Domestic Affairs

by Bridget Siegel

  Walking out of Adams’s office, she didn’t even wait until she reached the water cooler before enthusiastically grabbing at her pocket for her BlackBerry.

  Looking forward to it, she pinned the governor, doing her best to play it cool, and then immediately started plotting out what she would wear.

  Getting back to Georgia after a New York trip usually left Jacob with almost a hangover feeling, but the past two days had been different. Getting Olivia on board meant the campaign could really start moving, and his date with Sophie had left him unable to stop smiling. He loved the adrenaline of both. The pieces were falling into place.

  He paced with antsy steps outside of the governor’s office, waiting for him to get off whatever call was taking him so long. He flopped down on the visitors’ maroon leather tufted couch that had become more comfortable as it got a little more worn in and stared up at the framed map of Georgia that hung across from him. Offices in the South seemed so much more regal than those up north. Almost an extension of Southern manners, they were decorated with a certain grace and tradition that just wasn’t found in New York. The ceilings were high and each corner had a beam that seemed like it had been taken off a plantation. Of course, Taylor had added a wall of Georgia sports heroes and the ten-foot mural of himself, Aubrey, and the kids, both of which detracted a bit from the elegance of the place. Classic Taylor, he thought, Southern tradition with a twist of superstardom.

  “What is taking him so long?” he mumbled under his breath.

  The governor’s assistant, a thin woman, probably in her sixties, named Arlene, who talked with a particularly slow drawl, glanced up almost as if he had yelled the question. She was a career assistant who had been passed down from one governor to the next, with seemingly little concern paid to who they were or what they stood for. “Hard work is the yeast that raises the dough,” she would say, addressing everyone as if she were talking to one of her sixteen grandkids. It probably was the multitude of offspring that armed her with a knack for hearing what people said under their breath. “The governor sure does have molasses in his britches today,” she said, concurring.

  “Yeah,” Jacob replied, enjoying another one of her classic sayings, and then quickly corrected himself. “I mean, yes, ma’am.” Something about older Southern people made him acutely aware of his habitually poor English. He picked himself up from the couch, deciding to take action.

  He peered into the office, trying not to lose his cool. “Governor, we really have to leave.” They were late again for the morning briefing, which would undoubtedly make them late for the rest of the day. Aubrey had already texted Jacob twice, not-so-subtly explaining how “unhappy” she would be if they were late to the Habitat for Humanity event. It was his least-favorite phrase of hers. “Jacob,” she’d say with a big break after “Ja-” and a loud emphasis on the “-cob,” like she was auditioning for Meryl Streep’s role in The Devil Wears Prada, “I will be ra-ther unnn-happy if he is a minute late to myyyy event today.” He had heard it so many times he could detect the passive-aggressive emphasis on each syllable even in an email or text. Her insistence on getting the schedule every morning was one of Jacob’s big lost battles. She would comb through it, picking apart every detail, and would often call for an explanation of why something had been put on or why something else had been left off.

  On some level Jacob appreciated her intensity, and lord knew they needed her on the trail. He just wished she didn’t always have to be so mean about it. Inexplicably, to anyone who knew her well, she was beloved everywhere in the country, aside from the campaign, of course. Her smiles and hair flips were enough to win them at least five to ten points in the polls, and having her stump could always pull them out of whatever hole they were in at the moment. She was happy to do it too. Sometimes it seemed she liked campaigning more than Landon did.

  And she was definitely more ambitious about winning. Aubrey had been measuring the White House for curtains for years now. The inside joke on the last campaign was that the presidential candidate threw the election because he knew Aubrey carried a pocket knife that she wasn’t afraid to use to make Landon president especially if he were next in line. Her ambition, though, in Jacob’s view, was flawed in its stubbornness. She didn’t only want them to win, she wanted them to win her way, and when they weren’t doing it her way, heads would roll. Jacob had mastered the art of keeping her happy and the perhaps more difficult art of making her seem happy to the rest of the world.

