Twenty-Eight
No one over the age of five would confuse this for professional baseball. Some players on the field were graying. Many were testing the tensile strength of their uniforms. The pitcher for each team didn’t actually throw from the mound. But the trappings were there. Big lights. Scoreboard. The mascots—Tom, Abe, George, and Teddy—ran around the edge of right field at the bottom of the fourth inning, shoving and tripping each other.
It was the annual Congressional Baseball Game for Charity. Bo, Wallis, Cricket, and I cracked peanuts and sipped light beer from our seats a dozen rows behind home plate. Next week we would be meeting with Melinda Darley, and I was gathering a certain amount of amusement watching the soon-to-be secretary strike out so hard she spun a full circle in the batter’s box.
For many years, Gregory had participated in this event. Shortstop. Cricket, Wallis, and I had attended as a family, posing for pictures, playing the game that was more important than the one on the field—humanizing Gregory, the senator. Unlike the majority of our required outings, I’d actually enjoyed this one. I could eat cups of ice cream and run around with other children. I didn’t have to wear tights or a dress.
Cricket had liked this tradition, too, especially as she became one of the veteran wives, leading the welcome committee for new families. She held court, kissed babies, and made friendly overtures to women on the opposite side of the aisle. And it didn’t hurt that Gregory always managed to make some pretty dramatic plays.
In the third inning, Miles tripled to left field on the first pitch, and we all stood and hollered like it was our job. And so maybe it was. Cricket, inscrutable behind her giant round sunglasses, took this as an opportunity to excuse herself for a bathroom break and another round of beers. As the crowd died down and the next batter came to the plate, I spotted just the person I’d been looking for a few rows below: Claire, the chief of staff for Senator Armstrong, Miles’s counterpart from Maryland. I knew she would make an ideal partner for a new initiative involving both our offices.
Since I had learned the source of my college tuition funding, I had been thinking of actionable, immediate ways to compensate for it. National Literacy Week was coming up, and I figured the two senators could jointly canvas Maryland, establishing Little Free Libraries at schools and community centers, inaugurating read-to-service-dog programs, promoting the 1000 Books Before Kindergarten campaign. All ways to remind elementary and middle school students and their families of the connection between reading and mental health before they left for summer break. Big impact, little money.
I grabbed the shoulder of Bo, who had been laughing with Wallis about the rep from Maine currently running the bases with his laces untied. He obliged me and hollered for Claire; we waved her over and she filled Cricket’s empty seat.
“You had me at service dogs,” Claire said, clapping me on the back when I finished laying out my plan. I’d always respected her unique combination of diligence and good humor. “Armmie will love this.”
Bo agreed. “We could end at the governor’s office. Make a resolution proclaiming May as Maryland’s reading month.”
By the end of the inning, we had a preliminary strategy in place and delegated the obvious first step duties. It was when Claire returned to her own seat that I realized Cricket wasn’t back. I guessed she’d been waiting elsewhere, having observed that her place was occupied, then got sidetracked socializing with an old friend.
But when she was still missing at the end of the fourth, I worried something might be wrong, and went to find her. Maybe she’d gotten a phone call from our lawyer. I couldn’t imagine she’d break her own cardinal rule and leave without saying goodbye.
I made it up the many steps, ignoring the rows of spectators on either side of me, to the concessions area, and noticed her sitting at a table by the ice-cream cart. “Cricket!” I called as I strode over.
She looked up, forlorn. “Daisy?” she said. “I can’t go back in there, Daisy.”
“Okay,” I said, nodding, trying to mute the warning siren blaring in my head.
“Everyone knows I was married to a criminal. They probably think I abetted him. That’s what they all think. I have zero credibility.”
She hadn’t ever talked about Gregory, or herself, in these terms. I pulled out the chair across from her and gingerly sat.
“I lost him, then I lost everything,” she whispered, clinging to her watch, twisting it around her wrist. She’d removed her sunglasses, and her eyes darted nervously. “So what good am I, now?”
