Cleo McDougal Regrets Nothing: A Novel

by Allison Winn Scotch

  Lucas was still groggy, so Cleo sat with him, enveloped by the quiet tranquility of his room. She held his hand, which was bigger than hers now and warm and occasionally trembled when, she supposed, he dreamed, and which he’d never allow her to do if he were awake. It was just the two of them, as it nearly always was. Cleo squeezed her eyes shut and rested her head on his bed. She was so weary from everything. Maybe that’s just how it was, with their little compact duo bracing against the world, but maybe it was also that it was so often just their little compact duo period.

  Fifteen years ago, Cleo didn’t tell a soul about her pregnancy. At some point it became obvious in the late summer when she was entering law school, but Columbia was a fresh start—she literally didn’t know anyone—so she didn’t have to explain herself other than the occasional, “No, no partner, no husband. I’m doing this alone.” She called Georgie around the holidays when she was about eight months in and said, “Um, so I’m having a baby,” and it was clear from her reaction that Georgie didn’t know if she should be hurt that Cleo hadn’t told her earlier or overjoyed that her twins would have a new cousin.

  Her labor came two weeks early. Because Cleo was Cleo, she had a birth plan lined up and a bag at the ready. She hadn’t taken a birthing class because she figured women had been doing this for centuries without learning how to breathe and push properly, and beyond that, she didn’t want to be the only one to go through a fake labor on the floor of a school gym without a partner. When her water broke while she was frying an egg for dinner, she efficiently flipped the cooktop off, called her doctor, grabbed her bag, and hailed a taxi. All on her own. It wasn’t that hard.

  The contractions came quickly, so quickly that by the time she made it to the delivery ward, she was doubled over in true, visceral agony every two minutes. For a brief moment, she very much wished she had taken that Lamaze class, and if she were thinking about it later, she would add this to her list of regrets. Cleo McDougal was always prepared, and she didn’t know why she had forsaken that aspect of goddamn birth preparation because she would have had to acknowledge that she was single and lonely and a little bit terrified. She tried to get through a contraction and admonished herself for being so shortsighted, for giving in to the weakness of choosing emotion over preparedness. Yes, she had a bag packed and yes, she had read a birthing book, but would it have been the worst thing to have learned how to breathe?

  It was too late for an epidural, and from there her envisioned serene birthing plan flew out the window. She grunted and she pushed and she listened to strangers—the doctor who was not her usual OB-GYN because her usual OB-GYN was skiing in Vail, the nurses who held back her legs—and twenty minutes later, Lucas, red-faced and mushy and looking a little startled to have arrived on the planet, emerged. Cleo had counted on a relaxed, measured birth, but you got what you got, something she’d remind her son over and over again as he grew older.

  Lucas stirred from his anesthesia-induced sleep but didn’t yet open his eyes.

  Cleo stared at him now, her handsome young man, and wondered how the time had gone so fast. She reached out, cupped his chin. She dropped her head back on his bed, waiting for him to finally rouse, realizing that just like when he’d emerged from her, tiny and perfect, it was the two of them, all alone in a hospital room.

  For a long time, Cleo had figured this was the only way to do it. Now she wondered why she was so often alone in the first place.

  Regret.

  Lucas awoke and was feeling a little better, texting his friends, Snapchatting away. He complained that his wound was uncomfortable, and the nurses re-dressed it, and Cleo sat in the corner wishing there were more she could do to heal him.

  A girl appeared in the doorway clutching a bouquet of GET WELL! balloons. Cleo recognized her as Marley Jacobson, one of Lucas’s paramours. She thought of Esme, all the way in Seattle, and wondered if she knew that she had only half his heart. Then she wondered if maybe Lucas wasn’t overcompensating by filling his life with loved ones to make up for the dearth of companionship that he saw in her own. She needed to talk to him about this, she knew, but for now she was touched that Marley was here, showing up for him, even if he’d probably also texted Esme for sympathy.

