Cleo McDougal Regrets Nothing: A Novel

by Allison Winn Scotch

  “No,” Cleo snapped. “I don’t really want to dance. But you made me write down ten regrets, and I thought that pursuing something creative in the public eye was better than tracking down Lucas’s father in the public eye, so does that satisfy you?”

  Gaby’s eyebrows skyrocketed as Cleo’s intercom buzzed.

  “Senator McDougal?” Arianna still always sounded like she was apologizing. Cleo grabbed a pen, wrote down, Speak with Arianna about her tone!, and underlined it twice to remind herself. Arianna wasn’t going to get far in politics, in any career, if she couldn’t quell that upward tick, that question mark. Women who were constantly apologizing were at a disadvantage in any negotiation and, of course, taken less seriously, because who wants advice or counsel from someone who is sorry before they’ve even convinced you of anything?

  “Yes, Arianna.”

  “Veronica Kaye is here? Um. Now. She’s outside?”

  Gaby’s face went slack, and the blood drained from Cleo’s.

  “Shit!” Gaby said.

  “Shit,” Cleo said too.

  “I wanted to have time to tell her our plan,” Gaby was whispering again, a sure sign of her highly unusual and extremely rare panic. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  “Our plan?”

  “The regrets plan! That’s what she wanted from us; that’s what got her here.”

  “Shit. OK, go with dancing.”

  Gaby looked even more alarmed.

  “I am not a complete rhythmically challenged imbecile, Gaby,” Cleo bleated. “My mom was a professional ballerina. It’s in me somewhere!”

  “OK, OK, we’ll go with that.” Gaby smoothed out her sweater, grabbed a lipstick (Veronica Kaye Fire Engine Red!), and puckered up. “Here.” She thrust it toward Cleo. “You need more help than this, but it won’t hurt.”

  Veronica Kaye swooped in and smelled, frankly, heavenly. It was the first thing Cleo noticed: her scent. Not just that the tones were perfect, some magical blend of vanilla bean and gardenia and perhaps a touch of grapefruit, but she also reeked of power. Cleo sized her up and genuinely thought she was the most intoxicating, most impressive woman she’d ever seen. And Cleo had met heads of state, ambassadors, prime ministers, and, of course, other senators (there were seventeen total, to the eighty-three men). Gaby was nearly salivating. It was hard to quantify who was more stupefied, but together their collective awe spoke to the way that Veronica Kaye commanded a room.

  Of course, she was also beautiful, though neither Cleo nor Gaby would have led with that. Praising a woman for her beauty was so retro that it was uncouth. But still, she was. Stunning. As the CEO of the largest cosmetics company in the world, she needed to be, but she sold her products on more than prettiness; she sold them to encourage women to know their worth, to feel comfortable in their skin, to own who they were. Veronica had emigrated from the Dominican Republic as a young girl, and her face was still dotted with freckles from the Caribbean sun. Her caramel skin was flawless without makeup, despite her being somewhere in her fifties. Her eggplant-hued dress was immaculately tailored, her gold watch and jewelry just the right amount of heft on her wrist.

  Cleo stood behind her desk and wondered if she weren’t a little bit in love.

  “Senator McDougal,” Veronica said, thrusting out her hand and shaking with the exact measure of firmness that Cleo would expect from such a goddess. A thin blond man in his thirties trailed her, and she turned and said, “I’m fine, Topher; can you please get me a cup of coffee?”

  Topher nodded and was dismissed, and Cleo knew that she was more than just a little bit in love.

  “Cleo, please call me Cleo, Ms. Kaye.”

  “And you call me Veronica.” She laughed. “Ms. Kaye is my slightly overbearing mother-in-law, who, God bless, I love, but we really don’t have much in common.” She laughed again. “I guess we both love her son—she maybe even more than I do.” She pointed toward the door. “That was Topher. He’s one of my VPs—I suppose we have to hire at least one man or risk a lawsuit, no? But he won’t be sitting in for this. This is just us women.”

  Gaby swallowed, her eyes wide with reverence. “We can’t thank you enough for coming in,” she said. “But I didn’t think . . .”

