Cleo McDougal Regrets Nothing: A Novel

by Allison Winn Scotch

  Gaby blew out her breath like Cleo was testing her patience.

  “It’s . . . Wait, here.” Arianna swiped and clicked a few more buttons, and then there was a video playing. “See, look? Senator McDougal, you’ve inspired all these women to confront the men who took advantage of them. And they’re filming it, so it’s all captured in real time. Like, there aren’t any take backs.”

  “Oh!” Cleo said.

  “Oooh,” Gaby said, then reached for her own phone in her back pocket and pulled up the app.

  “It’s all over,” Arianna said. “I think this could go seriously viral.”

  “It is going seriously viral,” Timothy yelled from a door away.

  “Oh!” Cleo said again.

  “We do need to be cautious—the backlash, Cleo; we can’t ignore that,” Gaby replied, looking at neither of them, her singular focus on her screen. “I’m making a call.” She placed her phone to her ear and left.

  Cleo herself was late for a meeting with Senator Jackman about the free housing bill. Also, she wasn’t sure if she wanted her personal story with Nobells to be trending or not. It was one thing to stride into his office and say her piece; it was another for it to become a nationwide phenomenon, which, if she had thought it through, she should have anticipated. Of course she wanted young women to reclaim their power or not abandon it in the first place, but reclaiming that wasn’t as easy as simply speaking your mind and putting it on camera. Putting it on camera meant exposing your trauma, and that potentially unearthed all sorts of secondary complications. Cleo didn’t want young women to think they had to air their emotional bruises just because she had. And then there was the other fallout, the equally as unsavory blowback: the steady stream of disgusting, misogynistic emails and phone calls that had come into the office all morning. Not to mention the angry missives about the “film first, think later” tactic that Cleo had employed and that her copycats were employing too. Cleo didn’t regret that because it was the only way she could have seen it through. But still, she didn’t want other women to step in shit just because she had.

  Cleo checked the time again and, with the phones a nonstop bleat in the background, she grabbed her notes and briefcase. The internet and the hashtag and the furious calls would march on without her, whether or not she stewed over it. She resolved that stewing would give Alexander Nobells the win, and he’d already come out on top far too often. She was a senator, goddammit. She was about to craft the Jackman-McDougal Free Housing Bill that might genuinely change lives for the better. No one, not even her lecherous law school professor, who almost took credit for her worth and simultaneously cost her a job in Big Law, could stop that.

  She slid her feet into her dreaded heels and went. Her toes pinched and her calves hated her, but she had to admit that she was standing taller.

  By the afternoon, a counter-hashtag had been started. Because of course it had been. A particular set of men was angry that they were being held to account, and a particular set of women was angry on their behalf.

  “Yeah,” Arianna said. “But it still has two thousand fewer posts than ours does.”

  #notallmen had taken flight thanks to Suzanne Sonnenfeld, who had a considerable Twitter following and a cable show in prime time, where she frequently conjured up trouble from nothing. Lucas had once said she probably hid a broom behind her desk so she could fly home, and though Cleo was firmly against the sexist nature of his joke—she’s not a witch, Lucas, she’d snapped, and even if she were, we aren’t against witches, per se!—she really only chastised him out of principle. Not because Suzanne wasn’t possibly a witch—to be clear, she was a horrible, miserable woman. But Cleo would not bring herself to call her a bitch either, because that was even worse. Language matters, she’d yapped at Lucas, whose eyes could not physically have rolled farther back into their sockets. If you want to insult someone, make it smart. Insult her for spreading lies when she knows that they’re not true. That’s where you go for the jugular.

  “She’s an irresponsible piece of shit,” Gaby said when they were once again gathered in her office. Cleo didn’t argue because she was figuratively correct about that. Suzanne had been known to incite online mobs and stoke partisan and gender and class and race divides, just for ratings. They’d once been seated at a table together at a fundraiser for ovarian cancer, and in person, Suzanne wasn’t even particularly putrid—she was also a single mom with a son around Lucas’s age, and in that moment Cleo found her perfectly—well, relatively—normal, which made her on-screen persona all the more repugnant. She didn’t even believe in the flames she was stoking, but they’d made her famous and they’d made her rich, so she poured on gasoline and watched the blaze.