  Cleo excused herself and wandered into the waiting area, hoping maybe someone she knew—Gaby, Emily—would have shown up, even though she hadn’t asked them. She knew Gaby was likely still at the office, fielding the calls and comments from her stint on Bowen’s show, which Cleo had watched on her phone while Lucas slept. Bowen had been both understanding and firm in his questioning, whether or not blindsiding these men was fair, whether or not filming them without giving them the opportunity of telling their side was just, even when he’d taken part in the very video that got it all started. Bowen had gotten his own blowback about that, of course, the journalistic integrity of it, but he opened the show detailing his fact-checking and why he thought it was a story worth exposing. The network stood behind him, though if the story had gone bust, maybe they wouldn’t have. Also, he was an extremely gorgeous white man. He was a moneymaker. His face was on billboards and buses. Of course he was easy to defend.

  “I know why I got involved with this,” Bowen said as they were wrapping up. “But what about Senator McDougal? What sparked her to this now? And why?”

  “I think the reason she did it,” Gaby said, taking a beat, “is because we all live with regrets. And Senator McDougal is addressing those regrets she can change now. Wouldn’t it be nice if we all had that luxury?”

  “So there are others?” Bowen asked. Then clarified: “Other regrets, not men. That’s Senator McDougal’s business.”

  Cleo worried for a beat that Gaby would betray her, share the revelation on national television that not only did she have further regrets but that she had a lengthy list of 233 of them that she kept in her top desk drawer where most people stored pens and paper clips.

  “Bowen Babson, you know as well as I do, as well as any of your viewers do, that you don’t get through thirty-seven years of your life without making some mistakes. He who has, let him cast the first stone.”

  “Or she,” Bowen pointed out before they cut to commercial. “She can cast that stone too.”

  In the waiting room, Cleo stared at the ceiling, and then she stared at the floor. Gaby wasn’t coming. Emily wasn’t coming. Bowen, obviously, wasn’t coming. Matty wasn’t coming. MaryAnne wasn’t coming.

  She understood that she hadn’t asked. Maybe, she thought, it was as simple as that: asking.

  She picked up her phone and dialed Georgie.

  TWENTY

  Georgie flew in within hours. Literal hours. Cleo couldn’t believe how quickly she showed up.

  “Oh.” She waved a hand and at least a dozen gold bangles clinked together. “A client was flying back and offered me a ride. We worked through some of her issues and we did some meditation, so it was a fair trade.”

  She pulled Cleo back into a second embrace, and Cleo inhaled deeply—much like Veronica Kaye, Georgie smelled magical. They hadn’t seen each other in at least a year, likely longer. Cleo had done a fundraising stop in Los Angeles about sixteen months back—big donors at a mansion in Pacific Palisades—and she’d spent the night at Georgie’s and said hello to the twins and Peter, Georgie’s husband, who worked in real estate development. She wished she could say, there tangled up against her sister, that it was as if no time had passed, but it wasn’t like that. Time had passed. Their lifetimes—thirty-seven years for Cleo, forty-seven for Georgie—had passed, and she didn’t know her sister much better than she knew Mariann, the saintly nurse who had provided Oreos and a clipboard to fill out Lucas’s insurance forms.

  “Hi, Aunt Georgie,” Lucas said when he woke, and honestly, Cleo was a little relieved that he remembered her. He barely knew his cousins, and he’d met Georgie on occasion but no more than half a dozen times. He offered her a shy smile, and Georgie rushed to him and clutched his cheeks and said, “My God, you ar
e so goddamn handsome. How many girlfriends do you have?”

  And Cleo said, from behind them, “Two, actually. It’s a bit of a chauvinistic problem.”

  And Lucas groaned and said, “Mom, it’s under control. Please stop. I was raised by a woman half the country considers their feminist true north right now, so Jesus, I’m not going to become an asshole.”

  Georgie laughed so hard that her bangles all clanged together again, and so Cleo managed a smile too, and already, just by adding one person to their small tribe, Cleo felt a little more optimistic.

  “Besides,” Lucas said, “Marley is committed to, like, her camp boyfriend too.” He winced a little, and Cleo wasn’t sure if it were at his incision or at the camp boyfriend. “It’s all fine, Mom; no one has to be together together. Your generation is the one hung up on labels. We’re just cool with, like, whatever.”

