The Hopefuls (29 page)

“That's not exactly what I said. And anyway, it's not even happening right now. There's no plan in place. I was just talking, just saying what I thought in the moment.”

“Sure,” she said slowly. “But would you want him to do it? If something did come up right now?”

“I don't know,” I said. “Not really, no.” We both took sips of our wine, and I took a breath. “I mean, really, I don't know. But he was so upset that I even questioned it, that maybe I wasn't completely on board with the idea. He said that when he married me, he thought I'd be behind him on this.”

“Jesus,” Colleen said. “It sounds like he's having a midlife crisis.”

“I know. And the thing is, maybe I don't want him to run for office. But is that the end of the world? He made it sound like he only married me because he thought I'd always go along with what he wanted.”

Colleen shrugged. “Maybe that
is
what he thought.”

“Well, that's really fucked up.”

“Not really. I mean, every person expects something from the other one when they get married.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, everyone has their own reasons for getting married. Look at me and Bruce—he liked me because I was young and thought I was fun and I liked that he was more serious than the guys our age, that he was established. Marriage is a contract, same as anything.”

“That's so depressing,” I said.

“Not really. It's just realistic. I mean, marrying Matt because you liked that he was passionate and kind isn't the same as a porn star marrying a ninety-five-year-old man because he's rich.”

“Well, thank God for that.”

“And I mean, look at your favorite couple, Jimmy and Ash. Don't you think he married her because she's pretty and from Texas and looks great standing next to him while he makes speeches? And she married him because she gets to live in a big house and have luncheons.”

“Colleen,” I said. She held up her hands like she was surrendering.

“It's just something to think about.” She waited a beat before she said, “Maybe you guys should see someone.”

“Like a marriage counselor?”

“Yeah. I can give you the name of ours.”

“You guys went to see someone?”

“Beth, grow up. Of course we did. I married a guy who's almost twenty years older than me. We've had some shit to work out.”

Colleen rarely acknowledged the age difference between her and Bruce—she usually just pretended it didn't exist, and it surprised me to hear her say it so plainly.

“I'll think about it,” I said.

“It's not so bad going to see someone,” she said. “It's like this dinner, sort of, but without the wine.”

I texted Matt when we were done with dinner, but he didn't answer, so I walked back to the apartment. We were returning to Texas in the morning, and I wished that we didn't have to, that we could just stay here and slip back into our lives the way they were when we left.

Matt was home when I let myself in, watching TV with the lights off. “Hey,” I said. “I texted you. I thought maybe you'd still be out.”

“Nope. Everyone had to head home.”

“Oh,” I said. “Did you have fun?”

He shrugged. “Same old, same old,” he said, staring at the screen the whole time.

Here's the thing I didn't notice until it was gone: Matt stopped finding me funny. I'd always been able to make him laugh. I was my goofiest around him, my weirdest self. I'd hold up a banana and make it dance and talk, or I'd smooth one of his unruly eyebrows and say, “This guy is just really excited today.” And he'd throw his head back and laugh—really laugh from deep down in his stomach. Sometimes he'd shake his head at me and tell me I was weird, but it didn't matter, because I knew he thought I was hilarious. Even in his worst moods, I could get him to smile.

I don't know when it stopped, but I do remember once that summer in Texas, when he was sitting on the couch with his laptop in front of him, probably reading about a new oil well or cyberstalking Candace Elroy's campaign team. I'd just gone for a run, and still had my headphones on, listening to music. He didn't say hi when I walked in, didn't even lift his head. There was some obnoxious Taylor Swift song playing, so I unplugged the headphones and turned the music up, started dancing in a crazy way, slapping the air in front of me like it was the ass of an imaginary person, waiting for him to look up and laugh. I knew he could see me out of the corner of his eye, but he didn't acknowledge me so I just kept dancing. Finally, he looked at me straight on and asked without smiling, “What are you doing?” and I stopped mid-slap and said, “Nothing.”

T
he last push of the campaign felt more like a death march. We were still traveling all the time and hoping for the best (whatever that meant), but the bad news kept rolling in. The Farm Bureau decided not to endorse either candidate, to stay out of the race altogether, which was a huge blow for Jimmy—he'd been courting them for months and their support would've prompted a lot of people to vote for him. The media interest slowed all through September and then basically stopped. No one cares about a David and Goliath story unless David has a shot in hell of winning. And then in early October,
The Dallas Morning News
(who'd endorsed Jimmy in the primary), endorsed Candace Elroy. This wasn't a surprise, but it felt like the nail in the coffin. After Matt read the piece, he slammed his fist down on the table and said, “Fuck!” making all of us around him jump. The op-ed said that Jimmy was eager and that they admired his intentions, but that Elroy had more experience and a measured approach to fracking regulations. “A measured approach,” Jimmy said. “Which means not changing anything.”

“Exactly,” Matt said. And then we all just sat there, not talking, because what could we say to make it better? Each day, it felt like a little more air was let out of the campaign. It was October and there was still a month left, thirty days until it could be put to rest. By the time it was over, we'd have nothing left.