  “She’s like your friend MaryAnne if MaryAnne had been given a cable show,” Gaby added.

  This wasn’t fair, and Cleo said so. “I actually did something bad to MaryAnne—” she started, but Gaby cut her off.

  “Don’t admit your full culpability; that’s where they get you. Since when have you gone so soft?”

  Cleo started to argue—she wasn’t going soft! But a twinge in her gut did feel guilty over MaryAnne, and she had sent Matty an Alaskan gift basket with a semiflirty note, and she also tried to maul Bowen Babson. So maybe she was suddenly gooier than she realized. Normally she and Gaby were aligned in their steely spines, in their “do not pass go” attitudes.

  This new vulnerability could not stand.

  “Fine,” Cleo said. “Tell me what to do. I’m listening.”

  “Bowen has issued an open invitation to go on his show,” Gaby said over a lunch of pizza delivery for the whole staff. Cleo preferred to order in (or have Arianna do it) when she remembered that it was lunchtime (which was less often than you’d think), because it meant everyone stayed at their desks, maximizing productivity. She knew it was spring and the weather was seductive and some people liked to run to a yoga class, and she didn’t mean to be a sly little hard-ass (she did, though), but if she were going to run for president or even be the most effective senator (last year she’d placed second on the number of sponsored bills signed into law), she had to insist that they stay in.

  Admittedly, a few of them were paler than they should be and looking not as healthy as their vibrant twenties and thirties would suggest, but welcome to Washington, friends. Also, since the livestream, their phones, both at the DC and her local New York state offices, had not stopped ringing. It was all hands on deck, even if that meant her staffers didn’t reach their Fitbit step count for the day. Gaby had the team tallying the positive versus negative calls, and right now there was a 73 percent posted on the whiteboard in their common room. That meant that 73 percent of constituents had her back.

  “I’m not doing Bowen’s show.” Cleo ripped the crust off her slice and ate that first.

  Gaby looked at her with a particular peculiarity. “Did you also sleep with him in New York? On top of everything, God, please tell me you didn’t sleep with him?”

  “I thought you were actively encouraging me to get laid.” This was more of a statement than a question, since they both well knew that Gaby was and they both also well knew that if they counted backward to the last time Cleo had headily made out with someone in that rip-your-clothes-off, heat-of-the-moment, can’t-stop-an-oncoming-train type of way, that Kate-Hudson-romantic-comedy-climax kiss, they might never find that moment. Regret.

  “I am encouraging that,” Gaby said. “But not with him. Conflict of interest all around. You can see that, right?”

  Cleo nodded. She hadn’t seen that, actually, but now, when presented with the notion, she could. Opponents would accuse her of manipulating the press with her diamond vagina, and there’d be an entire movement against her that mostly revolved around slut shaming and, once again, how she slept with a man for the sole purpose of bettering her position. It was the easy blow, the salacious one.

  “When will it ever be OK for women to have sex just for sex’s sake?” Cleo asked.

 
; “You can. I did this weekend. A lot.”

  Cleo scowled.

  “I just mean that it can’t be with someone who has something to offer you,” Gaby said. “It’s not fair. It’s the opposite of fair. But, Clee, we don’t want to give anyone anything to use.”

  Cleo sighed. “Well, I’m still not going on his show later. I made plans with Lucas.”

  Arianna poked her head through the door. “Senator McDougal? I’m sorry to interrupt—”

  “No, you’re not sorry, Arianna; that’s your job. To interrupt me.”

  “Right, I’m sorry. But the majority leader’s office just called? He wanted you to stop by.”

  Gaby’s chin dropped simultaneously with her eyebrows rising. “Well, that sounds important.”

  Arianna continued. “They said he has about ten minutes in about ten minutes.”

  Cleo stood, looked around for a napkin. Her desk was just papers and files and more papers and files. She grabbed a spare copy of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer with MaryAnne’s ad from the week before and wiped her hands. Then she slipped her heels back on, reached for her Veronica Kaye lipstick and blush, and pulled her hair into a bun.