  “I’m on it,” he had responded via email. “Like white on rice today!” He said it as he typed, trying to push a strained smile through the airwaves.

  White on rice that insists on being purple, he thought as he leaned on Taylor’s door and waved his hands in a speed-it-up motion. They actually needed about an hour more in their morning to make it to the event on time and there really wasn’t anything he could cut from the schedule. His plan was to pull his boss from every room ten minutes early and to do that, he needed to start pulling him twenty minutes early now. The governor looked over, annoyed at being hustled along. But he obligingly hung up.

  “Sorry, sir. We just have to go.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Taylor lightened up. “I’ve heard I’m on a tight schedule today.”

  Jacob smiled, realizing the governor had probably heard about the event twice as many times as he had. Some days Aubrey’s nagging would put Taylor in an awful mood, a fact that would never be alluded to in front of him by anyone except Jacob. At first Jacob never said a word, keeping his subtle eye-rolls, as all staffers did, strictly behind Taylor’s back. Half of his career had been spent putting out fires she started, and he had gotten used to it. A few years back, though, he’d had a particularly rough go of it. It was in the middle of the last campaign, and Aubrey was aggravated that Jacob had taken over her daily schedule, which until that point had been the job of Mary Elizabeth, Aubrey’s just-out-of-college, naïve assistant. With great regularity, Aubrey hired, and fired, assistants young enough to tolerate being ordered around, but who would not make a single decision—including when to take a bathroom break—without express approval and direction from their boss. Rather than talk to Jacob, she jumped unannounced onto the weekly staff call, which included about thirty-five campaign workers in six different offices.

  When the call turned to Aubrey’s schedule, Jacob began to walk everyone through the stops she would be making. They included “retail meet-and-greets,” where she would shake hands with people coming and going from stores. In grand Aubrey fashion, she piped up, without warning, when they got to the main stop of the day.

  “Now, why the fuck would I stand outside a Target all day? Do any of you know how fucking cold it is in Iowa in October?!” she screamed into her speakerphone. Jacob, shocked to hear her on the call at all and trying to control the outburst, immediately fell on his sword.

  “Mrs. Taylor, that is my fault. Let me call you offline right now and we can get this fixed.” He made the statement in his most controlled voice.

  “You can’t fix this, Jacob. It’s shit. The whole schedule is shit. I’ll just have to go and clean up your mess like usual.”

  “Clean up your mess” in Aubrey-speak meant nothing more than her canceling every well-planned stop of the day and, most likely, heading off to the salon instead.

  Jacob had literally held the phone away from his face, looking in disbelief, then started to apologize.

  “You know what, Jacob?” she shouted loudly, her voice then rising into a shrill scream. “The next time you get the urge to schedule something, go chew on a pencil.” And then the beep of a caller getting off the call hit the line like a slammed door.

  Jacob felt the need to put his fist through the nearest wall but resisted. “Okay,” he said, ending any gossip before it started, “I screwed something up this morning here, that’s all that was. Sorry about that.”

  He took a short unnoticed breath and went on with the business of the call. When they had finished the teleconferenc
e, Jacob asked everyone to pick up their phone off speaker. “Listen, people,” he had said. “We are a family and some days we all lose it. I have seen all of you lose it at least once and you have all seen me lose it more than once. We can laugh and joke about it and move on. It happens. But Mrs. Taylor’s image,” he argued to everyone, while also reassuring himself, “is as important to the campaign as the governor’s. Our bad day might piss off our family or our loved ones. Her bad day could piss off a country. So, as a family, we are going to respect the fact that she has a bad day every once in a while and we are going to have her back. It’s not going to become gossip. It’s not going to become a joke. Even between us. You have to remember the scrutiny we are under. One person overhears something like this, and we all go down. We’re in this together.”

  Silence followed.

  “Not to mention,” Jacob said, “I assure you that if something on this campaign is leaked, I will find out where it came from. I promise.” Jacob was only twenty-four then, and he had surprised even himself by taking such complete control. Of course it helped that campaign workers revered the team mentality. Campaign lessons varied from person to person and campaign to campaign, but lesson number one was always loyalty.