I noted our surroundings, still too stunned to formulate words. At a table nearby, an older couple gobbled soft-serve cones that were all but melting down their arms. By the entrance, a father struggled to calm a tantruming toddler. While on the field, powerful congresspeople were flaunting their lack of hand-eye coordination. And Cricket didn’t feel good enough? I gave my best attempt. “Cricket, I don’t think—”
“They’re all judging me!” she said, and pointed to the park. “I can feel it.”
Our presence at the game had certainly registered, but there hadn’t been any stares I would classify as mean or gawky. Especially compared to what we’d faced all winter. I had thought this would be a fun diversion, but maybe the memories of past years, the contrast of where she was now and where she’d been, had gotten to her.
“Do you want to go home?” I asked, leaning in with my elbows on the table.
“No,” she snapped, and I drew back, not sure what to make of the unfamiliar woman before me. “What would that say? That I fled? That I wasn’t strong enough? That I should be ashamed?”
Inside the park a ball cracked into a bat, and I tried to tune out the sound of the crowd. “Cricket,” I said again. “You don’t want to go back in. You don’t want to go home. What do you want to do?”
“What am I supposed to do, Daisy?” she asked gravely. Then: “No—forget I asked that. You’re my daughter. I’m supposed to be taking care of you. I’m not going to make you solve this problem.”
Bo materialized in my line of vision at the entrance to the stands, probably sent by Wallis to check on us. I gave him the universal sign for I need a minute.
“You know,” she continued, as I turned back to her, “it wasn’t simple before, my life, but it was straightforward. I knew the rules, at least. I hate what he did to us, but I miss him, so much. I miss him. And I know I’m not supposed to admit that to you.”
I’d been spending so much time on my own pain, I’d failed to truly comprehend hers. And she deserved her time to grieve, the same way Wallis and I had. Perhaps it had been easier to accept that Gregory was just cheating on her. The awfulness, in a way, was contained, centrally located in that house, in that beautiful parlor on P with the cream sofa and brass andirons. Though it hadn’t seemed like it, these last months had been just as much a strain on her as on us.
“That chapter of your life, in there,” I said, angling my head toward the field, the congresspeople on it, “is done. Yes, you’re not the senator’s wife anymore. But you have opportunity you didn’t before. You have freedom.”
She made a guttural sound. “I had freedom before. Thirty-seven years we were married. And most of the time I did what I pleased. Truly, I did. You know, Daisy, for such a progressive woman you have a really regressive view of me. I chose my own path, and I’m sorry that path doesn’t suit you, but it is what it is. The bargain we made with each other wasn’t terrible. Please don’t blame me for it.”
“I don’t blame you,” I said. I’d always known that Cricket was well-suited to be a politician’s wife; I just hadn’t understood how much she’d relished the duties of the role. I’d only seen what we’d had to give up as the family of a senator—namely, our privacy—and I’d failed to see what she had gained. “You kept our family together for as long as you could. I will never hold that against you.” She still appeared doubtful, so I l
ooked into her troubled eyes. “I promise.”
She exhaled and shimmied her shoulders, as if shaking off a chill.
I tugged at the sleeve of her blouse. “Come sit with us. It’s a beautiful day. We’re right behind home plate. And I heard for the last inning they’re going to let that cute congressman from Texas pitch.”
“I’m a sight,” she said, patting the top of her hair even though there wasn’t a strand out of place. “I can’t go back in.”
“Do you think we care?”
“I just don’t want to embarrass you and Wallis.”
“You’re our mother,” I said. “You’ll always be slightly embarrassing to us.”
We had a little laugh, then she linked her arm through mine and we returned to our seats. Wallis and Bo had saved us some peanuts. In the end, our team lost, by a lot, but Cricket stood and applauded them anyway.
