Cleo McDougal Regrets Nothing: A Novel

by Allison Winn Scotch

  “You’re not on the Judiciary Committee with me.” Cleo grabbed two wineglasses and poured generous fills. “Should we call the boys?”

  “Let’s drink this first,” Emily said. “They’ll still be there when we’re done.”

  Cleo clinked her glass to hers. She liked her more and more by the minute.

  With a belly full of chicken and salad, Cleo felt better than she had in days. She really should make a better effort with her diet, she told herself. She didn’t have to be Gaby and enter a marathon and swear off gluten (and dairy and anything else remotely pleasing to her palate) to be a little healthier. And maybe it was the protein and vitamins or maybe it was the wine (Emily had stopped at one glass because she was driving Benjamin home, but Cleo had poured herself a second), but she finally felt brave enough to cull her list, to whittle it down to ten actionable items that she really did regret and had courage enough to admit to. And possibly face publicly if both Gaby and Veronica Kaye insisted. There probably was not a lot she wouldn’t do for a check from Veronica Kaye. In a different line of work, some might call it prostitution. In politics, it was fundraising.

  She grabbed a red pen from her desk, unlocked the drawer, pulled out the worn yellow paper. Two hundred and thirty-three regrets over twenty-four years really wasn’t all that many, she thought. She made a mental note to raise this with Gaby, who seemed gobsmacked at the number. That was what?—Cleo did the quick math—something like ten or so a year. Imagine going through your life with only one regret a month! That was nothing! That was one bad day’s worth.

  Cleo clicked the top of her pen up and down, admonishing herself. Frankly, the list should probably be double what it was. She checked the dates next to each regret—she hadn’t updated it in some time; the last entry was from January.

  She rolled her shoulders forward, then back, trying to assess how best to narrow down two decades’ worth of missteps. It was really something to read through them all, to wonder what could have been if she hadn’t, say, weaseled out of her required art credit at Northwestern (she had signed up for dance, thinking maybe she had underestimated herself and had a twinge of her mother’s talent, but then sprained her ankle on the steps of her dorm one week into school and had happily used the injury and the accompanying doctor’s note to get out of the class). Maybe she would have fallen in love, as her mom had, with the movements of Martha Graham or Alvin Ailey, and even if it hadn’t changed, say, her trajectory toward law school and politics, maybe it would have made her more comfortable with her body, gotten her on the dance floor at those rare parties she attended, challenged her to take up more space in the world. Maybe she’d have Gaby’s posture and her stomach wouldn’t sag over her waistband, which it had ever since she gave birth. Or maybe taking that dance class would have given her more confidence in herself—not her intellect, not her drive, just . . . herself, because those were different things—and she would have been someone else entirely. She wouldn’t have gotten too drunk at that party her senior year and forgotten to use a condom and gotten pregnant, and Lucas wouldn’t be here and everything would have shifted. Maybe she wouldn’t have made dumb decisions with Alexander Nobells; maybe she would have stood her ground when she lost her summer position; maybe she would have confronted him and who knows what would have happened from that.

  She threw her pen across the room, startled at this realization. It was just a thread she was pulling, an imaginary thread at that, starting with a stupid interpretive dance class. She didn’t regret Lucas (of course!) or any of the struggle that came with him. And most of the time, Cleo genuinely loved her life, and she was proud of it. But still. It was easy to see how this list could go sideways. How looking back started to make you question the way forward. And, as her campaign slogan intended to convey, Cleo McDougal preferred to only look forward.

  She stood, retrieved the pen from the floor by her office door, then swung the door open and listened for Lucas. It was still early Seattle time. Maybe he was talking with Esme?

  “Luc?” she yelled down the hall. “Lucas?”

  She heard her phone buzz in her office, so scampered back.

  Emily: Town crier knows all. Penny confirms L is “with” Marley Jacobson.

  Cleo : What does “with” mean?

  Emily: . . .

  . . .

  Emily: (Checking)

  . . .

  Emily: She says it means they are “together.” I realize this is not more helpful.

  Cleo searched for the miserable-face emoji but found it took too long to find and gave up.

