Girls in White Dresses

by JENNIFER CLOSE

  S hannon knew the first time she saw him. His voice was soft and smooth and luling, his build was fit and strong. As he spoke, her eyes went in and out of focus and she couldn’t make herself look away. He was on TV, but it seemed like he was in the room, talking only to her.

  Dan sat next to her on the couch, staring at the TV screen, his eyes stil and his mouth open. He shushed her when she started to say something.

  “Do you know who that is?” he asked her. His voice sounded hushed, like he was speaking in a church. “That’s our next president.”

  “Do you real y think?” Shannon asked. She rubbed the back of Dan’s neck. “It would take a lot for him to win.”

  Dan final y turned away from the TV. He looked disappointed as he shook his head. “You’l see, Shannon,” he said. “Believe me, you’l see.”

  Later, Shannon would tel everyone this story. She would explain the way Dan’s voice changed when he spoke, the way it made a little hop of worry enter her chest. Her friends would humor her. “I’m sure on some level you did know,” they would say. “Hindsight’s twenty-twenty,” they would add. It didn’t matter. Only Shannon knew how she felt that day when she first saw the Candidate. Only she knew that his voice made her start sweating, made her heart beat fast, the way an animal reacts right before it’s attacked.

  Dan had always loved politics. He was a cable news junkie who yel ed along with the left-leaning political pundits as they got enraged about the state of the government, the failings of the current administration. He talked policy at parties and argued laws at bars. Shannon met him watching the 2004 presidential debates at a dive bar on the Lower East Side. Over Mil er Lite drafts, he explained the details of the Swift-boating. Shannon nodded drunkenly and thought, “This guy is smart.” They stood outside and smoked cigarettes and talked about the ridiculousness of the last election. “It turned this country’s electoral system into a joke,” Dan said. And then Shannon kissed him.

  Her friends approved. “I get it,” Lauren said. “He’s hot, in a nerdy, political way.”

  “He’s nice,” Isabel a said. “A little intense, maybe. But nice.”

  Shannon didn’t care that he was intense. He was hers. Right after they met at the debates, they started dating and volunteering, urging people to get out and vote. For days before the election, they sat in the volunteer center and made phone cal s until Shannon’s fingers felt numb from dialing. “I think we can do this,” Dan said. Shannon had never found someone so attractive in her life. They made out in a closet in the back of the volunteer center for ten minutes and then went back to their cal s.

  That night, they drank and watched as the Democratic candidate lost. “Four more years of this,” Dan said. “I don’t know if I can take it.” Shannon took his hand and held it in her lap. She wasn’t as upset as he was, but she tried to look like she was. “I’m so glad that I’m with someone who understands,” Dan said. Shannon just nodded.

  Shannon and Dan moved in together and hosted dinner parties for their friends where political talk ruled the conversation and lively debate was encouraged. Dan sat at the head of the table and quoted articles he’d read, pul ed out old New Yorker s to back up his point. He talked and lectured, raising his glass of wine when he made important points, as though he were their leader. Sometimes Dan almost crossed the line—like the time he cal ed her friend Lauren ignorant, after she admitted that she’d voted for the Green Party candidate in 2000 because she’d felt bad for him—but most of the time, the dinners were free of fighting and ful of wine, and Shannon was happy.

  Dan worked in advertising, but his heart wasn’t in it. He sat around al day, writing catchy copy to accompany ads. “I want to do something that matters,” he always said. Shannon would nod in agreement. “I want a job I care about,” he would say, and Shannon would groan in sympathy. She thought it was just talk, just something people say to get through their day. But the more the young senator from Il inois showed up on TV, the more Dan talked about his discontent. He complained about his hours, his pay, his mindless duties. He slammed dresser drawers in the morning as he got ready for work, and drank a beer each night as he sulked in front of the news. And then one day he came home and announced that he was going to volunteer for the campaign.

  “Do you have time to volunteer?” Shannon asked.

  “The question is,” Dan answered, “how do I not make the time?”

  Dan organized ral ies and trained volunteers. He went door-to-door making sure people were registered to vote. He skipped three days of work to attend a volunteer training camp in Chicago.

  “I asked you last week if we could go on vacation, and you said you couldn’t take any days off,” Shannon said.

  “This isn’t vacation,” Dan said. “This is our country.”

  He came home from the volunteer camp with a graduation certificate and newfound energy. “This is it,” he kept saying. “This is the time.”

  “The time for what?” Shannon muttered.

  “What?” Dan said.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  At night, al they talked about was the election. Dan analyzed every word that came out of every candidate’s mouth. He sat no more than two feet from the TV, so that he wouldn’t miss a thing. “Did you hear that?” he asked, pointing at a face on TV. “Did you hear the tone she used when she said his name? Unbelievable.”

  Shannon learned how to knit and sat on the couch twisting yarn into rows as Dan muttered to himself. “How can you knit at a time like this?” he asked her once. He looked at her like her yarn was the reason his Candidate was down in the pol s.

