by Michael Fine
It took all of Hope’s patience to let the call go to voicemail and wait until her phone indicated that she had a message. She listened to it, deleted the message, and immediately texted Charlie.
11:45 a.m., Senator Mary Roberts' office. Dress nice.
Hope quickly showered and put on a navy blue pair of pants, a white blouse, and a red jacket. It was the one nice outfit she’d brought with her. She took the Metro to the Capitol South Metro Station and walked to the Capitol building. It was the first time on the trip that she would enter the building without a disguise. As she approached, she saw Charlie, wearing a coat and tie, standing just outside the entrance. She ran the last few feet between them and gave him a tight squeeze. She tugged on his tie and said, “Never thought I’d see the day.” She had never seen him in anything other than jeans and a t-shirt under his greasy apron. He gave her a “what the hell are we doing here?” look, but she grabbed his hand and led him into the building.
Hope and Charlie went through security screening just inside the north entrance. Hope gave her assumed name to the guard at the Senate Appointment Desk while Charlie stood quietly, wondering what was going on.
“Driver’s license, please,” the guard requested like an automaton. Hope handed her doctored license to the guard. She tried to trust that Charlie had chosen someone reliable to make the fake ID—someone considerably more reliable than Eddie Townsend—but she found herself struggling to breathe normally. Charlie noticed and made a “breath” motion with his hands and inhaled and exhaled through pursed lips.
“Are you together?” the guard asked Hope, lifting his head in a slight nod in Charlie’s direction.
Charlie turned and faced the guard. “Yes.” He handed over his own falsified identification.
The guard returned their driver’s licenses and said, “Please wait here. Someone will be out to get you.” He turned to the man standing behind Charlie and said, “Next.” Hope and Charlie pocketed their IDs and stepped aside.
A few minutes later, a pimple-faced intern in a poorly fitting blue polyester suit came out to fetch them. “Regina Staubach?” he said as he approached Hope, surprised at how young the woman was. She introduced Charlie, remembering to use the name on the fake ID he’d just given to the guard.
“Please follow me. The Senator is quite busy today but is very much looking forward to meeting with important constituents such as yourselves.”
Charlie shot Hope another look that said, “What the hell?” Hope could only squeeze his hand and silently urge him to go with the flow. Wow, I never imagined I’d embrace a phrase like that in my entire life. She was winging it now, and it simultaneously scared and thrilled her.
The intern led Hope and Charlie through a wandering path until they finally made their way to the office of Senator Mary Roberts, the junior Senator from Louisiana. The young man stopped just before the entrance to the office and said, “Here you go. The Senator’s staff will assist you until she returns from the floor vote that’s going on right now. It was nice to meet you.” He shook their hands and scurried down the hallway.
Hope took a deep breath and steadied herself against the door jamb. She looked at Charlie, the only real source of comfort she’d known for nearly a decade. His kind eyes and warm spirit gave her the strength to enter through the door.
“Hope?” the woman at the small, messy desk in the antechamber exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”
Charlie looked at the woman. She had a narrow face, straight shoulder-length brown hair, and thin lips. Her lipstick was too pink for her age, he thought. Charlie looked at the woman’s name plate, which read Tanya McAvoy. He’d never heard of anyone named Tanya or McAvoy in Hope’s life. Still, the woman somehow seemed familiar.
“Hello, Mom,” Hope said. It was only the second time she’d seen her mother since Tanya left for Washington the day after Fred Spencer was elected President, over twelve years earlier, and the first since Angel died.
Tanya looked around to see if anyone else in the office was around. Especially the Senator.
“What are you doing here?” Tanya repeated.
“It’s nice to see you, too.”
Charlie stood quietly, not wanting to interrupt this family reunion, such as it was. So this was Hope’s mother. Charlie knew that Hope had practically raised herself and, while she was alive, her younger sister. Why on earth did this woman leave Hope alone? He found himself disliking Tanya McAvoy immediately.
