Campaign Widows

by Aimee Agresti

  * * *

  Sky had texted just before the story posted: obvi: between you and me, haze is the “source,” just not ready to go on record yet. totally unrelated: was superscary when everything happened, then everyone relieved, bonding, celebrating etc, after it was OK. but then everyone was working, sleeping, quiet. Except me (you know I can’t sleep on planes) and a couple others I noticed: I think air force two has a mile high club...Swear I saw reporter girl go into restroom, followed by guy few minutes later. Jay, it looked like Cady’s fiancé :-(((((( Hoping I’m wrong, but I don’t know. Looked like him. Might explain why Cady didn’t hear from him right away?

  Jay wanted to unread this, just like he knew Sky wanted to unsee it. Jay didn’t know what he was supposed to do with this information; did he have a moral obligation to tell Cady? He would consult the best advice columnist he knew. She would have all the answers. He texted:

  What do we do???? along with a screenshot of Sky’s damning text.

  Reagan wrote back immediately: I’m on it, standby.

  Thx. No way for Ted to corroborate, right? Jay tried, but knew the answer from their previous texts: Ted had been with a few staffers in the front compartment of the plane in the enclosed cabin that served as Vice President Arnold’s office.

  I wish, she wrote. Amazed Ted even noticed the turbulence.

  It was true, Jay had seen Ted in hyper-work mode. Reagan liked to joke that if he was in the zone, he would tune out everything around him so intensely it was like he was in some kind of sensory deprivation tank.

  Seconds later, Reagan sent a screenshot of an exchange between her and Cady. Jay groaned reading Cady’s message:

  you’ll think I’m insane—on my way to Philly!!! just needed to be with him, you know? Kinda freaked out from today.

  And then Reagan’s best advice to Jay:

  ugh. :( we gotta let it play out now. let you know when I hear from her.

  23

  OHHH, I’M SORRY, IS THIS A WORK FUNCTION?

  Cady got the last seat on the Acela. It had been impulsive, but she couldn’t just sit around, waiting to hear something, and she had exhausted all of her sources. According to Reagan, Ted had been in the private office meeting with Arnold, and Jay said Sky had been with press in back. Jackson apparently would have been in the front with staffers. Jay had even asked Sky to look for him, but they had to remain seated and he hadn’t gotten a good enough view. So she had cabbed straight to Union Station.

  Her mind had taken her down so many dark paths while waiting to hear from him. She had instantly felt sick about every argument they’d ever had—of which there had been many lately—every time she could have just let things go.

  To halt the steady flow of bad thoughts, she forced herself to focus on the good: the day they met, the start of it all. So much electricity and promise. After an interview about preparations for Times Square festivities on New Year’s Eve in New York, the mayor had invited Cady to watch with his staff, front row seats without having to wait outside all day either. She had ended up next to Jackson, and after talking all evening, he had kissed her at midnight, completely unexpectedly, his lips warm against the freezing cold. She couldn’t feel her hands or feet, but she didn’t care.

  The train ride felt impossibly slow, torturous, until finally, a full hour and a half after the news, when she was nearly to Wilmington, Jackson’s name at last popped up on her phone. This sweet comfort coming via text: All good here, just frightening moments. OK now. Official: Carter going to be announced as VP pick!!! Still going to convention tonight.

  He was okay. She read it over and over, hand to her heart in relief, as the train rumbled on, the lights of Wilmington shining outside her window. This, a text, still wasn’t enough though. She still needed to spend the night wrapped in his arms to know he was all right.

  She arrived just after nine, catching a cab to Jackson’s hotel. The front desk gave her a key to the room, no problem, when she told them she was his fiancée. It probably shouldn’t be that easy, she thought, but for her purposes tonight, she was glad. She had texted that she had a surprise for him but hadn’t heard anything since. He had probably gone to bed early after the whole ordeal.

  She smoothed her hair and her dress outside the door, then knocked a spirited bonkbonk bonk-bonk bonk, putting her ear to the door for any sign of movement. She heard nothing, so she inserted the key and crept in very slowly.

