The Hopefuls (15 page)

When, I wondered, did every pregnant person get together and decide that
Mama
was the appropriate term to use? Why did having a baby turn these people into hillbillies?

Ash had a gender-reveal party, where she and Jimmy strung up a piñata on their back patio, took turns whacking it until pink knickknacks and candy sprinkled out of it. “It's a girl,” she shrieked, and everyone clapped. I always judged Ash for the way she thought God personally looked out for her, but I myself thanked the good Lord above that they scheduled that party on a weekend I was already set to visit my parents in Wisconsin. (But don't worry, she posted the video of the two of them taking a bat to the piñata, just so anyone who couldn't make it was still able to watch.)

I'd sworn never to force Colleen and Ash into a social situation again, but that summer I did just that and suggested that we all go to brunch together. I was slightly worried they wouldn't have much to say to each other, but they quickly bonded over their pregnancies, moaning about finding cute clothes that fit them, listing all of the things they couldn't eat.

As Ash and Colleen talked that day about coffee and lunch meat and sushi, I was reminded of a gluten-free girl who worked with Matt and once asked if she could smell my Bo-shaped cookie at the White House Christmas party. “I miss cookies so much,” she said. “Can I take a sniff?” I didn't know what else to do, so I held out the little frosted dog for her and she leaned over and breathed in deeply. When she was done, I put the cookie down on the table. I didn't want it anymore. Her nose had been too close to it and it had lost its appeal.

I knew that girl didn't want to smell my cookie, she just wanted to remind me that she couldn't eat it. So when Colleen said dramatically, “I really miss eating fried eggs,” and Ash said, “Oh girl, me too!” I just sipped my coffee and spaced out.

At the end of brunch, Ash and Colleen exchanged phone numbers and made plans to send their registries to each other, so they could make sure they weren't missing anything, and I watched them hug good-bye with the beginning of a headache behind my eyes.

I'd hoped that going on the campaign trips would make Matt happy, that it would settle his restlessness just a little. But it didn't. He returned from these trips tired and cranky, annoyed that he had to go back to the DOE.

He wasn't happy with the White House liaison job, and I tried to be sympathetic, but I started to think that no job was going to live up to what he wanted. The things he complained about sounded childish: “I'm so far away from the White House,” he'd say. “I can't walk in there anymore, someone has to meet me at the gate. I have to wear a visitor's badge.”

What was I supposed to say to this? I'm sorry that you have to take a cab to the White House now? I'm sorry that you have to wear a different color badge so that everyone knows you're not as important as they are?

I always tried to stay positive. “You said this is good experience,” I reminded him. “That working for the DOE would help you if you ran for office. That it could be part of your platform.”

“I know,” he said. “It's just not what I thought it would be.”

“Don't you kind of think everyone feels that way about their job?” I asked.

Matt looked up at me for a moment and then said, “No. I don't.”

The last couple of months before the election were brutal. It was like we were all just waiting, killing time, hoping for the best. My insomnia and night terrors got worse, which was sort of embarrassing. Of everyone in DC, I probably cared the least about politics—so why was I plagued with nightmares? Was this what living here did to you? What was wrong with me?

“You're just stressed,” Matt said. “So are you,” I said, “but you don't wake up screaming. You're not having nightmares about Paul Ryan's widow's peak.”

Matt was always willing to talk to me until I calmed down those nights, partly I think because he wasn't sleeping all that well himself. But most of it, I knew, was that he was worried about me and was just being nice. We'd chat into the darkness until my eyes were heavy. Sometimes we came up with fake stories that I could write for DCLOVE. My favorite was “The 10 Biggest Douche Bags to Date in DC.”

The night of the widow's peak nightmare, we discussed theme songs of old sitcoms, challenging the other to sing the theme of whatever show we named:
Growing Pains, Family Ties, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
We were both weirdly talented at this game and we couldn't stop laughing as it just went on and on.

“Can we monetize this somehow?” Matt asked. “This might be our greatest gift.”

