Girls in White Dresses

by JENNIFER CLOSE

  “And Kel y,” Charlotte said, rol ing her eyes. “Can you believe the way she sets up the events? I mean, putting the chairs in a semicircle? Where does she think she is?”

  Dan doubled over with laughter and Chet and Shannon looked at each other. Shannon licked the salt off her glass. “Semicircles, huh?” she asked. “Crazy.” Dan stopped laughing and tilted his head at her. She smiled back.

  By the time they sat down, Shannon could feel mango margaritas sloshing around in her stomach. The waiter put a basket of chips on the table and everyone grabbed for them. Charlotte took a handful and shoved them in her mouth. Then she started waving her hands around like, Wait, don’t talk! I’ve got a story to tell! Chet looked at her from the sides of his eyes, and Shannon wondered if he hated his girlfriend too. Charlotte swal owed her chips and wiped the grease off her lips. She took a sip of her drink and smiled.

  “I forgot to tel you guys,” she said. “Last night, I had the most graphic, realistic, and extremely satisfying sex dream about the Candidate.”

  “Wel , it looks like we know who the next Monica Lewinsky wil be,” Shannon said. She laughed and no one else did. Dan looked at her with his mouth open. “What?” she asked. “She can talk about the next president of the United States giving her an orgasm and I can’t make a Lewinsky joke?”

  Charlotte looked down in pretend embarrassment. “Oh my God, ” Shannon said. “You brought it up. With your boyfriend sitting right there.”

  Shannon meant to point at Chet, but he was closer than she thought and she ended up poking him on the cheek. He jumped in surprise. Shannon got the feeling he hadn’t been listening to anything they’d been saying.

  They finished their enchiladas quietly, with pleasant, bland conversation. On the way home, Dan reprimanded Shannon. “I can’t believe you said that,” he told her. “Charlotte was pretty upset.”

  “Oh, was she?” Shannon asked. “Do you think that Chet and I were upset that we went to dinner with our significant others that we never see and al they talked about was the random people they work with on the campaign? People that we don’t know and have never met. It was so boring. And it was rude.” Shannon’s eyes started to tear up and she sniffled. Dan let his shoulders drop.

  “I’m sorry, Shannon,” he said. She shrugged and he grabbed her arm until she looked at him. “I mean it. I know this is hard for you and I real y appreciate your support. You know that, right? You know how much that means to me.” Shannon shrugged again and let him hug her.

  “We shouldn’t have gone to dinner with them,” she said. “That’s not fair. You’re leaving tomorrow.”

  “You’re right,” Dan agreed. “It should have just been us. Charlotte suggested it and I didn’t know what else to do. She’s having a hard time with Chet. I’m not sure they’re going to work it out. I feel real y bad for them.”

  “Yeah,” Shannon said. “How sad for them.”

  Shannon dreamt of the Candidate. She dreamt that they ran into each other at the grocery store and laughed about buying the same pasta sauce.

  “You like Ragú too?” Shannon said to him, and they laughed and clutched arms. She dreamt that he came over for dinner and she told him how he was making her life so hard. He smiled. He shook her hand. He talked about hope and belief and getting fired up! Shannon awoke from these dreams feeling exhausted and confused, until she noticed that she’d left the TV on CNN. They were showing a tape of the Candidate at some campaign stop. He was smiling and frowning, laughing and tilting his head to show concern. Shannon looked at him closely while he talked and gestured. Did he know? Did he know that he had stolen her boyfriend? Did he know that he was ruining her whole life plan? Did he know that he was making her miserable?

  He finished the speech and a Stevie Wonder song came blaring out of the speakers. He clapped his hands toward the audience, gave a serious look, and then smiled and went to shake hands. He swayed his shoulders and hips to the song. She decided that the answer was no. He didn’t know any of it.

  Everyone asked about Dan; people at work, friends, family, even the neighbors wanted to know what he was up to. “How’s he doing?” they would ask. “How’s the feeling on the campaign? Do we have this one wrapped up?”

