Red Blooded

by Caitlin Sinead

  My embarrassment fades as I focus on my mom, my insides shifting to hollow. Her face is soft and gooey, except for that one line on her forehead that’s dented. That dent is all her face ever concedes.

  “Mom, I...” What am I supposed to say? Um, can you tell me if Dad is really my dad? Did you cheat on him? If you did, and you didn’t tell me till now, would you really tell me now?

  There’s an invisible ball in my throat and I can’t get it out. I close my eyes and will the world away except for the sensation of my mom’s fingers smoothing back my hair, over and over.

  “You did wonderful in the interviews today,” she says. “I know this is hard. Not everyone plays fair and there will be mudslinging. I’m sorry some mud got on you.” Her voice has that edge to it, that tiny bit of emotion that rattles in her throat when she’s exasperated, or angry. “We need you at this fundraiser tomorrow, but, after that, I asked them to give you a few days off. Grandma and Grandpa will stay with you in Alexandria. You can hang out with your friends and get ready for Georgetown, and just be a kid for a few days before the Ohio town hall and the convention.”

  “It’s just dirty politics?” It’s the only question I can muster. “There’s nothing to it?”

  The dent in her forehead grows deeper and she drops her hands from me, holds it tense in her lap. “Don’t let them get the best of you, Peyton.” She stands up, reaching her hand out. I take it and she pulls me up. I hug her.

  Even though she addressed my question without answering it.

  Chapter Three

  When Peyton was five, we took her back to America on an eight-hour flight. We prepared ourselves for hell. But she was fine. She slept, she colored on her tray, occasionally actually making marks on the coloring book, and she spent several chunks of the trip looking down at the ocean. How could endless ocean entertain a five-year-old?

  I asked her.

  She said, “I’m pretending I’m a sea angel.”

  * * *

  The next morning, I’m busy taking in the amber waves of grain rolling thousands of feet below the campaign’s private plane when my mom taps my arm. “Honey, do you mind finding another seat while I talk to Mr. Bain?”

  Bain, the campaign manager, grips the headrest in front of my mom so hard his knuckles turn white. But his face holds an incongruous, broad smile. He’s still trying to get on my good side after I had a minor fit when he took my cell phone away. He didn’t think an eighteen-year-old could keep the fact that her mom was the VP pick a secret.

  I only would have told Annie and Tristan, and I can trust them.

  Cell phone confiscation aside, there’s something awkward about the way Bain’s lips stretch over his pearly whites, like he’s using cheek muscles he doesn’t usually employ.

  My mom stands and moves to the aisle. They stare, waiting. I don’t want to move, but I get it. My window seat and the chance to catch up with my mom as I point out weird things on the ground, like how farmlands look like computer hardware, aren’t high priorities right now.

  So, I grab my tea and e-reader and scoot past my mom. Once they’re settled, I get a small pang in my stomach as I confront the few remaining empty seats. One is next to a reporter. Um, no. Another is next to Lisa. She’s fine, I guess, but...

  Oh, good. There’s one next to Dylan.

  I walk over, like I’m in a pink dress and strapless bra in a high school gym about to ask the cute guy for a dance. I stand next to him, thinking he’ll, I don’t know, feel my magnetic presence or something and look up. But his eyes are narrowed on whatever he’s watching. Soft light blinks across his hard features.

  I clear my throat, loudly, and he looks up. “Hey, Squib.” His mouth spreads into a smile. Unlike Bain’s, it suits him.

  “Can I...” I point at the seat.

  He sits up and twists around, looking for someone. His shoulders loosen as he turns back to me. “Yeah. Another intern, Gin, was here, but he didn’t call fives, and I’d rather sit next to you anyway.”

  My face tingles with warmth. I smile and sit down, arranging my drink and tablet, and avoiding eye contact. Until I catch a glimpse of what he’s watching—Meet the Press. “How do you get that up here?”

  “Technology is a wonderful thing,” he says. I stare at Chuck Todd, wishing I could hear what he was saying. As though I’m emitting thought airwaves, Dylan asks, “Meet the Press junkie?”

