Cleo flipped the yellow papers. She resolved to cross out any items that were nonsensical to her now—vague, in-the-moment regrets that she couldn’t possibly fix or redo because she had no idea what they meant all these years later. She clicked the top of the pen, swiped through a couple dozen this way, easy. What did steps!!! or too many mushrooms mean after all these years anyway? It didn’t matter. She axed through seventy-two of these.
Next she thought she’d categorize the remaining. There were regrets, and then there were regrets like Alexander Nobells, among others. He wasn’t even the gravest. Those were regrets that were no one’s business but her own. She eased back in her chair, squeezed her eyes closed, pinched the bridge of her nose. She’d never intended for some of them to fester as they had. Sometimes an act or a lie or a misdeed started out simply as an in-the-moment impulse. No one ever really thought that they would follow you around, potentially haunt you forever.
Cleo opened her eyes, tore off a sheet of clean paper, and removed a ruler from her top drawer. She drew three parallel lines down the page, then inked a perpendicular line on top. Three columns. The first: Stupid Things. The second: Possible Fixers. The third: Off-Limits.
Cleo figured perhaps she could take a few from the first column, a handful from the second, and keep the third at bay. This should satisfy Gaby and hopefully please Veronica Kaye too, who, according to Gaby, loved the spunk she was seeing from Cleo without—Gaby promised—knowing the impetus (the list!) behind it.
She started scribbling, filling in the lines. She’d gotten only four deep when Lucas stuck his head through the door.
“Hey.”
Cleo jolted. She hadn’t ever told Lucas about the list and certainly didn’t need him reading it. Couldn’t have him reading it. When do parents grow to be OK with their kids knowing they are fallible? That they tell half-truths to protect their children or sometimes also, yes, themselves? That they do the best they can, which often isn’t good at all. She opened her drawer quickly, dropping the papers and pen and ruler inside. She shoved it closed.
“What’s up?”
Lucas glanced suspiciously toward the drawer. “What’s that?”
“Just a draft of a speech I’m working on.”
“You have a speechwriter.”
Cleo nodded. She did. “I know. But you know how I micromanage.”
Lucas made a face as if this were likely. She did micromanage. It wasn’t too far-fetched.
“So listen,” he said. “I don’t want to alarm you—”
“Oh my God, is this about Marley Jacobson?” Cleo interrupted, though there was no reason to think it was about Marley Jacobson. She realized this as soon as she said it.
“What?” Lucas soured. “Who told you about Marley?”
“No one.”
He stared at her, his cheeks basically quivering in what she knew was rage.
“Can’t you stay out of my business?”
“Hey, you came in here.” Cleo stood, walked around her desk, and leaned against the front of it. “Also, since we’re on the subject . . .”
“We weren’t on the subject.” Lucas crossed his arms, just like he used to as a toddler whenever he was gearing up for a fight.
“Fine, well, we are now, and I don’t know what’s going on, but you can’t be ‘with,’ or whatever, two girls, Lucas. You just can’t.”
“God, you are so lame.”
“I have never pretended otherwise.”
“If I had a dad around, I could ask him.” Lucas’s hands moved to his hips, even more defiant now.
It had been percolating since MaryAnne’s op-ed, this rebuke, the sting of how maybe Cleo fucked up and it could have been different with his dad, but still, it smacked her across the face. It was his default way of fighting, going right for her most vulnerable part, and he wasn’t wrong: she saw his dad’s name there, on the list, a reminder. Cleo tried to spend every moment she had while not working (and, admittedly, much of her time was spent working) with Lucas, putting Band-Aids on scrapes, reading bedtime stories before she returned to her office to review drafts of legislation, attending as many soccer games as she possibly could (so most, though not all), and, until a few years ago, he’d taken her at her word: that it had always been just the two of them, and they didn’t need anything, anyone else. He had been curious, sure, about why other kids had present fathers, but he hadn’t been pushy and he hadn’t been bothered. That changed around twelve, right about when puberty set in, and Cleo had to talk to him about all sorts of things that neither of them particularly wanted to discuss but discussed anyway. Body hair. Erections. She even broached masturbation once, but it was a bridge too far and ended quickly.
But she told him, clearly and with some finality over dinner one night—Cleo knew they were going to get into the heart of it, so she came home early to cook spaghetti and fresh marinara (his favorite and really one of the few things Cleo knew how to make)—that his dad didn’t want to play a part. The same line she used when the press had raised it in her first congressional run. And because Cleo took people at their words, she said to Lucas, she had honored what his dad said and reminded him that impregnating someone is not the same thing as being a father. Besides, she added, both when he was twelve and anytime he raised it after that, we are not the type of people who chase down others who spurn us. We never will be.
Cleo never felt good about it, this discussion and some of the mistruths she represented in it, but Lucas trusted her, and for the most part, that was that.
“Your having a father wouldn’t change the fact that it’s not fair to Marley Jacobson if you are FaceTiming Esme!” Cleo managed tonight.
She thought of her list, tucked in that top drawer, and remembered why she locked it. Because of this discussion. Because of Doug. Because how that night was such a massive clusterfuck of regret, even when, of course, it couldn’t be. Of how Lucas would feel if he saw it or understood it or had any idea the panic that she felt not just when she woke up and realized she’d had unprotected sex with a guy she really barely knew (it was Cleo’s only one-night stand both before and since) but also when she realized—ten weeks later—that she was pregnant.
Cleo’s period had always, always been reliable. To the afternoon, to the time of day. It was so reliable that she gave it no thought. At that point, she’d had so much else on her plate. Her grandmother was gone, her parents obviously too. She was focused on making dean’s list, on her law school acceptances, on completing her honors thesis. It didn’t even occur to her that her period was late, because it was one of the few things she could count on. Almost two months later, she woke up in a deep sweat, as if her body were literally waking up to a realization that something was changing, and she ran to the twenty-four-hour CVS down the street from the apartment she shared with two other girls. (Friends she’d made in the Club Against Homelessness!, a.k.a. CAH!, which she enjoyed—they visited shelters twice a month and brought gently used clothes and read to and played with the kids—but she knew looked great on her résumé, to be honest.) By the time she got an appointment at student health and saw the ultrasound, she was almost through her first trimester. Sure, her breasts had been a little sore, but she hadn’t been sick, her stomach wasn’t pooching, she hadn’t been exhausted in the way she figured pregnant women were supposed to be. The doctor (a man) told her the news with a moderated tone, a neutral expression, and Cleo wondered how, for someone so smart, she could have been so dumb.