  Veronica sat in the chair opposite Cleo’s desk, so Cleo sat too; then Gaby followed.

  “I was up on the Hill today. I know this is a surprise. But I find that sometimes surprising people can work in your favor.” She assessed Cleo, then Gaby. “Sometimes, it’s best to catch people off guard to get a sense of what you’re really getting into.”

  “Well,” Gaby said, spreading her arms wide. “What you see with us is what you get.”

  Veronica narrowed her eyes toward Cleo. “I’m intrigued by what you did in Seattle.” She paused. “Obviously, it is not going quite as you expected, but that doesn’t worry me.”

  Cleo glanced down at the open newspaper on her desk and subtly tried to fold it, but you can’t subtly try to fold a newspaper. They all waited until she finished, Cleo’s cheeks turning a deeper shade of pink as each second croaked by.

  “What I liked about it was the gumption,” Veronica said. “The end result is often less important than the passion behind it, at least for voters on the national stage. Running a presidential campaign is quite different from running a senatorial campaign, where your voters already know what they want to know.”

  “That’s exactly what I told her!” Gaby said, which Veronica ignored, and Gaby clamped her mouth shut.

  “What I mean,” Veronica said, “is that I’m intrigued. And you’re on my radar. And if I see more gumption, wherever this notion came from . . .”

  Cleo started to interrupt, though she wasn’t sure with what—she didn’t want to tell her about the list, which she worried would sound like a weakness, but perhaps if it were framed, as Gaby once said, as a way of growth, of looking more human—but she got no further than a stutter before Veronica cut her off.

  “I don’t need the details,” Veronica said. “I don’t even want to know them right now. Surprise me. That’s what I like out of a candidate.”

  She stood, her time here already coming to an end. “But keep that up and you’ll have my endorsement. And this time out, my endorsement can probably make you president.” Then she barked, “Topher? Where’s my coffee?” And then she was gone.

  After Veronica’s visit, Gaby’s plan to publicize Cleo’s regrets sped into hyperdrive.

  “Dancing,” she screeched the next morning after their staff meeting. “We are going to make you a dancing queen! And I took a look at the others,” she continued, talking too quickly, like she’d had four espressos by ten a.m., which she may have. “While I work on the dancing, I want you to get back on that bill—”

  “The free housing bill?”

  “Bingo,” Gaby said, pointing her finger at Cleo. “That was a smart move—putting it on the list.”

  “Well, I mean, I should have supported it in the first place. I caved when it became a political stink bomb.” Cleo didn’t often wilt in the face of political pressure but occasionally, yes. She never liked it, was never proud of it, but polling mattered, plain and simple. The only way you ensured that you got to stand up and fight for your constituents was knowing that from time to time, you had to take a seat to preserve your job.

  “But now you can look like a champion, at least in the eyes of Veronica Kaye.”

  The free housing bill was a controversial proposal that Cleo had been asked to cosponsor the year prior. It recommended sweeping new legislation for lower-income families who, if they could demonstrate five years of steady employment, at least one child elementary-school age or older, and a clean criminal record, could apply for either a free home renovation or a free home, period. It had its detractors, of course: cries that giving away things for free was not the American Way!, and further cries that housing was a temporary Band-Aid for larger, systemic problems in poorer neighborhoods. But Cleo had disagreed. She’d read the research an
d thought that stability started with a solid roof over someone’s head, with a rodent-free kitchen, with water that didn’t turn brown from the pipes. Still, her staff had polled her voters, and it was a disaster—positive numbers in the low thirties, and even though Cleo knew it was probably the right thing to do, she demurred when asked to sign on.

  “I’ll reach out to Senator Jackman and see if we can revive it,” Cleo said.

  “And I’ll be sure to let the press know when you do.”

  “I’d expect nothing less.” Cleo nodded. “Though, I mean, we’re not going to film that.” She thought of Senator Jackman, a perfectly coiffed, straight-spined sixty-four-year-old ballbuster from the great state of Illinois. As open-minded as she was, she also came from a generation that cared about etiquette, and Cleo was certain she’d nix Gaby’s guerrilla-style filmmaking as she and Cleo hashed out the details. Besides, that type of policy work was the opposite of sexy. It would die on the internet vine unless the two of them ended up in some sort of salacious choke hold.

