She squeezed her eyes closed. There was no point in arguing this further. Cleo had been brilliant at law school—she’d graduated number two. But Gaby was number one.
Gaby’s phone was on fire now, and she was on her feet, pointed toward the door. “Shit, I need to take this. MaryAnne Newman has officially become a pain in my ass.”
She headed toward the door just as Arianna in her blinding sweater rushed in, still pale, still nervous, with the WD-40.
“I’m sorry,” Arianna said to no one, to all of them.
Cleo did not correct her.
THREE
The condo was dark by the time Cleo got home. She’d made the decision when Lucas was starting kindergarten to move to DC full-time and commute back to New York, her representative state, on the weekends. With no coparent and no grandparents, there was simply no other way to do it and still provide him stability and also be a (relatively) present mother.
The day the movers came, though, she did jot the move down on her list of regrets. She thought she was doing the right thing—adding her voice to the political landscape—but she was twenty-eight and a single mom and, honestly, though she trusted her decision-making, she didn’t totally trust all her decision-making.
Thus, she supposed, the list. A way to track her decisions when they went awry.
That’s all her dad was trying to say from it, she was sure. She couldn’t ask him now. He had a brother who lived in . . . she wasn’t quite certain . . . she thought maybe Bozeman, and maybe she could have reached out over the years and asked if he kept a list too and why it started and if it gave him peace of mind, but her father and her uncle hadn’t been close, and she hadn’t heard from him since just around the funeral. Cleo wasn’t the type to chase down estranged relatives in Montana if they didn’t want to be involved in the first place.
She flipped on the lights in her kitchen. There was an abandoned half-empty pizza box on the counter, which meant Lucas was home from soccer practice and, she hoped, doing his homework, not rewatching Stranger Things, which he had now binged three times this spring and was actually beginning to concern her. She grabbed a slice, shoved the box in the fridge, and tiptoed to his room, devouring half the piece before she even reached his door. (The vanilla macadamia muffin had not been sustaining.) She didn’t want to eavesdrop, but she didn’t want to burst in there without knowing what she was getting herself into. Teenagers harbored all sorts of secrets.
His room was silent but the light was on, so she knocked, and he grunted, so she entered.
He was sprawled on his bed with his laptop open and his palm curled around his phone, which he immediately shoved under the covers. Cleo hoped he wasn’t looking at porn.
“Hey, how was your day? Soccer go OK?”
“Yep.”
“Your coach being nicer?”
While Lucas shared relatively little with Cleo (very, very, very little, in fact, but who knew what was normal, since he was her only child and she didn’t have very many mom friends), he had confided that his coach this year was being “a total dick.” Lucas had been blessed with a bit of a godly foot, something Cleo assumed he must have gotten from his father, who she thought she remembered had indeed been an athlete. Her son’s natural athleticism had been seamless until middle school, when his legs grew faster than the rest of his body, and he had to reconsider his gait and his balance, and also the other kids were bigger and shoved and elbowed, and everything about Lucas’s game had to be recalibrated. He was up for it, Cleo knew, but he had also had the good fortune of the game always coming easily. And so when he had to exert the effort, he was not pleased.
Which subsequently did not please Cleo. She didn’t want to raise someone who got by with half efforts. She would have to add it to her list of regrets in that case, and it would stay there forever. Cleo saw half-efforted people all the time in Congress, and frankly, they disgusted her. Not because you should apologize for being born into a dynasty or for being carried into your position on a wave of charming popularity, but because if you didn’t do the work once you held the golden ticket, what use were you to anyone?
This privilege reminded Cleo of MaryAnne Newman, who felt entitled to plenty of things, including evidently publishing disparaging op-eds on SeattleToday! about her former best friend. And now Gaby was toying with the idea of Cleo making amends with her? Cleo acknowledged her culpability in the detonation of their friendship, but the salaciousness of the paternity angle was a bridge too far. Really.
“Coach was fine today.”
“Mrs. Godwin dropped you off after practice?”
Lucas finally looked up and met her eyes. “I mean, I’m here, aren’t I?”
Cleo sighed. She’d learned in debate and law school to avoid stupid questions.
“I just wanted to be sure. My day got hectic, and I forgot to check in with her about carpool.”
“She asked me if you were OK after that . . . article.”
“Oh!” Cleo didn’t quite know what to say to this. Emily Godwin was one of her few mom friends at Lucas’s school, but they weren’t friend friends. She couldn’t call her up and say: My chief of staff wants me to expose all of my regrets; can I come cry into a giant vat of wine with you and watch shitty TV to distract myself?
In fact, she had no such friends like that, and maybe she should add that to her list of regrets too. It would be nice to have a normal, nonpolitical friend who didn’t have an angle and who you did more than text about carpool or covering for you at a PTA meeting. (Cleo had never attended a PTA meeting, my God!)
“I’ll text her right now,” Cleo said. “And thank her and tell her that I’m fine.”
“Are you?” Lucas’s face was washed with concern, and Cleo saw him as he used to be, before all the hormones overtook him and hair sprouted from his chin and an occasional crater of a zit planted roots on his forehead. Maybe he’d have been better off with a dad in his life; Cleo didn’t know.
“I am. I’m more worried about you.” Cleo sat on his bed, just on the edge, because he didn’t really like her in his space. “Is there anything else you want to talk about, with . . . that article this morning?” Cleo hoped the answer was no, but she acknowledged that it might be yes, and she’d have to deal with that too. That all this may have reopened questions, wounds about his dad. Obviously Lucas had asked about him from time to time. And she never felt good about her answers: vague, noncommittal, that she hadn’t known him well. What else was there to say? She had tried her best, she’d tried to be all things for him, she’d tried to love him from all sides and perspectives. She had tried to be enough.
“I’m OK,” he said. “Seemed like typical political bullshit.”
Cleo started to chastise him, but what was the point? Bullshit was well incorporated into his vocabulary now. She leaned over and kissed the top of his head, and he didn’t recoil, which was truly something. She did notice that he needed to wash his hair, but because they were having such an unusual moment of bonding, she let it go.
“Homework?” she asked.
“Already done.”
“Superstar,” she replied, just like her parents used to say to her.
Lucas gave her the finger, but she could tell he didn’t really mean it.