  “You know it,” I say.

  He pulls an earbud from his ear and passes it to me. “Want to listen?”

  I reach for the earbud, but he pulls it away and leans in like he’s about to tell me something juicy. “Lisa thinks it would be best if you didn’t watch the campaign coverage.”

  Well, that wasn’t salacious at all.

  I keep a stone face as I whisper back, “How am I supposed to know how I can help my mom win the election if you keep me wrapped up tight in the dark?”

  His dimple emerges and he gives me the earbud. Our heads tip toward each other as we watch the show. Chuck Todd interviews Representative James Roberts, the majority whip and a conservative darling, and asks him if he thinks my mom can bring in Virginia.

  “Of course she can bring in Virginia,” I whisper. I like this whispering thing.

  Dylan’s eyes stay on the screen, but he responds in a low voice. “Damn right.”

  On the screen, Roberts’s legendary scowl shifts. He hates being forced off topic. And for him, the topic is always something involving tax or spending cuts. I’ve heard his admirers call him Snippy Roberts because of his temperament and penchant for using the word cut.

  “I hate Roberts,” I say to Dylan. “In the bill he’s working on now he’s cutting education and free lunches and Head Start. It’s draconian.” I shake my head and scratch angrily at the armrest.

  “Education is really important to you.”

  It’s not a question, but I nod.

  On the screen, Roberts responds to the question about my mom bringing in Virginia. “No, we’ll get Virginia back this election. Senator Arthur is popular in her home state, but Virginians are also concerned about the budget. And they know that Ruiz and Arthur aren’t the right people to tame this country’s insatiable spending. For example, in the bill I’m putting forward—”

  “Do you think it helps or hurts that she’s a widow?” another pundit presses him.

  Roberts sighs. “I think it’s a nonfactor.” A few pundits stretch their heads forward, waiting for him to elaborate. He gives them no such pleasure.

  “Roberts seems sort of annoyed that he has to be there,” I say. “He’s also way too young to look that crotchety. But I guess if I was hurting millions of kids’ futures, I’d be sort of crotchety too.”

  Dylan doesn’t smile, but his mouth stretches thin. “I’ve heard Governor Ruiz refer to him as the orange Oscar the Grouch.”

  I bash my elbow into Dylan’s shoulder. “Don’t knock him for being a ginger. There are plenty of other things you can knock him for.”

  A smile slips over his face. “His hair is just fiery, yours is...well, yours is...” He blinks a couple of times. “Anyway. He’s something else.”

  “You mean because he’s said that Democrats seem to think leeches are a good health remedy for America, except we take money not blood, and that if immigrants really wanted to be here so badly they should buy Rosetta Stone and learn English already, and that—”

  “And that...” Dylan jumps in, “it makes no sense to invest more in public education when it’s basically a failing business. We should all just jump ship.”

  I laugh and sigh and rub my eyes. “Yeah, well, he might be a conservative Chatty Cathy on TV, but, actually, in person, he’s pretty quiet. At least the couple of times I’ve met him.”

  “You were lucky. I met him once and he was bombastic as hell. Whe
n Governor Ruiz was a senator, he tried to work with Roberts on a bill that would reduce prison sentences for non-violent offenders.”

  “I remember that. I was surprised Roberts went for it.”

  Dylan shrugs. “It costs about as much to send someone to prison as it does to send them to Yale. Roberts wanted to cut the federal prison costs, so we were able to work together. Well, work together meaning we could accomplish something, but he was an ass to deal with. The bill that passed was far from what Ruiz wanted.”

  I nod, remembering how frustrated my mom had been with that bill. But that was a few years ago. “How long have you been working for Governor Ruiz?”

  “A long time.”

  “He seems like a nice guy.”

  “He is a great guy.” Dylan’s words drop like stones. Extremely serious stones. Like my use of the word seems was somehow offensive.

  Maybe Dylan is moodier than he lets on?

