The Wrong Side of Right

by Jenn Marie Thorne

  I could read that New York Times article.

  I let my fingers hover over the keyboard. After a five-count, when no one had walked past, I started to type, hot shame sweeping up my cheeks: “Kate . . . Quinn . . . New . . . York . . . T . . .”

  But then . . . If I was going to Google embarrassing things, why not start with the other tidbit that had been burning a curious hole in my brain all afternoon?

  I typed it.

  “Sexy Ronald Reagan.”

  And there he was, on US Weekly’s website, a post from last November, wearing a rubber Ronald Reagan mask over . . . pretty much nothing. A bare torso and a pair of bright red swim trunks. Not even any shoes.

  Judging by this photo, Andy Lawrence was lightly tanned. Not ripped exactly, but lean, athletic.

  The blurb underneath said: “Naughty Andy caught shirtless: Lacrosse sure does a body good!”

  I found myself leaning against the desk to look closer. There were two girls to the left of Sexy Ronald Reagan in matching Tinker Bell costumes. I scrolled the image so they weren’t in it.

  Voices rose in the hallway. The meeting must have gotten out.

  Okay, you’ve seen it, I thought. Close the window.

  Seriously, close it.

  “Caught ya!” Louis pointed at me from the doorway.

  I slammed the laptop shut.

  “Am I too late?” He shrugged. “I was heading over here to tell you not to read it. Hard to resist, I know.”

  “Oh!” I nearly laughed with relief that he was only half right. “The article? I wasn’t—”

  “Not tell you,” Louis corrected himself, settling into Libby’s chair. “You’re gonna do what you’re gonna do. But I’m a campaign advisor. So I wanted to strongly advise you to hold off on reading that profile—at least until the press conference is done.”

  He leaned back, hands clasped on top of his bald head, waiting for my rebuttal.

  “That’s four days away,” I said. He motioned for me to go on. “It’s just weird, having all this information out there about me, and I haven’t seen a word of it.”

  “You seeing it isn’t going to change the fact that it’s out there,” he said. “What it changes is this.” He tapped his head and sat up. “Listen, back in one of our first campaigns, the Boston Globe wrote a piece on me—the Man Behind the Man, that kind of thing. I couldn’t wait to get a copy of this thing. Went out to the newsstand at the crack of dawn. Read it probably thirty times. This reporter must have had a crush on me, because I couldn’t believe what was in this article. Lou Mankowitz!” He pointed to himself, eyes wide. “He came from nothing, but now? He was a political mover and a shaker. Destined for greatness! I was shocked. I had no idea I was so important.”

  Louis leaned on the desk. I grinned in reply.

  “The next day, your dad comes into the campaign office. I’m walking past him to the watercooler. I give him a wave. He stares at me like I’m a stranger and says, ‘Goddamn it, Lou! You read that article, didn’t you?’ Apparently, I wasn’t walking. I was strutting. And an informal poll of our staff indicated that I’d been a total—excuse my French—asshole for the past thirty hours. I swore that day that I would no longer read my own press. And if I did accidentally happen to see my name in the paper, I wouldn’t believe a word that came after it.”

  A freckly guy from the phone bank walked by.

  “Sam!” Louis shouted, and he reappeared. “What do I always say about the press?”

  Sam’s brow furrowed. “Don’t talk to them?”

  “Your own press.”

  “Don’t read it?”

  Louis pointed at him. “Don’t read your own press! I owe you a Coke.”

  As I laughed, Louis turned back to me, his face serious again.

  “You want to know what’s in that article, I’ll tell you. It says you’re a great kid. A good student. It talks an awful lot about your mom.”

  I nodded, my smile sinking into nothing.

  “You can read it all later. But for now, you’ve got enough to deal with. Leave it alone.” He winked as he stood to go. “Otherwise, I’m telling you. You’ll be squirming up there in front of those cameras on Friday.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Pretty sure I’ll be squirming no matter what.”

  Louis watched me with a thoughtful squint. “I don’t think so. I’ve known you for five days, Kate Quinn, but I can tell you right now—you’re a lot less of a squirmer than you think you are.”

