Cleo felt her jaw tighten. “Yes.”
“Then you do it my way. I ran some numbers last night, read some internal polling. People like you, Clee. But they also see you as . . . robotic.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you are a successful single mom, which they admire—”
“Uh, yeah, this shit is hard,” Cleo interrupted.
“Right.”
“Also, I’m not robotic,” Cleo said flatly, a little too robotically, she realized. “Also also, she tried to out Lucas’s dad!”
“True,” Gaby said. They met each other’s eyes. Gaby knew Cleo well enough to know that Cleo wasn’t truly offended by this, particularly because MaryAnne had gotten it wrong. If anything, it amused Cleo precisely for that reason: that it was a clumsy, amateur play, and that as long as Lucas wasn’t upset by it, Cleo wasn’t either. Welcome to Washington. Bring your steel balls.
“Look,” Gaby continued. “We just need to have more than one emotional card to play. Voters want to—need to—have more of a connection with you. This isn’t just New York. This is America.”
“Very glad we get to expose all of my regrets to America.”
“Not all,” Gaby said, swinging open the refrigerator and sighing when she found it mostly empty. “Just five.”
Cleo hadn’t returned to Seattle since her grandmother died her junior year at Northwestern. Her sister had long since fled to California—after dropping out of the University of Washington, she headed south to Los Angeles and had stayed, and what else was left there for Cleo? It wasn’t that she lamented her childhood; in fact, she remembered it warmly and was grateful her parents had expected excellence or at least taught her to pursue it, but she’d made the decision—she remembered consciously thinking this at her grandmother’s funeral, which she, barely an adult, had organized—that Seattle had offered her all that it could, and, like an orange picked down to the rind, she was ready to emotionally discard it. Over the years, she’d gotten the (very) occasional invitation to weddings and, of course, her ten- and fifteen-year high school reunions, but she had a toddler, then an elementary-age kid by then, and dragging him across the country to reunite with friends she hadn’t felt the urge to speak with in a decade didn’t exactly sound appealing. Also, none of them were friends by that point. Maybe a therapist would tell her there were other reasons, more complex reasons for turning her back on the place that she came from—that this was where she gained a lot but lost a lot too, and that this was where she learned that playing dirty came with costs (that didn’t seem to bother Cleo as much as it should), and that this was where she quite literally mourned the loss of her childhood and learned how much you could get by on your own—but the result was the same: Cleo had left and didn’t come back.
That the flight was turbulent was no surprise. As if a sign from the universe, if Cleo were to believe in signs, which she did not. Gaby had booked a ticket for Lucas as well (“it’s important that we still see you as maternal,” she’d said, to which Cleo replied, “I am maternal!” to which Gaby had just said, “Great, then this will be easy,”) and Lucas was more pouty than usual because he missed his soccer tournament, but he’d never been to Seattle, and even with all her misgivings, Cleo wanted him to see where she’d grown up. Also, if Lucas had really protested, he could have stayed with Emily Godwin—Cleo’s red line was using Lucas for political gain; she wouldn’t have brought him if he didn’t “kind of” want to come. She wanted to take him to the cemetery where they’d buried her parents. Point out the mayor’s office where she’d interned that summer before her final year of high school, maybe even swing by her old school on Monday before their flight out and introduce him to her debate teacher, who had prodded her into another round of revisions on her speeches and also invited her over for dinners once a month after her parents died. Ms. Paul must have been sixty by now, but Cleo bet that she was still as much of a hard-ass as ever, while still knowing when a kid who lost her parents needed a plate of homemade lasagna.
Lucas drank four Cokes on the plane, which both improved his mood and made him too hyper not to be annoying. Cleo had bought him Wi-Fi to keep him occupied, and he’d spent the majority of the six hours texting frantically with . . . Cleo didn’t know whom, but she was glad that he appeared to have more friends than his morose demeanor would indicate. His leg bounced as their town car cruised down I-5 toward their hotel, his neck swiveling every which way as he took in the landscape, each turn of the freeway a new memory for Cleo and a new sight for Lucas. The Space Needle, where they’d held their spring dance. The expanse of Lake Washington where she spent summers, before she became so laser focused on moving up, up, up, jumping off the docks of more affluent friends who lived on the water. The looming mountains, where her dad had taken her to learn how to ski.