  Whatever. I shift back to listening to the pundits. “Frankly, I think the widow thing had to play in,” one of the talking heads says. “It’s going to be really hard for President Monroe to attack her character.”

  With all the mentions of widow, my stomach hits a sour spot. Dylan shifts a quick look to me and hovers his thumb over the part of the screen that would close the show.

  “Are you really suggesting that because Richard Arthur died, what is it, three, almost four years ago now, you can’t attack Jen Arthur?” a squirmy Republican pundit with a too-fuchsia-for-TV dress says as she leans over the table, blue eyes bulging.

  The original pundit nods emphatically. “Yes, look at Roberts.” She points to him. His eyes flash up as though this conversation had been too boring to keep his attention.

  “Yes,” he says as slowly as you can say a three letter word.

  “Even you haven’t blasted Senator Arthur since her husband’s death. But you used to be one of her worst critics.”

  “Well, that’s not...” Roberts fumbles along, but I can no longer hear him because Dylan’s pulled my earbud out.

  “What?” I say, getting overly grabby, to the point that our hands mini wrestle until he gives up the earbud. As I stick it back in, he asks, “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” I say, taking in a breath and moving my hands off my stomach, where I hadn’t even realized they had gone before. I must have looked like I was going to be sick.

  “And it’s not just Senator Arthur,” another political guest chimes in. “I think we all remember the picture of Peyton at her father’s burial.”

  Some quick-thinking producer swipes the well-known image onto the screen. There I am. Little fourteen-year-old me, in my black dress and black shoes that were just a little too big. My red hair had been tucked up into a severe bun, so all you could see was that bun, and me, eyes closed, looking like I was about to die myself.

  It went viral. The two million people who read the book posted it and even more people felt for me. They felt for my mom. The congresswoman who was widowed when Richard Arthur died.

  I blink hard to get rid of the tears before Dylan sees. Too late. His worried eyes are cavernous. “We should turn this off.” It’s a mix of statement and question.

  “No,” I answer, even as I rub my eyes and endure his concern. “No, I want to hear.”

  He frowns, but he doesn’t reach for the button. He looks back to the screen and so do I.

  “And now Peyton is old enough she can help with the campaign,” another pundit says enthusiastically.

  “No,” Roberts says, shaking his head and looking at his folded hands on the desk.

  “Seriously,” the fuchsia pundit says more soberly. “She was practically America’s sweetheart when her father died. I know so many people who loved his books and felt connected to him, and, with his final book, they connected with Peyton. It’s not a question of if they’ll use her, it’s how they’ll use her.”

  Roberts wipes his weary face as the conversation continues. It has strayed so far from budget bills and his favorite word: cuts. Instead they’re using words like unforgettable, iconic and teenager.

  “She’d bring in young voters, of course,” the first pundit says. “But she can also bring in her father’s fans. Perhaps they don’t relate to all of Senator Arthur’s politics, but they remember Richard Arthur. They remember him as a thought-provoking writer, and they remember him as a dying father. They remember his left-behind daughter, Peyton. In some ways, Peyton’s a stronger connection to him than Senator Arthur.”

  On that note, Chuck Todd cuts in to ask us to stay tuned because in the next segment they’ll discuss a new book proposing that we get rid of the Electoral College. Dylan sucks in his cheeks, which defines his jaw and his cheekbones. He runs his fingers through his hair and his arm muscles press against the fabric of his shirt.

  “Dylan,” I say.

  He swallows and doesn’t look at me. “Yeah.”

  “Thanks.”

  Dylan turns to me with eyes like lasers. Focused, deep-brown lasers. “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Well, no,” I say, pointing to the screen. “I’m very upset that someone is against the Electoral College. Adding up the states is half the fun of strategizing.”

  He melts back into his chair with a grin. “Oh really, what’s California plus New Hampshire plus Virginia?”

  “Seventy-two.”

  “Impressive.”

  “Oh, come on. I know you can do it too—Utah, Alaska, North Carolina.”

  He waves his hand. “That’s easy, twenty-one. What about Texas, Maryland and Colorado?”

