"I'm sorry. Forget I said anything about Halloween. But ask yourself, really ask, whether you want to move to California and let another job swallow your life whole."
She shook her head impatiently. "I can't just stay here forever."
"Why not?"
"Why not?" she repeated, the words climbing into a screech. "Because what am I then, Linden? Living in your house and wandering through the woods with you while I figure myself out—what is that?"
"It's exactly what you need."
"How can you say that? I mean, did you really think I could abandon my entire professional life just because I didn't love every moment of my work? Because that was never going to happen. I was always returning to that world, one way or another."
I rocked back on my heels as her words hit home. "So, that's it? This is where it ends?"
There was a moment where the stubborn set of her jaw slipped and she looked far less certain about her plans, though it was only a moment. Vanished before it truly existed. Then, "This would be easier if you were happy for me."
A lot of things would make this easier but that wasn't one of them.
"It only matters that you're happy," I replied. "You never wanted me to be part of this equation. My opinion shouldn't matter to you." Since another minute of this conversation was going to succeed in tearing my limbs from my body, I took a giant step back and snatched up my keys. "I'm gonna take off. Stay here tonight or don't. It's up to you. I won't be here either way."
"Linden, don't—"
"Nope, it's good." I held up a hand to stop her because I couldn't. I couldn't live through any more of this. I couldn't stay, not with her in my house and all these things I wanted to say to her, to beg of her. And I couldn't survive the night with her next door. I couldn't do any of this. I couldn't put myself through this only to watch her drive away. "Listen, I hope you get everything you want out in California. Your blood is probably too thin for a New England winter anyway. But you know where I am if you change your mind." I backed out of the kitchen, reached behind me for the knob. "Good luck out there."
I didn't wait for a response before slamming the door.
27
Jasper
I was on the first flight out of Boston the next morning and I spent every minute of the five and a half hours in the air telling myself Linden was wrong about everything.
He had to be wrong.
I wasn't punishing myself for anything. That was ludicrous. It didn't even make sense.
I kept telling myself that because if I stopped fuming for even half a second, I was going to fall apart and I couldn't have that before I met Dino and his associates.
Besides, I wasn't the kind of woman who fell apart. Not when it mattered and this mattered. Yeah, my research last night—which I did after stomping around Midge's house for a good hour—revealed the NCVC had a lot less cash on hand than I would've liked and their operations seemed to push the definition of shoestring, but the early years with Timbrooks were like that too. And start-up organizations were fun! They were fun. Everyone worked hard and had fun.
It would be great. I'd missed working with an eager new team where everyone was obsessed with the possibilities ahead rather than choking on jaded bile. It would be hard though, and a ton of work. Long days, long weeks. But it would be great.
There was a lot to love about fresh starts. I'd have to learn everything about the region and figure it out on the fly but I'd done all that before. And I loved a challenge. Who wanted the same old same old? Not this girl.
I didn't know anyone in California, not anyone I'd consider a friend rather than a contact, but that was fine. I could make new friends. That was part of the adventure. New places, new people, new experiences. I'd find a community for myself. It would be fine.
Out of nowhere, I flashed back to Sunday dinner with Linden's family. They were such a strong unit, their lives woven together in more ways than I'd ever be able to parse. They were a community all of their own but they didn't exclude anyone. They sucked you in with tight embraces and marmalade and inside jokes. They were wonderful.
Too bad Linden hadn't asked me to stay.
He hadn't even hinted at that. Of all the things Linden said to me yesterday, not a single one of them involved passing up this opportunity because it meant moving to the other side of the country and the end of our relationship as we knew it.
He hadn't even mentioned us and that told me everything I needed to know. It was fine. It didn't matter. I didn't need him or his lumberbear vibes. I didn't need anything at all.
It wasn't like I expected him to fight for me or anything like that. God, no. How ridiculous. As if he'd have a grand speech about how much he wanted me in his life. Of course not. That didn't happen to real people. It just didn't happen. We'd had a fling and now it was over. I expected nothing from him. Moving right along.
Even if he had asked me to stay, it wasn't like I would. Please. I couldn't. I couldn't dawdle around a quiet Boston suburb while a moody beast of a man encouraged me to find my passion in life, all else be damned. That didn't happen to real people either. Real people pulled themselves together, worked their asses off, and knew no one was going to help them.
This stop was never meant to be permanent. Nothing was permanent and I'd do well to keep that in mind.
Dino and his colleagues met me at a restaurant that served everything in mason jars or on rustic bread boards. The menu was scrawled on a great chalkboard covering the top half of one wall and the patrons sat at mismatched picnic tables. The music was loud yet mellow.
It was real nice. It was charming, when I gave it a minute. I didn't even mind the awkward bench straddle I had to do with one hand plastering the front of my skirt down, the other on the back because, for the first time in months, I knew how to work this situation.