  “I haven’t forgotten about Bowen,” Gaby called after her. “So I’m putting it in your schedule for tomorrow. Did you hear me? I’m confirming you for tomorrow.”

  Cleo had heard her. But tomorrow was another day. She’d triage that situation when the time came. That was one of her specialties.

  SEVENTEEN

  William Parsons, the majority leader from the great state of Arizona, was sixty-eight years old and had been in the Senate for four consecutive terms. Cleo rushed down the halls of the Russell Building, her heels clacking and echoing. A few reporters lurked around corners, looking bored and scanning their phones, until they eyed Cleo flying through, and then they raised those phones-turned-mics to inquire about Nobells, inquire about the hashtag, inquire whether this whole thing didn’t make her look a little bit unhinged. She stopped only for that one.

  “No,” she snapped. “I will not allow you to portray me as crazy for confronting a man who had something to apologize for.” And then she kept on running and arrived outside the heavy wooden doors of his office with one minute to spare. Senator Parsons was known to run an even tighter ship than Cleo: he did not tolerate tardiness, he notoriously hated both grammatical mistakes and even the tiniest of factual errors, and he did not suffer fools. For all these reasons, Cleo generally liked him. He was usually dispassionate, and he was tough, and he held his staff to exceptionally high standards, which meant that stories had circulated for years about his occasional temper tantrums and his frequent use of extremely creative profanity, but Cleo figured that no one came to the Senate for a playdate, so you either put on your big-girl pants or you got a job in lobbying.

  Senator Parsons’s office was nearly empty when Cleo arrived. An assistant with a phone pressed to his ear waved her in, then held up a finger. Cleo found it both amusing and terribly rude and presumptuous—that a twenty-three-year-old was beckoning her into the senator’s hallowed space but also indicating that she wasn’t yet allowed to speak.

  The aide, Albie, whom she had seen scurrying after Senator Parsons on occasion, finally clunked down the phone, and Cleo was ready for him to apologize in the way Arianna would have. Instead, he said: “The senator is ready for you.” Then he returned to his keyboard and started typing.

  Cleo knocked on Senator Parsons’s door and entered when he said, “Come in.”

  His office, actually a fairly posh suite, was much more impressive than hers, a perk of being not just the leader of the majority party but being one of the senior-most members of the Senate. Washington was a hierarchy, after all, even with office space. There were photos with all the living past presidents, more photos with global leaders at various world conferences. There were opulent vases and decorative gilded candlesticks and, naturally, a United States flag in the corner. Light bounced off the overhead chandelier; a velvet couch enticed a nap. On one wall, a flat-screen was set to mute and played CNBC. Cleo knew that before his rise in politics, the senator had made a fortune as an investment banker, and he liked to keep an eye on his portfolio.

  Senator Parsons rose from behind his desk and embraced her.

  Cleo for the life of her had no idea why she was here, but perhaps the senator had heard the whispers about reviving the free housing bill (she loved the sound of the Jackman-McDougal Bill—not least because it was the first policy she’d worked on all year that felt pure and honest and impactful, not laden down with compromise and favors—and kept saying it over and over to herself in her mind) and wanted on board. It would be surprising, what with his banking background and what Cleo assumed was his general distaste at the notion of giving something out for free, but every once in a while, politicians made morally correct choices, rather than politically expedient ones.

  He sat, and so she sat. He cleared his throat, and she smiled. (Polling showed that men of his generation liked women much more when they smiled.)

  He held the silence for a moment, so Cleo thought perhaps she was supposed to know why she was here and made an opening statement.

  “You let your staff take lunch?” Cleo said. “I made mine order in.”

  Parsons laughed. “No, no. They’re in a meeting down the hall. Getting their asses chewed out by my chief of staff. I like to do that every once in a while for no reason—just to put them on notice.” His smile dropped. “So, Cleo, let me be frank.”