Gaby had booked them at a downtown Sheraton, and their rooms were not ready upon their late-afternoon arrival.
“I have to share with you?” Lucas whined.
“I won’t peek at anything,” Cleo said. She made a cross-her-heart sign across her chest and immediately regretted it. Lucas thought emojis were lame; this was not going to endear her to him either. “No, really, Luke, I’ll give you as much privacy as you need.”
He sighed as Gaby pecked at her phone and said: “Uber’s on the way. Lucas, you’ll film it from your phone—you probably know your way around the tech better than I do.” Lucas shrugged, as if this were totally normal, and Gaby took it as a yes. Then she looked toward Cleo, as if she did not need to be in the know until now. (Cleo always needed to be in the know.) “If you want, because I sprang this on you, we can count this as one of your five.”
“My five?”
“Five regrets. After this, we can be down to four. Though, to be honest, I expected to have the ten to choose from by now.”
“It’s been twelve hours!” Cleo snapped.
Gaby didn’t give her the dignity of a reply because they both knew that Cleo could damn well get anything accomplished in twelve hours if she really wanted to.
“Let’s go clean up so you’re camera-ready,” Gaby said instead.
“Wait . . . now? We’re doing this now?” Cleo clutched the handle of her roller bag, like this could anchor her to the floor of the lobby of the Sheraton. She wasn’t mentally prepared to show up at MaryAnne Newman’s doorstep while still reeking of stale plane air and with a stomach filled with only half a turkey wrap that cost eleven dollars on board. “I need . . . I need to shower! I need to think about what I want to say. I need . . .” She caught a glance of her reflection in the front windows of the hotel. Maybe it was the prospect of facing her old ghosts, but honestly, she looked like a ghoul.
Gaby waved her hand. “I want this truthful, and I want it as close to raw as it can get. This is what we need to tap into.” She jabbed Cleo in the chest, right where her heart was beating too loudly. “This—heart. We’ll get there right as the sun is setting, and it will be picturesque and cinematic and cathartic, and then everyone is going to love you. But yes, let’s go swipe some lipstick on.”
Cleo exhaled loudly, enough to let Gaby know that none of this pleased her.
“You don’t know MaryAnne. It is not going to be that easy.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because if she showed up and did the same to me, I’d never let her off the hook.”
MaryAnne Newman lived in the ritzy part of Seattle. Of course. Growing up, Cleo hadn’t been lacking, but she wasn’t part of the upper echelons of Seattle society. The kids who lived in Broadmoor or Windermere or just off the golf course of the country club were always kind enough—Cleo didn’t want to pin her ambition to class differences or bank accounts or that she drove a beat-up Jetta while they got new BMWs and Jeeps. Seattle was a town where, theoretically, everyone was welcome and embraced and peace, love, and understanding were taught and imparted and mostly put into practice too. Cleo never went without—her parents did perfectly well. But as
the Uber wound through the wide, manicured streets, punctuated with high hedges and bursting rosebushes and blooming rhododendrons, Cleo so easily reacquainted herself with that steady bleat of “less than,” just like she had those first few times her mother dropped her at MaryAnne’s in elementary school. It was subtle, niggling—nothing that beat you over the head—just a small whisper of awe she felt walking into MaryAnne’s cavernous kitchen, eyeing the lush green backyard with a pool that had a waterfall. In the back of an Uber, she was nine again. Even though she was a senator. Even though she’d made something of her life that few of her high school peers could imagine. That she’d flown six hours across the country to apologize to MaryAnne Newman epitomized this: that despite everything, here she was, all these years later, hat in hand.
