive and unsure that is unique to Richie. It's as though he thinks he knows the right answer, but must always leave room for being wrong.
"If you say so," Margot says.
Margot finishes high school early, at sixteen. That same year her first professional production, Static Electricity, premieres at the Cavendish Theatre to glowing reviews. It's a smash. Margot spends a lot of time smoking pot on the roof. Chas moves out, though he still comes around a lot.
Etheline throws Margot a party to celebrate her successes. Needless to say, Royal is not invited and does not attend. Margot's hair is blonde again and she wears a silver shift dress with her loafers and fur. She sleeps with Eli for the first time, a little tipsy on celebratory champagne, and it occurs to her, when she squints, that he looks a lot like Richie. If his hair were darker, if the line of his nose smoothed out, if his eyes were different; if he were a Tenenbaum, he would look an awful lot like Richie.
They do it in her closet because something about that feels confidential. "This doesn't count," she tells him after.
"Okay," Eli says simply. "Hey, would you read something for me?"
***
At twenty-four Margot lets Peter Bradley feel her up backstage before the show. It's part of her publicity tour following Erotic Transference. He's rude to her in front of the camera, demeaning to her work, and Margot tastes bitterness in the back of her throat. She is not forthcoming in interviews so she says very little in response but afterwards in the green room she puts a cigarette out in his sleeve.
Uzi is born that night. It's kind of strange. Margot returns to her hotel to find half a dozen messages waiting from her mother and for a minute she's afraid someone has died. But instead it's the opposite.
Margot takes the bus to the hospital and has three cigarettes in quick succession before going inside and upstairs. Rachael and Chas are asleep, her in the hospital bed and Chas slumped in the chair beside her. They're holding hands. Etheline is overcome with pride and happiness, eyes shining. Royal is not present. Richie stands at the large window looking into the nursery, his hands clasped behind his back and sunglasses on. Margot goes to stand next to him.
"It's funny," Richie says. "Chas having kids."
She nods.
"But he'll be a good dad," Richie adds.
"Sure," Margot says.
Margot is certain she doesn't want children. She's not sure what she would do with one. Richie would probably be good at it, but she suspects he probably won't have any either. Richie never has girlfriends, so it's not like there's opportunity.
Margot goes back alone early the next morning. She looks in at Chas' baby, who already has a mop of dark hair though no other distinguishable features. It seems the Tenenbaums only have boys.
"Hi." A girl steps up next to Margot, a petite brunette with a pixie haircut. She wears a gray peacoat. "I'm Rachael's sister. You probably don't know me; I skipped the wedding."
"Mm," Margot says.
"I was in Africa," Rachael's sister continues. "With my boyfriend. Jack. This baby thing's crazy, huh?" She taps the glass, getting a harried look from one of the nurses. "Couldn't pay me. But Rach's good at this kind of thing, I guess. She's very responsible."
Margot particularly dislikes this kind of small talk and always finds she has little to say in return. She looks at Chas' baby and doesn't feel very much in the way of anything. That's been her problem her whole life, she thinks. Where she should feel love there's only indifference. Where she should feel guilt there's only impotence.
"I skipped it too," Margot says belatedly. In the glass she first sees the reflection of her and Rachael's sister, both of their expressions unreadable, and just beyond them the newest Tenenbaum. "I was in France."
Richie once told her she wasn't a bad person, but Margot suspects he is not an unbiased critic.
***
Chas is thirty-six, Margot is thirty-four, and Richie is thirty-two. They aren't children anymore. They aren't geniuses anymore either. They exist in a post-genius fugue, three disasters who had once been rather promising.
It is the day of Etheline's wedding to Henry Sherman. She looks beautiful in ivory, touching up her makeup in the mirror. Margot lounges barefoot on the windowsill gnawing on her nicotine inhaler. Margot's mother has had many suitors since the divorce, but Henry is the only one Margot ever liked.
"What did Raleigh mean the other day?" Etheline asks without turning to look at Margot, her voice light.
"You'll have to be more specific," Margot says.
There is a very obvious pause and then Etheline says, "About Richie."
Margot's teeth dig into her tongue. She says, "You'd have to ask Raleigh what he meant."
Margot doesn't feel guilty about any of the people she's been with, not really. Maybe that's bad. The only person she feels guilty about is Richie, and she's never been with him, not once, not at all.
The worst she's ever felt was hearing about him in the hospital. Every time she thinks of the jagged marks on his wrists she wants to cry, wants to wrap him in her arms and apologize for nothing, for doing nothing, for always making herself feel nothing.
She clears her throat and swallows. "You don't think Richie will do it again, do you?"
"I hope not, sweetheart," Etheline says gently. Then, "I'm worried about you too, you know."
"I'm fine." The reply is immediate, but her stomach twists a little, pleased by the concern and embarrassed about it. "You shouldn't worry."
Etheline rises so she can come closer and press a kiss to Margot's forehead. "I'm going to anyway," she says. "You don't have to talk to me, but you should know that you can."
Margot doesn't know if Etheline knows about Richie – about how Margot is in love with him even though it's gross and wrong. She wouldn't put it past Eli to have sent over a note or something. Margot swallows past the tightness in her throat and only nods.