  Cleo didn’t know what to say to that, since she thought half her life’s work was dedicated to redefining labels, so rather than reply, she gazed at her son with wide, teary eyes and thought that she’d never been prouder of him in her life than now.

  Lucas stared back at her, a little horrified that she was weeping openly, and said succinctly: “I’ve never seen you cry, Mom, like, ever.”

  “I’m sorry,” Cleo said, though she still couldn’t stop.

  “It’s OK,” he said back. “Crying is fine. It doesn’t bother me at all. Coach Beckett is always saying leave everything on the field, even your tears.”

  Cleo thought that she should spend more time around men like Coach Beckett and less around men like Senator William Parsons.

  Georgie took her house keys and promised to stock the kitchen.

  “You’re too thin,” she said and then paused. “My God, when did I become Mom? I promised myself it would never happen.”

  Cleo started crying again, batting her hands in front of her face as if that ever in the history of meltdowns slowed the crest of tears. She hadn’t spent a lot of time missing her mother until recently and now, having unearthed her paintings from the storage space and having also evidently unearthed a swarm of unresolved feelings about at least five to a dozen regrets, she found that she was an open wound. She wished very much that Lucas’s nurse could come in and re-dress hers as well.

  “Oh, Cleo,” Georgie said. “I didn’t mean anything by that. You look fine. Really.”

  “Thank you for c-coming,” Cleo sputtered and spotted Lucas staring at her with astonishment.

  “Oh, baby sister, all you had to do was ask.”

  On Thursday, the next day, Cleo was working from home, which she never, ever did during the week, but the condo was closer to the hospital than the office, so she allowed herself this convenience. Senator Jackman, who had raised two children of her own, told her that she and her legislative staff could put the finishing touches on the housing bill before they sent it off to Leg Counsel for the legal jargon, but Cleo didn’t want to sit it out.

  “It’s nice to actually be putting forth some policy that really will spur positive change,” Cleo had said in their last sit-down.

  “Spoken like a presidential candidate,” Senator Jackman had replied and winked, then grew serious. “If you run, I’ll do everything I can to help you. God knows that women of my generation didn’t have a shot.”

  Cleo promised her that she would be among her first calls.

  “Not really if I run,” she had said. “Rather when.”

  Senator Jackman thumped her manicured hands against her heart and beamed. Cleo wasn’t even sure when she had made the concrete decision that she would, that she was wholeheartedly going to chase the presidency. She hadn’t had much time to really weigh it, what with one recent calamity after another, but maybe it was one of those ideas that lurked around your subconscious, hidden but quietly calling out, until one day you woke up and you just knew. Maybe deciding to run for president for Cleo McDougal was a little bit like falling in love. One day she realized that she was done for.

  Emily Godwin stopped by with two casseroles just after Cleo wrapped up doubleheader conference calls. Lucas had a steady stream of friends stopping by the hospital who were, she guessed, ditching school to say hi, in and out, so he practically begged her to give him some privacy and/or not embarrass him in front of them. Georgie had gone to a yoga class that she’d researched online. (“Why don’t you come?” she’d implored, as if Cleo couldn’t think of many things more embarrassing than attempting to morph herself into a pretzel in public, and then Cleo remembered that she’d agreed to dance in public this weekend.) So it was just Cleo, home alone, when Emily rang her doorbell.

  Emily stood in her kitchen, and Cleo fumbled with her words. She hadn’t seen her since that night when Jonathan had tucked his arm around that (extremely) young woman and exited the ballroom. It felt like two years ago, but Cleo met Emily’s eyes and realized, good Lord, that was last week.

  “Listen,” Emily started. “I saw what you did with your old professor. I was really proud. I hope you aren’t second-guessing it.”

  After Gaby’s stint on Bowen’s show, the protests outside her office had grown even rowdier. Arianna had emailed this morning to say that she was calling the Capitol police in to help. I did make sure to give them all the finger tho, she typed, then added the middle finger emoji.

