Campaign Widows

by Aimee Agresti

  “HEY!” came a man’s angry voice. “Stop or we’ll shoot!”

  She took off running, flinging herself back over the fence again just as the Secret Service came into view. She grabbed the tripod, camera still attached on top, and ran through darkened Lafayette Park. She didn’t stop until she made it to the Ritz.

  * * *

  Birdie saw it on every news show and blog the following morning: someone had placed a sign featuring a giant photo of Hank Goodfellow’s face in a circle with a line through it—as in No Hank Goodfellows here—on the North Lawn of the White House. She texted Madison: You have got to be kidding me. You’ve outdone yourself.

  Birdie got this reply: I must be losing it because this is all starting to seem like fun.

  A sure sign that you truly belong here, Birdie typed back. As I always suspected!

  * * *

  Reagan could be wrong about the letter. The email address, of course, was random and anonymous, but the email itself was too telling:

  I’ve recently become, for lack of a better phrase, a stay-at-home dad while my wife pursues a dream. It has been an exhausting process for both me and our child. Financially, we are fine, for which I’m grateful, but the rhythm of our family unit has been disturbed with so much travel and so little time at home. And I am even more concerned that, if this actually worked out for my wife, life as we know it would change so drastically, we would have to carve out a new normal. Do you have any advice on how to face these potential changes and keep us all steady?—Out of Tune

  She typed up her response. Every day feels this way when you’re a family. There’s a constant fear of shaking things up. Just as you establish a routine, something always comes along to disturb it whether on a grand scale or small one. I applaud you three for not being afraid and for creating the type of environment where one of you can pursue dreams headfirst and heart first. Every day as a parent is a wild card. Just keep communicating, checking to see how everyone is absorbing these changes. It sounds like important opportunities are on the horizon for you all. What’s good for one of you is good for all of you. Be strong and supportive and loving and as fearless as you can. You’ll get each other through.

  She sent her column along to Jay “OMG, have Sky check. I swear this letter is from Alchemy...”

  * * *

  Jay welcomed any excuse to reach out to Sky these days, and any exchange that didn’t involve editing and didn’t require them to talk about their relationship was a rarity, so he was only too happy to forward Reagan’s column along. Just curious, does this sound like anyone we know? If you’re not at liberty to say just blink twice.

  Sure enough, Sky sent back the emoji happy face with its eyes closed, twice, then wrote: Wow, Reagan is good. You didn’t hear it from me, but Alchemy and I have become pals. Other day we were watching Rocky at a town hall and he had been quiet all day and finally just shook his head and said, “She could actually win this and I’m not even sure what that means—it’s a whole new life for us, Harmony, our family. I just don’t even know.” Never seen him like that, you know? Worried, dejected almost. Not like him. I didn’t know what to say so I just said why don’t you talk to someone and he said he didn’t trust anyone. I said, what about anonymously? So we sent it in. It was the only thing I could think of. OK, now delete this! PS: Miss you J.

  Jay savored that postscript, reading it over again and again.

  And Jay wasn’t the only one feeling better. When Reagan’s column posted on the site that week, Sky texted: Reagan’s answer was perfect. Alchemy said that was all he needed, just to have someone tell him it wasn’t crazy to feel like he was feeling. Tell Reagan thanks...and to never tell!!!

  35

  HAVING THE MOST HORRIFYING HALLOWEEN

  Reagan almost wished Ted hadn’t gotten the tickets, terrible as it was of her.

  “You won’t be there? Are you sure? We can meet you there,” she said, phone to her ear.

  “Reagan, I’m not even on the East Coast today. It’s a week to the election, it’s like a parade of fucking swing states,” he said wearily. He sounded completely exhausted.