  Dan pored over newspapers, websites, and right-wing blogs to see what the opposition was saying. When Shannon asked him if he wanted to go out to dinner, he just shook his head no. They ate takeout in front of the TV almost every night. More and more often, she found him asleep on the couch in the morning, his computer propped up next to him and CNN chattering in the background. He’d wake up and rub his eyes, then immediately focus on the latest news. “I can’t believe I missed this,” he’d say. He’d turn up the volume. “Shannon, can you move?” he’d ask. “I can’t see the TV.”

  Dan applied for every job the campaign had. “How much does this one pay?” Shannon asked once.

  “Does it matter?” Dan asked. “You don’t get this. I would do it for free.”

  “It would be kind of hard to pay rent then, wouldn’t it?” Shannon asked.

  Dan walked away from her and turned on the TV, to CNBC. Shannon fol owed him into the room, but he didn’t look at her. “I was kidding,” she said. “God, don’t be so sensitive.”

  “This matters to me,” Dan said.

  “I know,” she said. “It matters to me too.” Dan raised his eyebrows but didn’t say anything more. Shannon sat down on the couch next to him and watched the wild-eyed political commentator scream. It was the blond man, the one who interrupted his guests and got on her nerves. “He spits when he gets excited,” she said. And then they watched the rest of the show in silence.

  When Dan quit his job, Shannon was supportive. “It wil be hard,” she said. “But if it’s important to you, it’s important to me.” She was pretty sure she meant what she said.

  “I’l be traveling a lot,” Dan said. “But it’s what I always wanted to do.”

  “Of course,” Shannon said. She didn’t real y know what she was agreeing to, but her answer made Dan happy.

  Later, Shannon explained it to her friends. “It’s too good to pass up,” she said. “It’s the opportunity of a lifetime.”

  “Wel , you knew this about him when you met him,” Mary said. “I guess this doesn’t come as a huge surprise.”

  “It just sucks for you,” Lauren said.

  “Yep,” Shannon said. “Yep, it real y does.”

  At first, Shannon stil saw Dan about once a week. Then his trips started to overlap with each other and he didn’t seem to have time to come home in between. Soon, he was flying from stop t
o stop with barely enough time to cal her and tel her where he was going. Shannon realized that if she wanted to see him, she’d have to go to him. And that’s what she did.

  Shannon shivered in New Hampshire while Dan arranged an outdoor ral y. She attended a fund-raiser in Chicago and then took a bus to Iowa and painted campaign signs in a high school, while a snowstorm raged outside and Dan worried that the old people wouldn’t be able to drive to the school. Shannon painted poster boards red, white, and blue. She painted the Candidate’s name in fancy block letters, and made signs that said

  “Davenport for Change.” She painted “Hope” over and over again, so many times that the letters started to look funny and the word lost its meaning.

  Shannon went to Boston and fol owed Dan around to three different events in one day. She shook hands with the Candidate and nearly blacked out from excitement. She listened to him give the same speech over and over and she cried every time. He talked about the hardships people have to face, and he talked about wanting a better world for his children, and Shannon clapped and cried.

  Shannon shouted that she was “fired up and ready to go” in seven different states. She passed out buttons and helped set up chairs. And sometimes, when she went to bed at night, she heard ral y cries in her head, soft and far away. They sounded so real that she was sure there were people gathered outside her apartment, huddled together, chanting the Candidate’s name as she tried to fal asleep.

  Dan returned to New York for an event and Shannon recruited al of her friends to come. They waited in line at Washington Square Park for three hours, getting crushed by the crowd. “Dan wil be so happy that you came,” Shannon told them.

  “Where is he?” Lauren asked.

  “Up there.” Shannon pointed to the stage. Dan darted by.

  “That’s fun that you got to see him last night,” Isabel a said.

  “Oh, wel , I actual y didn’t,” Shannon said. “He ended up working al night. He slept here.”

  “In the park?” Mary asked. “Gross.”

  “Tonight, maybe?” Isabel a asked.

  Shannon shook her head. “He’s off to Pennsylvania,” she said. The girls were quiet for a minute.

  “Wel ,” Lauren said. “It wil be over soon, right?” Shannon started to agree, but the music came on and they al turned to the stage, and clapped and cheered.

  As the primaries got closer, Dan traveled so much that Shannon didn’t even have time to go see him. He’d be in a city for twenty hours and then on his way to the next one. Even phone cal s became rare. Sometimes, though, she caught a glimpse of his head on the border of the TV, running from side to side in a gymnasium after the Candidate finished a speech. She watched for him closely, waiting for his blond head to flash on the screen.

  “There he is,” she’d cry, although no one was there to hear her. And then as soon as she spotted him, he’d run off the other side, gone from her

  sight.

  When the Candidate won Iowa, Dan cal ed from the campaign center. He sounded muffled and far away. Shannon could hear screaming in the background and Dan had to yel to be heard. His voice was thick, as though he’d been crying or was just about to start.

  When Dan did come home, he was exhausted and wrinkled. Sometimes, he’d been up for days. His hair stood up in clumps and his eyes were bloodshot. He’d come into the apartment, shower, and head straight for bed.

  Shannon talked to him while he slept. She told him about her job while his eyes stayed closed. “Mmm-hmm,” he’d murmur sometimes.