Tanya McAvoy was never really cut out to be a mother. When the girls were toddlers, she found herself perturbed by having to worry about and care for them every second of the day. Now, years later, she had stopped thinking of herself as one altogether. “I thought you were a donor.” She checked her notepad. “Someone named Regina Staubach.”
“Surprise,” Hope said sarcastically.
“Hope,” Tanya said in a quiet, menacing voice, “We agreed that you would not interfere with my important work here.”
Hope looked around at the cramped room, which wasn’t much more than a closet. The room held two other small desks besides her mother’s, both of which were currently unoccupied. Hope glanced at the heavy wooden door to the Senator’s office. She wanted to say, “What important work? The important work happens behind that door,” but she held her tongue. Instead, she replied, “No. You decided. I was thirteen. Angel was only eleven. And you just picked up and disappeared.”
Tanya noticed Hope’s glance at the door to the Senator’s office and read her daughter’s mind. Despite the fact that Hope hadn’t said anything out loud, she stung from Hope’s unspoken judgement about her standing in the office. “You were almost fourteen and Angel was almost twelve,” she said, as if rounding up their ages justified her decision. She smoothed her shoulder-length mousy brown hair and added, “And look, you’ve turned out to be a strong, confident young woman.”
Charlie found himself simultaneously mortified by this woman and begrudgingly willing to grant that Hope had, indeed, grown up to be independent, competent, and a natural leader. He reached out and touched Hope’s shoulder. She jumped at his touch.
“Maybe you should explain why we’re here, kiddo,” he said gently.
“Tanya,” Hope said, her disdain dripping as she purposely used her mother’s first name, “I need your help.”
“Go on.”
“I am trying to stop the ‘Sanctity of Life’ bill. Surely you must know about it.”
“Yes, of course. Senator Roberts and I are working hard to defeat it.”
Hope stared angrily at her mother and said the thing she knew would hurt her the most: “You don’t have the votes. Surely you must know this. The bill is going to pass unless something is done. Something big.”
Tanya’s shoulders sagged. She knew Hope was right.
Hope thought she heard a rustling sound come from behind Senator Roberts’ door, but wasn’t certain. She hoped her mother hadn’t heard it; if she had, she almost certainly would have immediately thrown her and Charlie out.
“I have a plan,” Hope said, knowing as she said it that this was far from the truth. She briefly explained her research and her idea of showing Senator Royce Carrington first-hand what it meant to be made pregnant against one’s will. “I need your help getting into the Senate chamber. That’s all. After that, you don’t have to be a party to anything.” While Hope spoke, Charlie slowly moved to stand closer to Hope, who stood at the edge of Tanya’s desk.
After a few minutes, Hope’s impassioned plea ended and the room was silent for several moments. Her mother finally spoke.
“You are nuts. Nuts! I cannot support what you’re doing. I cannot help you. I won’t help you. Don’t ruin this for me, Hope. I’m trying to make a difference, from the inside.” Legally.
It was Hope’s shoulders that sagged this time. What was she thinking? Her mother had been focused on her own life plan since that fateful day when that douchebag Fed Spencer, with his absurd handlebar moustache, got elected. Hope, Angel
, and a traditional family structure be damned. A small voice in her head asked, How is that description of your mother different from the way people would describe you, Hope? She shook the thought away.
“Dad would be ashamed,” Hope blurted out.
“Don’t bring your father into things. He left the day after your sister was born, leaving me alone to raise you both. My plan to run for office died that day.” She nodded toward the door to the Senator’s office and added, “I saw your eyes before and you’re right. That’s where the real work happens. That was my goal, but your father saw to it that that was not in the cards for me.”
“Are you blaming Dad—or me and Angel—for you not being a member of Congress? For the fact that you’re on this side of that door?”