  I smiled at the desk. “Thanks, Mr. Mankowitz.”

  “Mr. Mankowitz? Psh. That’s the guy from the article.” He grinned. “I’m just Lou.”

  “Lou!” a guy down the hall shouted, as if cued. “I need your signature.”

  I waited until he’d gone before I opened the laptop. One last look at Andy Lawrence’s abs, then I cleared the search history, shut it down, and shoved it in a drawer.

  • • •

  The campaign left me alone for the next few hours—or so I thought.

  Around three, as I was flipping through binders, learning a series of sound bites that impressively avoided expressing any opinion at all, I heard Nancy’s muffled voice in the office next door. The sound filtering through was like what dogs must hear: “Hmfm, hmf, hmm, KATE! Hrm KATE! . . .”

  Lou’s advice rang in my ears—but this wasn’t listening to my own press. This was the campaign itself. I rolled my chair over and leaned my head against the wall. The staffers’ conversation became instantly clear—and really unpleasant.

  Apparently the fact that I was orphaned was “polling” well. They were brainstorming what demographics would respond best to hearing about it. Even without me in the room, Nancy was careful in the way she brought up my mom, using her full name with a respectfully lowered voice. But I couldn’t mistake the casual, almost cheerful tone with which everyone talked about her accident.

  “Tragic,” one of them said. “We can work with that.” Nancy herself noted that the fact that Mom had run a food bank and soup kitchen for ten years and that I’d volunteered at the Cocina almost every day after school made for a “great backstory.”

  There was something so hollow about hearing Mom described as a backstory that my breath caught cold in my throat.

  Elliott was the only one who sounded dubious.

  “Soup kitchen, huh?” Even through the wall I could hear him snort. “How did she vote?”

  I mouthed “Democrat” just as a staffer chuckled, “What do you think?”

  “Look into it,” Elliott said, and the room fell silent.

  I rolled my eyes. If they were worried about my mom being some kind of left-wing activist, I could’ve told them right then not to bother digging for problems. Beyond impressing upon me the importance of voting, my mother was probably the least political person I knew. For years, her friend Marta would try to engage her in debates or get her fired up about whatever issue had sent Marta’s lefty flag flying, but my mother always smiled and said, “I can see both sides of it.”

  I wondered what Mom would think if she could see me here, in the middle of a presidential campaign office, memorizing Do’s and Don’ts for Interactions With the Press. And then, of course, I tried to imagine her, not much older than me, working for a campaign. His campaign.

  It was strange. I’d tried for months to keep the thought of my mom at bay, and now it wouldn’t come. The harder I tried, the more she seemed to blur.

  As for the senator, he was even blurrier. I heard his voice in the corridor late in the afternoon, but he was gone before I could even get up from my roller chair. Peeking out the office window, I watched as he got into James’s waiting car and drove away.

  Libby poked her head over my shoulder.

  “He’s got meetings with donors and RNC officials all week,” she divulged in a giddy whisper. “Closed-door meetings.”

  No public events. Not until our press conference. The family press conference. The “Hey Everybody, Meet My Love Child!” press conference.
>
  Four days away.

  The thought was paralyzing, so I decided to pretend it wasn’t actually happening—that it was all for the girl on the long row of whiteboards, the hypothetical Kate Quinn, all her best qualities shined up and imperfections removed. Lou was half right. I was most definitely squirmy. But Whiteboard Kate wasn’t.

  “Kate’s a great kid,” mustached Chuck said into his cell phone, passing my cubby without so much as a glance as he left for the day. “Whip-smart, solid—you’ll see.” Whiteboard Kate was solid—an A-student, a volunteer, a sad orphan.

  None of those things were wrong, exactly. Still . . . I wasn’t quite sure how I saw myself, but this wasn’t it. If you’d asked Penny to describe me, she’d say, “She’s got a weird obsession with songs about wolves, and if there were a competitive staring circuit, she’d at least make regionals.” Or maybe, “She’s loyal. She cares about other people. She rescued a baby squirrel from the on-ramp of the 101 when we were ten.”