Twenty-Nine
To Melinda Darley’s office, with the entourage. We rolled deep, feeling the occasion required a show of strength.
It had been a week since Miles’s team—our team—had been trounced by hers in baseball, and although the conversation with my mother had left me a bit rattled, slipping back into my office and my work had given me a renewed sense of purpose.
As we marched through the tunnels underneath the Capitol, interns jumping out of our path, we discussed strategy and topics for disarming small talk.
“Her kids,” Bo offered. “We can always bullshit about them.”
“No mention of kids,” I said, sharp. “No mention of Blake.”
“Her dead husband was a Baptist minister,” L.K. said. “Weren’t you raised Baptist, Miles?”
“Lord,” said Miles, “not her kind of Baptist.”
We bypassed the elevators and made for the stairs, Miles’s preference when a busy day’s schedule prevented a workout. I was out of breath by the time we reached Melinda Darley’s floor. Outside her office, flags, obviously, and a few tourists taking pictures of the wall plaque bearing her name and state. Her receptionist, a young woman fresh out of the sorority house, asked us to Please wait just a sec while she made the call.
I wiped my damp palms on my suit pants and tried to gather my wits. I would need them. Melinda Darley was many things, shrewd and ruthless among them. But when we were escorted back to her office a few minutes later, her greetings were cordial. Handshakes. Offers of water, coffee. The Please do sit downs. Your sports team, they’re really something. Gosh, this weather.
Once the pleasantries had been dispatched, Miles began. He was in one of the armchairs—upholstered a jarring shade of chartreuse—in front of her dark wood desk. From the matching love seat in the corner where Bo and I sat, perched, ready for battle, I thought smugly how awful her taste was. “Off the record,” he said. “Are you sure you want to get inside this administration? We’ve seen what it’s like over there.”
“The reports, I believe, are grossly exaggerated,” replied Melinda. Her dress and lips both burgundy, she sat with fingers tented under her chin, framed by a window with aluminum blinds, her loose papers stacked perfectly in three piles by her right elbow.
“Don’t think someone won’t try to smear you,” Miles said. “Whatever bodies you have buried will be exhumed.”
“I’m a simple girl from Turbeville, South Carolina.” She glanced at her chief of staff, the same guy from the cemetery and the bar in Charleston, who let loose two barks of laughter. She smiled, too, both rows of teeth. “I’ve got no bodies buried except for my childhood cat. He’s under the old sycamore in my parents’ backyard. He has a little headstone, too. Made it from some mortar mix my Daddy had leftover at the hardware store.”
I had to mindfully resist rolling my eyes. The story was stump-speech quaint. That is to say, bullshit. After a long pause, Miles prepared to strike. “This is what it’s come to, then,” he said. Ever so briefly, Melinda cast her eyes in my direction, and I did my best to mask my satisfaction with a professional, pensive expression. “All right, since we’re not getting any younger. Our office has come to understand that you bribed some staff at your son’s university a while back. That’s what this meeting is about. I’m not sure what to do with this information. Therefore, we’re hoping you can help.”
“Huh.” She barely blinked. “How interesting.”
“Indeed,” said Miles.
“What’s stopping you from releasing this information?” she asked. “As you said, media would pounce upon it. So would your colleagues. So why don’t you just be frank, Senator. What do you want?”
“Firstly,” said Miles, “my mental health study is stuck. And it confuses me as to why. My staff has worked tirelessly with HHS to get the logistics in place. The money, once we get it, will be well used.”
“Did you try to get it on the omnibus last year?”
This, from the woman who blocked that exact effort. Bo and I exchanged a skeptical look, marveling at her selective amnesia. It was a pretty brazen tactic, even for the Hill.
“Yes,” Miles said. “You didn’t bring it up for a committee vote.”
In a move I was beginning to recognize as a habit, she pursed her lips and hummed. “I don’t remember that.”
“I do,” Miles said. “But since your memory is foggy, let me remind you, getting the funding should be a no-brainer.”