Finally, we were both stumped at
Mr. Belvedere,
and after twenty minutes of trying to figure it out, we googled it and played the opening credits about five times, singing along after we remembered the words. Eventually we just started watching a full episode on my phone, propping it up between us. “I thought Wesley was the funniest kid ever,” Matt said. “I wanted to be him when I was little.” His eyes were half closed, but he was still watching the tiny screen.

“Really?” I said. “You never told me that before.”

“We've never talked about
Mr. Belvedere
before.”

“True.” It was almost 4:00 a.m. by that point, and I knew we'd both be useless the next day, but I didn't really care. I moved a tiny bit closer, resting my head against his shoulder, my mind quiet for the first time that night.

By October, Matt had used up all of his vacation time and wasn't able to do any more advance trips for the campaign. He'd so badly wanted to help with the second debate, and instead was watching it at home with me.

I'd made popcorn and opened a bottle of red wine. Neither of us was all that hungry, and I thought maybe the popcorn would make the night feel more festive. Ash came over to watch with us, bringing a plate of brownies.

“I baked,” she said, holding out the plate to me. “I was so nervous, I couldn't sit still.”

“Perfect,” I said. “It will round out our well-balanced meal.”

Ash set the plate down and unwrapped it, then plucked a brownie off the top of the pile and ate it. She was due in February, and her stomach was already swollen against her clothes; her face was rounder, which had the strange effect of making her look younger. She didn't seem to care about what she ate or how much weight she was gaining—not that she was being a pig, more that she accepted that her body was going to change and wasn't going to obsess about it.

She picked up another brownie and took a bite. “I thought the last election was crazy,” she said. “But this feels bigger, somehow. Doesn't it?”

“This election is almost more important,” Matt said. “I mean, if he loses, then what? All we worked for is gone. He's basically just Jimmy Carter.”

“Jimmy Carter does amazing things,” I said. I felt like I should defend that peanut farmer. Poor Jimmy Carter, always brushed to the side. Did no one think about Habitat for Humanity?

“You know what I mean,” he said.

The last debate had been less than stellar, and we all felt how much was riding on this, knew that Obama needed to be great. (Or at least that's what every pundit had been saying on repeat for the past week.) The three of us sat down on the couch, and fidgeted as we waited for it to start. Matt looked at his phone, texting his friends and obsessively reading Twitter. “I wish I could have some wine,” Ash said softly, and for once I wasn't annoyed at her bringing up her pregnancy restrictions. Wine was the only reason I wasn't jumping out of my skin.

“Jimmy texted that there's going to be a great line about the Navy,” Matt said, already texting him back.

“How does he know that?” I asked.

“He sat in on debate prep,” Matt said.

“Really?”

“Yeah. How awesome is that?”

I almost pointed out that even if Matt had gone on the trip, he probably wouldn't have been able to be in the room while the President was getting ready, but I knew that wouldn't make him feel better. So, I just said, “Cool.”

When the line about the Navy came, we all laughed and clapped. Ash shook her head like she was reacting to a sassy friend and said, “Whooooo!” Matt pumped his fist and screamed, “Fuck, yeah!”

When we settled down a little, Matt's phone dinged with another text from Jimmy and he read it to us. “Yeah, Jimmy said the line was originally supposed to just stop with the aircraft carriers, but during rehearsal POTUS kept going with comparisons and Axe and Plouffe were cracking up,” Matt said. His phone dinged again. “Plouffe told him to go for it.”

I watched the air go out of Matt, watched his elation disappear as he realized he wasn't the one with the inside knowledge of debate zingers, that he wasn't referring to one of Obama's top aide's as Axe. Matt's change of mood was so slight that Ash didn't notice, but I did. When Romney talked about “binders full of women,” Matt did clap his hands a couple of times and say, “That's it, you moron. Keep them coming,” but it was more subdued.

Before we went to sleep that night, I kissed Matt and said, “It went well, right? We should be happy.”

“Yeah,” Matt said. “I know.”