  “Helloooo,” she whispered, stepping into the pitch-black room. She heard only a moan in response, someone waking up. “It’s me! Surprise! I thought a near-death experience warranted—” She turned the corner into the room and someone screamed, followed by the thump thump-THUMP of someone falling out of bed, the crash of a lamp knocked over, another light flipped on.

  Jackson stood there, naked, his perfect abs taunting her. “CADY! What the—!” he called out at her, tripping, trying to grab something to cover himself as though she hadn’t seen it all before.

  “Ohmagod!” Cady blurted. In the fluffy bed, sheets just the right kind of disorderly as though art directed for a photo shoot, a blonde stared back at her, plump pout agape. She looked like she could have been a lingerie model except she wasn’t actually wearing any lingerie at the moment. Cady’s hands flew up to cover her eyes. She felt as she had when he had proposed, like she was watching the scene from above.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked, like she was the one who had done something wrong.

  “I was freaked out after your flight. And not hearing from you... So I got... I wanted to see...” She was having trouble putting sentences together.

  “It’s not what it looks like,” he said, barely trying.

  Her mind now having fully processed the scene, Cady’s anger set in. “It took way too long for you to say that.” She opened her eyes, but looked away. Picked up the satchel she just realized she’d dropped. “This looks like a cliché. I can’t believe you’re really this...typical. Who is this anyway?”

  “Willa,” the girl said, meekly.

  “It’s just, it’s not, it’s, I mean, I don’t know, it’s, she’s from Capitol Report and—we’ve sort of been working together and—” he stammered.

  “Ohhh, I’m sorry, is this a work function?” She smacked her palm to her forehead, mocking.

  “No, I just mean, we almost died today, or we could’ve died today, I could’ve maybe almost died,” he tried, half-heartedly, for sympathy.

  “Congratulations,” her voice cracked.

  “No, I mean, we drank too much, after we didn’t die—”

  “After you didn’t die.”

  “From that flask—the one that YOU gave me.”

  “So this is my fault, for giving you a fucking engagement gift. My bad. I can’t even...” She had to get out before any tears came. He didn’t deserve them. She tripped on her way to the door but didn’t fall, thank God. She threw the door open with such strength it hit the wall, and trembled as she ran down the hallway, ungracefully, in her heels.

  “Wait! Cady!” he called after her.

  She heard a crash and glanced back: the door had swung shut, closing behind him. He was in the hallway, completely nude, his hands rushing to cover the part that had gotten him into this trouble in the first place. She kept running and flung her key card over the ledge, letting it flutter down to the lobby below.

  He caught up with her just as the glass elevator doors closed. Their eyes locked, and she whipped around, turning her back before the first tear dropped.

  * * *

  On the train back home, she couldn’t stop that scene from playing and replaying and replaying in her head on an endless loop. The bed. The girl. The parade of nudity. The inner battle to not cry. And then her mind ticked off their many recent tiffs and offenses: him missing the majority of their engagement party, him being absent the day she moved in, with nowhere to put
any of her stuff. But then some of the good stuff trickled back in: that night they met, the Hay-Adams, the proposal, him whisking her around their engagement party as a team, as a unit. She was a mess.

  She tried to figure out how things had changed so drastically. How had they gone from that to this? Should their beautiful history outweigh it all? She sure as hell didn’t know. She felt sick, her stomach knotted, her eyes sore from holding back tears as best she could. She didn’t want to be that person sitting alone on a train in the middle of the night having a breakdown. She didn’t want to be alone at all.

  It felt like her life had exploded, and now she had to sort through and determine which parts were still viable. She didn’t want to think about him or see him ever again. And she really didn’t want to go home to that apartment that looked like him, smelled of his cologne, had the TV tuned to whatever channel he had left it on. She made a call.

  24

  THIS IS TINDER FOR NERDS

  Reagan picked up on the first ring without even looking.

  “Reagan, darling, it’s Birdie, and you will never believe where I am,” Birdie launched right in. She paused for dramatic effect, expecting Reagan to take a stab, apparently.

  “Umm, I would guess the convention.” Reagan stifled a yawn. It was nearly eleven, but her rapidly growing bump—what was it now? The size of a cantaloupe? She had stopped reading those weekly baby emails—kept her awake. For some reason this pregnancy seemed harder than carrying the twins, but maybe it was just because she was also chasing after the girls while cooking up this new creature. She was fucking tired. And the evening’s Air Force Two drama had further exhausted her.