  Shannon knew they were al nervous. They were scared that they’d wind up with an old man and a crazy-booted gun lover in the White House. “It’s going great,” she would tel them. “Everyone’s feeling positive.”

  “But what about this Muslim rumor?” they would insist. “Do you think we can shake this? What about the flag pin?” they asked. Shannon looked at their wrinkled eyebrows and tried to reassure them, but she barely had anything left.

  As the election went on, the rumors got nasty. People tried to paint the Candidate as anti-American, finding incriminating old footage of a reverend he knew, and playing it on what seemed like a twenty-four-hour loop. When this news broke, Shannon didn’t talk to Dan for a week. He was jumping from event to event, trying to make people forget they’d ever heard the words “God damn America.”

  When Dan final y did cal , it was in the middle of the night and Shannon wasn’t sure if she was dreaming.

  “I just wanted to say hi,” he said. He didn’t sound like he knew she’d almost put out an Amber Alert on him.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Just tired. I keep thinking they can’t do it again. They can’t steal another election from us.”

  “That’s good,” Shannon said. She was stil half caught in sleep.

  “They can’t take this away,” he said. “The Candidate deserves this. We need him. The country needs him.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Shannon said. “They can’t take it away,” she repeated.

  “That’s right,” he said. “And if they do, we’re moving to Canada.”

  One evening in early fal , Shannon walked the dog up Broadway with her friend Lauren. The air was starting to turn and the wind made Shannon shiver just a little. The two of them were deciding where to get a drink, and Shannon was trying to hurry the dog along, pul ing him past hydrants he wanted to sniff, when a smiling boy with a clipboard stepped in front of them. “Excuse me,” he said. “Do you have a minute for the Democratic candidate?”

  Lauren started to say something, but Shannon spoke first. “Do I have a minute for the Candidate?” she asked. The boy nodded and smiled and Shannon felt heat rush into her eyes. The dog sniffed the boy’s leg and stood very stil .

  “Yes,” he said. “If you have just a minute for me, I can tel you about how you can help—”

  “Do I have a minute for the Candidate? Do I? Have a minute? For the Candidate?” The boy nodded again, but now he looked nervous. “Let me tel you something,” Shannon said. “I have given the Candidate weeks—no, months—of my life. No, I don’t have a minute for him. You want to know why? My boyfriend has left to travel around with him. He quit his job to work for the campaign, and I haven’t seen him in a month. A month! I’m not sure if he’s ever coming back, and the thing is, he doesn’t even care! He doesn’t care because al he wants is to work on this godforsaken campaign that is just so important. More important than anything else, including me!”

  The boy began to back away. “Okay, then,” he said. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “You didn’t mean to what? Interrupt my walk? Stop me on a cold night and make me listen to you tel me how amazing this Candidate is? Yes, you did. And I’ve heard it. I hear it al the time. From my boyfriend, from everyone. I get it. He’s amazing.”

  “Yes, he is,” the boy said quietly. Shannon narrowed her eyes. Lauren tried to pul her arm and make her walk away, but Shannon stayed right where she was.

  “Why are you even here?” she asked.

  “To inform people about the change we want to see in the world,” he said.

  “No,” Shannon said. “Why are you here?” she pointed to the sidewalk. “Why are you in New York? You think you need to convince people here to vote for him? Let me give
you a heads-up, buddy. He’s got New York, okay? We got it. We’re Democrats here. And you’re on the Upper West Side, of al places. For God’s sake. Don’t waste your time. Go somewhere else! It doesn’t even matter if I vote. I might not even bother. Did you hear that?

  I might not vote!”

  The boy kept walking backward and then turned and ran down the street, clutching his clipboard to his chest. He kept glancing back to see if Shannon was chasing after him. A few people stood on the sidewalk and stared, and Lauren took five steps to the right, trying to pretend that she didn’t know Shannon.

  “Every vote counts,” an old lady said to Shannon. “Don’t be stupid.”

  “Oh, fuck you,” she said. The dog hung his head. He looked embarrassed. Shannon started to walk down the sidewalk toward her apartment.