  “No, we’re not going to film that,” Gaby said. “But it can still be a feather in your cap, a reconsideration, a regret addressed all the same.” She clicked her tongue. “That leaves us with two more. Give me the day, and I’ll let you know what’s next.”

  “You told me we were doing all this on my recess,” Cleo argued. “In case you’ve forgotten, I’m not yet running for president, and I have to represent the people of New York in other matters right now, and who even said I want to do this?”

  Gaby froze, literally, her hand in midair, her eyes as wide as globes. “You don’t want to run for president?”

  “My regrets,” Cleo snapped. “After MaryAnne has gone so well, can we at least have a conversation about if I even want to do four more?”

  Yesterday’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer still sat folded on her desk. She’d meant to ask Lucas last night if he’d gotten any further intel from Esme, but he’d had on his noise-canceling headphones and was so focused on his homework (she hoped it was his homework—perhaps she should more accurately say, so focused on his laptop) that she didn’t want to disturb him. Besides, she hadn’t yet figured out how to respond to the ad, much less to whatever was next in MaryAnne’s arsenal.

  “The regrets list is what got Veronica here in the first place,” Gaby said.

  “No, not the list, because she doesn’t know about that,” Cleo said. “Confirming?”

  “Fine, the act of embracing said regrets. The semantics of it doesn’t matter, OK?” She grabbed the newspaper from Cleo’s desk and threw it—somewhat dramatically, Cleo thought—into the garbage can.

  “Gab, you can’t just throw it away and act like there aren’t reverberations. That’s not how this works. That’s the very point of the list. That I did something and maybe there were ramifications. A lot of times, toward me. Some stupid stuff, like not finishing my antibiotics, but some other stuff too, like torpedoing MaryAnne’s internship.” Cleo sighed. “Just because you do that doesn’t make the ad disappear or the mess with MaryAnne disappear either. Besides, people already like me. Why risk that?”

  “People like you enough, that’s true. But now we’re going to make them love you.”

  “I never needed anyone to love me,” Cleo said.

  “Well, maybe that’s where you’re shortsighted,” Gaby replied.

  TEN

  The truth was that even outside of high school, even well beyond the MaryAnne Newman situation and the “dumping her perfectly nice boyfriend” situation, Cleo McDougal really hadn’t ever been such a good person. The opening line to MaryAnne’s initial op-ed had been, in fact, quite accurate. Cleo didn’t think this was why her dad passed on his habit of noting his regrets—she didn’t believe that he believed that she was an inherently bad person. But now she couldn’t be sure either.

  And nothing changed once she entered politics. If anything, politics amplified these characteristics. In politics, this self-involvement made her even more successful. Theoretically, politics was about bridging divides. Realistically, it was mostly every man (and woman) for themselves.

  Cleo had removed the crumpled copy of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer from her garbage can when she returned from her Budget Committee meeting and before she had to run to a banquet retirement dinner for the Human Rights Campaign. She’d refolded it, carefully, and tucked it in her bag. She didn’t really know why. The lawyer in her told her it was evidence—of what, she wasn’t yet sure. The regretter in her also told her it was evidence but of her own culpability. Because she knew that she was culpable, even when she’d also been bruised, like with Alexander Nobells, like in her estranged relationship with Georgie.

  As it turned out, Emily Godwin’s husband did some work for the HRC and was at the dinner too. Cleo had brought Arianna; she wanted to mentor her, to show her how women wielded their power out in the real world, not just on C-SPAN. But Arianna had seen a boy across the room from Senator Frost’s office, and Cleo sent her toward him with her blessing. God knew these things could be dull and also agonizing in small ways; why not enjoy a glass of wine with an ally and possibly a man to kiss you at the end of the night? (Maybe, even, as Gaby had suggested, find someone to love you and love in return too. Cleo wasn’t so impenetrable that Gaby’s comment hadn’t resonated just a little bit.)