“That’s not what I’m saying. Your father and I had a plan. Or so I thought. When we first got married, he was totally on board. But then your dad just wouldn’t join the military—he was a spineless pussy. All he cared about was his stupid music. He set my plan back by years.” It took her two full seconds to stretch out the last word. “Then, when he left, he killed it for good.”
Hope turned to Charlie. “Mom always told us, ‘Always have a Plan.’ The way she said it, you could tell the ‘P’ was capitalized. Angel and I were obstacles to her plan. So was our dad, apparently.”
She glanced at her mother. The woman didn’t try to argue, and Hope’s heart sunk. She continued speaking with Charlie. “Then when Doucheface was elected, she left for Washington the next day. The very next day. She said that since we lived in such a rural area and that I was already in high school, nobody’d know she was gone. She sent five hundred dollars every month to help with expenses. Christ, what a joke! I’ve been working since I was twelve to help pay for things, things like clothes and food.”
Hope turned to her mother and sealed her emotions away. “Goodbye, Tanya,” she said, again purposely using her mother’s first name. “Thank you for your time this morning. Tell Senator Roberts that Regina Staubach couldn’t make it to her appointment. Or that she decided not to donate. Or whatever, I don’t really care.”
Hope motioned to Charlie, signaling him that it was time to go. Charlie put his hands into his pockets and followed Hope out. He was deeply saddened by Hope’s icy relationship with her mother.
As Hope and Charlie walked out of the office, neither noticed Senator Mary Roberts as she listened through a crack in the door to her office. Tanya, who sat with her head in her hands, didn’t notice either, and her boss carefully, silently closed her door.
When Hope and Charlie exited the building, Hope made it about ten steps before she bent over and put her hands on her knees. She had failed. Again. She was suddenly so tired she could hardly stand.
Charlie wrapped his arm around Hope’s waist and steered her toward a nearby bench. “Come, sit,” he pleaded.
When they were seated on the bench, Hope began to cry. “It’s over, Charlie. It’s over,” she said through tears and snot. A breeze whipped her hair around, and a light drizzle began to fall.
Charlie lifted her chin with one hand and reached into his pocket with the other. He palmed his large hands around the object he withdrew from his pocket and flashed it in front of Hope’s face.
“Nope.” He grinned and his eyes danced.
He had swiped Tanya McAvoy’s badge.
Hope’s face brightened immediately. She wiped the snot from her nose with a crumpled tissue from her pocket, then jumped forward and crushed Charlie, who fell backward from the impact.
Hope snapped into overdrive. “Tomorrow. 10 a.m. Go buy a suit. A nice suit.” She got up with renewed energy, already thinking through all that she had to accomplish in—she checked her phone for the time— less than twenty-one hours. She started to walk away, got a few steps away, then turned and walked back to where Charlie was sitting.
“Love you, crazy old man.”
“Love you too, kiddo.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Thursday, March 1 (later that evening)
Hope’s Hotel Room
Outside of Washington, D.C.
14 days before vote on the Sanctity of Life bill
Hope pushed thoughts of Tanya McAvoy out of her head. God, it was hard to believe the woman was her mother. She’d had years of training partitioning her mind, of putting her emotions into boxes and time-shifting when she opened them. She called on that training now. Strangely, the one emotion that she couldn’t fully curtail was anger that her mother was using her maiden name, not her father’s last name. A shrink would have a field day with me, she thought. The man left when I was two years old and this is what I’m most upset about?
As soon as she left Charlie outside of the Capitol, Hope called the young girl who wanted to shorten her pregnancy. She asked the girl to come to her hotel at 9:00 p.m. Hope wasn’t truly comfortable with the idea that she had to perform surgery in her hotel room and so late in the evening, but she had no choice. She knew that her mother had almost certainly realized her badge was missing. The only question was what Tanya would do about it. Would she inform security? If so, would they disable the badge? Would she figure out that it was Charlie who’d stolen it and call the police? The only thing Hope could do was hurry and hope that things would work out. She recalled all the times her mother had said “Hope is not a strategy” to her when she was growing up, and tried to shake the thought away.
