Several weeks after the dinner, Mulcahy contacted her to say he had a lead on a position with Wyncott’s campaign and that he and Feeney were both willing to act as references for her. While grateful, she was also surprised, given how she’d failed to measure up. “I’ve never worked in politics,” she confessed to Mulcahy. He assured her it was only very entry level and she could make as much or as little out of it as she chose. “But the job’s yours if you want it, Ally. Just let me know.” Part of her felt being handed a job for which she hadn’t competed was in opposition to the values of hard work and opportunity drilled into her American psyche for the bulk of her childhood. But the thought of beginning her postcollege life back in Piedmont without a job terrified her. Thanking Mulcahy, she accepted the position.
She struggled at first to fit in, as much in the office as in DC. Her coworkers weren’t cold exactly, but they had all been working on the campaign for some time before she showed up, an interloper thrown into their well-oiled machine by a prelate hundreds of miles away in Boston, a city they already knew wouldn’t go for Wyncott. It was understandable, and the notion of trying to force them to accept her instead of just tolerating her was more aggressive than Ally had any desire to be.
But now that she’d asserted herself at a meeting with Casey with some success, she felt more at ease. More importantly, she felt she could connect to what Casey was looking to find out about the voters they seemed to be losing. By bestowing the honor of this trip to Philadelphia on her, even if she’d had to share it with Steve Tilden, Casey acknowledged her worth. The job in his office was no longer a handout she struggled to justify. It was now something she had earned, and she planned on continuing to deliver.
That’s why she was so rattled by how unprepared she was for the conversation with Ernesto Horta. She’d spent a good amount of time researching the economic and ethnic makeup of the neighborhood by Saint Rita’s. She was certain she’d be able to cover anything he asked about and make some strong arguments in favor of Wyncott. He seemed like a nice enough man, and she felt they probably would have liked each other more if they’d met under different circumstances.
She studied her materials the entire way there, stopping to look up only once, just in time to spot the vandalism lining the walls of rundown buildings as the train pulled into Thirtieth Street station. Steve was still flipping through his notes even as everyone had begun to rise and collect their belongings.
“I just don’t know that we’re not wasting our time here,” he had said at the start of their journey from DC. “I mean, Philly is probably going to go for Archer no matter what we do.”
“The point isn’t to get Philly to vote for him,” Ally replied. “It’s to make inroads with the community here and figure out how to make Wyncott more attractive to similar groups in other cities.”
Apparently they weren’t the only ones thinking about this. When Ally and Steve arrived at the community center, Ernesto commented immediately on how popular his office had become since Thomas Archer delivered his speech in the neighborhood. “I only seem to hear from you guys when it’s election time.” He said the words with a smile, but it knocked Ally and Steve off their game a little. It didn’t help that during the subsequent discussion, Steve kept calling the neighbor hood’s voters “demographic patterns” and “migrant populations” in basic conversation.
Ernesto had eventually interrupted him and, with a warm smile, said “Yes, yes, Mr. Tilden. Of course, I know that your candidate’s current interest in me and the groups I work with is based on the strength of our voting numbers.” He’d leaned back in his chair. “But please. Do try to remember that we are people first. Though we may occasionally lean toward certain issues as a community, we are not all the same person, and if we do vote collectively on occasion, we do so in the hope that someday we may be recognized as people, not a sociological trend.”
Ally saw an opportunity to wrangle back control of the discussion and jumped in. “Understandably, Mr. Horta. That’s why we’re here. We want to know what the members of your community want and need from a candidate. Arthur Wyncott, as you know, is a man of great faith, and we think that helps him be a better president, to make governing decisions that serve humanity and preserve a strong moral core. What do the people in your community need from a candidate possessed of faith?”
“Your colleagues have heard all this from me before, Ms. Larkin. I’m not a good judge for your campaign strategy because I don’t have a black-and-white answer.”
She cringed inwardly realizing her first mistake. Of course, Steve screwed up by calling them a demographic, but she was hardly faring better by labeling them one-issue voters.
“Oh no, we’re not looking for black-and-white answers. We know that different people have different needs. From what you see in general about your community, what’s important to them?”
He seemed to relax a bit. He leaned forward and doodled on a piece of paper. “Well, obviously, they’re looking for better opportunities. Education, employment, health care. It’s easy to chalk this all up to immigration, but that ship has sailed, Ms. Larkin. Immigration is here to stay—whether Wyncott and Archer like it or not. The question is what to do now. They are and want to be part of their communities.” He gestured around him. “This is part of it. They’re a devout group of people. The people in this community don’t make a lot of money, Ms. Larkin, and maybe can’t offer much to help finance a campaign. But they always find time to get to Mass, whether it’s Saturday night or Sunday morning. And regardless of what they don’t have, they always manage to give money to the collection plate. I think that’s what makes it all the more insulting.”
Ally heard the last word like a slap. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Horta—I don’t mean to be insulting at all.”
