Cleo McDougal Regrets Nothing: A Novel

by Allison Winn Scotch

  Cleo met Emily’s eyes and loved her friend a little more for seizing the moment to redefine herself. She thought of her father and of her regrets list and also of MaryAnne Newman calling her a bad person, and she wondered if you couldn’t redefine yourself so many years later while still staying true to who you were. Emily and Jonathan had navigated all this, and that gave Cleo hope that she could too. Maybe that was at the heart of the list; maybe that was the purpose. To look back, to acknowledge who you were, to see where else you might be going. Cleo didn’t want to not be a senator, to not be president, but she wondered if there weren’t another route too, one that opened up her world a little wider, one that relabeled her beyond how she’d always seen herself: “Only Forward!”

  She was so glad that Georgie had flown in and even gladder that Emily had shown up with two casseroles.

  “Anyway,” Emily said before she had to run and drop off her eldest daughter’s basketball jersey because she’d forgotten it that morning. “I just wanted to tell you: you know”—she laughed and held up a fist—“Not All Men.”

  Cleo laughed too. Not all men. Not Jonathan. Not Lucas. Not Benjamin. Not Matty. Not Bowen either.

  “But some of them are still pricks,” she said.

  “Oh,” Emily said as she walked out the door, “some of them are still pricks for sure.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Georgie and Cleo brought Lucas home from the hospital on Friday. Marley and Benjamin had insisted on decorating his room with over-the-top get-well decor—streamers and banners and balloons found at the grocery store—and Cleo watched from the hallway as her ornery son became someone else around his peers.

  That afternoon, Georgie was stirring a homemade chicken soup, and the entire condo smelled of sautéed onions and garlic when Arianna called to confirm that she and Gaby had locked in a last-minute dancing event for tomorrow night and to say that she was forwarding the details. Cleo grabbed her phone, read the fine print, and went into red alert. With everything else, there was no way, no way she could dance in public tomorrow. (If ever! she had decided.)

  “Cancel it—you just booked it; how hard can it be to get me out of it?” Cleo screamed at Arianna on speakerphone.

  “I don’t—I can try?” There she was again, Cleo thought, ending her sentences in question marks. This wasn’t a request from Cleo. This was a demand. She heard Gaby in the background of the office. “Hang on, Senator; Gabrielle wants to speak with you.”

  Cleo paced the kitchen while Georgie made some hand gestures that Cleo thought indicated that she wanted her to take deep breaths, but she was past deep breaths now. She was well on her way to rage or panic or a mix of the two, and she didn’t see how breathing would help her with that.

  “Clee, I know you have a lot on your plate, but you can’t cancel. I actually called in a favor and squeezed you in—Arianna remembered that we had initially said no weeks ago, before, I mean, all of this,” Gaby said, officious as ever, like Cleo hadn’t just brought her son home from the hospital after his insides turned putrid and could use some quality time with him, and as if she hadn’t gotten enough publicity in the past two weeks, between MaryAnne and Nobells—like she needed to humiliate herself on the dance floor!

  “It was just some stupid idea!” Cleo shrieked. “I don’t need to face it tomorrow, to address this regret right now! Look through the ten I gave you, find something else. Do you want me to adopt a dog? I’ll adopt a dog. Do you want me to go backpacking through Europe? I have August off!” Cleo, in fact, did not regret not backpacking through Europe after college, as she was pregnant by then, but she could see how it would make a nice video diary for Gaby to exploit. She also didn’t really think they had time for a dog, but she wouldn’t rule it out. Voters loved dogs.

  By now Georgie had stopped with the gestures and threw her hands on her hips. Cleo heard her say, “Oh no,” and then she became as still as a statue, which Cleo had never seen in her sister and terrified her nearly as much as public dancing.

  “Veronica Kaye is on the board of the foundation,” Gaby said. “She called me personally when she saw that you recommitted. She asked what changed your mind, and I told her you were newly impassioned about the arts, and she practically howled with glee, Cleo!”

  Cleo reread the email Arianna had forwarded.

