“And I’ll be sure to let the press know when you do.”
“I’d expect nothing less.” Cleo nodded. “Though, I mean, we’re not going to film that.” She thought of Senator Jackman, a perfectly coiffed, straight-spined sixty-four-year-old ballbuster from the great state of Illinois. As open-minded as she was, she also came from a generation that cared about etiquette, and Cleo was certain she’d nix Gaby’s guerrilla-style filmmaking as she and Cleo hashed out the details. Besides, that type of policy work was the opposite of sexy. It would die on the internet vine unless the two of them ended up in some sort of salacious choke hold.
“No, we’re not going to film that,” Gaby said. “But it can still be a feather in your cap, a reconsideration, a regret addressed all the same.” She clicked her tongue. “That leaves us with two more. Give me the day, and I’ll let you know what’s next.”
“You told me we were doing all this on my recess,” Cleo argued. “In case you’ve forgotten, I’m not yet running for president, and I have to represent the people of New York in other matters right now, and who even said I want to do this?”
Gaby froze, literally, her hand in midair, her eyes as wide as globes. “You don’t want to run for president?”
“My regrets,” Cleo snapped. “After MaryAnne has gone so well, can we at least have a conversation about if I even want to do four more?”
Yesterday’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer still sat folded on her desk. She’d meant to ask Lucas last night if he’d gotten any further intel from Esme, but he’d had on his noise-canceling headphones and was so focused on his homework (she hoped it was his homework—perhaps she should more accurately say, so focused on his laptop) that she didn’t want to disturb him. Besides, she hadn’t yet figured out how to respond to the ad, much less to whatever was next in MaryAnne’s arsenal.
“The regrets list is what got Veronica here in the first place,” Gaby said.
“No, not the list, because she doesn’t know about that,” Cleo said. “Confirming?”
“Fine, the act of embracing said regrets. The semantics of it doesn’t matter, OK?” She grabbed the newspaper from Cleo’s desk and threw it—somewhat dramatically, Cleo thought—into the garbage can.
“Gab, you can’t just throw it away and act like there aren’t reverberations. That’s not how this works. That’s the very point of the list. That I did something and maybe there were ramifications. A lot of times, toward me. Some stupid stuff, like not finishing my antibiotics, but some other stuff too, like torpedoing MaryAnne’s internship.” Cleo sighed. “Just because you do that doesn’t make the ad disappear or the mess with MaryAnne disappear either. Besides, people already like me. Why risk that?”
“People like you enough, that’s true. But now we’re going to make them love you.”
“I never needed anyone to love me,” Cleo said.
“Well, maybe that’s where you’re shortsighted,” Gaby replied.
TEN
The truth was that even outside of high school, even well beyond the MaryAnne Newman situation and the “dumping her perfectly nice boyfriend” situation, Cleo McDougal really hadn’t ever been such a good person. The opening line to MaryAnne’s initial op-ed had been, in fact, quite accurate. Cleo didn’t think this was why her dad passed on his habit of noting his regrets—she didn’t believe that he believed that she was an inherently bad person. But now she couldn’t be sure either.
And nothing changed once she entered politics. If anything, politics amplified these characteristics. In politics, this self-involvement made her even more successful. Theoretically, politics was about bridging divides. Realistically, it was mostly every man (and woman) for themselves.
Cleo had removed the crumpled copy of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer from her garbage can when she returned from her Budget Committee meeting and before she had to run to a banquet retirement dinner for the Human Rights Campaign. She’d refolded it, carefully, and tucked it in her bag. She didn’t really know why. The lawyer in her told her it was evidence—of what, she wasn’t yet sure. The regretter in her also told her it was evidence but of her own culpability. Because she knew that she was culpable, even when she’d also been bruised, like with Alexander Nobells, like in her estranged relationship with Georgie.
As it turned out, Emily Godwin’s husband did some work for the HRC and was at the dinner too. Cleo had brought Arianna; she wanted to mentor her, to show her how women wielded their power out in the real world, not just on C-SPAN. But Arianna had seen a boy across the room from Senator Frost’s office, and Cleo sent her toward him with her blessing. God knew these things could be dull and also agonizing in small ways; why not enjoy a glass of wine with an ally and possibly a man to kiss you at the end of the night? (Maybe, even, as Gaby had suggested, find someone to love you and love in return too. Cleo wasn’t so impenetrable that Gaby’s comment hadn’t resonated just a little bit.)
Senator Jackman, the champion of the free housing initiative, lingered by the bar in an immaculately tailored red pantsuit—she was impossible to miss—and Cleo made a beeline and offered up her full and renewed support of the idea. The senior senator seemed both pleased and amused at Cleo’s change of heart, but in DC, everyone’s intentions were constantly shifting, and Senator Jackman knew better than to look a gift horse in the mouth. When someone offered to be your ally, you might privately ask yourself WTAF!, but you publicly nearly always shook on it. Indeed, Cleo clasped her hand, feeling quite good about herself for following up on her promise to Gaby (and the fact that this was the right policy to pursue for her constituents—New York real estate had boxed out too many deserving families), and then felt her stomach shift. She couldn’t remember what she’d eaten for lunch. Or breakfast actually.
So this was how Cleo ended up running into Emily Godwin’s husband at the buffet: he went for steak, she for salmon, and they were forced to make small talk (Cleo hated small talk) while waiting for the server to refresh the grilled vegetables. Jonathan was the kind of good-looking you saw throughout Washington—chiseled jaw, hair graying at the temples, wide shoulders—the kind of good-looking that earned him respect before he even opened his mouth, respect earned at literal face value. Cleo was nodding in agreement with him about something having to do with the boys’ soccer team but really thinking: This guy is given the benefit of the doubt in ways that I would never be granted. He was nice enough; none of this was his fault, but Cleo’s gut roiled and she lost her appetite for the salmon, which really wasn’t very good in the first place. (The food at these things rarely was.)
Jonathan got ushered out into the sea of other chitchatters, and Cleo found her table, happy to be seated, off her feet in her high heels, which she hated and found sexist but what was she going to do? Show up to a work dinner in flats? Lace up her sneakers, which were really only appropriate (for serious women) at the congressional gym? Across the room, she watched Arianna flirt with the other young aide, and it occurred to her that people all around her were having sex left and right, falling in love left and right, and here she was, elbows on a rented linen tablecloth, staring at her cold salmon, thinking about how much her toes hurt. Lucas’s perception of her dating life wasn’t quite accurate: there had been failed attempts, three dates in a row with a few men, some making out in cars or their bedrooms (if Lucas had a sitter or was at a sleepover), but something sustainable, something real, well, no, there hadn’t been that. She thought of Matty at the bar in the Sheraton, how she was surprised that she wouldn’t have minded if he’d kissed her. She realized that this was likely because she wouldn’t have minded being kissed, not because it had to be Matty. Was that how lonely, how isolated she’d become?