  Cleo: OK. Ugh. Thanks.

  She settled back at her desk, trying to reorient herself and focus. She’d intended to cull the list, and cull it she would. Dealing with Lucas’s love triangle could wait. She knew she wasn’t the best one to give advice on romance, and she further knew that he would pounce on this weakness immediately. He was her son, after all. He could nearly out-debate her now, if and when he chose to string more than three words together consecutively, which was not often. (So in some ways, also a blessing.)

  Cleo flipped the yellow papers. She resolved to cross out any items that were nonsensical to her now—vague, in-the-moment regrets that she couldn’t possibly fix or redo because she had no idea what they meant all these years later. She clicked the top of the pen, swiped through a couple dozen this way, easy. What did steps!!! or too many mushrooms mean after all these years anyway? It didn’t matter. She axed through seventy-two of these.

  Next she thought she’d categorize the remaining. There were regrets, and then there were regrets like Alexander Nobells, among others. He wasn’t even the gravest. Those were regrets that were no one’s business but her own. She eased back in her chair, squeezed her eyes closed, pinched the bridge of her nose. She’d never intended for some of them to fester as they had. Sometimes an act or a lie or a misdeed started out simply as an in-the-moment impulse. No one ever really thought that they would follow you around, potentially haunt you forever.

  Cleo opened her eyes, tore off a sheet of clean paper, and removed a ruler from her top drawer. She drew three parallel lines down the page, then inked a perpendicular line on top. Three columns. The first: Stupid Things. The second: Possible Fixers. The third: Off-Limits.

  Cleo figured perhaps she could take a few from the first column, a handful from the second, and keep the third at bay. This should satisfy Gaby and hopefully please Veronica Kaye too, who, according to Gaby, loved the spunk she was seeing from Cleo without—Gaby promised—knowing the impetus (the list!) behind it.

  She started scribbling, filling in the lines. She’d gotten only four deep when Lucas stuck his head through the door.

  “Hey.”

  Cleo jolted. She hadn’t ever told Lucas about the list and certainly didn’t need him reading it. Couldn’t have him reading it. When do parents grow to be OK with their kids knowing they are fallible? That they tell half-truths to protect their children or sometimes also, yes, themselves? That they do the best they can, which often isn’t good at all. She opened her drawer quickly, dropping the papers and pen and ruler inside. She shoved it closed.

  “What’s up?”

  Lucas glanced suspiciously toward the drawer. “What’s that?”

  “Just a draft of a speech I’m working on.”

  “You have a speechwriter.”

  Cleo nodded. She did. “I know. But you know how I micromanage.”

  Lucas made a face as if this were likely. She did micromanage. It wasn’t too far-fetched.

  “So listen,” he said. “I don’t want to alarm you—”

  “Oh my God, is this about Marley Jacobson?” Cleo interrupted, though there was no reason to think it was about Marley Jacobson. She realized this as soon as she said it.

  “What?” Lucas soured. “Who told you about Marley?”

  “No one.”

  He stared at her, his cheeks basically quivering in what she knew was rage.

  “Can’t you stay out of my
business?”

  “Hey, you came in here.” Cleo stood, walked around her desk, and leaned against the front of it. “Also, since we’re on the subject . . .”

  “We weren’t on the subject.” Lucas crossed his arms, just like he used to as a toddler whenever he was gearing up for a fight.

  “Fine, well, we are now, and I don’t know what’s going on, but you can’t be ‘with,’ or whatever, two girls, Lucas. You just can’t.”

  “God, you are so lame.”

  “I have never pretended otherwise.”

  “If I had a dad around, I could ask him.” Lucas’s hands moved to his hips, even more defiant now.