  “And she believed that? She really thought that I’d start with a public dance performance if I were trying to turn arts education around?”

  Gaby hesitated. “I explained that it was all about your new commitment to your gumption—which was Veronica’s word, not mine. You’re not going to argue with me. Instead, I will see you bright and early tomorrow at eight a.m.—”

  “That’s not bright and early; that’s practically lunch.”

  Gaby did not laugh at her attempt at humor and instead quieted. “Cleo, impress Veronica tomorrow and I’m pretty sure you’ll be a lock as her pick. Which means you’ll be a lock for the nomination.”

  Cleo let out an audible sigh. How could she say no to that?

  Which was how she wound up saying yes to Dancing with the Stars: Washington, DC (Charity Version!).

  Georgie waited until Cleo had cooled off from the phone call to bring it up. And that took some time, to be honest. Cleo looked in on Lucas, who had fallen asleep with his headphones and computer on—she checked, because she couldn’t help herself, to make sure it wasn’t porn, but it was actually The Simpsons, and she started crying again because it really did appear that he was not going to turn out to be a world-class asshole. This alone was a triumph of modern parenting. Then she laced up her sneakers and ran around the neighborhood for what felt like seven hours but turned out to be twenty minutes and two miles, and then, with a cramp in her side and her anxiety over public dancing only slightly in check, she slunk home.

  Georgie had ladled up a bowl of soup and also made some chai tea (Cleo had no idea where she’d gotten chai tea).

  “Sit,” she said and pointed toward the kitchen table, and because Cleo had not yet adjusted to having a big sister push her around and having the instinct to push back, she sat.

  “Let me start by saying I like that you hung Mom’s painting in the hall. It makes me really happy to see it.”

  “Me too,” Cleo said.

  “Now, the other thing. Regrets?” Georgie asked, scooting out a chair and blowing on her own mug of tea. “You . . . you haven’t been doing that all these years? Dad’s thing?”

  Cleo blinked quickly. Why was she always crying now?

  “I mean, well, yeah. Of course I did, or . . . I am.”

  “Cleo . . .” Georgie exhaled, and Cleo wondered if she was going to treat her as a patient or as a sister. “That was Dad’s way of keeping score or of micromanaging. He spent a lot of time worrying about mistakes he made or different paths he could have taken.”

  “Well, I hope you’re not about to tell me that he made mistakes with Mom!” Cleo was indignant. So much of what she was learning about people in the past few weeks had upended her. She didn’t know if she could bear to unearth her parents’ secrets too.

  “No, not with Mom.” Georgie’s hand found Cleo’s, and she squeezed. She started to speak, then stopped, then found the words. “But maybe with me—I mean, obviously things weren’t great with us, between them and me.” She paused, lost somewhere in a memory. “I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out why—why I was so mad at them, and why we never really clicked, and why I let that affect our relationship—yours and mine.”

  “Did you?” Cleo asked.

  “Not really. It would be easier to point to something, you know? Something concrete to say, ‘I had a terrible childhood,’ but I didn’t. You know that I . . . we didn’t. I just was how I was, and they were how they were . . .” She drifted again. “I guess I had more time with them, so I was able to see them more fully formed, as adults. You never got that space between childhood and the growth that comes with recognizing that your parents aren’t perfect.”

/>   “I never felt that they were perfect!” Cleo didn’t like being put on the defensive. She didn’t like, frankly, not being the one in the room with the most knowledge about any subject, any one thing, even if that thing were her parents, and her sister knew them for a decade longer than she did.

  Georgie sighed and reached her right hand around to massage her left shoulder. “I wish you and I had been closer. It was hard, with the age gap and with me always rebelling and then them gone, and we didn’t have a house to come home to. And, look, you can catalog your regrets; you can do whatever you want. You’re an adult, and you have succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.”

  “Not beyond mine.” Maybe calling Georgie had been a mistake.