  She’d thought he was coming back today. She never knew his schedule. Polls and predictions still showed John Arnold locked in a near tie with Goodfellow, and Haze not far behind. Ted seemed to be rapidly imploding, always one extreme or another: either entirely beat down like today or the opposite, manic as a college kid hopped up on Adderall during finals week, trying to save his GPA. Except he wasn’t twenty-two, he was forty, and she worried he would give himself a heart attack with all this freaking out. She wanted to remind him to take a breath, that there would be plenty of people to hire him even if Arnold didn’t win—he knew this whole town, and even if their party got knocked out of the White House and was in the minority in Congress, there would still always be a place for him somewhere. That was the one luxury of having worked like a dog for so many years. She didn’t say any of this though; he wouldn’t want to hear it right now.

  “The girls will love it. It’s the White House, it’s Halloween. Believe me, I’d rather be there than wherever we’ll be today,” he went on.

  “I know, of course, it’ll be a blast. We’ll just miss you.”

  On the sofa, Natasha and Daisy squealed, hugging and wrestling, and she couldn’t tell if their game was happy-go-lucky or hostile. It changed by the minute. No tears yet though.

  “I miss you guys too. And don’t forget to take some pictures!”

  She knew, absolutely, it was a great privilege to get to do something like this. How many kids could say they got to trick-or-treat at the White House? But she would be lying if she said she wasn’t at least slightly terrified by the idea of going there alone with Natasha and Daisy at the appointed time, which happened to be their afternoon nap time.

  Some switch had flipped and the terrible twos had taken hold with a vengeance. They no longer sat in any high chair or booster seat but would only eat meals while walking around the living room, as though at some kind of toddler cocktail party. Getting into the car seat required bribery—“Bri-breee! Bri-breee!” they both chanted, requiring cookies or electronics for a simple drive to the grocery store—and the stroller was a crapshoot; sometimes they were content, sometimes they viewed it as a torture device.

  But still, with hope and cautious optimism, she got the girls into their little denim shirts with their little red-and-white-polka-dotted bandannas, rolled up their sleeves and taught them how to flex their arm muscles. Then she loaded her two mini Rosie the Riveters into the car along with the stroller that had been outfitted with a We Can Do It! sign, and she drove them downtown.

  She had packed enough snacks and drinks to feed a tiny army, she had her phone and iPad fully juiced and loaded with new apps; she was fucking prepared. They were angels waiting in line for nearly an hour, smiling and waving, making friends with other children, perfectly content to suck their thumbs in their stroller and take in the festive ambiance, all these costumed families revved up for their visit to 1600 Pennsylvania. She had almost decided not to dress up herself, but she was glad now that she had found that Mother Earth costume online, a drapey toga-sort-of getup, covered in faux flowers and leaves with a picture of the globe strategically placed to cover her pregnant belly. She even put some flowers in her hair. They were going to get at least one decent Instagram shot of the three of them, goddammit. She was determined.

  At last the line moved past that monument of General William Tecumseh Sherman on horseback across from the Willard Hotel, and snaked onto the sprawling emerald green South Lawn. The late October air just crisp enough without being chilly, the sun shining bright in a blue cloudless sky. She took a deep breath, grateful for her sweet girls, wishing that Ted could be there to enjoy one peaceful family moment.

  But then something happened as soon as they passed through security, as though the metal detectors had activ
ated the Crazy Chip in their little brains. A wonderland of overstimulation greeted them instantly. Circus performers juggling! Clowns walking on stilts! Acrobats flying on a trapeze! Costumed characters handing out candy in boxes embossed with the presidential seal! So many people everywhere! And Natasha began squirming. “Go, Mommy! I go! Down! Down! I want GOOOO! Now!” she cried out. And then Daisy, quietly contorting herself, trying to Houdini out of the stroller straps, twisting and arching.

  “No, no, sweeties! We have to try to see the president and then we go-go,” she said in the extra cheery voice she used when surrounded by parents who seemed more successful at parenting than she was. She patted the girls’ heads, gently easing them back down into their seats. Hustling now, she wove around groups of dawdling families with children happily riding atop their parents’ shoulders. She positioned the stroller with the White House in the background and snapped a quick picture, both girls grimacing, screaming as though being held against their will.