  She walked quickly, and Lauren had to jog to keep up.

  “Are you okay?” Lauren asked.

  Shannon stopped. “Yeah. I guess maybe I’m not handling this whole thing as wel as I thought.”

  “Real y?” Lauren said. “Do you think?”

  “Whatever,” Shannon said.

  “Hey, I get it,” Lauren said. “If you want to go back and push down that old lady, I’m al for it.”

  “Maybe later,” Shannon said. “Drinks first.”

  On Election Day, Shannon slept in. She got coffee and took her time walking to the public school where she would vote. Everyone at work would be late because of voting, and she might as wel take advantage of it. She at least deserved that much.

  Shannon had butterflies in her stomach as she walked, but they weren’t from excitement. She’d been counting down to this day for months, and now that it was here she didn’t quite know how she felt about it.

  As Shannon turned on Ninetieth, she saw that the line stretched al the way down the block. People were laughing and waving to their neighbors.

  Moms from the school were sel ing baked goods and hot chocolate. “Al the proceeds are going to the school,” they kept saying. The group at the front was rowdy and slaphappy from standing in line for so long, and they started cheering as people came out of the building. “Whoo!” they yel ed.

  “You made a difference! Good for you!”

  Everyone was acting like this was some strange election-themed street fair. Shannon debated going back to bed and not voting at al . She could just tel everyone she had. What was the difference? In the end, she stayed put, but she put on her sunglasses and refused to smile at anyone around her.

  Shannon saw a guy she knew from work walking down the line. “Hey!” he said to her. He held up his hand for a high five and Shannon gave him a

  weak slap. “What a day, huh?” he asked. He turned his face to the sun and smiled. Like it was Christmas. Like there was a miracle to observe.

  “Yep,” Shannon said. “What a day. Where did you come from? Were you in the front of the line?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “But I gave my place to an elderly lady. I told her I’d go to the back of the line, you know? It’s the least I can do.”

  This wasn’t the New York that Shannon loved. These weren’t the people who normal y lived here. Everyone had gone crazy. Dan was gone and maybe he was never coming back. Shannon thought, as she waited in line, that she was crazy too, that she should have never waited for Dan in the first place. She should have made him choose: “Me or the Candidate,” she should have said.

  Shannon thought this as she stood in line and as she voted. What had she done? Why had she chosen to stand by and support Dan as he’d left her? When she came out of the building, the group of people waiting to get in smiled and waited for Shannon to smile back. She didn’t. Final y, one of the women said, “I hope you made the right choice.” Shannon just looked at her and said, “Me too.”

  That night, Shannon sat in a bar with her friends to watch the returns. Everyone was anxious, and they drank quickly. “So, our feeling is hopeful but cautious, right?” Mary said.

  “Sure,” Shannon said. She was drinking faster than any of them. Vodka went down like water. No one real y noticed until she fel off her stool.

  “Whoa,” Isabel a said. “Are you okay?”

  “Maybe we need some chicken fingers,” Lauren said. She held up her hand for the bartender.

  “She’s just real y excited,” Shannon heard Mary tel ing someone at the bar. “Her boyfriend’s been working on the campaign and now he’l final y come home.”

  “He’s not coming home,” Shannon tried to say. But it didn’t come out right and no one seemed to understand her.

  When the Candidate gave his speech that night, Shannon cried, of course. Everyone did. The whole bar watched in tears because it was amazing and inspiring and they were al relieved. But Shannon didn’t cry like the rest of them. She didn’t have little tears dripping out. No, Shannon had flared nostrils and she heaved and hyperventilated and her face turned red. It was the way she used to cry when she was little, when her mom used to say, “You need to calm down” and would send her upstairs to do just that. Shannon sat in the middle of everyone and cried like a red hog.

  Al of her friends sat around her, taking turns patting her on the back. Final y, Lauren took her home and made sure she got into bed and took some Advil.

  “Just go to bed,” Lauren said. “You’l feel better tomorrow.”

  “Nothing wil ever be the same,” Shannon said.

  “That’s right,” Lauren said, misunderstanding. “It’s al different now.”