Cleo had dragged her feet all the way from the hotel restroom, where she’d polished her makeup and changed out of her merino wool sweater, which stank a little bit of perspiration. She’d snapped at Gaby as she touched up her eyeliner, run a brush through her blond-brown hair that was in need of new highlights that would return it to more blond than brown. She’d tried to pluck out three grays with her fingers but had no luck. She’d have to find time for a hair appointment before the next set of television appearances. Things like this mattered for women senators: shimmering highlights or too-long darkish roots or, God forbid, gray hair, could make or break your Twitter feedback. Cleo had never once seen anything of the sort for her male colleagues. In fact, one of the most reviled members of Congress (on both sides!) recently grew in some stubble, and rather than being met with disdain, this somehow made him more likable. Cleo had read headlines claiming he was now sexy. (!!!) All because of a fucking beard.
“Hold still,” Gaby had said in the Sheraton bathroom. “Please keep in mind that I’m not doing this because I want to embarrass you or make you eat crow. God, Cleo. When have I ever advocated for that?”
Cleo pursed her lips, because it was true.
“I’m doing it because I’m trying to protect you. My phone hasn’t stopped buzzing; your interview with Wolf didn’t tamp this down. MSNBC is talking about it now too; let’s not even get into Fox. Don’t you want to at least have the chance to be considered for the nomination? Because this could be over before it even begins.”
Cleo pursed her lips harder and met Gaby’s eyes in the mirror. Gaby was right.
“Apologizing is not my strong suit.”
Gaby handed her a pink lipstick that would ensure her pallor morphed from half-dead to at least having a steady pulse. “Tell me something I don’t know. And you know I don’t like you to apologize, not when it comes from a place of weakness. But there are all sorts of ways to say you’re sorry, and sometimes it can come from strength too. That’s what this is about. Besides, what’s the point of your list if not to make amends?”
“The list is for me! That’s what it was for. Who said anything about amends?”
“So your dad would hate that you are using it to become a better person?”
Cleo snapped the lid back on the lipstick and dropped it in Gaby’s bag. “I thought we were really doing this to have a shot at the nomination. Not because I needed to become a better person.”
“Touché,” Gaby said. “But maybe we can do both at the same time.”
And now the Uber was nearly at MaryAnne Newman’s house. It looked vaguely familiar to Cleo, and she realized MaryAnne must live in—or at least near—her childhood home, like so little had changed twenty years in.
“Wow. This is a super-nice area,” Lucas said, his head swiveling back and forth as he took in the old mansions from each window. “Did you grow up here?”
“No,” Cleo said, a seed of her old class insecurity kicking in, recalling the way that MaryAnne’s mom always looked like she had just come from the salon, with blown-out hair and perfectly pink polished nails. Cleo’s mom, even with her perfect dancer’s posture, was usually covered in paint splatter and wearing clogs. Cleo noticed only when confronted with the differences. “No. Another part of town. We’ll go there tomorrow.” She hesitated. “Well, I don’t know. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.”
Her old home had been sold shortly after her parents died, the money put away for college, with half of it going to her sister, who had by then gotten her act together, graduated from UCLA, and was working at some New Agey spa that Cleo scorned, even at fifteen when she and her parents last visited. So there was no house to tour in Seattle, really. What, exactly, was she planning—a slow drive-by of the beige ranch home that hadn’t been hers in two decades? Maybe that sounded more macabre than it needed to be. Maybe she could just park outside and say, “Hey, I was fourteen once too, and this is where I lived when I was.”
Their car rounded a curve and eased to a stop on the right side of the road, and Cleo couldn’t help but let out a little gasp of air. MaryAnne actually lived in her childhood home. She and Cleo had spent nearly every weekend here, because MaryAnne had a pool and a ping-pong table, and there was a brief stint in middle school, before they each respectively grew serious and cast all playful things aside, when her older brother convinced their parents to buy him a real-life Pac-Man machine, and that was really something.
MaryAnne had repainted the door bright red, but otherwise, the looming Colonial was just as Cleo remembered. She hesitated before popping the handle to the car door, nausea cresting in her throat. She wanted to grab Lucas and Gaby and yank them back in the Uber and flee. Her misdeeds toward MaryAnne Newman weren’t even on the list! (She didn’t think.) Now, twenty years later, should she regret them? She swallowed, waited for the unease in her stomach to pass.