“Not you. All of this. You asked me what matters about the faith of a candidate to the people I serve. Okay. For them? What the Church teaches. The Church tells them to come every Sunday, so they do. It tells them to give money, and they do. And what has the Church done for them lately?”
Ally interjected, “But Archer is a pro-choice candidate. Wyncott is aligned with what the Church teaches on this subject.”
Horta nodded. “I’m sure that matters to an extent. People feel strongly about it ideologically, but look at this neighborhood, Ms. Larkin. Crime rates are high, graduation rates are low. Poverty is the norm. They don’t devote a lot of time or effort to the pro-life/pro-choice debate. It’s not a luxury they can afford.”
He took in Ally’s shocked expression. “That said, they still listen to the Church and make a place for it in their lives. See my point?”
Ally nodded. “That’s always been one of faith’s strongest elements,” she said earnestly. “Creating and reinforcing a sense of communal morality.”
“And one of its most easily manipulated,” he responded. “I don’t know if any of what I’m saying helps you all that much. What I can tell you is that while I like Wyncott well enough, and I appreciate what he’s doing with his interfaith initiatives, what Archer plans to do for communities like mine matters more. And I’m not shy about saying it to the people who come to me.”
“And what’s that, exactly?” Ally could see Steve flipping frantically through his packet of preparation materials, searching for information on what Horta could be talking about.
Horta gestured around the room. “This—the community center—it’s attached to the school across the street. Saint Rita’s primary school. And the archdiocese identified it to be closed down by the end of the fiscal year.”
Ally was confused. As they had walked past the building, she had seen what appeared to be a thriving school with a flurry of activity through the windows of every classroom. “Is enrollment down?”
Horta laughed, and she felt herself blush. “Oh no, Ms. Larkin. There are plenty of students in that school. Plenty of people in this community who scrape together the money to send their kids there because a Catholic education is important to
them and they feel they need to in order to fulfill their obligations to the Church.”
He leaned back in his chair. “The problem is that the Church feels no such obligation to them. You passed the new apartment building on your way here, I take it? And the Starbucks that just opened on the corner?” Ally and Steve nodded.
“They can operate the school and serve the people of this community for a profit of barely seventy thousand dollars a year. Or they can sell it—the church, the school, the community center—to a real estate developer for four million dollars. And another apartment building that the people here couldn’t possibly afford to live in will open. And another one. And another. Until they have to move and the only time they come back to where they raised their children is to clean the apartments their displacement built. And you don’t suppose the Church would share any of that profit, do you?”
Ally’s mouth was dry. She’d read articles about the Church being forced to close parishes and schools all over the country. Some closures were reportedly prompted by large settlements for abuse cases. Others were the result of falling enrollment.
But looking around the neighborhood, she saw a viable community. A place where churches and schools still held the neighborhood together. And where closing them would tear at the seams of a community already struggling for mobility.
“Archer has a plan. He’s going to direct funds toward helping communities like ours get first-buy options. And demand that if the Church insists on closing and selling, it’ll be taxed at a higher rate, with the revenue going to assist communities affected by the closure. What’s Wyncott willing to do?”
It was a reasonable question and one she couldn’t answer. Put on the spot, she did her best. “He’s got a panel looking at that very question right now,” she blurted out. “That’s why your input is so valuable,” she added for good measure. Writing quickly in the margins of her binder, she made a note to find out what Wyncott’s religious affairs team had in mind to balance Archer’s proposal. It was clear from the conversation with Horta that Casey would have to put that front and center in any promotional materials to urban Catholic congregations feeling pinched.
She left the meeting feeling like they’d failed. Steve told her to stop worrying so much. “These people? They’re small potatoes. Casey wouldn’t have sent you and me if he was that worried about getting their votes.” They were sitting in a sandwich shop at Thirtieth Street station waiting to board the train back to DC. Ally chewed her meal sullenly while Steve mocked her for being so dejected.
“Then what was the point of coming here?” she asked him. “To make fools of ourselves?”
Steve rocked back in his chair. “No—not to make fools of ourselves. But to make them feel like they got to tell us off. To feel like they got one up on us so that when Casey announces whatever it is he has up his sleeve, they can feel like they had a part in it.”
But during the meeting, Ernesto had asked them a lot of questions she’d been unable to answer. That bothered her the most. “Frankly, I don’t know why they’re closing Saint Rita’s, Mr. Horta,” she told him, the words coming out more exasperated than she’d intended. “I don’t work for the archdiocese. I don’t know what’s behind their business planning.”
“That’s just it, isn’t it, Ms. Larkin?” He’d smiled triumphantly. “When did it become a business?” The question made her uncomfortable. Her worries went beyond the confines of their meeting and seeped into the larger doubts she’d begun having about her church.
On the train back to DC, she mulled things over. What if, she posed to Tilden, they took an approach that seemed less punitive and more collaborative?