Later that day, Matt said to me, “Well, that's that.” He sounded so defeated, like he wanted to pack it in, call it quits and head back to DC immediately. But you can't just abandon a campaign because you think you're going to lose—there were still so many events to attend, so many trips to take. “You really think it's over?” I asked, and he sounded so certain as he said, “It would take a miracle for him to win.”

After Luling, Matt had stopped asking me to help as much with the campaign. I still did some stuff, of course, because it was impossible to live in the same house as campaign headquarters and be completely uninvolved. But where he used to ask me to pick something up at an office supply store or coordinate volunteers, he now asked Katie. I don't know if this was his way of punishing me or if he figured I didn't want anything to do with it, or if he was just trying to avoid fighting. I was still going on all of the trips, but when we were at the house I felt like I'd been cut out of the loop.

Ash had stepped back from the campaign too—just a little bit, but I noticed. She booked more parties than she had all year, and was gone a few evenings a week. She didn't attend any of the in-town events, and she started dropping Viv off at her parents' house almost every morning. Ash would return with Viv in the early evening, giving the impression that she'd been working, but never saying where she was. I couldn't imagine her sitting in a Starbucks on her laptop all day, and sometimes I think she just stayed at her parents' place or maybe just drove around. Honestly, I think she just wanted to be out of the house, and really, who could blame her?

The upshot of all these changes was that we no longer ate breakfast together, and when we were together for dinner, we usually had takeout in front of the TV. We still saw each other plenty, with all the trips we were taking, but things were different. It was clear that if given the choice, we had no desire to be anywhere near each other.

I woke up one morning to find I was the only one in the house. Even with our new disjointed life, this was strange. I'd stopped setting my alarm, no longer caring how late I slept. (Not that it mattered much anymore.) But I realized that morning that Matt hadn't bothered to say good-bye to me—surely I would've woken up if he had, I wasn't that heavy a sleeper—and it made my stomach knot up, his indifference feeling worse, somehow, than an all-out fight.

The kitchen was empty as I made a pot of coffee and ate a banana. I peeked in the campaign office, just to be sure, but no one was there. Ash, I assumed, had taken Viv to her mom's and wouldn't be back all day. I could've texted Matt to see where he was, but because he hadn't bothered to say good-bye or even leave me a note, I didn't want to.

It was a little creepy being in that big house all alone, and I decided to take a book out to the patio. It was sunny and warm as I stretched out to read on the lounge chair, a glass of iced tea beside me. We'd been traveling so much that it felt nice to relax, and when I finally checked the time, I was surprised to see that two hours had passed.

I began to wonder when everyone would be back and also started to get annoyed at Matt for not bothering to be in touch when I was stranded at the house, stuck in Sugar Land—he'd taken our car and must have known I'd be alone there. The more time that went by, the angrier I got, and I was just worked up enough to give him a call, when Jimmy drove up. He was alone in the car, and held his hand up in greeting, but didn't smile.

“Hey,” I called, as he walked over to me. “I was starting to think no one was ever coming home.”

“We had that minister breakfast,” Jimmy said, lying down on the lounge chair next to me and closing his eyes.

“Right,” I said. The event sounded vaguely familiar. “So clearly, it was a ton of fun.”

Jimmy smiled, but his eyes were still closed. “It was fine. I just didn't sleep much last night.”

“Where's Matt?”

“We drove separately. He said he had some stuff to do after.” He opened his eyes and looked over at me. “What are you up to? What are you reading?” I held up the book's cover for him and he nodded. “I read the review,” he said. “It sounded good.”

“I'll give it to you when I'm done.”

“I'm not allowed to read anything that's not about fracking. I can't be wasting my time—my campaign manager said so. At least for another month.”

“Yeah, well, I'm sure Matt would think this was a waste of my time, too.”

“Oh yeah? What does he think you should be doing?”

“Writing, I guess. I think he had this idea that I'd write a novel while we were here. Or at least try to. That I'd do something worthwhile.”

“You should write,” Jimmy said. “You're talented.”

I laughed. “The only things you've read of mine are the things I wrote for DCLOVE. Did you see a lot of talent in the ‘Ten Best Places to Meet a Man in DC' article?”

“I certainly did,” Jimmy said, giving me a half smile. “But also, Matt's always talking about how great your writing is.”

“Really?” I asked. It was weird to hear something nice that Matt said about me secondhand. It had been so long since I'd felt like his compliments were free of ulterior motives. He'd always told me he thought my fiction was great, but since we'd moved to DC it felt like he encouraged me to write because it seemed more serious; that it would be less embarrassing for me to spend my days writing blind items about presidential aides if I was also working on a novel.

“Also,” Jimmy said, “I googled you and read one of your short stories that was published on a website.” He had his face toward the sun and his eyes were closed again, which I was happy about because I could feel my cheeks get warm as he told me this.

“You did?” I asked. It wasn't that I couldn't imagine Jimmy taking enough of an interest in me to google my name—or maybe it was—but it surprised me that he'd never mentioned it before, like he was keeping it a secret.

