Gaby and her comms team had gotten out ahead of the story, true. But like it or not, that hadn’t quashed it entirely. The op-ed had over ten thousand retweets on Twitter, and Cleo was also trending, albeit not at number one, so that was a relief. It was nuts, Cleo thought, how this theoretically unimportant—and, more critically, unverified—gossip could take off so quickly. Sometimes politicians used this to their advantage. But today Cleo was playing cleanup. She did one interview: Gabrielle didn’t think that Cleo needed to give such a piece wall-to-wall coverage, and besides, she had to be on the Senate floor for votes, and she simply couldn’t devote all her time to an old high school dispute with her former best friend.
On CNN, her one interview with Wolf Blitzer, she’d come off as human, flawed (in a good way, which mattered in polling numbers), but not terribly contrite, which Cleo had thought was acceptable.
“Should we all apologize for being self-centered at seventeen?” Cleo had laughed when Wolf asked her if MaryAnne’s charges of selfishness had merit. “Because I have a fourteen-year-old, and I’m pretty sure that this comes with the territory of being a teenager.”
“Speaking of him—” Wolf didn’t have to finish his question.
“Wolf, I can say unequivocally that her lurid insinuation about my son’s father—which is our private family matter—is untrue. I don’t know who her source was, but her facts are wrong. And I don’t want to have to discuss this further.” Cleo didn’t mention that the accusation of an affair was indeed accurate. Because she didn’t want to have to waste any energy thinking about that man, that mistake, and besides, she felt confident that by batting down MaryAnne’s gossip with facts, she could bat down the rest of it too. On this, with Wolf, she proved correct.
“Also, Wolf, I should say that I’d rather not discuss my son.”
Lucas was going to be pissed that she’d mentioned him publicly, though technically this was MaryAnne’s fault—generally, he would have preferred that she ignore his existence in any capacity other than at home and/or when he needed money or food or a ride or whatever else he requested when he emerged from his room, and he certainly did not like her to mention him in interviews. But it was true: teenagers were assholes, and Cleo didn’t want to lose the chance at the presidential nomination because of that.
“Moody teenage years do have the right to be off-limits . . .” Wolf smiled.
“And no one gets out of those unscathed.” Cleo smiled.
Wolf chuckled but pressed her. “I have a grown daughter. I understand. But . . . why did your friend raise this at all, if it’s all untrue? Just a baseless smear?”
“You’d have to ask her about her intentions,” Cleo replied, and immediately she knew this was a mistake. Cleo rarely made mistakes, much less in public, much less with Wolf Blitzer. The last thing she wanted was CNN chasing down MaryAnne Newman and combing through Cleo’s childhood—or any of it. She knew some of this was inevitable with a presidential run; with her congressional campaigns—barring her first campaign against Martin Bridgewater, which had been a bit of a nail-biter—she’d easily triumphed, and any opposition research had been limited and squelched quickly, but she didn’t need to direct the cameras to MaryAnne’s doorstep.
Cleo followed up before Wolf could latch on to her slip. “What I mean, Wolf, is that of course there were petty disagreements. If memory serves, we both chased the coveted editor of the paper position and a junior-year summer internship, and we were both on the debate team. I was captain. Perhaps MaryAnne thought that she should have been instead. It was a long time ago, before . . . well, as you and your viewers know, my senior year was difficult for many reasons—”
“Your parents,” Wolf interjected, as if Cleo had forgotten.
“Yes, well, my parents were killed the summer before in a helicopter accident, and I don’t think that any seventeen-year-old can be expected to handle that with the grace that’s required. Not completely anyway.”
Cleo did not want to play the “dead parents card” any more than she wanted to play the “Lucas card.” But it was true: her parents had been killed when, as a surprise anniversary present, her dad took her mom up on a new Boeing chopper he was working on, and Cleo then had to move in with her grandmother. And maybe she still would have cut MaryAnne off at the knees to be the editor of the paper—she was the golden child of the household, and she knew, both then and now, that her parents had hung the moon on her achievements—but Cleo couldn’t say now. Her dad had taught her to reach for what she wanted, to grab hold and dig her nails in deep, so she didn’t think he would mind her mentioning her parents now. With Wolf. On national TV. With the presidential bid calling. Her mother, though . . . her mother may have minded.
“So you do have regrets?” Wolf asked.
“Don’t all people have regrets?” She hoped her face didn’t twitch when she said this, betraying her. She’d have to rewatch the tape later to be sure.
Wolf nodded at this and let her off the hook. Politicians being human was always a good thing to go to commercial with.
Did Cleo have regrets? Of course she did. But this did not please Gaby.
“I love you, Clee,” she said once the CNN crew had left their offices and in between bites of her midday omelet (protein). She passed Cleo a wipe to remove the TV makeup. “But you admitted that you’ve made mistakes. Men can do that. Women, not so much.”
Gaby reminded Cleo of her mother when she said this, which was maybe part of the reason they were such good friends. Cleo had discipline, to be sure. But Gaby had acumen beyond the rigidity and focus needed to become a congresswoman at twenty-five and a senator at thirty-one. Gaby had been the one to nurse the slow but steady drumbeat of support for a presidential run, molding Cleo’s messages and tone, which initially were more strident than necessary and probably more off-putting than Cleo realized. MaryAnne wasn’t the only one from Seattle who harbored a grudge. And probably Northwestern. And Columbia Law. Cleo was likable enough to get elected but not so likable that she ever would have won a popularity contest of her peers. She didn’t care all that much, but Gaby did, which was why Gaby had vision, just like Mona, Cleo’s mom, who’d had vision in a different way—she’d been part of the company at the Pacific Northwest Ballet until she first got pregnant, and then she picked up painting, as if that had been a natural course for her all along. She became fairly well-known for her work within the Seattle art scene—not because she was Georgia O’Keeffe or Frida Kahlo (the list of famous female artists was sadly significantly shorter than their male peers) but because she had a unique ability to capture a specific, piercing emotion in each of her works. As if she could see through not just her subjects but her audience too. Gaby was like this: a seer, and it made her extremely excellent at her job and dangerous too.
“I didn’t mean to sound weak,” Cleo said. Her stomach growled as Gaby tore into her omelet. “And I don’t think I did. Isn’t part of the human experience admitting your mistakes?”
“Human but not female.”
“Disagree.” Cleo palmed her stomach, as if this would quell her hunger. “Part of being a good lawmaker is the ability to adapt.” Cleo thought of her dad, how he’d tell her to jab left if she couldn’t jab right. To dance, to move, to win. And her mom would laugh and laugh when she and her dad did this little jig in their kitchen—his hands up and Cleo punching them, as if her dad were an amateur boxer and not a nerdy Boeing engineer, and as if Cleo were a prizefighter, not a middle schooler who barely made the growth charts. And how happy it made Cleo to see her mom laugh and to please both of them. That laughter and approval and Cleo winning were all knotted together, especially after Georgie, her older sister, had been such a disappointment.