  “Oh, darling, no one who’s anyone is even seen there until Tuesday night. My event isn’t till Wednesday. No.”

  She sounded a little tipsy, but with Birdie it could be hard to tell.

  “So! I am at the one and only Madison Goodfellow’s stunning pied-à-terre.”

  Ohhh boy. Reagan felt nauseous—and not from the baby. She hadn’t spoken much about Ted to anyone. They had heard and seen his clip with Grant, which made the rounds, but they had all been respectful enough not to ask her about it and instead just let it run its course through the news cycle, passing like a kidney stone. Birdie had texted her simply: Ted has done us all a great public service. Jay had come over with a bottle of sparkling cider, feeling terrible that he’d slept through Reagan’s text that night of Ted’s arrest and feeling even worse that she couldn’t actually drink at a time like this.

  “It must be beautiful there,” Reagan said, not sure where this was going.

  “Of course it is, but I didn’t call to brag. What are you doing right now?”

  “You know, typical Monday night rager.”

  “Excellent, hop in a cab and come over.”

  Reagan looked at the other end of the sofa: her mother snuggled in a blanket, snoring softly. She had come in from San Francisco the day before Ted left, ostensibly to help out while he was away at the convention. But really, Reagan suspected, her mother felt that the full iciness of her glares at Ted couldn’t be adequately communicated over FaceTime. Mama was not happy.

  It was the last thing Reagan felt like doing. But the idea of Birdie and Madison potentially discussing her—and her family—while she wasn’t there proved a powerful motivator. She had to be there to defend Ted’s actions, to set things right. He wasn’t perfect, but he was passionate about his job, about this country, about Arnold’s vision. And though sometimes that kind of intensity could boil over, it came from a good place. “Sure,” Reagan said, trying her best to sound like she wasn’t heading into a firing squad.

  The second they hung up, she called Jay.

  “Ohmagod! Is Ted in jail again? I’m there!” Jay started in as soon as he picked up.

  Reagan sighed. “No. Not this time. Put on something cute and be ready in twenty minutes. Details forthcoming.” She didn’t have time to answer all the inevitable questions. But she sure as hell wasn’t going in there alone.

  She threw on a tank dress and flats, woke her mom gently. “You said I should have more fun, and the girls want to take me out for a late drink, nonalcoholic of course,” she said.

  Mama gave her a look, eyebrow cocked, not entirely believing it. But then she nodded anyway, giving Reagan a kiss on the cheek and taking the baby monitor from the coffee table and setting it beside her.

  On the way to Jay’s, Reagan called the Ritz and arranged to have two bottles of champagne and a plate of cookies for her and Jay to bring up. She was not arriving to this thing empty-handed.

  Jay was waiting curbside and hopped in. “You are so mysterious lately,” he said.

  “Birdie called. We’re going to Madison Goodfellow’s place.”

  “Ohhhhgod,” Jay said. “For real?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What? How? I feel like some Real Housewives shit is gonna go down. In which case—” He threw his hands against the window, pretended to try to escape.

  “We’ll see!” she said faux perkily. This had, obviously, occurred to Reagan. She certainly hoped she wasn’t facing a reality-TV-style ambush. Much as she enjoyed those shows, she didn’t want to be in one. But she trusted Birdie, felt that she wouldn’t lure her over there just to have Madison Goodfellow wipe the floor with her for Ted’s fisticuffs with that press secretary.

  “If I’m your backup, you’re in trouble—that lady can work a fire baton like nobody’s business,” Jay joked.

  * * *

  The door to the penthouse opened: Madison, wearing the perfect casual separates, wide-legged embellished denim pants and a short-sleeve lacy top, which Reagan was fairly certain were both Chanel. Her photographic memory placed it in Vogue, a resort-wear pictorial, from her pre-Iowa-party reading frenzy.

  Madison didn’t say a word, so Reagan introduced Jay and said, uncomfortably, “We come bearing gifts?”

