Lucas was speaking again. “I don’t know, Mom, OK? He’s . . . fine. I don’t, like, talk to him a lot.”
“Is he nice to Emily?”
Lucas grabbed the forms, headed back toward his bedroom. “Hey, Mom, not everything has to be turned into some feminist manifesto.”
Cleo jumped to her feet. “What does that mean?”
She thought of the two girls he might be juggling—Marley and Esme—and realized she really, really needed to sit him down and make him choose, not just dance around it as she had the other night. She needed to explain why he was being a dick and what a terrible precedent this set. Not just for him but for those girls too. Making them feel as if it were one or the other, making them wonder if they needed to be something more than they were for him, making them morph themselves into something they weren’t.
Or maybe teen girls these days would just shove a middle finger in his face and recognize that he was the problem, not them. That actually seemed more like it.
Lucas stopped, turned back. “Sorry, that came out harsher than I meant it to. I just meant that not all men are the enemy. And I doubt Ben’s dad is.” He swiped his hair from his face and disappeared into his room for what would be the rest of the night. Like it was that simple. Men and women. How people make you believe that what you see is who they are.
Cleo slunk back into her chair. Of course all men aren’t the enemy! She noticed her search results still in her tab. Alexander Nobells. But sometimes, it’s just a fact that they are.
Cleo had arrived at Professor Nobells’s apartment on the Upper West Side with a bottle of wine that she hoped was good. No one had really taught her how to buy wine—her parents were dead by the time she realized that she should know about it, and her sister was across the country now, working and therapizing and doing a good job being an adult (surprising), and Cleo wasn’t going to bother her to ask about vintages and grapes, especially after she’d screamed at her when she came to help just after Lucas’s birth. Besides, Cleo was busy raising a baby on her own, and thus the long and the short of it was that she hadn’t been drinking much wine anyway.
But the nice man at the wine store recommended this Italian merlot, and though she wasn’t a fan of trusting people without doing her own research, she had to acknowledge that this time, she simply was not an expert. Nor could she become one between the time Nobells invited her and now. So she swiped her credit card and hoped for the best. She didn’t love wine or any alcohol to begin with. It made her lightheaded too quickly and sometimes it flared up her rosacea, though that was unpredictable at best. If Cleo liked anything in life, it was to be in control, so whether it be wine or a skin condition, she did whatever she could to mitigate unpredictability. (The irony of her unplanned pregnancy was not lost on her. Maybe a therapist would tell her that part of her skipped the condom intentionally, so she had something, someone to call her own. Cleo wasn’t sure. Georgie probably had some thoughts too, but Cleo wasn’t interested in asking.)
His building was fancier than she expected, though she didn’t know why. Maybe it was his low-key professor vibe, which quelled his smarmier, flashier law-partner vibe. The doorman called up and announced her; then she was shown the elevator, and then Professor Nobells was opening the door to his rambling three-bedroom. He had books stacked upon books and a bunch of oil paintings that looked expensive. Cleo hadn’t taken Art History at Northwestern, but these paintings, in gilded frames and highlighted with overhead lights, reeked of wealth, and Cleo felt a little bit over her head. After retiring from the ballet, Cleo’s mom had painted for the love of it, to keep that part of her alive; though she had a following in Seattle, it wasn’t as if her works were commissioned by MoMA, and Cleo had never paid close enough attention to differentiate what set good art apart from great art. Georgie had taken most of her mom’s paintings when she, Cleo, and their grandmother packed up the house; Cleo had a few in a closet wrapped in Bubble Wrap.
“I brought wine,” she said, and she was already embarrassed. This wasn’t a date, for God’s sake! He was her teacher, and he was married with two children a little bit older than Lucas! “I didn’t know if you and your wife drink red, but here you are.”