  Dan wore two BlackBerrys, strapped to either side of his belt. “You look like a nerd,” Shannon always told him. He didn’t care. Once when Dan was home and lying in bed, Shanon saw a red mark on his hip. “What’s that?” she asked. She touched it lightly.

  “It’s from the BlackBerry, I think,” Dan said.

  “You have a scar from your BlackBerry vibrating against you?” Shannon asked.

  “I guess so,” Dan said.

  “And that doesn’t strike you as strange? As not right?”

  “Not real y,” Dan said. He rol ed over and turned out his bedside light.

  “You’ve been branded,” Shannon said. But Dan was already asleep.

  Every time Dan got ready to leave again, they fought.

  “When wil you be home?” Shannon would ask.

  “You know I don’t know that,” he’d say.

  “Do you even miss me?” she’d ask.

  “Shannon,” he’d say. “Don’t start this now. You know I miss you. Don’t fight with me right before I leave.”

  Sometimes she let it drop, but sometimes she didn’t. Sometimes she’d poke and whine until they fought. It felt good to scream at him, to scream at someone. Once she asked him, “Let’s say that you got to have dinner with one person and you had to choose: me or the Candidate. And you hadn’t seen me in a month. Who would you pick?”

  “You, of course,” he said. He came over and kissed her good-bye. It was a lie. She knew deep inside that she was his second choice. Always.

  He’d fal en for someone new. And infatuation was winning.

  Once after he left, the dog jumped onto the bed, lifted his leg, and peed. Shannon didn’t even yel at him. “I understand,” she said to the dog as she stripped the sheets. “It’s a shitty situation.”

  As months went by, Shannon forgot what it was like to live with Dan. Some nights she convinced herself that he was gone for good. If he did leave, she decided, she would take his TV.

  Her friends were worried about her. They took her to brunch and brought over wine. “How are you doing?” they asked.

  “Good, good,” Shannon always said. What was she supposed to say? That Dan would rather campaign in Texas than spend time with her? That she’d been abandoned? That the Candidate had stolen her boyfriend? It was easier to just say, “I’m doing great.”

  “You’re such a good sport,” they’d say.

  Shannon drank the wine and agreed. “Yep, that’s me.” It was better, she thought, than the truth.

  At the end of August, Dan got four days off from the campaign. Shannon thought they’d have al sorts of time together, but when he was in the apartment, al he did was e-mail with his campaign friends. He was constantly looking at his BlackBerry. They went to dinner, and Dan remained hunched over, his fingers clicking away. Sometimes he’d laugh at a response he got, or nod in agreement.

  “Don’t your fingers hurt?” Shannon asked him. He looked up, surprised.

  “No,” he said. “They’re fine.”

  “Do you think you could put that away for twenty minutes while we eat, so that I could actual y talk to you while we’re in the same city for once?”

  He whistled. “Whoa, Shannon. Calm down.” He put his BlackBerry down next to his plate and held up his hands in a fake surrender. “It’s away,” he said. “Okay?”

  “No,” she said, holding out her hand. “Away, away. Give it to me. I’l keep it in my purse.”

  “Shannon, come on. Don’t overreact.”

  She kept her hand out. “I’m not overreacting. You’re not even e-mailing about work stuff, are you? You just miss your little campaign friends.”

  Dan handed over the BlackBerry, but looked at Shannon with narrowed eyes. “You’ve real y got to figure out how to deal with your issues,” he said.

  “Yeah,” she said. “That’s total y the problem.”

  The last night Dan was home, he wanted to go on a double date with his campaign friend Charlotte and her boyfriend, Chet. “Why?” Shannon kept

  asking. “Why do we have to go out with them?”

  “I want you to meet her,” Dan said. “I think you’l real y hit it off.”

  “I kind of doubt it,” she said.

  “Come on,” Dan said, and final y she agreed.

  On the way downtown, Dan told Shannon that Charlotte and Chet were having some problems. “Chet’s not thril ed that Charlotte’s traveling so much,” he said. “He’s not taking the campaig
n too wel .”

  “Who is?” she asked.

  “Shannon.”

  “What?”

  He just shook his head.

  They went to a tiny Mexican place in the West Vil age that served mango margaritas that tasted like candy. Dan and Shannon got there first, and stood at the bar drinking their margaritas. “Oh,” Dan said, “there they are!” He waved his hand up in the air and a tal blonde waved back.

  Charlotte was almost six feet tal and very thin. She was the kind of person you don’t think is that pretty at first, but upon closer examination, you realize that she’s gorgeous. Her angular nose was striking and her long limbs were graceful. She could have been a model. When Shannon stood next to her, her head came right up to her boobs.

  “Shannon, hi!” she said, and she surprised Shannon with a hug. Shannon’s face smooshed into Charlotte’s chest and she could barely breathe.

  Final y she let Shannon go, but stil held on to her shoulders. “It is so nice to final y meet you.”

  Shannon finished her margarita and shook the empty glass at Dan. “I’m ready for another one.”

  They waited a long time for a table and got two more rounds of margaritas. Chet and Shannon drank while Charlotte and Dan talked about the people they worked with.