“There’s another thing,” Cleo said after they had armed themselves with caffeine and headed toward the office. “Where are we on the dancing?”
“It’s harder than you would think to find just the right forum for a senator to dance.” Gaby slowed her stride as a pack of men walked past and turned to stare at her (maybe at Cleo too, but more likely her) as they went. “On the one hand, I want Veronica to see your sass—”
“Would we say that I have sass?”
“We would say that you will have sass.” Gaby laughed. “But on the other hand, I’m not so confident in your dancing skills that I really want to make this a public spectacle.”
“We could cut the dancing. I could take a pottery class. Or glassblowing.”
“You’re not taking a pottery class.”
“It’s just about the art, about me trying the art,” Cleo said, and Gaby made a face as if it should never just be about one thing when you can make it about so much more.
Cleo swung open the door to the Russell Building and held it for Gaby to enter, then for three more people—two men and an older woman—to pass through as well. She wasn’t at all put off that the men hadn’t offered. She wasn’t looking for special treatment or gentlemanly gestures.
Still, though, she didn’t much mind when the door swung closed behind her right as she saw the majority leader lumbering up the steps and asking her to hold it. She kind of hoped it smacked him in the face, bruised the crown of his nose, split open one of those dry, crusty lips.
It wouldn’t make up for anything, but at least she’d enjoy watching him taste blood.
Gaby tasked Arianna with sifting through the mail to find an invitation to something . . . arty.
“Let’s start there,” Gaby said. “Anything that might have a live band with a few boldface names. Even if I film Cleo out there on the dance floor myself. I’ll make it work.”
Arianna raised her eyebrows and surely had something to say but did not. Over the years, her staff had made it known around town that Cleo would show up for a fundraiser for a cause she believed in (or for her own campaign’s funding, naturally), but given her disdain for both small talk and art appreciation, she was not likely to waste her time on, say, pop-up art gallery shows to raise money for the homeless. She wanted to help the homeless, of course. Whichever staffer had to RSVP would emphasize this, and it wasn’t even untrue. But she wasn’t going to show up and eat cheese cubes and sip dry wine and nod at art that she didn’t understand or think was all that good to do so. She’d rather spend the night writing legislation that made a difference. Like the Jackman-McDougal Bill.
“Well, this is something,” Arianna said. “You . . . were invited to a prom?”
Gaby was midgulp in her latte and laughed so hard that she had to lean over the trash can and spit out her drink.
“I feel like that would garner bad press, like, something illegal?” Cleo replied. Then to Gaby: “What? I can’t be hot enough to go to a prom?”
“Did you even go to your own prom?” Gaby retorted once she got control of herself.
As a matter of fact, Cleo had not. She had long since dumped Matty, and no one else was interested. Besides, by then she had been accepted to Northwestern, and she was well on her way to plotting her exit out of Seattle, so she spent prom night studying the course catalog and drinking Diet Cokes and listening to her grandmother answer the questions on Jeopardy!.
“Fine,” Cleo said. “I’m obviously not going as someone’s date to prom.”
The phone kept ringing as Arianna sifted through the mail.
“Don’t get that,” she said to Cleo and Gaby, as if either of them had taken to answering their own phone lines. “It’s just more stuff about the hashtag. Pros and cons.” She looked toward Gaby. “Don’t worry—I’m still tallying them.”
They all paused and looked toward the whiteboard. The pros were creeping up toward 77 percent, but underneath, Arianna had also written in all caps and underlined: FIRST LAWSUIT.
“There’s actually a lawsuit?” Cleo asked, a little alarmed.
“Not against you,” Arianna replied. “A high schooler in Omaha who outed some big-deal friend of her dad’s. She filmed it, and it’s gotten, like, fifty thousand YouTube likes, and now he’s suing her for defamation.”
“Jesus Christ,” Gaby said. “What is wrong with people?”
“A lot.” Arianna shrugged.
Gaby turned to Cleo. “This is what I warned you about. This ‘film first’ tactic gives these dickheads an opening.”