  It had been percolating since MaryAnne’s op-ed, this rebuke, the sting of how maybe Cleo fucked up and it could have been different with his dad, but still, it smacked her across the face. It was his default way of fighting, going right for her most vulnerable part, and he wasn’t wrong: she saw his dad’s name there, on the list, a reminder. Cleo tried to spend every moment she had while not working (and, admittedly, much of her time was spent working) with Lucas, putting Band-Aids on scrapes, reading bedtime stories before she returned to her office to review drafts of legislation, attending as many soccer games as she possibly could (so most, though not all), and, until a few years ago, he’d taken her at her word: that it had always been just the two of them, and they didn’t need anything, anyone else. He had been curious, sure, about why other kids had present fathers, but he hadn’t been pushy and he hadn’t been bothered. That changed around twelve, right about when puberty set in, and Cleo had to talk to him about all sorts of things that neither of them particularly wanted to discuss but discussed anyway. Body hair. Erections. She even broached masturbation once, but it was a bridge too far and ended quickly.

  But she told him, clearly and with some finality over dinner one night—Cleo knew they were going to get into the heart of it, so she came home early to cook spaghetti and fresh marinara (his favorite and really one of the few things Cleo knew how to make)—that his dad didn’t want to play a part. The same line she used when the press had raised it in her first congressional run. And because Cleo took people at their words, she said to Lucas, she had honored what his dad said and reminded him that impregnating someone is not the same thing as being a father. Besides, she added, both when he was twelve and anytime he raised it after that, we are not the type of people who chase down others who spurn us. We never will be.

  Cleo never felt good about it, this discussion and some of the mistruths she represented in it, but Lucas trusted her, and for the most part, that was that.

  “Your having a father wouldn’t change the fact that it’s not fair to Marley Jacobson if you are FaceTiming Esme!” Cleo managed tonight.

  She thought of her list, tucked in that top drawer, and remembered why she locked it. Because of this discussion. Because of Doug. Because how that night was such a massive clusterfuck of regret, even when, of course, it couldn’t be. Of how Lucas would feel if he saw it or understood it or had any idea the panic that she felt not just when she woke up and realized she’d had unprotected sex with a guy she really barely knew (it was Cleo’s only one-night stand both before and since) but also when she realized—ten weeks later—that she was pregnant.

  Cleo’s period had always, always been reliable. To the afternoon, to the time of day. It was so reliable that she gave it no thought. At that point, she’d had so much else on her plate. Her grandmother was gone, her parents obviously too. She was focused on making dean’s list, on her law school acceptances, on completing her honors thesis. It didn’t even occur to her that her period was late, because it was one of the few things she could count on. Almost two months later, she woke up in a deep sweat, as if her body were literally waking up to a realization that something was changing, and she ran to the twenty-four-hour CVS down the street from the apartment she shared with two other girls. (Friends she’d made in the Club Against Homelessness!, a.k.a. CAH!, which she enjoyed—they visited shelters twice a month and brought gently used clothes and read to and played with the kids—but she knew looked great on her résumé, to be honest.) By the time she got an appointment at student health and saw the ultrasound, she was almost through her first trimester. Sure, her breasts had been a little sore, but she hadn’t been sick, her stomach wasn’t pooching, she hadn’t been exhausted in the way she figured pregnant women were supposed to be. The doctor (a man) told her the news with a moderated tone, a neutral expression, and Cleo wondered how, for someone so smart, she could have been so dumb.

  “Listen, it’s ten o’clock,” Cleo said now to her son, that blip on the ultrasound fifteen years ago. “I’m not going to litigate why I’m a single parent with you right now. I’m just encouraging you to not be a jerk to these girls.”

  Lucas flexed his jaw. Cleo tried to envision his father doing the same, if he’d look like him while doing so, if they shared these mannerisms. In truth, she couldn’t really remember all that much about him, and that both embarrassed and relieved her. There wasn’t much to tell Lucas because, well, there wasn’t much to tell.

  “Fine,” Lucas said. “Duly noted.”

  “Thank you. That’s all I’m saying. I’m out here on the front lines fighting for legislation that makes women true equals, and if I end up raising an asshole . . .”

  “I got it.”

  “Right, of course. You’ll do the right thing.” Cleo relaxed. She thought she might brew some coffee and get back to the list once he went to bed. “Oh, but did you come in here to tell me something?”

  “First of all, can I stay home from school tomorrow? I have a headache.”