  Senator Jackman, the champion of the free housing initiative, lingered by the bar in an immaculately tailored red pantsuit—she was impossible to miss—and Cleo made a beeline and offered up her full and renewed support of the idea. The senior senator seemed both pleased and amused at Cleo’s change of heart, but in DC, everyone’s intentions were constantly shifting, and Senator Jackman knew better than to look a gift horse in the mouth. When someone offered to be your ally, you might privately ask yourself WTAF!, but you publicly nearly always shook on it. Indeed, Cleo clasped her hand, feeling quite good about herself for following up on her promise to Gaby (and the fact that this was the right policy to pursue for her constituents—New York real estate had boxed out too many deserving families), and then felt her stomach shift. She couldn’t remember what she’d eaten for lunch. Or breakfast actually.

  So this was how Cleo ended up running into Emily Godwin’s husband at the buffet: he went for steak, she for salmon, and they were forced to make small talk (Cleo hated small talk) while waiting for the server to refresh the grilled vegetables. Jonathan was the kind of good-looking you saw throughout Washington—chiseled jaw, hair graying at the temples, wide shoulders—the kind of good-looking that earned him respect before he even opened his mouth, respect earned at literal face value. Cleo was nodding in agreement with him about something having to do with the boys’ soccer team but really thinking: This guy is given the benefit of the doubt in ways that I would never be granted. He was nice enough; none of this was his fault, but Cleo’s gut roiled and she lost her appetite for the salmon, which really wasn’t very good in the first place. (The food at these things rarely was.)

  Jonathan got ushered out into the sea of other chitchatters, and Cleo found her table, happy to be seated, off her feet in her high heels, which she hated and found sexist but what was she going to do? Show up to a work dinner in flats? Lace up her sneakers, which were really only appropriate (for serious women) at the congressional gym? Across the room, she watched Arianna flirt with the other young aide, and it occurred to her that people all around her were having sex left and right, falling in love left and right, and here she was, elbows on a rented linen tablecloth, staring at her cold salmon, thinking about how much her toes hurt. Lucas’s perception of her dating life wasn’t quite accurate: there had been failed attempts, three dates in a row with a few men, some making out in cars or their bedrooms (if Lucas had a sitter or was at a sleepover), but something sustainable, something real, well, no, there hadn’t been that. She thought of Matty at the bar in the Sheraton, how she was surprised that she wouldn’t have minded if he’d kissed her. She realized that this was likely because she wouldn�
��t have minded being kissed, not because it had to be Matty. Was that how lonely, how isolated she’d become?

  Something had to change.

  Before she could determine just what—other than the obvious, that it would be nice to have steady, reliable sex every once in a while, to have a date to see a movie or binge a Netflix show (Cleo had never binged a Netflix show)—and how exactly to solve it, she spotted Jonathan again, just a few people away from Arianna. He was tall, which was probably what caught her attention—she wasn’t spying, in any case. She’d remind herself of this later, when she sat at her home office desk, a pen in hand, and went to add this incident to her list, that she wasn’t trying to stir up any trouble.

  But she saw what she saw: Jonathan slipped his hand onto the small of a woman’s back who was clearly not Emily Godwin. (Who was home watching his three children and probably cooking and cleaning for them too! Cleo felt her pulse accelerate and very much hoped that Emily was not doing Jonathan’s laundry as well.) He leaned in close to the woman—a blonde, of course—and even from across the room, Cleo could see this woman relax into him, a secret passing between them. Her hand reached back, grazing his shoulder at whatever he said, as they tipped their heads together, laughing.

  Cleo felt the betrayal as if it were her own. Emily Godwin had been a bit of a saint to her, for no reason other than she recognized that Cleo needed a saint from time to time. Cleo stood up in her chair, threw down her napkin, and started toward Jonathan to give him a piece of her mind, to tell him just what a goddamn saint he had for a wife.

  “Senator McDougal!” Before she could get even halfway across the room, a man whose face she recognized before she placed his name—not because she didn’t know his name, rather because his face was simply so ubiquitous—stepped into her path.