  Cleo shook her head. “No, not second-guessing it, though I probably didn’t think it through as well as I should have. A lawsuit has been filed against one of the young women. I didn’t mean it to spiral that way.”

  “Well, he deserved it,” Emily said emphatically. “Fuck that guy.”

  Cleo emitted something like a hiccup, which she meant to sound like a laugh. Then she said: “I wasn’t the only one he did it to, I guess. He’s taking a ‘leave of absence.’” She bounced her shoulders. Nobells facing his comeuppance felt good, but maybe not as good as she expected. But then, she didn’t know what she expected.

  “Also,” Emily started, then stopped, wrung her hands and dropped them.

  Cleo felt a swell of panic rise in her exhausted guts. She didn’t want to be the one to tell Emily that her husband was just as much a piece of shit as Nobells. She didn’t want to change everything in this simple, wonderful friendship that for Cleo was both rare and precious. She didn’t want Emily Godwin to be yet another one of her regrets. She thought of MaryAnne then and for one short, piercing moment missed their complementary friendship, their Canadian bacon and pineapple pizza slices, their quest to be the highest scorer on her brother’s Pac-Man game. God, why had she been so shortsighted back then to think the mayoral internship trumped their sisterhood? That the editor of the paper mattered more than MaryAnne’s loyalty?

  “I know—” Emily started.

  “I ran into Jonathan the other night—” Cleo said.

  “I know.” Emily exhaled and focused on Cleo’s countertop, which Georgie had cleaned that morning with a nonchemical expensive-smelling cleaner and looked better than it had in quite some time.

  “We talked by the buffet. But I left early,” Cleo said, hoping they could leave it at that, knowing that they probably couldn’t. She didn’t want anything to change between them; she didn’t want to sacrifice this one woman she hadn’t yet done anything to hurt.

  Emily inhaled, then exhaled sharply. “I assume you saw him; I mean, I know what he does at these dinners.”

  “Oh,” Cleo said. She very much wished she could disappear.

  “It’s not . . . it’s not what it looks like.”

  “You don’t have to explain.” Cleo flapped her hand. “You don’t owe me an explanation.”

  “No, you’re my friend, and it’s OK.”

  Cleo silenced herself at this. She couldn’t remember the last time, other than Gaby, that anyone had called her a friend. MaryAnne, but look how well that ended up.

  “About three years ago,” Emily continued, looking a little ashen but more sure of herself too, “I found . . . I found myself having feelings for someone
else.”

  “Oh!” Cleo exclaimed and hoped it didn’t sound judgmental.

  “I didn’t do anything, or at least then I didn’t.” Emily paused, and Cleo gave her the time she needed. As a friend would. “It, well, she was a woman.”

  “Oh!” Cleo said again.

  “It’s been . . . complicated. I love Jonathan, and he loves me, and we are a great team, but relationships grow and expand and don’t always conform to what you expect them to be at the start.” She shook her head and smiled. “We were so young when we got married, you know? How was I supposed to know that I might want to sleep with a woman from time to time?”

  “Oh!” Cleo repeated and wished she had something more articulate to offer. Labels. More peeling them off, shredding them up, leaving them in the garbage.

  “Anyway.” Emily shrugged. “I didn’t want you to think I was the victim here. We decided, mutually, that we were still partners but that . . . we could also find other ‘partners’—oh my God, I hate that word, but it’s the one we use, the one our therapist suggested—and still . . . be OK.”

  Cleo took her time, wanted to be sure that she said the right thing to her friend whom she admired for many reasons, including speaking her truth.

  “I think that’s pretty wonderful,” she said finally. “I never had that type of . . . flexibility. It was always black or white with me. And . . . maybe that hasn’t always worked out so well.”

  Emily laughed. “Cleo, you’re a fucking United States senator. With an amazing kid. And if rumors are true, you’re about to get Veronica Kaye’s endorsement for president. Black and white works for you. Don’t sell yourself short.”

  “Maybe.” Cleo shrugged and thought about how she had been alone with Lucas in the delivery room and alone again with him in the emergency room and how, in the span of fourteen years, not much had changed.