The apartment smelled like butter and chicken and rosemary, and though Cleo didn’t wish for a man to cook for her in perpetuity, she was glad that for tonight, one had. She wondered what his wife was like, if she was as beautiful as he was, if she was as intelligent. She thought, despite her mildly palpable crush on Professor Nobells, that she could learn from both of them. How to negotiate a mortgage on a three-bedroom on the Upper West Side, how to cook a perfect chicken, how to raise kids in a world where it seemed like, soon enough, big tech would be able to implant chips in their brains.
Nobells ushered her into the kitchen, his hand on the small of her back.
“Oh, my wife, Amy, she’s away with the kids. Florida.” He pulled an apron over his head in one swift motion. “I’m sorry. Maybe I should have told you when I proposed this?”
Cleo felt blood rise to her cheeks, and she worried that he could see straight through her naivete. That she had quickly debated that this might be romantic, dismissed the idea as preposterous, only to discover that maybe it was. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that: it was one thing to stare at your professor from the third row while he lectured. It was another to be invited into his home under the guise of wise counsel and realize that he actually wanted to woo you.
Cleo reminded herself that he was married. And she wasn’t reckless. But he had gripped her shoulder outside of class and run his hand down her arm and palmed the small of her back just a minute ago, which sent an electric pulse up her spine.
Nobells uncorked the wine and reached for two crystal wineglasses he had at the ready. He poured them generous fills and then raised his glass, so Cleo followed, her head still spinning, her brain trying to keep up, her heart racing so quickly that it felt like it might explode inside her chest cavity. She wondered if he would say something suggestive, something even mildly romantic. She hoped not, not because she didn’t every once in a while fantasize about him kissing her from her seat in the third row, but because she knew this wasn’t how she wanted to be seen. Cleo McDougal was a serious person, a serious student, and she wanted to be treated as such. (She thought. Mostly.)
“To hoping my chicken is as good as I promised.” He grinned.
And she grinned too. “I can drink to that.”
They clinked their glasses, and then they did.
It wasn’t until years later, when Cleo had extricated herself from the messiness of the affair, that she had seen it for what it was. She had written it on her list, yes, but that was just the regret. The pain, the secrets, the shame, all of it. They had been careful. Meticulous. Because it was in both of their natures. Amy hadn’t ever caught them, and if she suspected anything, Cleo never heard.
Back then, she had blamed herself as much as she had blamed him. She could have left that night. She could have turned him down. She hadn’t gone there seeking anything physical, but she hadn’t gotten up and left when his motives became clear.
Even now, she understood that there was still plenty of blame to go around. She wasn’t one to shirk that. Never had been. But years later, her perspective had shifted. That it was never an equal decision, that he was her professor, that he was the one with the power and the advice and the recommendations, and though, yes, she was a consenting adult, what they both did was wrong. But what he did was more wrong. He knew she wanted a full-time position at his firm; he knew her grades were in his hands; he knew that by initiating the affair, he left Cleo with few good options. To spurn him in that moment in his kitchen meant she risked all of the above; to spurn him down the line meant the same. Cleo knew, in hindsight, that she probably should never have gone there in the first place, to that dinner, eaten his chicken, toasted with her wine. But like so many regrets, once you’d set those actions in motion, they felt impossible to undo.
Cleo stood and clasped her hands together, stretching her shoulders and rolling her neck. She had lost track of time, and her whole body, not just her head, ached with a dull throb. She reached into her bag, pulled out the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and splayed it on her desk.
MaryAnne’s ad had been an echo of her op-ed. A large-font headline about Cleo’s marred character, some lines about her ethics and her judgment and how she was a cheater. How cheaters shouldn’t run our government, how cheaters shouldn’t be our collective moral voice. (Cleo knew that MaryAnne walked it right up to the slander line, probably consulted with lawyers, probably could back it up with facts. MaryAnne was smart enough not to risk a lawsuit, and so was the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.) Cleo ran her fingers over all the cheaters, then pressed her palms against the paper, its grit chalky on her fingertips.