  “No.” Cleo sighed. She didn’t know why this had become a thing lately, Lucas squirming out of school. She’d asked Emily if there were any bullying rumors or drama, but she’d heard of nothing and said, “Benjamin does the same thing. I think it’s teenage boys. They want to hibernate.” So Cleo, who had let him skip the first two times he’d groused about a nondescript ailment, had started putting her foot down. “Take a Tylenol,” she said. “You’re fine. But what did you want to tell me?”

  “Fine,” he huffed, then softened. He chewed his lip. (Did his dad also do this? Cleo had never chewed her lip a day in her life. Or at least certainly not since she held an elected position. Lip chewing implied equivocation, and elected women were not allowed to look equivocal.) “Well, I just hung up with Esme.”

  Cleo sighed.

  “Do you want to hear this or not?” Lucas barked. “I’m, like, trying to be helpful. A good son.”

  “I’m sorry, yes, continue.”

  “Well, her mom. She’s, like, still pretty pissed.”

  “Yes, that makes sense.” Cleo nodded. MaryAnne could harbor a grudge with the best of them.

  “And I guess she’s running a full-page ad tomorrow in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.”

  “A what?” Cleo yelped. “An ad about what?”

  “About you,” Lucas said. “Or against you.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Cleo screamed.

  “I don’t know,” Lucas said and even seemed a little bit sorry for her. “But it seems to me that this is war.”

  NINE

  The ad went more viral than even the YouTube video. Frankly, a lot of people thought that it made MaryAnne look a little bit unhinged, which left Cleo conflicted. On the one hand, Cleo appreciated that the tide of public opinion was tilting toward her, but on the other hand, she didn’t appreciate the notion of a woman being deemed “psycho,” as she was frequently seeing online, because once you called one woman crazy, you opened the door to call all of them crazy. And more often than not, women were not only saner than men but actually less hysterical. Cleo and her colleagues had trained themselves to hold their voices firm, their posture unwavering whenever any of their hearings were televised or whenever a reporter tracked them down in the halls within the Senate building. They couldn’t afford to look emotional, couldn’t risk even being called emotional. As if emo
tion were something that made them less capable at their jobs. Often it made them better.

  One of Cleo’s colleagues, Helene Boxer, learned this lesson the hard way. During a particularly contentious Supreme Court justice hearing, Helene had the audacity to rise from her seat and point her finger at the nominee when she caught him in a lie about his voting record, and not only was she raked over the media coals for ten days straight, she lost her upcoming reelection. Her challenger Photoshopped the video of her at the hearing such that she resembled a witch on a broom and ran ads with the image the last two weeks of the campaign. He won by seven percentage points.

  So Cleo was understandably torn at the blowback against MaryAnne Newman.

  Gaby, however, was not.

  “I am going to fuck that bitch up,” she said. She’d sent out one of their staffers, Timothy, to the newsstand that stocked the papers from all fifty states, as well as countries across the world, and she was staring down at the open paper on Cleo’s desk. “Like, seriously. I could kill her. Kill her.”

  “You can’t kill her,” Cleo said.

  “True, I’m a black woman in America. I could be arrested just for saying that.” Gaby paused, only half joking. “We’ll enlist Timothy. He’s white, Harvard-educated, and twenty-eight. He’ll be out of jail in three months, if he’s convicted at all.”

  Cleo pulled a sheet of paper from her bag. She couldn’t sleep last night, not after Lucas announced the declaration of war and certainly not after more obfuscation about his dad. Cleo knew the mess was her own making—perhaps not all the MaryAnne stuff, because MaryAnne was happily digging her own hole deeper, but the father stuff, well, sure. So she had plunked down at her desk, and she had taken another hard look at those 233 regrets, and she had written down ten before she could talk herself out of it.

  “Here,” she said and shoved the paper at Gaby. “Ten. As demanded.”

  “As requested,” Gaby corrected.

  “Same thing coming from you.”

  “True,” Gaby demurred, glancing over her options. “Hmm, OK, OK, no, OK, oh yes, that one for sure.” She looked up, met Cleo’s eyes. “There are some things we can work with here. You really want to dance?”