  “No, that’s not what I meant. I meant you’re . . . a whirlwind, a shining star. The twins print up news stories about you; they revere what you did to that professor; they are in awe that you live in this rarified air of elected officials who determine the course of our nation.” She paused. “And I feel the same, Cleo. I feel the same. Pride. Please don’t misunderstand that.”

  “Thank you.” Cleo nodded.

  “What I mean is that Dad spent a lot of time cataloging these regrets, which was fine. It made him happy, I guess. But it really didn’t make him happy, actually. He used it, well, Dad was very anxious, which was probably part of our problem—he was a micromanager, and I couldn’t handle it. Now, today, he’d be diagnosed and given Lexapro or Ativan or something. But back then there was a stigma, and he’d never have even thought he was . . . off.”

  “Dad wasn’t off,” Cleo protested.

  “No, he wasn’t. He was wonderful,” Georgie said. “But he also had an unhealthy need to be in control, and over time, with my job, I came to believe that’s where this started. He started writing things down so he could control his regrets rather than have them control him. Because you don’t remember that—but that’s what his anxiety did. He compensated by being meticulous and extra, extra sure of everything—like with his work and, of course, with me. And that probably also explains why he thought he could fly a helicopter without any other approval.” Georgie sighed. “But anyway, you can’t beat back anxiety by working hard, and you can’t manage your teen by breathing down her neck.” Georgie fell silent. “That’s just my theory, obviously. He knew I wasn’t really like him, so he never pressed me to do it, to keep a list. But, Cleo, Dad wasn’t like you in the ways that you think.”

  “I don’t even know what that means,” Cleo said flatly.

  “I just . . . You’ve accomplished so much, and you are fearless and you are a force, and Dad was amazing, he was, but . . . you don’t have to be him, just because he thought his way of controlling his fears and stressors could also be yours.” She sighed. “Look, I have a lot of people in my practice who use the past as a crutch.”

  Cleo felt her chest spin. She loved her father; she revered her father. She didn’t want to learn that he was fallible, that his example shouldn’t be the one she strove for.

  “That’s not what I’m doing, using it as a crutch,” Cleo protested. “I’m doing the opposite. I’m finally looking at my past to clear the path for the future.”

  Georgie, having worked out her knot, took a sip of her tea and considered this. “Fine, but then promise me that once you have, once you’re done, you’ll let go of this list and these regrets and stop living by Dad’s rules and start living by yours.”

  Georgie clasped Cleo’s arm and then stood to refill her tea. “Look, I just worry that this is weighing you down. And if you let it go, I really believe that you’ll fly.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  The ballroom at the Grand Hyatt, just across the way from the Smithsonian, had been transformed into a Dancing with the Stars set—spotlights, wooden floor, side area for the band. That was Cleo’s first sign that she was in over her head. She’d never watched the show—did Cleo McDougal seem like the type who had time for reality TV?—and she hadn’t really understood the scope of the situation until she stepped onto the dance floor in her black workout capris and a cotton tank top, with a disco ball hanging overhead and extremely limber professional dancers stretching into positions Cleo hadn’t realized the human body could achieve—that she grasped this wasn’t just going to be a regret, but it was going to be an all-caps REGRET. She supposed that no one ever claimed that one regret couldn’t beget another one.

  The event was being heralded as a competition among Washington’s best and brightest, all in the name of fundraising for Arts East!, a nonprofit that brought arts education to at-risk children. And with all that Cleo was juggling, Cleo had forgotten to ask Arianna who else had said yes. Which was how she discovered that one Bowen Babson and one Suzanne Sonnenfeld were participating. She nearly dropped her coffee when she saw them chatting across the ballroom.

  An extremely perky twentysomething with a clipboard and a headset approached.

  “Senator McDougal! You’re right on time.” She checked something off on her clipboard. “We’re going to be going over the schedule and rules in a few, and then we’ll pair you up with the pros.”

  “Do I get to pick my partner?” Cleo looked around and noticed a highly muscular, highly flexible man about her age who she thought could likely compensate for her lack of skills with his own. This may have been the first time in the history of Cleo McDougal’s life that she wanted to fade into the background.

  “No, ma’am. We made the selections to ensure fairness.”