  To this day he felt proud of that moment and took credit, internally at least, for the fact that there had been no subsequent leaks. He had also come up with his words of steel, as he termed them: calm, contain, control. According to him they were the keys to making it in campaigns, especially when it came to handling people like Aubrey. And so far, they’d worked. The country never suspected that even a single curse could pass Aubrey’s lips, much less the daily serving she actually provided.

  As he and the governor walked to the car, Jacob laughed thinking of that episode. And he remembered how the events of that day had changed a great deal for him, and for Taylor as well. Jacob had been working late and around ten forty-five that evening when the governor came into his office and sat down. He threw his feet up on Jacob’s desk, an occurrence that had not yet become familiar, and said, “So how was the day?”

  “Good,” Jacob replied as he listed several of the accomplishments and updated him on endorsements, half wondering if he would be fired as a result of Aubrey’s anger.

  “Good, good,” the governor replied. “Oh, hey,” he added, “I got you something.” He placed a box on Jacob’s desk. Jacob looked down at the box of pencils and laughed.

  Ever since then the two had running private jokes about everything. Including Aubrey.

  Amazingly, Taylor made it to the Habitat for Humanity event only fifteen minutes late, and Jacob let out his first sigh of relief of the day. Habitat fundraisers were their signature event and accordingly second nature. Aubrey and Landon actually had been two of the organization’s first supporters when it was just a small, faith-based community group in Georgia. It was also at a Habitat event where the Taylors met Billy, the governor’s trusted adviser, longtime friend, and now chief of staff. He was a young staffer to a congressman then.

  On this May morning, Aubrey and Billy were waiting at the entrance to the site when the governor’s car pulled up. The governor and Jacob opened their doors and stepped out in tandem. Jacob forced a smile, pushing back his annoyance at Aubrey, who stood with her hand solidly at her hip, where it often seemed Krazy Glued. Obviously out of public eyesight, she turned her cheek to Taylor’s kiss.

  “You’re late,” she said, shooting a stare Jacob’s way.

  And you’re a joy, Jacob said sarcastically in his head as he turned on as much charm as he could muster. “So sorry, Mrs. Taylor, we did everything we—”

  She began talking in the middle of his sentence, and Jacob stopped, knowing he wasn’t supposed to give an answer and kicking himself for trying. Aubrey looked at Landon with a smile that Jacob thought was more of teeth grinding than happiness.

  “Darling,” she said, transforming that faux smile into pursed lips, “the Angevines are here. Please remember her name is Danielle.”

  The governor gave a “Yes, dear” head nod, and Jacob could see one of those momentary pangs of timidity in his eyes and wondered how long it would be before Aubrey let the governor live down not remembering Danielle’s name one time last year.

  Billy stood back, hands folded in front of him, as always, with the unfazed look of someone who had been watching this same movie for twenty years. Jacob surveyed the chief of staff’s face, unsuccessfully trying to picture him twenty years younger. Billy was one of those men who seemed stuck in time, a statuesque African-American man with grayed hair that one couldn’t imagine him without. He was always dressed meticulously in a three-piece suit without deference to occasion or weather. Jacob imagined he had little choice in the matter, having met Billy’s wife, Martha Ann. Martha Ann had edicts that would not be broken, and among them was, breakfast should consist of porridge, and a man should be properly dressed at all times. Jacob felt forever awkward in her presence, but especially at their first meeting, when he thought she was kidding about the porridge thing and had made a joke that was, retrospectively, not very funny. Okay, not at all funny. In his defense he wasn’t aware porridge was something people other than Goldilocks and the three bears ate.

  Martha Ann had since come to like Jacob—well, at least he thought she did. Maybe “tolerates me” is a better term, he thought, remembering the searing look of disapproval she’d given his khaki pants the last time they were in church together. Must work on that, he thought, piling it onto his ever-increasing list of resolutions. Impress Martha Ann and Billy. He smiled, knowing it was a near-impossible task. They were as elegant and meticulous as Billy’s old three-piece suits.