The plan came together in her mind quickly, and she moved ahead, without consulting Gaby, without second-guessing herself. These were usually her best decisions—the ones that came from her gut. She knew this next step, hell, this next regret—undoing what she thought to be impossible—had to be big, to be a real reckoning, and she knew exactly the person who could help her.
She sat in her chair and cracked her knuckles. Grabbed her phone.
Cleo: Going to New York this weekend for something kind of top secret. Want to tag along? No questions until I say so.
He wrote her back within seconds.
Bowen: Mysterious. I’m in.
TWELVE
Cleo had been set to return to New York for the weekend for a few events with her constituents; thus it wasn’t even all that hard to slip away from Gaby, who was distracted by Oliver Patel’s arrival. He was landing Thursday night, so though she and Cleo and Cleo’s five legislative assistants were ostensibly set to prep for a meeting with Senator Jackman on the free housing deal, Gaby left the office early to “beautify,” and Cleo could make her New York plan in peace.
“This whole thing,” Gaby had said earlier that morning, swooping her hand from the top of her head to as far as it could drop. “I’m cleaning up this whole thing.”
Arianna happened to be in Cleo’s office at the time and piped in unprompted.
“Natural is back, by the way,” she said, and Cleo and Gaby both tilted their heads and stared. Arianna’s cheeks flushed. “I’m sorry? Should I not have said that? Oh God, oh God, I’m sorry! You’re a senator. I mentioned pubic hair in front of a senator.”
“Well, for one,” Gaby replied, “you didn’t mention pubic hair until now. But for two, OK, thank you. Noted.”
“We’re tired of putting our bodies through pain for men,” Arianna said, and for the first time, Cleo thought she had potential. Not because she wasn’t interested in having hot wax near her vagina (because when you thought about it, Arianna was much saner than Gaby), but rather because it was a strident notion that shouldn’t have been strident at all: that these things we do for beauty cause us pain, and who ever said that pain should be a requirement?
“I like that.” Cleo nodded. “I like the point your generation is making.” She herself had recently been considering Botox, not for a man but because youthfulness mattered to public perception. She gazed at Arianna for a beat. Actually, maybe that was for men too. Men had for so long dictated what was and wasn’t beautiful, what was and wasn’t youthful, and let it not be forgotten that youthfulness was more coveted than age. She resolved right then, with Arianna sorting through her files and Gaby rethinking her bikini wax, to skip the Botox. Unless, of course, it was for her. How she could even determine that, though, was unclear. The notions of beauty and power were all very messy. She thought of Veronica Kaye. Maybe she should ask her. She seemed like she might have the answers.
“I will think about all of this during my appointments,” Gaby said. “Extremely illuminating.”
Arianna seemed a little embarrassed but for once not apologetic.
“These are our bodies.” Arianna shrugged. “Men should be grateful to be seeing them at all.”
She finished with the files and left, and both Cleo and Gaby made “well that was a surprise” faces at each other, their eyebrows reaching toward the top of their foreheads, their chins pressing toward their necks.
“Kids these days,” Gaby said, shaking her head.
“Did not see that coming,” Cleo replied.
Cleo didn’t know whether they were referring to Arianna’s bravado or the newest trends in bikini waxing, but it didn’t really matter either way.
Bowen met Cleo at Union Station after lunch on Friday. Cleo usually tried to bring Lucas back for her trips to New York, but he didn’t have friends there anymore, and he was old enough to launch genuine gripes about why he didn’t want to spend his weekend holed up at their apartment while she held town halls or did ribbon cuttings or 5ks for various cancers. When he was littler, though he required more from her, he was also easier in some respects. He did what she said; he was simply an extension of her, and questions weren’t asked or argued in the same way that they were now. He would whine, sure, but he could be easily bribed, and besides, he didn’t really know any other way. It was them, the two of them, in it together, and he did what she did, peas in a pod.