“Not sure how that’ll fly given anger about parish closures and the bigger abuse situation,” Tilden said in one of his few examples of astute analysis. “I mean, I think Archer’s approach is as popular as it is because he’s basically telling his own church that they’re going to have to pay for their mistakes. That the parishioners, those who experienced the abuse and those who had nothing to do with it, aren’t going to have to pay the price for the Vatican’s screwups.”
He was right—the punitive undertone to Archer’s plan was appealing, even to Ally, who despite her devotion to Catholicism felt out of sorts after her meeting with Horta. But while she wasn’t entirely certain what Wyncott’s or Casey’s relationship with the Church in America was, one thing was fairly obvious: they weren’t interested in alienating either Catholic voters or the leadership that served them every Sunday. Whatever solution Ally developed would have to address the concerns outlined by Horta but avoid offending the Church.
“I know that,” she said as they exited Union Station and hailed a cab back to the office. “That’s why we need something that seems friendlier. Something that says we’re going to help the parishes in need instead of punishing the Church. His first concern is making sure people in his community get what they need. I think he and voters like him would be fine with something that keeps the Saint Rita’s center open without necessarily giving the Church a spanking.”
She thought Tilden looked unusually impressed as he held open the door to the office. Usually he regarded her with the condescension of an older sibling forced to let the baby tag along. Their growing office rivalry caught her by surprise. Tilden didn’t perceive her as a threat at first. She figured he enjoyed feeling superior to her and knowing that, in almost every way that mattered to elite America, he was. But ever since she shared her analysis of why Archer was winning votes, Casey had paid more attention to her, and Tilden’s demeanor around her had changed. Deep down, she suspected, what offended Tilden most wasn’t that she had ideas or that they were good. It was that he should have remained superior to her in spite of it, that his supremacy should have gone unchallenged simply because of who he was and where he’d come from, not because he wasn’t coming up with ideas as good or as often. Ally’s America may have been one in which opportunity was open to everyone, but Tilden’s, financed by a hedge-fund father and defined by Phillips Exeter and summers sailing, was one in which opportunity wasn’t just handed to you. It also protected your roost through well-placed limits on the Ally Larkins of the world.
This was likely why he went out of his way to ridicule her. And possibly why one night after they returned to the office from a reception, he had propositioned her in a thoroughly unappealing fashion. It was a social misstep born, she imagined, of curiosity and inebriation more than carnal desire. She had left the reception alone (she thought) and returned to her desk to pick up her ratty backpack. Going back to Takoma Park between work and evening events wasn’t usually possible, and the JanSport pack, with her since freshman year of college, carried her facial cleanser, a toothbrush, and makeup. It was where she had left it, tucked neatly beneath her desk.
The majority of her colleagues were still at the reception, and the office had a strange atmosphere of desolation, the sound of her every movement magnified so she felt like an elephant crashing through a sleeping village. She turned at a noise in the hallway. Steve rounded the corner and steadied himself on the wall.
“You don’t have to spend every minute at work, you know.” He was slurring his words, but only slightly. His boisterous volume was more indicative of his state.
Ally smiled patiently. “Not working. I’m just about to head home.”
“You don’t honestly expect me to believe this quiet saint act of yours,” he scoffed, heaving himself into an office chair and landing in a disheveled heap. “Casey doesn’t take on anyone who isn’t cutthroat. There’s nothing wrong with wanting what you want and going for it, Larkin,” he said. “You want an invite to his boating party as much as I do. You just won’t admit it.” Ally stared blankly at him.
“The boating party?” he said. “Casey’s annual soiree that determines whether he’s going to build your career for you or not?” It was a question but sounded more like an insistence of fact. She shook her head no. She was aware of Milton Casey’s past—born to a
n influential Tennessee tobacco family with a tradition in politics that stretched back to a great-grandfather’s run for governor in 1880. And Mulcahy had certainly been clear that she should be prepared to network and take advantage of any helpful contacts she could make through the position. But the mysterious boating party eluded her.
Steve shook his head in disapproval more than disbelief. “Fucking classic,” he said, standing up and brushing off his clothes in agitation. He walked to his desk and pulled a folder out of the filing cabinet. “Twenty other kids out there dying to get a job in this place and you don’t even bother to look him up.” He tossed the folder, full of articles about Casey, onto her jumbled desk. It couldn’t have held more than twenty pages, but it landed with a thud of condemnation.
“Why are you here, Ally? What are you looking for? You don’t care about politics. Not the way the rest of us do.” He dismissed her absently and checked the pocket of his suit jacket for cigarettes. “You’re not going to find a rich husband to take care of you here,” he said, lifting one to his lips. “You’re not up to the competition. So you may as well go home to Minnesota.”
“Michigan,” she corrected. “I’m from Michigan.” An uncharacteristic anger in her. “And sleeping your way to security is something I’d ask your mother about, not Milton Casey.” She watched the cigarette drop from Steve’s mouth, his normally pursed lips slack with shock. “You must be so proud.” She punctuated the insult by grabbing the folder and flipping off her desk lamp, leaving him silent in the darkened office.
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