  Dan was offered a job in D.C. shortly after. Shannon cried and they fought, and he took the job and moved there. They tried to make it work for a while. She took the train to visit him, and he drove up to New York on free weekends. But it wasn’t working. Shannon couldn’t shake the feeling that she was his second choice, that Dan had chosen someone else over her. She couldn’t forgive that.

  One of the last times Shannon visited Dan, she ran into an old friend from col ege. He was sitting in a bar, drinking beers with a friend. He told her that his longtime girlfriend had joined the campaign and then gotten a job with the administration. She was in charge of finding hotels for the president and his staff and was currently in Germany. “I haven’t seen her in two months,” he said.

  “Are you stil together?” Shannon asked. He shrugged and took a long drink.

  “How can you be with someone if you never see them?” he final y responded.

  “That,” Shannon said, “is a great question.”

  Dan and Shannon broke up over the phone about two weeks after that. She blamed the Candidate for their breakup. (She didn’t cal him the president, like everyone else. To her, he would always be the Candidate.) When Shannon thought about it, the Candidate was probably responsible for al sorts of breakups. She and Dan were just the tip of the iceberg. Al over America, boyfriends and girlfriends had been ripped apart in the name of Hope.

  Shannon was angry that no one was covering this news story. People were talking about health care, but no one was talking about the Relationship Misery Phenomenon that the Candidate had caused. She started writing an op-ed for the New York Times but she didn’t get very far.

  She couldn’t put into words what had happened.

  Shannon stopped reading the newspapers. She stopped watching CNN and MSNBC. Every day that she woke up seemed to matter less. It was Tuesday or Monday or Friday or Wednesday. What difference did it make? She didn’t care who the president was or what changes he was going to make to the country. She was alone and that was al she had room to think about.

  Her friends tried to cheer her up. “Come on,” they said. “Come out. Forget about Dan.” But Shannon refused.

  “You know,” Lauren said, “you were too good for him anyway.”

  “That’s just something people say,” Shannon said.

  “Shannon,” Lauren said, “the guy wore two BlackBerrys on his belt. He wasn’t perfect.” But this only made Shannon cry.

  In her darkest moments, Shannon wished it had gone another way.
Lying in bed at night, with her head under the covers, she wished that the Candidate had lost. She never admitted this to anyone, and she wasn’t sure that she real y meant it. But maybe she did. She felt reckless when she had these late-night thoughts. She was a lifetime Democrat and here she was wishing that the Republicans had squeaked out another one.

  Sometimes she laughed by herself, feeling giddy, the same way she’d felt when she’d stolen a candy bar in the fourth grade. How ashamed her parents would have been if they’d known. How ashamed she was of herself when she looked in the mirror in the morning.

  She thought of cal ing Dan just so she could say, “I wish he’d lost,” and then hanging up. But she couldn’t do it. She was afraid it would only reaffirm his belief that he was right to choose the Candidate over her, that it was the smartest thing he’d ever done.

  Shannon wished that she were a stronger person, a more selfless soul that would be happy to put the needs of her country ahead of her own. But maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she was nothing more than a weak and selfish brat who wanted what she wanted. Oh yes, she was ashamed.

  She started watching a lot of reality TV. She watched it for hours at a time, surprised when she looked up at the clock and found that a whole day had slipped by. It soothed her to see people eat bugs and search for love in rose ceremonies. It gave her peace.

  Shannon used to judge people who watched these shows, this trash TV. Now it was al she could stand to do. She watched whatever was on—

  dysfunctional famous families, snotty teenagers at reform camp, even a couple with a litter of in vitro babies that squabbled and screamed. But her favorite one of al , the one she waited al week to watch, was a weight-loss show where morbidly obese people were sent to a ranch and forced to exercise and starve themselves to a healthy weight.

  These people cried and fought. They fel down on the gym floor and begged not to be sent home. They tried to undo al of the bad choices they’d made. Shannon watched in her bed, curled up under the blankets, bawling at the big people as they struggled to break out of their giant bodies.