***
Rachael dies in the height of summer. Margot is thirty-three. Ari and Uzi are seven and nine, respectively. Uzi is quiet and reserved. He likes to read. He didn't think much of The Cherry Orchard, which Margot lent to him. She understands. Ari is much more forceful. Sometimes he sort of reminds her of Royal, but mostly he just reminds her of Chas.
The boys look pale and drawn in their black suits. Standing on either side of Chas, they look like diminutive versions of him: Chas throughout the years, so to speak. Chas declines to speak at the service and he refuses any help in the planning, though Etheline is forced to step in when he loses it at one of the caterers.
Afterwards they invite the funeral-goers back to the house on Archer Avenue. Rachael was cremated so there wasn't a casket or anything, but her ashes are in an urn on the mantle and Margot finds it unnerving. Chas and the boys will have to take it home with them at the end of the night. Margot remembers Rachael once joking, "Scatter my ashes at Saks Fifth Avenue!" but she doesn't think they're going to do that.
Margot finds Chas upstairs in the ballroom. Her own face stares down at them at least twenty times on one of the walls. Diversification of subject was not one of Richie's strong suits.
"Mom wants to know if you've eaten," Margot says by way of an introduction. "Or if you'd like to eat."
Chas does not respond. Margot sits beside him. She reaches over to prod the B.B. between the knuckles of his left hand, then lightly smoothes her finger over his wedding band. Chas does not flinch so Margot, who is not normally demonstrative, slips her hand into his.
"She knew how much you loved her," Margot says. "And I think she was really happy. I mean, she always seemed happy."
"She was really mean before six a.m.," Chas says.
The corner of Margot's mouth lifts a little and at the same time her heart breaks. "Most people are," she says. "We can probably agree on that."
Chas releases a long, slow sigh and, surprising her, turns to lean his forehead against her shoulder. Tentative and a little uncertain, Margot raises an arm to put around him.
"I'm sorry, Chas," she says softly.
"Everyone's sorry," Chas says. He sounds worn-out. They sit there for who knows how long and eventually Richie finds them. Silently, Richie moves to a corner of the room and puts on the record player. The Velvet Underground fills the room as Richie comes to sit on Chas' other side. No one says anything else and it seems alright, or as alright as it can get right now.
***
"What you did," Margot says, "With the investigator. I didn't like that."
Raleigh gives her a look that might be incredulous if it wasn't so sad. Most of all, she'd always liked his sad eyes; Richie had sad eyes too. "My dear, you can hardly –"
"I don't like that either," she interrupts. "'My dear.' I know I was wrong but you were wrong too. So I thought you should know."
"Alright." Raleigh looks down at his hands, smoothing one over the other. He picks up his pen and signs his name, unintelligible as always, on the dotted line of the divorce papers. "Alright."
Margot is thirty-five. She has been married and divorced twice. She doesn't intend to do either again, and that's a relief.
***
Chas is nineteen, Margot is seventeen, and Richie is fifteen. She and Richie lay on the floor of the ballroom with Bob Dylan on the record player. One of Chas' Dalmatian mice has made a home in the half-empty snack box they brought up with them.
Margot and Richie lie facing away from each other with their heads side by side, interlocked like puzzle pieces. Her cheek is against his cheek, which is a little scratchy with the beginnings of stubble.
She considers telling him about Eli Cash, who she slept with again without quite meaning to, but Margot isn't very good at confessions and anyway, she thinks it might crush him. Richie's low, burning sweetness has begun to shift into melancholy lately. It makes her very upset but it's not like there's anything she can do about it.
"I love you, Margot," Richie says suddenly. Margot stills. Then –
"I know, Richie," she says. She turns her head to kiss his cheek but he turns at the same time so instead she ends up kissing him on the mouth, upside down. It's very quick and very dry but it zings sharply down her spine and Margot knows that isn't the right way to react to kissing your brother. Probably you shouldn't be kissing your brother in the first place.
She sits up and changes the record.
***
After their father's funeral, Margot and Richie return to the studio in Mockingbird Heights, which they now share. He sits in a chair pushed slightly away from the little kitchen table. He sighs. Margot comes to put her arms around him, to hold him against her chest. His hands settle on her lower back. His hair is beginning to grow back but Margot is getting used to Richie without it. It's so easy to see his face now.
"I told Chas we would take Ari and Uzi to a museum or something this weekend," Richie says.
"Alright," Margot says. "Maybe the African Wing of the Public Archives."
She feels Richie smile. Richie's smiles are tender and infrequent, have been since they were teenagers, and it makes her grip him tighter. She loves him, always has and especially now. It feels odd to admit that to herself, but there are probably worse things to feel. Richie pulls away enough that he can look up at her and Margot sinks down to sit on his lap. He kisses her and she kisses him back, winds herself around him.
They haven't slept together, whatever anyone else thinks. Margot figures it's a matter of time but she is content to wait for it. She's spent half her life running away from Richie and it's good to stand still now.
She is writing a new play. It's about running away. It's called Loneliest Paradise. It takes place on a ship. Margot finds she doesn't really care if it does very well. Right now it's enough to be doing something new, and enough to want to do something new.
Margot and Richie curl up together in a bed that belongs to both of them. A record plays in another room. Her typewriter is on the small card table in the corner and a collection of racquets lean against the wall. Margot doesn't believe in cheap sentimentality and she is a proponent of deep denial but even she would be hard-pressed to call this place anything but home.
And that really is kind of nice, honestly.