  “I would expect nothing less from you, William.” Cleo sat up straighter, ready to welcome his support for the free housing bill and get down to the nitty-gritty of how it could benefit his own constituents, how the road to its passage was going to be tough but not impossible, and how Cleo always rose up for a fight.

  “There has been . . . quite a commotion about your . . . situation this weekend.”

  “Oh.” Cleo felt a quiet clang of alarm in the quickening of her pulse.

  Senator Parsons waved an age-spotted hand. “Before we go any further, let me say that I support women! I am here for you! I have a daughter about your age, you know.”

  “I do know,” Cleo said, wondering why on earth she should give a shit that he had a daughter in her late thirties, much less what it had to do with her situation with Nobells.

  “You know we are supposed to be taking a delegation to the Middle East next week,” he said.

  “Of course, the CODEL. One of my favorite parts of the job. Getting on the ground and speaking with the troops.”

  “Yes, well.” Parsons let his voice drift. “I worry that this situation . . . with the . . . ‘hashtag’”—he mimed air quotes—“I worry it has become a distraction. My office has been getting calls.”

  “I’m sorry?” Cleo said. She wanted to retract that immediately, because she was not fucking sorry at all. She was confused how one thing was related to the other in the least.

  “Right. My suggestion is that you sit this trip out,” he said.

  Cleo’s already straight spine shot up even taller. “Sir, with respect, why would I sit this trip out?”

  He leveled his eyes at her. “Senator,” he said. “I admire what you . . . what your generation is doing; I’m an ally, but—” He paused, perhaps due to the look on her face.

  Cleo could feel the heat of her rage rising to her cheeks. She sensed that she was barely going to contain herself from screaming: You are on your third fucking wife! You think that you’re an ally, but your staff is 95 percent male! You are sitting here demoting me because I caused an outrage! That isn’t an ally; that’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

  When Cleo said nothing, he continued. “As I said, I’m an ally, but I’ve conferred with the committee chair, and we both agree that you on this trip will be a distraction.”

  “A distraction? William, I can walk and chew gum at the same time. I can speak with the troops and tell young women that they shouldn’t have to deal with lecherous old
er men at the same time.”

  At this, Senator Parsons’s forehead rose, and he clicked his tongue loudly. A reprimand. As if Cleo were attacking him by attacking his peer group.

  “I didn’t ask you here to debate me, Senator McDougal. I asked you here to inform you of . . . the discussion we’ve been having with the senior members of your committee.”

  “So now you’re conferring with the committee without me?” Cleo was nearly on her feet, but then what? What was she actually going to do? Clock him? She settled back down.

  “No, but there has been some talk that you violated this man’s right to a defense—that your actions framed him as guilty before he had a right to prove otherwise.”

  “He was guilty. He is guilty.” Cleo steamed.

  “Be that as it may, I fear this is going to escalate, take away your focus, distract the men and women we are there to support. Distract the embeds we’re flying over with us. I don’t want the journalists to be asking you questions about . . . this . . . when it has nothing to do with our mission.” He folded his hands in front of him on his desk. “I believe this is the best decision for everyone.”

  Cleo wanted to point out that technically this wasn’t his decision to make. The entire Intelligence Committee and a few stragglers were going on the trip, and by benching her, he was placing her at a deficit. Which reduced her effectiveness as a senator and therefore impeded her duty to her constituents and her oath to the Constitution. But Cleo had scaled these mountains before, fighting the fight against men who weren’t going to be swayed, even when they were in the wrong. There was something remarkable about this arrogance, really. How easily they could plant their flags on the erroneous side of the facts and stare you straight in the eye and almost convince you that the world was flat. Cleo could surely still go on the trip if she insisted on escalating what Parsons wanted her to quell, if she released Nobells’s emails and texts, if she demonstrated a pattern of his retaliatory behavior. Or if she simply showed up with a packed bag on the tarmac. She knew he wouldn’t boot her in front of her peers. But politics was a bit like chess: you had to move with an eye on the whole board, with a 360-degree view of what would come next and the move after that. Both she and Senator Parsons knew that if she checked him now, he’d find a way to checkmate her later.