  I shake my head. “Those three states won’t be in the same column. At least not this election.”

  “Probably not, but there’s some hope. The Latino population, which tends to lean Democrat, is growing quickly in Texas.”

  “Oh, I know, I know, 88 percent of the new residents in the last census were Latino, black, or Asian, and the cities—Austin, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio—have voted Democratic. But you’re forgetting that the white, non-urban population is getting even more Republican. Plus, Texan Latinos don’t lean toward the Democrats as much as non-Texan Latinos. That state can’t be won. Not for a while, anyway.”

  Dylan scratches his cheek as he examines me with this goofy smile.

  “What?” I ask.

  He shakes his head and asks me to add up Maryland, Florida and Hawaii.

  “Forty-three.”

  We dork out, adding electoral votes and talking swing states and even swing counties.

  “You know,” he says, “most girls don’t like to talk about this kind of stuff.”

  “Most people don’t like to talk about this stuff,” I say. “But, fortunately for you, you happen to be surrounded by campaign nerds.”

  He looks around the plane dubiously before whispering, “They’re no fun. They take themselves too seriously.”

  “And you don’t?” I raise an eyebrow.

  “Oh, no. I do too. But you don’t. That’s why you’re the best person here to talk to.”

  I feel warm all over and don’t know what to say.

  “Dylan.” Lisa holds the headrest in front of me and looms over us. She shifts her gaze back and forth. “I need you to focus on that car-tax press release, okay?”

  “Sure, of course. I’m on it.” He nods more times than he probably needs to while poking away at his tablet.

  “Okay, thanks.” She turns, about to walk away, before stopping and looking back at us. “Just, keep your focus. Both of you.”

  We both nod.

  If I’m distracting campaign staff, I’m not an asset—I’m a detriment. I put my headphones in and listen to some bluegrass as Dylan types away. We don’t talk again until the plane lands.

  Chapter Four

  Falling
in love with Jen meant I’d have to accept that my life was no longer my own. It wasn’t just her family, although being the daughter of the exuberant George Carmichael has its advantages and burdens. It was also her vision of how she could impact the world. She wanted to take a leading role, which meant continuing her dad’s legacy in one of the most reprehensible fields: politics.

  No spouse is spared from the polluted process.

  * * *

  Even though it’s August, it’s a pretty chilly night on the New Hampshire estate where the campaign is putting on this immense fundraising shindig under a huge white tent. As I linger in an impromptu backstage area, my goose bumps insist on staying put even as I rub my arms. When Governor Ruiz makes his closing remarks—”And, with Senator Arthur’s help, I look forward to making a better America for all of us”—my blood flows with excitement. The stagehands press our backs and tell us to go, go, go. I relish the harsh light of the stage. The beams warm my skin.

  My mom wraps her arms around me and she squeezes. I squeeze back. Maybe our intimate moment is on display for all these funders and supporters, but that doesn’t make it less genuine.

  “We’re going to do it, Mom,” I say, as the bubbly, positive atmosphere sinks in my brain.

  “We are,” she says, before giving my shoulders one last pinch and turning back to the packed tent of high-level donors.

  The top of the tent is high enough to allow the marvelous view to serve as a natural backdrop. It looks out over a shimmering, moonbeam-laced lake and then into a forest that’s generous with both trees and a fresh pine smell. The crowd emanates energy back at me. I smile and wave. Voices wash over me.

  “We love you, Peyton!”

  “Next Stop: White House!”

  There’s cheering. There’s more hugging. There’s the red, white and blue confetti that’s intent on hitting me in the eye. But none of it lasts long. I kick some balloons with George and Paulo. Maria and her other kids are here, along with Governor Ruiz’s youngest daughter, Sammy.

  Finally, it’s time for us to get off the stage and small talk with the plebeians. And by plebeians I mean one percenters who lean Democratic. I walk to the side of the tent first, intent on savoring a non-stage view of the lake, if only for a moment. Campaigning can wait a little bit, right? Insects chirp in chorus and the cool air freshens my skin.