“I know.” Cleo nodded. “But still, with Nobells, it worked.” In fact, Columbia had just issued a press release announcing the illustrious professor was taking a “sabbatical” while they investigated.
“Clee.” Gaby sighed. “We both know that just because something works doesn’t mean that it’s not reckless. Veronica Kaye knows that too. We have to be smarter, OK?”
Of course they had to be smarter. They were women.
Arianna returned to the mail pile, then looked up, remembered something, stuttered, then stopped.
“Well, I mean, something came in a few weeks ago?” She shook her head. “I’m sorry; it’s stupid.”
“You did it again,” Cleo said. “You apologized.”
“Shoot, I’m sorry!” Arianna’s face went slack. “Goddammit!”
“What was that one?” Gaby asked.
“Oh God, I shouldn’t have even mentioned it. It’s just that, well, no offense, Senator McDougal, but no one is really after you for your arts patronage.”
“Maybe I can just take a class,” Cleo said. “It doesn’t need to be a grand gesture.”
Gaby bugged her eyes like it very much needed to be a grand gesture. “What was the one from a few weeks ago, Arianna?” she pressed.
“I replied no, but maybe I can switch it. You’re here this weekend, right?” Arianna flipped through some papers in the bottom drawer of her desk.
Cleo nodded a curt yes. No delegation. Lucas on his retreat. She was begrudgingly available.
“Whatever it is, as long as it’s legal and not a prom, she’ll do it,” Gaby said, then dragged Cleo into her office. They had Bowen Babson to prepare for.
On the way to the studio for Bowen’s show, Gaby was talking a mile a minute, even faster than her usual rate. She had informed Veronica that Cleo was not only pushing through the free housing bill (Gaby had not yet figured out how to make that one sexy for the public, but all parties agreed that writing good and valuable legislation could be used to Cleo’s advantage regardless of sex appeal) but that Cleo may very well dance in public this weekend. Veronica Kaye had loved it.
“She loooooved it!” Gaby shrieked and pumped her fist in the air.
Cleo wanted to share in her joy, she really did. She knew it was no small thing that Veronica Kaye was boarding her train, going Only Forward!, but she was anxious about facing Bowen and she was worried because she’d called Lucas twice around noon and texted him three times and even figured out how to Snap him (Arianna had to help her, obviously), and she hadn’t heard back. She’d missed a call from him about an hour ago when she was on a conference call with Senator Jackman going over the budgeting of just how they were going to ask Congress to subsidize their free housing, and now she couldn’t get him to pick up.
“He’s probably just sleeping,” Gaby had said as they got into the town car, when Cleo wondered aloud if she should cancel. “Don’t teen boys do that all day? Besides, I know you’re avoiding Bowen, and honestly, Cleo, your hashtag has been trending for twenty-four hours, and you need to put your face out there as the woman behind the movement.”
Neither of them mentioned that the hallway outside of her office was now teeming with protesters, angry men and also some angry (Cleo thought confused) women, carrying signs that screamed NOT ALL MEN and MEN HAVE RIGHTS TOO! and MEN DON’T RAPE—WOMEN DO! Cleo had to read that one twice to be sure she had seen it correctly, but Gaby yanked her by the arm before she co
uld point out the (mostly) failed logic in this poor woman’s argument. Cleo even had statistics to raise on-air, though she knew it would be a lost cause. In her experience, once people were so entrenched that they picketed outside your office building and took the time to write insane signs, they weren’t open to being swayed.
“I’m putting my face out there,” Cleo said. “Stop telling me that. I get it. I know that I need to address this. I just . . .” She stared out the window as they rolled to a stop at a red light by an Au Bon Pain. This made Cleo wish she were eating a croissant and reminded her that, in fact, she hadn’t eaten since the PB and J last night, unless you counted this morning’s latte. “Look, Bowen rejected me, and granted, I had had too much bourbon—”
“Oh my God, you can’t drink bourbon.”
Cleo nodded. “It was on my list. I couldn’t remember why.”
Gaby’s eyes grew three sizes at least. “You didn’t start dancing in front of him, did you?”
“What? No, why?”