Now, at fourteen, he would still come along from time to time, but he preferred to stay with friends in DC, or when she was really, really hard up, Gaby would babysit. (“Don’t call it babysitting,” she snapped once. “I do not babysit. This is me pitching in to get you back to your constituents.”) But this weekend, Emily Godwin (anointed saint) had been happy to have him. The boys had soccer practice for half the time anyway—“It’s easier this way,” she’d said. “Then Benjamin doesn’t have to talk to us at all. He’s much more delightful when that’s the case.”
Cleo had laughed and wished that Lucas had someone else to talk to besides her. Well, and Benjamin. But the two of them, mother and son, their little unit, she could see how it might be getting claustrophobic for him. Maybe that’s why he had two girlfriends, she reasoned: more options. More outlets. Then she chastised herself for such a cavalier thought. Gross, she told herself. You’re part of the problem. Women aren’t options.
These weekend arrangements had been made before Cleo had caught Jonathan Godwin in his act of betrayal, which was a bit of a relief—Cleo didn’t know if she could call Emily and ask for a favor while keeping such a secret from her. Though Cleo was indeed excellent with secrets—she sat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, after all—this one was different; this one was personal, and Cleo didn’t have it in her to lie to one of her few friends.
So it was just the two of them—Bowen and Cleo—for the train ride up to Manhattan. Cleo had emailed the staffer set to travel with her—she nearly always went with at least one minder—and gave her the weekend off. This was a semipersonal trip, and the last thing she wanted was a lackey. Bowen was dressed down, and Cleo found she liked it. Jeans, a crisp light-green button-down, trendy navy sneakers. She was suddenly aware of how much she would like to sleep with him. This was not a feeling she welcomed or found particularly useful. He was here because she needed his help. She willed this notion out of her mind. It proved harder than she thought.
Bowen bought them both Starbucks and himself a giant scone; then they headed to the tracks and waited for the train to blow by. He asked no questions—she didn’t even know where he was staying in New York—though she imagined he had a penthouse in Tribeca that was wall-to-ceiling glass windows. He seemed, she thought, genuinely amused that she had texted him but not condescending or patronizing about it at all. Amused in a kindhearted way.
They settled into their seats and finally, as the train’s engines masked the sounds of their conversation, he said: “OK, Cleo, you have my attention. I’m headed all the way to New York for you. I assume this is not a whirlwind date.” He paused. “To be clear, if it is, that’s entirely fine wit
h me too.” He read the look on her face, which she imagined was a bit like a schoolmarm’s. “All righty,” he continued. “Definitely not a date. So, then . . . what?” He furrowed his brow. “Are you OK?”
“I want you to cover a story. About me,” she said quietly, and she didn’t know if he could hear her over the rattle of the train. “Not just about me. About something I did.” She inhaled, stopped. Tried to start over. This wasn’t coming out correctly. “A long time ago, at law school, I made a bad decision—I mean, you probably read about it, sort of the half-truth about it, in that op-ed. And until recently, I blamed myself. But I think what I’m realizing is that I was young and he . . . wasn’t. And . . . maybe something should be done about that now.”
Bowen’s eyes were wide but compassionate. He nodded.
“I’m not very good at . . . ,” Cleo started, then stopped again. “Well, I’m really terribly shitty at asking for help. But I thought I could trust you. You’re smart. And you’d tell me if this were a bad idea—”
He cut her off. “It’s probably a bad idea.”
Cleo glared at him.
“Why are you asking me this instead of Gaby? Isn’t she your other half?” he asked.
“Because she’d talk me out of it.”
“And you don’t want me to?” Bowen asked. It was a fair question, and Cleo liked him precisely because his questions always were.
“I think it’s the right thing to do,” she said finally. She thought of Arianna, of all the other girls who might have endured the same, from Nobells, from men like Nobells. She was in a position of power now, and she’d tried—really—to spur change with that position. But if she couldn’t confront the abuses of power in her own past, how could she expect other women to do the same?
Cleo McDougal Regrets Nothing: A Novel Page 15