“And you want me to get something earmarked for you,” she said.
“That would be helpful. And I imagine there’ll be some more specific projects we’d like funded, as well,” Miles said, “once you’re confirmed.”
“I see.” Her placid smile remained in place. “The or else goes unsaid.” The room was quiet again. On the wall behind her desk was a framed yellow flag: the words DON’T TREAD ON ME were printed below a coiled rattlesnake, its hissing tongue extended like a bayonet. I tried not to let it make me nervous, but my heart was now beating unevenly at her acknowledgment of the grenade we had just thrown on her desk. “You’ve done your research,” she said. “And—actually—we have, too. It’s all a little embarrassing, isn’t it? Having to get into the muck like this. But that’s the job.”
“My job is working for the people of Mary—”
She cut him off, a slice of her hand through the air. “Save it. You know, you bring up the time when Blake was at college. So, I can’t help but remind you about your own chief of staff, and how she paid for college. Rather, how her father paid for it.” Melinda stared at me for a moment, daring me to speak. I could not, for I wasn’t really there anymore. I was in my mind, tumbling through possibilities, turning over stone after stone, wondering how in the world she knew. Melinda Darley waited, patiently, until I came to. Then she held my eyes, so when she said the next thing, it was right at me. “Your choice to employ the daughter of one of the most corrupt and shameless thieves this body has ever seen speaks volumes about your judgment, Senator, does it not?”
A less adept politician might have let his shock at this revelation show. Miles did not. “It seems that we are at an impasse.”
She drummed her fingernails on her desk. “An impasse? No, a compromise, I think. We will both sit on our respective piles of—what did you call it?—information. And the sanctity of the system will be somewhat preserved. I don’t expect your vote to advance me out of committee. Nor do I need it. But I would prefer not to be met in committee with a walkout.”
Miles, sturdy as can be, pushed back. “You know I don’t have the power to decide—”
“Then find some power,” she said, all perkiness and pep. “Maybe it is in the same place you found this ludicrous gossip about me.” She spun to her chief of staff. “Can you imagine?”
“I think we’re done here,” Miles said, rising, arms stiff at his sides.
“Just one more thing, Daisy,” she added, standing as well and turning to me. “I know you and my son and your sister were quite close, onc
e. And although Blake was adamant that we not hold this tuition thing over either of your heads”—she looked convincingly abashed—“I’m afraid I must overrule him. You understand? Whatever my son said to you during the course of his friendship with your sister will remain a distant memory. If someone asks you about him, you say, who?” Then she smiled politely and nodded like this was the simplest instruction in the world.
As she walked out, staffers emerged from their offices along the main corridor to observe the mood, spot the trampled. Their mission was an easy one. But before I could blink, Melinda Darley was gone, back into the open arms of her staff, who would surely cheer once she confirmed their victory.
“Is it true?” Bo whispered when we were down the hall and out of earshot.
L.K., who had waited for us outside, was ahead with Miles, handing him a bottle of water, a tissue.
“I don’t know,” I said, the lie making me feel even worse. Miles sped down the steps, and we all had to hurry more than usual to keep up. We passed into our office building, and the tunnel structure changed, became narrower, the lighting harsher. I felt exposed. The shock of Melinda Darley’s knowledge was beginning to wear off; taking its place was scorching regret. Why did I think this would work? Bo had been right—it was blackmail. I’d just tried to blackmail a sitting senator. I turned my face away from Bo, but not before I saw the disappointment in his eyes.
We caught up to Miles and L.K. at the elevator. “Daisy.” Miles frowned. “Go to that meeting on rural broadband for me, will you? I need to get back to the office.”
I questioned whether a dull, overly long basement meeting would be the worst of my punishment. “Miles, can I just say—”
“Please,” he said without looking at me. “Don’t want to know. Let’s go, Bo.”
Ladies of the House Page 22