Her surgical appointment made, she spent the rest of the day shopping. First, she purchased a navy blue pant suit, choosing the color so she could wear the pair of shoes she already had. She slipped the tailor five twenties to get the pants tailored while she waited. She also purchased a powder blue blouse, the color as close to the Democratic party’s blue as she could find. She was going be making a statement, and she did not want to be wearing Republican red when she did. Second, she purchased a small watermelon from a neighborhood fruit stand. She brought her haul back to her hotel room, then headed back out.
Hope walked to a medical supply company and purchased a new oxygen tank and a small two-wheel oxygen tank carrier. As soon as she walked into her hotel room, she emptied the tank completely. An hour later, she was wearing her old lady disguise, with the added detail that she now wore the oxygen tubes and pulled the now-empty oxygen tank. She walked slowly to a nearby hospital, excruciatingly aware of each minute that passed. Finally, she made her way into the hospital and to its OB-GYN pod. Undetected, she walked out fifteen minutes later with her tank filled with sevoflurane, an anesthetic she’d used many times during her residency. The extent to which people trusted the elderly never ceased to amaze her.
It was eight by the time Hope was back in her hotel room. She had an hour before her young patient arrived.
Hope removed the small bag containing the two explosive devices Quinn had given her from the small safe in the closet of her room. She took one out and put the other one back in the safe, which clacked securely after she closed its door. With a knife she’d swiped from the breakfast buffet, she dug a small tunnel into the center of the watermelon and carefully inserted the explosive device into the hole, ensuring that the fuse trailed out. She walked into the bathroom and gently set the watermelon, hole down, in the center of the bathtub.
Hope suddenly pictured Quinn’s magnetic grin, his crazy beard, his larger-than-life personality. She focused on his quiet competence, or at least what she thought was his competence. But how did she know he was, in fact, an expert? She didn’t, really.
She stripped the sheets from her bed and carried the mattress toward the bathroom, propping it up next to the door. Hope pictured the maneuver she intended. It was something she was always good at: forming a detailed mental model of human anatomy and of medical procedures in time and space. Convinced she was ready, she lit a match, leaned into the tub, and lit the fuse. She flicked her wrist to put out the match and quickly retreated out of the bathroom. Three seconds later, the mattress was in position blocking the door and she was across the ro
om, squatting behind the dresser.
A few seconds later, Hope could barely make out a muffled pfft sound from the bathroom.
Slightly embarrassed by the precautions she’d taken, Hope moved the mattress away and entered the bathroom. The watermelon was still sitting in the center of the tub, but was bulging outward, like it had expanded by a half an inch or so. She reached into the tub to lift the watermelon but when she went to pick it up, it disintegrated into thousands of small pieces. Juices and seeds slipped through her fingers. Hope’s last thought before cleaning up the mess in the bathtub and re-making her bed was to silently offer an apology to Quinn for having doubted him.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Thursday, March 1 (the same evening)
Delivery University
Murdock, Virginia
While Hope Hunter was blowing up a watermelon in her bathtub, Senator Royce Carrington was on stage at Delivery University in Murdock, Virginia, participating in a debate on abstinence-based sex education. Leroy “Roy” Wainwright, the school’s fifth president, was moderating. The Slather Convention Center was packed with students, faculty, and members of the press, and they were being treated to a lively, heated debate.
Dr. Marcia Huang, a tiny woman with long, shiny black hair that fell to the middle of her back and an MD–PhD from the Yale School of Medicine, said, “Federally funded abstinence-only programs continue to rely on curricula that, quote, contain false, misleading or distorted information about reproductive health, unquote. That quote is from a 2004 congressional study. Similar studies since then have, sadly, confirmed that the misinformation and distortions have gotten worse.”
Peter Norquist, a public policy analyst at the Kaelin Institute, a conservative think tank, once again interrupted Huang. “Democrats continually deny these programs the critical funding they need. With more funding—”