Nonetheless, I couldn't stop myself from wondering what Linden would think about this place. Would he hate the just-so-ishness of it? Would he love the vibe but hate wedging himself into a damn picnic table? Would he stare at me from across the table, a slow smirk filling his face as he said, "You look good, Peach. You look real good."
I shook myself back into the conversation, murmuring and nodding as Dino, Chester, Slater, and Saylor recounted an effort to get younger voters to the polls in the last election cycle. They loved their work, that much was plain to see, and it reminded me of my early days with Timbrooks.
I'd loved that little campaign family and it was a family. There was always a mom and a dad, little brothers, middle sisters, weird uncles, crazy aunts, cousins for whom we couldn't trace the bloodline, stepsiblings who came to us through concession speeches and endorsements. It wasn't a strict gender paradigm, of course. There were female dads, male middle sisters, nonbinary cousins.
Much like my own identity, it was about minds and hearts, not parts.
For me, I was always the bossy big sister, the one who got shit done and made sure everyone else got theirs done too.
I'd always angled for the dad role though I was never the mom.
The moms were essential to campaign life—someone had to manage the advance team and get in the weeds with the inch-tall details about matching or contrasting balloon strings and hotel room assignments—but they were never the stars. No one received recognition for the work of having the flags staged appropriately behind the podium at a press conference or moving the senator briskly through a rope line. You couldn't hold everyone together and be a star shining bright enough to stand out at the same time.
Saylor wasn't the mom of this operation. She had more of the youngest child essence, the one who stood out because she was new and that meant all her stories started with "Since this was my first election cycle…" and "At my previous gig…" Of course, that meant Dino, Chester, and Slater had to follow those moments with recaps of events before she joined the team.
Tons of big brother energy.
They all wanted to be the dad but that required them to stop having experiences whe
re someone slept in someone else's bathtub after a raucous party attended by other coworkers.
The problem wasn't the party or even the bathtub. It was that Dino couldn't be Slater's boss and drink enough with his direct reports to find an apartment tub suitable for a night's sleep. He could but that never worked out too well for anyone and I didn't get the impression he'd come to that realization on his own.
The big sister would have to sit him down and explain the stakes of carrying on like a frat boy in the evenings while attempting to sway public opinion toward equity and access during the day. That was how it was for the big sisters.
Not that I minded. I was good at this sort of thing. Eerily good, actually. I could engage in the types of difficult conversations that left most people hyperventilating as easily as I could place my coffee order. Ultimately, it didn't matter to me whether I was liked. I didn't have to be liked. I had to be effective and capable.
Being liked was the priority of the moms—but only when everyone was fed—and the middle children—because no one ever noticed them. That was the same reason neither of those groups lasted long in this kind of work. They let the churn of campaigns and then the outrage-and-fundraise cycles exhaust and demoralize them. They didn't get the love and attention they needed to flourish.
I didn't need love or attention. I didn't need anyone coddling me with reminders about how much they wanted me on their staff. I didn't need anything. Didn't need anyone. Didn't need a family or a Sunday supper tradition. Didn't need a pair of semi-sisters to laugh a weekend lunch away with or an extra mom to drag me into a community. Didn't need a cozy cottage in the forest or people to call my own.
I was a goddamn professional and I didn't need anyone but myself.
"Okay, real talk," Slater said, dropping his elbows to the table. "I have to ask, Jasper, how did you pull it off?"
Since I was busy bulleting out the convo I'd have with Dino in six to nine months and the redirection I'd give Saylor in a year or two—because those would be the hurdles ahead for me, nothing else—I missed the lead-in to this question. I blinked at him for a long moment, smiling just a touch to keep it pleasant. "What did I pull off?"
He snicker-laughed and shot an are y'all with me on this? glance to his colleagues. "Taking down Timbrooks."
I started to object but Chester chimed in with, "That was the ultimate drag and you played it so cool. Like it was an accident."
They hooted with laughter and clinked their mason jars together because they believed I'd planned this disaster. They believed I'd orchestrated this to knock Timbrooks out of the presidential race.
They believed I could manipulate at that mastermind level, that I'd even sacrifice myself to the cause. I wasn't sure I wanted to examine what that said about me.
"I think about taking down out-of-touch, two-faced elected officials all the time but I'd never considered the suicide bomber route," Slater added. "It's so fucking genius."
I flinched and froze the way I did every time someone spoke of suicide in a glib way but the group didn't notice. They were busy agreeing with each other over my tactical brilliance.
"It's genius but it's also a little dangerous," Saylor said with a laugh. "I mean"—she lifted a shoulder, gave an uncomfortable smile—"it could've really backfired on you, right?"
It did, Saylor. It did.
When I didn't respond immediately, she added, "I'm just saying it could've looked like a personal implosion—and some of the networks did run with that angle, if I recall correctly—rather than an intentional character assassination, and that could've really screwed things up for you."
You don't know how right you are, Saylor.
"Who did you work with on this?" Chester asked. "Not to say you couldn't pull it off yourself—we've admired your work for the past few years and I have to say, it is A-plus—but that kind of coordination requires more than a lone gunman."