  But my limited understanding of politics was enough to make me realize that none of those things would interest voters. They didn’t want to hear about how weird I was. They wanted me to be just like them.

  I couldn’t help but wonder whether the Coopers felt the same way.

  8

  “Dinner!” Meg called from the house, and my pulse jumped.

  As Gracie and I got up from our Monopoly game, I whirred with anticipation. The senator had worked late last night at the campaign office. But tonight he was right in front of me, jacket off and sleeves rolled up over tanned arms, settling into a seat at the head of the table.

  Back in California, my mom and I used to eat on trays in front of the TV, or huddled silently over textbooks and Cocina paperwork. I imagined that tonight would be more like the family dinners I’d had at Penny’s house, the Diazes laughing together around a messy table—and, I hoped, a special meal too, an acknowledgment that I was part of the Cooper family, if only for the summer.

  • • •

  But as soon as our plates were down, the senator pulled a printout from his briefcase and scowled over it in concentration, a stubby pencil in his hand.

  “Daddy,” Gracie called. “Is that a speech? Can I hear it?”

  “Let your dad work.” Meg scooted her chair so that it faced away from her husband. “Now, today was a big day, wasn’t it?”

  I put down my fork, beginning to glow.

  “What was special about today?”

  My smile wavered. Something about Meg’s singsong tone told me that this was not a new topic of conversation.

  “I dove into the deep end,” Gabe said.

  “That’s excellent,” Meg said.

  “I dove like seven times,” Gracie countered. “And I did a flip in the water.”

  I took another bite of Brussels sprouts, feeling smaller and smaller the more they talked. I watched them and waited—for a look, a nod, a question. Anything. But when the plates were empty, the family meal complete, it was official. Nobody had said a thing about me—or even to me—at all.

  When I went to bed, I told myself that the Coopers were comfortable enough around me to revert to their usual dinner routine. And wasn’t that a good thing? That they didn’t see me as an outsider who needed to be entertained? But the sensation of being a ghost in that dining room had sunk in so deeply that at 2:00 A.M., I got up and splashed cold water on my face just to make sure I could feel it.

  • • •

  On Tuesday, two days and twenty hours until the press conference, Elliott poked his head into my office, squinted past me at the stack of binders, and stormed away bellowing for Nancy.

  Out in the hall, they had what looked to me like the start of a massive blowout fight, daggers shooting from their eyes, their whispers like whip cracks.

  “Get rid of that shit,” Elliott said. “She doesn’t need talking points. She’s not gonna be talking.”

  “She needs to be prepared,” Nancy said. “They’ll be coming at her from every angle.”

  “It’s your job to keep that from happening.”

  And then, just as I expected one of them to lunge, they slid past each other and kept marching in opposite directions.

  Elliott had gotten the last word. Did that mean he’d won? Was he going to have a gag order placed on me?

  Part of me relaxed at the idea. A small part. The rest of me seethed. I kept studying, feverishly now, waiting for somebody to take my binders away.

  It turned out I wasn’t being paranoid. When I came in Wednesday morning, my workspace had been transformed into a lounge, the desk, office chair, laptop, and binders removed, replaced by an Ikea sofa and coffee table, with a new flat screen mounted on the bare wall. As I hesitated in the doorway wondering if I’d been relocated, Libby ducked in behind me with a shopping bag full of DVDs.

  “You can relax today! Mr. Webb said!”

  I popped in the first episode of some show called Triple-cross. But as soon as I heard the team start a meeting next door, I left the TV playing and silently snuck down the hall to help the volunteers stuff letters into envelopes.

  An hour later, the senator made an appearance. I froze, wondering what his reaction would be—angry that I’d disobeyed or proud to see me helping? I grabbed the next envelope and started to stuff.

  He patted an older gentleman on the back and crouched to share a joke with a couple of college-aged helpers, his cheeks crinkling as he smiled wide. He stood, his round blue eyes traveling across all of us. Then he raised his hand in a wave, turned, and left the room.

  I couldn’t get the paper into the envelope. I held it in front of me until my arms began to droop.