Just days before the election, Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast. Jimmy was out of town and so Ash came to stay with us, because we didn't know how bad it would be. Matt suggested it first (but I would have eventually), and when I agreed, he said, “I mean, I just don't think she should be by herself in her condition.”

We were prepared with candles and food and extra batteries, but in DC the storm was just a lot of rain and some strong wind. Our power never even flickered. Ash ended up staying with us for two nights, because Jimmy went to help with the President's visit to the Jersey Shore, which was hit hard.

Ash and I sat by the windows with cups of tea and watched the rain come down. Matt was there, but was on his phone, reading articles about the election while watching coverage on TV. I remember feeling so antsy that day, just waiting, again. Waiting for the storm to get worse, waiting for the power to go out, waiting for it to be over.

The next day, we watched as Obama landed in New Jersey, as he and Chris Christie hugged, which Jimmy had already told us was the plan. “So smart,” Matt muttered. “This could be the thing that pushes Obama over the top, the thing that secures it.”

I watched the two men hug, watched it replay a million times, and I couldn't help but think: If a televised hug could affect an election, weren't we all just really screwed?

Matt and I had decided months earlier that we'd go to Chicago for election night. Most of our friends (including Jimmy and Ash) would be there, and it felt like we should be a part of it. We flew in early that afternoon, dropped our bags at the hotel, met a few people for dinner, and then headed to McCormick Place.

I don't remember that much about the actual night—Jimmy arranged to get us into one of the donor rooms, and for most of the time I stood next to Star Jones and drank wine, feeling slightly ashamed that I was wishing for a better celebrity sighting when there was so much more at stake. After the election was called, we were ushered into a roped-off section and stood next to Rahm Emanuel as Obama spoke. It was a blur of cheers and confetti.

But what I do remember perfectly is the next day, when Jimmy took us to campaign headquarters. “The President is going to stop by,” he said, “and you should be there.”

That place was like nothing else I'd ever seen. It was a little bit like a frat house after a party and a little bit like the dorms on the last day of school—everyone was exhausted, hungover, ecstatic about winning, and sad as they started to realize it was all over.

The campaign office was mostly one big open room with desks and tables crowded so close together that you couldn't tell one from the other. There were a few offices around the perimeter, but most people sat in the middle, using whatever they could for a work space. The whole place was dirty and lived in—empty pizza boxes on the floor, Tabasco bottles on desks, containers of Parmesan cheese and open bags of nuts strewn everywhere. It was clear that the staffers had been eating all of their meals in the office, that they'd probably even slept there every once in a while. The air was a little stale, the way it gets when there's too many people crowded in one area for a long time.

Around each work space were different decorations—college flags hanging from the ceiling, state posters hung up with clips, American flags, and more Obama 2012 posters than you could count. Deflated balloons were tied to someone's chair, leftover from a birthday celebration. Whiteboards and chalkboards were still filled with notes and schedules, signs made out of construction paper were taped on the wall, inside jokes and memories, I assumed:
REMEMBER
IOWA
,
WE
'
RE
NOT
BINDERS
,
and
DON
'
T
FORGET
TO
BREATHE
.

The office was full of people, but no one was sitting at their desks. There was nothing more to be done. Exercise balls that had been used as chairs rolled around as everyone milled about, hugging each other, sometimes laughing or crying with relief, sometimes doing both at once. All around me, I heard people saying over and over again: Congratulations, we did it, and good-bye.

There was a young staffer who'd died during the campaign—unexpectedly and suddenly—and in the corner was a makeshift shrine to him. It had notes from his friends and co-workers, a bottle of his favorite liquor, and a big sign that said,
DO
IT
FOR
ALEX
. I was tired that morning (we hadn't slept much the night before), and although I'd never met him, I cried openly as I read the Post-its that people had put up there after he was gone, little random thoughts and notes addressed to him: “I miss you”; “I wish you were here to make binder jokes”; “You would have loved the event today.” Most of them were written by his co-workers, but there was also one from the President and another from the First Lady.