"Or gunwoman," Saylor said with the kind of stretched canvas smile that told me she made those remarks often and they tended to fall on deaf ears.
I focused on this because reading between the gender politics lines was less painful than the implication I'd conspired to kneecap my boss on cable news. Not only that, I'd conspired and I'd kneecapped and these people admired those choices. They wanted me because I was nightmarish and manipulative and willing to play dirtier than anyone else. Anything else I brought to the table was a bonus so long as I brought the lead pipe I'd used to take out Timbrooks.
A deep voice in my head asked, How long have you hated your job?
And that was the first time I had a specific answer to his question. I'd hated it since the work stopped being about the possibility of positive change and making good trouble—about the idealism of it all—and started being about tricks and games and manufactured scandals. When the people turned into an afterthought. When the senator's votes turned into commodities available for sale. When I placed winning above all else.
I smiled but it felt wrong. Forced, like I was wearing those horrible wax lips people gave out at Halloween. Those were terrible Halloween treats. I didn't know why anyone did that to children but I shook all of this away, saying, "A strategist never reveals her secrets."
"Not for free," Dino chirped, and the group erupted in laughter.
Again, that deep voice said to me, It's not a badge of honor, you know.
Yeah. I understood that now. I finally understood.
After another round of glass-clinking, Slater said, "And that's why you're here now. As I hope Dino explained, we want to get you on board and put some of those secrets to work remaking the local scene."
Saylor nodded while subtly gesturing to the nearby tables. "We shouldn't talk about this here but Slater's right. The only way we'll unseat some of the problems in this region is by getting messy."
They went around the table, echoing this sentiment with various metaphors in case I was somehow confused—gloves off, mudslinging, take no prisoners, hills to die on, and such. They wanted to declare war on some of the elected officials in this part of the state and they didn't mind slashing and burning everything in their path to claim victory.
In one sense, I had to give them credit for calling me. My work history was exactly what they needed to accomplish their goals. In another sense, I was working hard at not sliding off the bench and wishing myself away from this conversation because oh my god, I hated this breed of politics.
I hated this and yet it was the only thing I knew how to do. It didn't matter whether I was skilled in policy or voter enfranchisement or even fundraising, every operation's big bugaboo. It didn't matter because I could make an on-air accident look like a strategic fire set from inside the house.
As they talked, I kept my wax-lipped smile in place and nodded at the correct moments, and I stopped feeling sorry for my former self. I stopped aching for all the things I'd lost in the last few months and I allowed cold, sinking numbness to fill that space. I listened though I felt like I was observing this conversation from the bottom of a deep pool, the shadows of figures at the surface moving over me, moving on without me.
I was here, such a great distance from the surface, and I was alone and empty because I told myself this was better. This was what I wanted.
28
Linden
There were a few routes I could drive without thinking. It was some form of muscle memory where I knew where I was going and could get there on autopilot, without much recollection of the trip. It always bothered my brother when I said anything to that effect since he found driving with anything short of undivided attention to be the height of recklessness.
I didn't set my autopilot to his Boston apartment because he asked too many damn questions and he always expected concrete answers to those questions, though I did point myself in the direction of New Bedford. The only place it made sense to go was home to my parents.
Before I did that, I stopped at a sports bar where I nursed one and a half beers and a burger I didn't taste. A fo
otball game claimed the majority of the patrons' interest and energy, and on most occasions, that much noise would've bothered me. I didn't care about it now. I just wanted to drop into all that noise and distraction, and forget that I'd given Jasper everything I thought she'd needed but none of it mattered because she was leaving.
It was stupid of me to get attached. It was stupid to think we could be—well, that we could be anything. It was stupid of me to try. There was never any chance of this arrangement lasting. And it was an arrangement, by no means a real relationship. We'd only known each other a handful of months and we didn't even like each other very much.
I don't hate you.
Fuck. Just…fuck.
But Jasper had been stuck here. Trapped, really. Now she had a way out and only a fool would pass that up. Jasper was a lot of contradictory things but she was no fool.
When the game was over and the burger felt like concrete in my stomach, I drove to my parents' house. I'd constructed a half-truth about an early appointment in Dartmouth and wanting to avoid morning traffic on 495, and my mother had texted back an emoji-heavy response that promised fresh sheets in my childhood bedroom.
I made a point of arriving there too late for anything more than a quick hello, good to see you, good night, and promptly closed myself in the room I used to share with Ash. It was a guest room now, stripped of its boyish blues and browns, and refined in a way it'd never been when we were kids.
I spent the night alternating between staring at the ceiling, checking my phone, and sleeping in fitful, disappointing bursts. There was a pinch in my chest every time I opened the messaging app and found nothing new from Jasper. I was capable of texting her, though that seemed like the wrong course of action. She was clear about what she wanted and I had no business standing in her way.
The Belle and the Beard Page 31