“You really don’t remember? The night at the end of our second year? The bourbon and . . . the bar . . . on which you danced? And subsequently fell off?” Gaby had an air of such astonishment that you’d think Cleo had told her she decided to retire and teach yoga.
Cleo squinted and tried to recall it. She could not for the life of her piece together the evening, but the timing checked out. Of course, back then, Gaby didn’t know about Nobells, but Cleo remembered giving herself one night—one night—to be furious and to drown her sorrows and to wash away her shock at his disloyalty and her contempt at that disloyalty and then to put it behind her, inasmuch as a young woman can do that. Perhaps she did end up dancing on a bar. That certainly would be something for her list; she could see that now.
“And you’re still pushing me to dance in public?” Cleo asked. “You can’t get why that might be a terrible idea?”
“I think the bourbon more than the dancing was the problem,” Gaby said, and Cleo took her point.
The town car started moving again, but her eyes lingered on the Au Bon Pain. Why was it so difficult for her to take care of herself? Was this why people had partners? Was this why they made room in their lives for someone else? Cleo knew, because she was not an idiot, that she could feed herself. But there was something in the underlying notion of it all: that she was constantly fraying at one end. By God, Emily Godwin had to show up with a chicken from Costco. She thought of Emily just then and how she really still very much wanted to cross jab Jonathan square on the nose.
Her phone buzzed alive in her lap. She didn’t recognize the local number, and she’d normally never accept an unknown caller, but Lucas was ghosting her, and maybe he was stuck at a pay phone, in a store, a friend’s, and trying her? Cleo didn’t even know if they had pay phones anymore, but regardless, she picked up her cell. Beside her, Gaby folded a piece of gum on her tongue and offered her one too. Cleo shook her head, then reconsidered. This would have to be breakfast and lunch combined.
“Hello?”
“Cleo McDougal?”
“Yes, speaking.”
“Hi, ma’am. Are you Lucas’s mother?”
Cleo’s heart jumped, and she reached to her side and clutched Gaby’s arm so tightly that Gaby said, “Shit, ow!”
“Yes,” Cleo managed.
“He’s OK, ma’am,” the woman said. “But we had to bring him in to Inova Alexandria—”
“The hospital?” Cleo dug harder into Gaby’s arm.
“Yes, ma’am. He called 911 himself.” She paused. “Don’t worry, ma’am. I’m a single mom myself. I know how it goes.”
“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.” Cleo released her grip on Gaby and felt tears behind her eyes, then down her cheeks. Why was she so fucking bad at feeling his forehead? Why wasn’t she better organized and knew where the thermometer was? She was a goddamn United States senator and a future candidate for president. How hard was it to see that her son was sick? “Is he OK? Jesus, what is going on? I didn’t think he was that—”
“It’s his appendix.” The woman cut her off. “It came on suddenly, so don’t feel too bad. I think most moms would have mistaken it for a tummy ache. He’s a responsible boy, ma’am. That’s why he knew what to do. They’re taking him into surgery now—it was quite emergent—but of course, Mom, he was asking for you.”
“I’m on my way.” Cleo hiccupped, barely managing the words, weighed down by the recognition that she couldn’t even do right by the one person she was responsible for.
She had thought he might even be faking it! That’s how awful her instincts were.
No wonder she was always alone. Maybe this was just how it was meant to be. Maybe when you compiled a list of 233 regrets (and she hadn’t even updated it recently), this was the life you deserved.
NINETEEN
Gaby had the driver drop them at the entrance of the hospital, then let Cleo rush in while she lingered behind to deal with her own type of triage: explaining to Bowen’s producers why Cleo wouldn’t be available for the taping that was set for less than an hour from now. As the car slowed, Gaby had offered herself up instead, which Cleo considered a kindness. Gaby hated doing live TV. She saw other strong, insightful black women too often portrayed instead as hysterical angry black women, and she found the tap dance around this stereotype so irksome that she often didn’t even want to bother. But Cleo trusted her so implicitly, believed in her so empirically, and Gaby, equally hell-bent on putting a positive spin on the entire hashtag situation, agreed (somewhat begrudgingly) to be her messenger on Bowen’s show.