  Louis appeared in the doorway, forehead creasing as he watched the senator walk down the hall. His eyes darted to me.

  My face felt heavier than usual, but with great effort I forced it up until my mouth clicked into Stock Smile Mode. When I trusted my prickling eyes enough to lift them from the table, Louis was motioning me over.

  Outside the volunteer room, the hall was empty. Lou gave my shoulder a squeeze. “You doin’ all right?”

  “Of course!” I swallowed. “Everyone’s really nice and . . .” I couldn’t think what else. The lunch selection was good. The building was well lit.

  Lou just nodded. “Good.”

  He looked like he wanted to say more but hadn’t found the right words to start, and just as his mouth was opening, mine blurted: “Did you know my mom?”

  “Yeah, I did.” His shoulders shrunk in on themselves. “Not well. Just for those few weeks, but—she was a nice kid. I was really sorry to hear about what happened to her.”

  Just as I was mentally cursing myself for making both of us so uncomfortable, he squinted at me.

  “You’ve got a lot of Emily in you, if I’m remembering her right.” I flushed at her name, realizing that he was picturing her as a college kid, just as he’d last seen her. “But you’ve got a lot of your dad, too. I can tell already.”

  I glanced up, surprised. He raised his chin, daring me to contradict him.

  “Not just looks. Personality too. You’ve got more in common with him than you know.”

  Something about the phrasing struck a raw nerve. Complimenting my poise was one thing. But how on earth would I know whether I had anything in common with that man, besides our eerily similar styles of shooting a thumbs-up? Several snarky retorts came to mind, but Lou didn’t deserve them. Instead, I said, “Okay.”

  “Listen.” He lowered his voice. “Your dad is a tough guy to get to know in the best of times. Always has been. Believe me, I’ve known him since we were both young and stupid.” He laughed. “We’re still stupid, but you know what I’m saying.”

  I nodded, trying desperately to brighten, but Lou’s face was serious.

  “Stick it out.” He patted my arm kindly as he walked away. “He’s worth it.”

  • • •

  Libby drove me to the Coopers’ house on Wednesday, singing softly along with a Chri
stian rock station, while I thought back to Monday night’s family dinner—and what I could have done differently. By the time we’d pulled past the camped-out reporters and through the front gates, I’d come to a decision.

  Tonight, I would participate. Even if the conversation had nothing to do with me, I would butt in, ask questions. Maybe they were just waiting for me to get over my politeness. Well, tonight I would.

  Especially where Gabe was concerned.

  From day one, Gracie had embraced me as a long-lost sister, latching on to my arm and chattering away whenever I walked into the room. But Gabe still watched me from oblique angles, like I was one of his backyard birds—and watched Meg too, gauging her reaction to me before he dared one of his own.

  Meg met me at the door wearing a classic Chanel tweed suit, her hair elegantly styled.

  “You look nice,” I said, eyeing her curiously. Seemed a little much for a Wednesday night.

  She groaned. “Long story.”

  Before she could tell it, a knock sounded on the door and she hurried past me to answer. A pretty twenty-something girl wearing a Georgetown hoodie stood grinning on the doorstep.

  “Hiiiiii,” she cooed. I heard the kids scrambling out of their rooms upstairs. “Where are my favorite twinsies?”

  “Sarah!” Gracie barreled down the stairs and clung to the girl’s arm. “I have so much to tell you!”

  Okay, I realized, sinking. Maybe she’s like this with everyone.

  Gabe didn’t even give me his usual sidelong glower, too busy grinning at Georgetown Sarah to notice I was there.

  “Donor dinner tonight,” Meg said to Sarah over Gracie’s chattering. Sarah sighed sympathetically, as if she’d been to a million donor dinners herself. “We won’t be too late.”

  I caught Meg alone in the kitchen. “You didn’t have to hire a babysitter. I’ve taken care of kids before—I’d be happy to watch them.”

  Meg looked uncomfortable.

  “They’ve known Sarah since they were four. She’s great with them.” She must have seen the wind knock out of me, because she forced a smile and clapped me on the shoulder. “But good point. I’ll take you up on that next time.”