  A joyful mom of serene twin storm troopers, who looked to be a mature seven or eight years old going on thirty offered to take a picture of the three of them. Reagan posed, then jogged away before being asked to return the favor—she had to get to the exit at the opposite side of the grounds before these two completely expired. She whipped them past the endless line directly in front of the White House where the best candy and best photos could be had. “Me get out! Out, Mommy! Out, Mommy!” they both screamed now, crying, faces red and wet as they thrashed, trying to stand in the stroller. She pushed them faster, her gargantuan belly so heavy she thought the baby might just fall the hell out. Winded from climbing the long hill, she ran out of steam and couldn’t push the stroller anymore—what was wrong here? She slowed her pace, shaking the stroller; something had jammed. One wheel was stuck, her long, flowy costume caught in the spokes. She yanked it out, ripping the cheap fabric in the process, and that was all it took.

  In that split second, Daisy slunk out through the stroller straps and bolted across the lawn toward the West Wing, like some kind of tiny captive animal returned to the wild. There were no guests over there, only Secret Service: a sure sign that this area was not intended for play today. Reagan ran after her—pushing the stroller, where Natasha remained tangled in her straps. “Daisy! No! Daisy! Stop! Now! You’re supposed to be the easy one!”

  She tried to steady Natasha as they ran, but the girl stood up in her seat as though surfing. And then she leaped. Somehow, Reagan abandoned the stroller and caught her midair, running while holding the kicking, hysterical child. Ahead, she watched a burly, stone-faced man in a boxy suit with an earpiece lunge for Daisy, swooping in and grabbing her up into his arms in one swift motion. Expressionless, he walked toward Reagan, handing over the crying toddler as though she were a feisty fawn.

  “Watch her,” the Secret Service agent said in a commanding, gruff voice.

  “Sorry, sir, won’t happen again,” Reagan said, still panting from the exertion—that had been the most exercise she’d had in months. She held one child in each arm, barely managing to speak between breaths. “This is the way out, yes?” she asked, pointing down a hill.

  He nodded.

  She set Natasha down for a moment, holding her arm with one hand while trying to get Daisy into the stroller with her other. Still completely stoic, the Secret Service agent scooped up Natasha and buckled her in seconds. Meanwhile, Daisy did her best impersonation of a wooden doll with no hinges, completely rigid, refusing to get into the seat. With great effort, Reagan finally shoved her in and got her fastened.

  It wasn’t until she had wheeled them back outside the gates near the Eisenhower Executive Office Building that she realized how bad she felt, and not just normal exhausted-pregnant-mom bad: Were those contractions? “What the fuuuuck,” she said out loud, not caring about the passersby glancing. “Three fucking weeks early? Now?”

  She called Jay, laid it out in one long sentence. “Having the most horrifying Halloween here and I might be having a baby can you come meet us and take these maniacs I think I should probably go to the hospital I’m sorry, this is, like, a really inconvenient time for this shit to be going down. We’re chilling behind EEOB.”

  “OHMAGOD, Rea! I am coming RIGHT NOW!” he said.

  “You are my hero,” she said.

  She looked and found the girls had somehow fallen asleep. She leaned against a giant planter and called her mom until Jay arrived.

  * * *

  Back on the Upper East Side, Madison was swiping thick black liner along Gemma’s upper eyelashes and winging it out—“You’re going to be the prettiest Cleopatra anyone’s ever seen!” she said, kissing Gemma’s freckled nose—when her phone rang.

  “Maddy, remember last time we talked? What you said?” Hank asked by way of greeting.

  She could hear the TV on in the background. Where was he? Pennsylvania again? Like the rest of the country, he had seen the signpost on the White House lawn. For some reason that didn’t bother him so much, according to an interview she’d seen of him on Bloomberg. “Look how damn close I’m gettin’ to the White House. I’ll always have that,” he had said when ambushed after one of his rallies. She had been oddly encouraged, as though he was still mulling over their conversation, the possibility of bowing out.

  She froze now. “Yes, Hank, of course I remember.”

  “Mommy, I need my hair,” Gemma said.