Cleo ran through the halls toward Emergency as Gaby negotiated the situation on the sidewalk, much like she had rushed through the Senate halls toward Senator Parsons, only now with the recognition of the importance of one and not the other. She threw herself at the nurses’ desk and reconsidered this notion. She wasn’t going to be one of those women who suddenly deemed her life’s work unimportant. She literally shook her head while ringing the desk bell—she slammed her hand down three times and spun around looking for someone on duty—and reminded herself that other than Lucas, her work was the only thing that mattered in her life, and she didn’t have to disparage one to embrace the other. This wasn’t going to be that type of story.
A young nurse appeared from the filing room, and her eyes widened in recognition.
“You must be Lucas’s mom.” She smiled a little shyly. She had long, sparkly purple nails and luminescent dark skin and a tiny diamond in her nostril and whiter, straighter teeth than Cleo had ever seen. In fact, Cleo thought she looked a bit like an angel. “I’m a huge fan, ma’am. I mean, I’m considering ‘pulling a Cleo’ tomorrow with a girlfriend.” She shook her head. “Man, fuck that asshole. Screw the patriarchy.” She held her fist out, and Cleo, feeling a bit like she was having an out-of-body experience, held her own fist out, and they bumped them together.
“Is he . . . ?” Cleo said.
“Oh my God!” The nurse thumped her hand to her chest, her purple nails shining under the bright lights. “I’m so sorry!” The nurse looked genuinely mortified, so Cleo did not tell her to recant her apology. “Your boy, I should have told you about your boy! He’s going to be OK. He’s in surgery now.”
Cleo leaned against the nurses’ station and thought it might be the only thing keeping her from complete collapse.
“You’re not looking so great yourself, and I don’t mean that disrespectfully, ma’am,” the nurse said. She reached out and pressed the back of her hand against Cleo’s forehead.
“No, I’m fine. I’m just . . . I haven’t had time to eat all day. And obviously, I mean, this news, while I was at work.” Cleo started quietly crying. She didn’t even have to ask what was wrong with her—crying in public! She would normally be eviscerated for such a thing, but she found that she couldn’t care. She knew what was wrong with her: her son was in emergency surgery and her blood sugar was dropping by the second and whoever the fuck said anything was weak
about tears? “Do you . . . I mean . . . do you need my insurance or whatever?”
“Oh, ma’am.” The nurse’s name was Mariann. Cleo stared at her ID and wondered if maybe there actually were signals from the universe. Mariann opened the little swinging door to the back of the nurses’ station and ushered her inside. “Come on, let me feed you. We have cookies. A lot of them.”
“You don’t have to—I mean, thank you, but I know you have work to do.”
“Girl, we all have work to do. You do yours for me, just like you did when you filmed that teacher of yours, and I do mine for you, just like I am now by giving you some coffee and Oreos, and maybe I can rustle up some Jell-O. In fact, I know I can. The nurse on the shift before me hoards it. No one really knows why.”
“Thank you.” Cleo bowed her head and found that she couldn’t stop crying.
“No woman is an island,” Mariann said as she rubbed Cleo’s back. “Even VIPs like you.”
The surgery had gone well, the doctor told Cleo. They’d gotten to the appendix in time, well before it burst, and now it was just the standard recovery—rest and TLC for a few weeks.
The doctor kept addressing Cleo as “Mom,” as in, “Mom, can you give him some TLC for a few weeks?” and Cleo very much wanted to direct him to use her name—she was more than just Lucas’s mom!—but after neglecting her son and his (now) obvious fever and his (now) obvious distress, she didn’t have the heart to push it. She’d thought it might have been a bit of spoiled food! She’d thought maybe he just wanted a mental health day! “Mom,” the doctor was implying, was a compliment, and she didn’t need to fight every ingrained battle when she knew the surgeon didn’t mean anything by it other than that she was Lucas’s caretaker, even when she hadn’t been a very good one.
Cleo McDougal Regrets Nothing: A Novel Page 23