“But that's not how I know you're a good writer,” he said. He opened his eyes then and turned on his side to face me. I was on my back on the chair next to him and our positioning felt strangely intimate, like we were lying in bed together. “It's because you're so observant,” he continued. “You're always watching people and you notice these little things about them—what makes them tick, what they really want, what they're afraid of. You can sum anyone up in two lines. Most people are too busy worrying about themselves, but you're always paying attention to everything around you.”

“Thanks,” I said. My voice didn't sound like my own and I hoped Jimmy couldn't hear it. I was flattered that he'd bothered to notice this about me, but our whole conversation was a little odd, a little different from the way we normally talked to each other, though I couldn't exactly pinpoint why. I was happy when Jimmy broke the silence and said, “How about we go to Torchy's and stuff ourselves?”

“Sounds perfect,” I said. And by the time we were eating tacos, things were completely normal between us, back to the way they always were.

But that night, as I stared at the back of Matt's head while he slept, I thought about Jimmy's words and how nice it was to have someone say something kind to me; how nice to have someone think about me at all.

When Ash and I were together, we talked only of surface things: logistical parts of campaign trips, new clothes, reality TV. She must have noticed this, the tentativeness between us. I felt angry with her, but didn't know why, exactly. One night, we passed each other in the hallway and she said, “Oh, I saved
Parenthood
for you on the DVR.”

“You watched it?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “It was a sad one.” Since I'd been in Texas, it had been one of the shows we religiously watched together (Matt and Jimmy both refused), and this felt like a slight. But I just said, “Thank you,” and left it at that.

It seemed to me that Ash was stepping back from our friendship, that she was the one setting new boundaries, putting distance between us.

But also, there was one week I'd barely talked to her, when I almost couldn't bring myself to meet her eyes. I'd had a dream about Jimmy, one where he climbed on top of me, his body heavy. It was just a dream, but it had felt so real as I woke up pulsing with pleasure, surprised to see he wasn't there, disappointed, really, to see that Matt was.

So sure, maybe that was part of it too.

The last week in October, Jimmy's schedule was completely packed. He and Matt had planned a full swing through Galveston County, Austin, Waco, and San Antonio; five days and four nights of travel, with multiple events in each city. After that, Jimmy would stay in Houston, do a few local appearances, and ride out the end of his campaign, waiting for Election Day.

When this trip arrived, I couldn't remember how or why we'd all agreed to it. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time, but it certainly didn't now. The night before we were supposed to leave, Ash whispered to me that she didn't want to go. “I'm flat-out exhausted,” she said. She was folding Viv's tiny clothes as she talked. “But I can't say no—if I tell Jimmy I don't want to go, he'll take it personally, like I don't believe he has a chance.” She paused and folded a little pink T-shirt that said
DADDY
'
S
LITTLE
TEXAN
on the front, ran her fingers over the sparkly cowboy hat. “But the thing is, it
is
over. He doesn't have a chance. So why are we still pretending?”

She sounded angry as she whispered this last part, and her eyes filled with tears. This was the most substantial conversation we'd had in a while and I put my hand on her back to comfort her. “Hey, it's okay,” I said. “Of course you're tired. This has been hard on you.”

“I know it,” she said, gulping in some air. “We're all just so run down, aren't we?”

“Yes,” I said. “This schedule would make anyone lose it.”

It was true, how all the crappy food and sleep deprivation had affected us, and I wondered if that was the reason for our disharmony. Was it possible that we were just too tired to get along, too run down to be decent to each other?

Ash told me that she planned to leave Viv with her mom while we were gone. “I don't want to be away from her for so many days, but it's too much. I'll lose my mind.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” I said, rubbing her back again. I had a moment of feeling hopeful, of believing there was a chance we could go back to normal when this was all done. But then she straightened up and wiped her eyes.

“It'll be fine,” she said. And there was a sharpness to her voice, like she thought I'd tricked her into being honest, like I'd made her cry. She pulled a tiny pair of Viv's pants tight as she folded them, stretching the material as far as it would go to make a crisp crease. “I just need to get everything organized for this week and it will be fine.”

The next morning, Matt and I carried our bags to the front hall and walked in on Jimmy and Ash having a fight. They were standing about two feet apart, glaring at each other, and Ash's arms were folded across her chest. They weren't talking, but it was clear they were mad. Ash's mom was also standing there, just to the side of them, looking like she wanted to slip right back out the front door. When she saw us, she gave us an awkward little wave, but Ash and Jimmy didn't even glance our way, and we paused for a moment, unsure what to do.

“Jimmy,” Ash said, breaking the silence. “I'm not going to pack up all of her gear and drag this poor child clear across Texas just so you can get a photo op with her. She needs stability.”

“She has stability,” Jimmy said.

“She doesn't. She doesn't get her naps at the right time when we travel, she doesn't eat as well, she's cranky and out of sorts for days when we get back.”

“She's a baby. She'll adjust.”

“Exactly. She's a baby,” Ash said. They stared at each other for a few seconds without talking and I wondered if this was the time to sneak out, but we just stayed frozen where we were.

“You can't just make these decisions without me,” Jimmy said, and I realized that Ash had never told him she wasn't planning to take Viv, that he hadn't known until Beverly showed up at the house.