  “One second, sweetheart.” She patted Gemma’s head, her long fine ginger locks snuggly wound in small flat spirals to fit beneath her sleek black wig. “What is it, Hank?”

  “It’s all this. I’m getting a little tired of all this, Maddy,” he said, like a child who had grown sick of his Saturday morning Little League.

  She knew he hated to admit this so she didn’t gloat.

  He was quiet a moment. “It’s just not what I like to do. I’m not sure I want to do this. I’m not sure I like the prize enough to keep competin’ for it. Maybe you were right.”

  She didn’t say a word, just listened.

  He sighed. “So how in the hell do I do this?”

  “I know someone who could work it all out, put just the right, what’s the word? The right...spin...yes, the right spin on it.” She was sounding so Washington, she almost didn’t recognize herself.

  “You really think so?” he asked.

  “I promise. This’ll be something we laugh about one day, like that time you took up hang gliding and ended up in the middle of the East River and got fished out by that nice captain from the Circle Line tour boat.”

  “Those were the days!” he said, coming back to her.

  “But if you don’t bow out, I don’t think we’ll be laughing. And I don’t think anyone in the country will be laughing. So we’ll do this, I’ll make a call, okay?”

  “Yeah,” he said, giving in. “Hey—why are you always right?”

  “Someone’s gotta be,” she said, warm.

  “Ever since high school,” he said, wistful, as if recalling the past. “Wait, now, one last thing: I may be crazy for askin’ but Mike was talkin’ and, honey, you don’t have anything like a Super PAC, do you? There’s this thing out there, and Mike seemed to think—”

  It would do no good to lie at this point. “Oh, Hank, you do have sources everywhere, don’t you?” she said lightly. “I did have one. But I didn’t mean to, it just happened.” She had needed to put all the money from those Arnold donors somewhere. Now she’d have to decide what to do with it. These were good problems to have.

  “Magnolia, you are full-a surprises. That’s what I love about you.”

  * * *

  On a chilly November morning, one week before the election, Hank Goodfellow gathered his running mate, his most trusted advisers, a crowd of thirty, into the banquet room of his Upper East Side town house. He plied them with drinks before he set foot inside, so they could’ve been forgiven for
assuming it was some kind of very, very early celebration.

  When he arrived, in a button-down shirt, sleeves rolled, no tie, Madison at his side pretending to look grave, he laid it all out. “Look, you all know me and you know, better or worse, I follow my gut and my heart and that’s how I got here. And, sorry to say, but that’s how I’m getting out of here too. Plain and simple, this just isn’t for me anymore.”

  No one moved, no one breathed, for so long that Madison wondered if they had even heard. Then, a delayed-reaction gasp and “WHAT?” swept the room. Someone dropped a glass, another person threw one. “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” someone blurted.

  “I know, I get it, you’re pissed off at me and y’all got a right to be, but this is what I had to do,” he went on. He pushed his silent running mate forward. “Remember this guy? Well, he’s still runnin’, so you all have still got jobs and if you get him to win, even better. I’m gonna be pulling for him too. And let’s face it, he’s a hell of a lot smarter than me.”

  Hank put his leg up on the banquet table, leaning forward as if he was about to tell a secret, and promised to throw his money into ads in every state reminding voters that a vote for Goodfellow now meant a vote for his VP pick, since ballots had already been printed. “I don’t expect you to like this, but I’m hoping in time you’ll forgive me. I still love y’all.”

  Hours later, the news already trickling out, he stood on the steps of his town house, grinning like the perfect salesman before a group of reporters.

  “I’ve thought long and hard about this and decided I can have a greater impact on our country, help folks more, by just doin’ what I do, just givin’ my money away. I’ll let the other folks do the business of ‘leading.’” He made air quotes around the word as though this was a newfangled kind of occupation. “With this behind me, in the coming months you’ll hear about a whole buncha philanthropic projects—ones that took a back seat when I began pursuing this dream. This country’s big enough for a lotta different dreams and a lotta different ways to make the world better.”