  The woman looked into Reagan’s eyes, expressionless for a long, painful moment, and Reagan braced herself, prepared to defend her husband despite his Neanderthal-like behavior that night. In the background, she could hear Birdie singing along to a Rocky Haze song.

  Madison finally spoke. “I was just talking to Birdie about this terrible thing that happened and how I needed to talk to you. And she said she could just call you right now so we could get this out of the way.”

  Reagan tensed up, preparing possible responses in her mind to what might come next. But before she could say anything, Madison nodded once and hugged Reagan, squeezing her tight in her strong, slender arms. When Madison let go, she still held Reagan’s hand in hers.

  “I am so glad, so very glad, to meet you,” she said in her drawl. “And I am so sorry I didn’t send a car to take your husband home that night.”

  “Excuse me?” Reagan said, confused.

  Birdie came to the door, a small plate crowded with sushi. She nodded and pointed to Madison as if to say, Get a load of what this one’s about to lay on you.

  Madison guided her inside, still holding her hand. “I was with Hank when he got the call from Mike,” Madison explained, “our press guy, about what had happened. So Mike says he ran into a man from the other campaign and thought it would be fun to get him all worked up. And he did and then got the man to hit him so he could tell the press how crazy the other campaign—the Arnold people—are.”

  Reagan couldn’t believe what she was hearing, and who she was hearing it from. Ted still shouldn’t’ve taken the bait, but she felt for him now.

  “I grabbed the phone from Hank, yelled at Mike—I never liked that guy.” Her drawl flared up now, her eyes teary. “I’m sure they all thought I was just madder than a wet hen, but I didn’t care. It wasn’t right, and it’s not right. A lot of the things Hank’s been doing and saying... I’ve had about enough. So I went over there and bailed him out, your husband. And I’m just so
sorry about this all.”

  The landline rang, and Birdie answered, making herself at home. “Cady Davenport is here?” she asked, pleasantly puzzled.

  Reagan had forgotten to mention that. “Oh! I invited her,” she said. It had been selfish—not to mention a flagrant etiquette breach—but Reagan had wanted to have as many people as possible there on her side.

  “She’s having kind of a rough night,” Jay came to the rescue, offering an explanation. “Her engagement is, like, over.”

  Birdie shook her head knowingly. “Send her up.”

  “Well, it’s a good thing you all brought more of this.” Madison grabbed one of the champagne bottles and a towel and set to work.

  * * *

  Madison answered the door and without a word gave Cady a bear hug. “They’re all terrible in their own way,” she said comfortingly.

  Then came Birdie, champagne flute in hand. “Come, self-medicate, darling.” She handed Cady the drink and threw her arm around her. “Reagan filled us in. We’re all up to speed.”

  Cady absorbed the scene. Reagan and Jay, deep in conversation while typing on their phones, sat perched on Madison’s sleek white sofa by the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city. Rocky Haze music played; an impressive array of sushi was laid out on the kitchen island. Cady still couldn’t believe she had taken Reagan up on the offer and come over here straight from the train. She just couldn’t bear the thought of the apartment.

  “Aww, sweetie, you look so pretty,” Jay said.

  “This was supposed to be my ‘I’m-so-glad-you’re-alive look,’” she said, pained.

  “Well, your heart was in the right place,” Jay said.

  “A million guys would love to get a surprise convention booty call from you,” Reagan said with sweet sympathy.

  “Just apparently not this fucker,” Birdie said. “But you do have options.”

  “You know, when Hank did this, it was after Henry was born, and I was miserable,” Madison said, sipping her champagne, perched on the sofa arm. “I mean, we were high school sweethearts, college sweethearts, I loved that man. We split up and married other folks, this is all, you know, pretty much common knowledge by now, but we still loved each other, and when he divorced that gold digger that was his second wife, I set out to make him sooo jealous. It worked, because honestly, men are pretty easily manipulated when you set your mind to it. And then we got together again, and this time it worked.” She spoke in the open way of someone with a healthy amount of confidence but few female friends. “We’ve been going strong ever since.” She tilted her head back, draining her champagne. “Until now, I mean. But this time he’s just in love with power, which oughtta be an easier problem to fix than an affair, but who knows.”