  “Based on what?” Cleo saw Bowen take notice of her, and she glanced away. “I mean, how can you know how well any of us can dance?”

  The assistant laughed like this was a preposterous question. “Oh, ma’am, dancing isn’t just about raw talent. It’s also about chemistry. We let the professionals choose.”

  Cleo couldn’t imagine that any of the professionals rushed to write their names next to hers, but she realized she couldn’t upend the system. Besides, now Bowen was waving at her, and embarrassing herself on the dance floor became secondary to embarrassing herself in the moment.

  He ambled over in stretchy workout clothes, and she tried to look nonchalant. She had mastered this body language when going head-to-head with her peers in committee or while delivering a speech on the Senate floor, and yet she doubted very seriously that her face was looking at all serene, at all like she had no cares in the world. She had too many cares in the world, frankly, and even the very best politician (of which she considered herself) displayed her tell from time to time.

  “Hey,” he said, like the last time they’d seen each other, she hadn’t been both drunk and handsy. “I’ve been trying to reach you. How’s the kid?”

  Cleo was grateful that he was pretending the bourbon-filled afternoon in Manhattan never happened. A decent portion of politics was pretending that certain events never happened: that you hadn’t said something monumentally stupid a few years back (you had) or that you hadn’t supported a bill that your constituents now rallied against (you had). So much of it was theater—not all of it but plenty, and Cleo relaxed just a bit knowing that Bowen was willing to act his way around that afternoon too.

  “On the mend,” she said. “My sister’s with him today. It’s nice to have the help, honestly.”

  The lights flickered, and a man in dance tights and a tank top walked to the center of the ballroom. He clapped his hands and shouted: “Can I have all the talent form a circle around me?”

  “Are we the talent?” Bowen whispered.

  “Joke’s on them,” Cleo replied.

  Once they had all formed said circle, which took some time because Suzanne Sonnenfeld kept insisting it should go boy-girl-boy-girl, the choreographer explained the rules. They would each be matched with a professional; they’d spend the day working on the professional’s dance of his or her choosing; they’d perform it that night, where the crowd would vote on the winner.

  “What do we win?” Suzanne asked.

  The choreographer scowled. “It’s
a fundraiser, Ms. Sonnenfeld.”

  “So pride?” she replied. The rest of the circle tittered, because for this group, pride was enough.

  The pairings were handed out one by one, and Cleo regressed back to PE class in middle school, standing shoulder to shoulder with MaryAnne, waiting to be picked for teams. Neither was ever in the top half of the selection, for obvious reasons. After each classmate was selected, the two of them would mutter one of the terrible nicknames they’d given said classmate under their breath. Craterface. Or Spaghetti brain numbskull. It was their way to feel superior in the face of being inferior, Cleo could see now. At the time, it was self-preservation.

  To her dismay, Cleo was not paired with the highly muscular, highly limber hero type she was hoping for. He, naturally, went to Suzanne, who squealed and ran her hands up and down his washboard abs in a completely inappropriate and objectifying way, but Suzanne was usually inappropriate and objectifying, so no one so much as raised an eyebrow.

  “It’s amazing,” Cleo said to Bowen. “How we all lower our standards to what we come to expect from her rather than raising our standards to demand that she’s not an asshole.”

  “So what you’re saying is: Not All Men?” Bowen replied with a grin on his face.

  Cleo rolled her eyes.

  Bowen was paired with a lithe ballerina who didn’t look much older than Marley or Esme, and as he walked off to the practice rooms, Cleo was gutted with a pang of jealousy. Which was pathetic, she knew. She’d given Bowen his chance, he’d firmly passed, and what was the point of pining? Cleo wasn’t the pining type. She literally could not think of a time in her life or a man in her life she’d pined for. Not for Matty, though there had been a twinge, perhaps, at the bar in the Sheraton. She thought of him now and how kind he was and how cute he had looked. She reminded herself to check and be sure he got the care package from Alaska. Not even for Nobells, who was obviously off-limits even while they were sleeping together.