She remembered a sliver of a moment their junior year, AP French. She and MaryAnne had both struggled on an exam. It wasn’t a big deal in the scheme of their world, but it sure as hell felt like one at sixteen and with college applications looming. Cleo had never come naturally to the language, but she bore down, gutted it out. Neither of them knew what exactly went wrong on this test, other than for the first time in their academic lives, they bombed it. Each sat at her own desk, slack-jawed and stunned, Cleo battling back tears, staring at the C- on her blue book. When she’d told her parents that night, ashamed and disappointed, her mom said, “Well, sometimes you have to fail to know where you can succeed next time,” and her dad nodded along, saying nothing. If they shared her disappointment, and knowing them they did, they didn’t make it known. Which, in hindsight, Cleo could appreciate. She’d do the same for Lucas. But three days later, MaryAnne asked her to hold her bag when she went into the bathroom to change her tampon, and Cleo—who was not even snooping—saw a new blue book with an A- written on the cover in their French teacher’s handwriting. It turned out, Cleo found out by sniffing around, MaryAnne’s parents had called their teacher and raised a stink, and she had been allowed a retake during lunch two days before. MaryAnne had told her she was having cramps and had gone to the school nurse.
Cleo gazed out at MaryAnne’s manicured lawn, so green that it nearly felt like an optical illusion, like a painting where the artist had intentionally used a verdant green rather than a more realistic one. She replayed her own shortcuts, ostensibly, her own regrets—the internship essay, the glancing at MaryAnne’s notes before she ran for the paper, the various other small but cutting ways their friendship fractured.
Yes, she thought. I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat.
So maybe not regrets after all.
FIVE
Gaby rang the doorbell, then scampered off the front stoop, so Cleo waited by herself, flanked by two towering potted ficus trees. It was an unusually sunny near-dusk afternoon—May in Seattle was hit-or-miss with the weather—and she reached for her sunglasses, an extra armor to shield her from whatever lay behind the door. When no one answered, Cleo allowed herself a small exhale, felt the knot in her stomach untangle.
“Ring it again!” Gaby stage-whispered from the side of the lawn. She was on the right; Lucas was on the left, their came
ra phones held high so as not to miss either angle of the blessed reunion. (Gaby had decided to film for backup.)
“No one’s home,” Cleo said. “Let’s go. There’s always tomorrow.”
“She’s in town!” Gaby whispered back, though Cleo was honestly not sure why she was whispering. The street was otherwise empty, and they didn’t have anything yet to capture on film. It wasn’t like this was an FBI raid, which, it occurred to Cleo, she would have been much more enthusiastic about. “Ring. It. Again!”
She pressed the buzzer one more time, praying feverishly that Gaby had gotten her intel wrong, and MaryAnne was currently enjoying the beaches of Maui or the mountains of Whistler or wherever she would whisk her family off to avoid the scrutiny of the press glare from the op-ed. Then Cleo recalibrated: MaryAnne would never shy away from the spotlight. She’d shared the op-ed on her Facebook page! Of course she was in town. Cleo was surprised the front door wasn’t flung wide open, with MaryAnne welcoming the inquirers with homemade shortbread and Earl Grey tea. She may have been planning a parade to celebrate. It was easy to envision this, after all, because if Cleo had charted the same course as MaryAnne (country club president rather than senator), it’s what she would have done exactly.
Before she could consider this, the Sliding Doors possibilities of their lives, she heard footsteps coming too quickly, then the lock unlatching (too quickly!), and then the bright-red door, so cheery and welcoming, flung open too quickly. Cleo squeezed her eyes closed. No! No, no, no, no, no! This was not the intention of her regrets list. This was not how junior senators from New York made apologies! She should have stood firm and had Gaby craft a statement of sincere apology and weathered the storm. Then she remembered that they’d tried that (kind of) with Wolf Blitzer, and in the age of social media, one juicy scandal has longer tentacles than an apology, particularly for women. Women couldn’t fuck up the way that men could. They were held to a higher standard, as if making mistakes weren’t part of the human experience. Cleo understood that she couldn’t change society’s preconceptions with one Wolf Blitzer interview. She’d have to do that piece by piece, bit by bit, as senator, maybe as president, maybe just by raising her son to be a good human being.
Cleo McDougal Regrets Nothing: A Novel Page 5