  The governor approached Billy and the chief of staff leaned in a bit, speaking with his usual calm. “Senator Del Giudice is here. He’s warm on section 2A of the spending bill.”

  And that goes on the list too, Jacob thought, watching Billy ask the governor to do something without ever actually asking a question and vowing to adopt the technique. Jacob constantly felt as if he were begging for something to be said or done. Billy had a way of just mentioning a fact that would immediately spur Taylor to do just what he wanted him to do. Of course, Jacob thought to himself, he also always has every domino piece in place before he asks for the push. Like his perfectly put-together outfits, Billy laid things out well before they ever needed to be done. Everything he did was slow and methodical—one might say painstakingly slow—but he was always prepared.

  Jacob often wondered how Billy managed to stay with Taylor, who was basically his polar opposite in terms of planning things out. Opposites attract, he thought gratefully, as he also couldn’t imagine Taylor, or any of them, without Billy. Everyone loved Billy, even Aubrey, who now interrupted their conversation to say, “Thank goodness for my dear man Billy. Otherwise I would have been here by myself.”

  Billy smiled, ever the peacekeeper, and stayed a careful three steps behind the governor and Aubrey. He turned to Jacob and began speaking again, not exactly in a whisper but in a tone that only the person he wanted to hear his words could make out. “Good job, kiddo. I thought we were in for at least twenty more minutes.”

  “We almost got here early!”

  Billy grinned again and continued walking quietly behind the governor.

  Jacob sprinted ahead to Taylor and began grabbing the business cards that the governor was receiving from all sides and slyly passing off. When Jacob saw Aubrey grab the governor to pull him over to the Angevines, he knew he’d have at least five minutes to himself and he took the opening to run up to the stage, which was built out on the side of one of the houses under construction.

  Double-check there is water on the podium. Yes. The mic level has been adjusted. Check. The right amount of chairs set. Check. The Taylor sign perfectly straight on the front of the podium. Check.

  He rushed back to the Taylors’ side just in time to hear them moving on from Aubrey’s friends. Calm, contain, control, he reminded himself as he watched
Billy, still steps back, clearly and serenely catching each person he needed to talk to. Jacob watched him move closer to the governor as Senator Del Giudice approached him. He barely looked as if he was moving but when the senator said, “Hiya, Billy!” sure enough they were so near to the governor that Taylor simply turned his head and was in the conversation.

  When the speaking program finally began, Jacob walked back behind the hundred or so people crowded in the middle of the four houses that were being built and slid back, leaning onto one of the erected support beams. He looked around at the scene in front of him, thinking it was an exact replication of every Habitat event they had ever done, including the very first. Not that Jacob was there, but he had heard about that first event so many times, it was clearer in his mind than some of his own memories. He wondered if maybe the stories had evolved, as all political stories do, with the passing of time; it seemed less likely that they would be able to re-create the same event so many years in a row. Although they did have it down to a science. Even their stage positions stayed the same: Taylor at the podium, Aubrey stage left looking adoringly at him, Billy in back of the crowd listening intently. It was like an old rock band playing a thirty-year-old hit song live. They could do it in their sleep, but the crowd still loved it, and so did they.

  Billy, who met Taylor at that first event, explained the scene to every interviewee that stepped into Taylor’s offices, including Jacob, as if describing a Norman Rockwell painting come to life. “It was a cool Georgia day unsuspecting of its imminent importance,” he would say. The high school quarterback, now the matured law professor, was at the podium with his beautiful wife by his side. Her blond hair blew in the subtle wind as she looked intently at him, nodding as if he were preaching her life’s religion. The half-built house in the background and the hammer that Taylor had accidentally taken up with him and clumsily placed on the podium as he was speaking seemed unprofessional to Aubrey, who apparently later scolded, “Can’t you juuuust fuckin’ keep it together at least for the pictures?” Billy never told that part. To him the scene was “directly analogous to the country’s house—desperately needed, but only half-built—and Taylor held the hammer to get it done.”