Nine
Nine
JULY 2021
Tess’s voice echoes in my head. “Someone knows about us,” she says.
My hand fumbles the phone. I grip it tighter and rub the stubble along my jawline. She sounds exactly the same. Her voice quivers just like it did at seventeen.
Except we aren’t kids anymore. My mind spirals as I try to figure out who could know and what that could mean.
“There’s a photo of us, from that summer,” Tess says. “Grant, we need to meet. Soon.”
Just then my wife, Cecilia, walks into the kitchen.
I turn my back and stare out the window. My voice is low as I reply to Tess. “Now is not a good time. Can you text me the details? I agree we should discuss this in person.”
Tess harshly whispers, “Fine,” and I hang up.
I rest my hands on either side of the sink. This is fixable. At least that’s my hope. Although I always seem to make a mess of things involving Tess Murphy.
“Who was that?” Cecilia asks, walking up behind me, eyes narrowed.
“A campaign donor.” The lie slips easily out of my mouth.
“I feel like our lives revolve around donors these days,” Cece says with a sigh. “There’s so much to do before tonight, Grant. I need your focus for two minutes.”
I don’t respond quickly enough, and Cece says my name again. I close my eyes, trying to erase Tess’s ghost so that I can concentrate on my wife. There is a donor dinner tonight, hosted in our home, and Cece is already irritated.
“I’m sorry,” I say, a smile plastered across my face. “You have my undivided attention.”
There are delivery trucks lining our driveway and strangers moving throughout the rooms, rearranging, preparing, and following the party planner’s orders.
Cecilia is slamming kitchen cabinets louder than the builder’s soft-close finish ever intended. This is her way of telling me she is upset about the bodies cluttering our home.
She turns toward me, lips pressed together tightly, and I can’t help but laugh. She’s trying to be supportive, but Cecilia craves privacy and these constant invasions of our home have been bothering her for months. Last week it was a photo shoot for some magazine, tonight the party, and I’m sure Stuart has planned a dozen or so additional events between now and November.
“Anything bothering you, Cece?” I ask, watching her move around the kitchen, adjusting a vase of flowers, wiping the marble counters.
“Why would anything bother me, Grant? It’s a beautiful summer day. You are the Republican nominee for governor. Everything is perfect.” The way her pitch escalates at the end of each sentence suggests she feels otherwise.
“Everything?” My head tilts sideways. “Because it seems like something is bothering you.”
“I’m fine.” She eyes me critically. “Is that what you’re wearing today?”
I look down at my khaki pants and golf shirt. “I feel like my answer should be no, but I’m not sure why.”
“You can change before the party tonight. I’ll lay your clothes out on our bed. I want to make sure we coordinate this time. The picture from the event last week was a disaster.”
“You are going to lay out my clothes for me? Am I your third child?”
Cecilia’s eyebrows shoot up and I quickly say, “Never mind. Don’t answer that. Besides, no picture of you has ever been a disaster.”
I watch Cecilia’s eyes wander as she nervously nibbles on the inside of her cheek. “Cece, what’s going on?”
Cecilia sighs deeply and I see the concern streaking her eyes. “Nothing important. There are a million things to do before the party tonight and the boys leave next week for camp. It’s hard to get anything done with these people around.” She whispers “these people” with the judgment and disdain used by gossiping grandmothers.
“I’ll talk to Stuart. No more of these big events at our home.”
She nods, but none of her concern disappears.
“The boys are old enough,” I say, attempting to decode what’s worrying her. “Ten-year-olds should be spending the summer in the woods, not on a campaign trail.”
We decided early in the race that if I won the nomination, the twins would spend the summer at sleepaway camp in Maine so we could focus on the campaign. Cecilia reluctantly agreed.
I reach for a cinnamon roll on the platter of pastries someone has brought in. “Declan and Hudson are going to have the time of their lives. And Stuart is going to keep you so busy you won’t have time to miss the boys.”
Cecilia gives me the look she usually reserves for the end of the day, after I’ve done something to piss her off. “Grant. Don’t be ridiculous. They are our sons and six weeks is a long time to be apart. I am going to miss them so much.”
I lean my head backward, pausing before I respond. “We are both going to miss them like crazy, but this is the best solution for everyone.”
She looks at me like I’m some clueless dad from the fifties. Sometime in the last decade of parenting, I was relegated to the position of sidekick. Oftentimes, the incompetent assistant, rendering my parenting opinions irrelevant. It’s a dynamic of my own creating, I realize. Long hours working when the boys were infants led to Cecilia doing it all, because I was too slow with the diaper changes or I didn’t know that the boys liked baseball better than football that week.
I get it. But it feels like shit to be useless to your own family.
I take a giant bite of the cinnamon roll, Cecilia watching my movements, her nose scrunching upward.
“You shouldn’t eat that,” Cecilia says. She decided to give up gluten a year ago for who knows what health-related reasons, which basically means that I eat as many sandwiches as I can during the day and graciously accept whatever grain-free dinner she gives me at night.
“I know,” I say, diving in for another bite. “That’s why it tastes so good.” The frosting sticks to my lips and I grab Cecilia’s waist before she can run, pulling her in and briefly brushing my mouth against hers.
“You’re purposefully glutening me, Grant.” She squirms away and I try to ignore the fact that my wife flinches when we kiss.
I fake a smile and say, “Yep. Do you think you’ll survive?”
“Barely,” Cecilia whispers.
And then my wife, with her regimented exercise routine and daily diet and closet organized by color and season, surprises me. Cecilia leans forward and takes a bite of the cinnamon roll in my hand.
She closes her eyes as she says, “That’s delicious.”
All of a sudden, it feels like we’re thirty again, before kids and campaigns and bread substitutes that taste like Styrofoam. Back when Cecilia would look at me across a room, raise her eyebrows, and I never knew what kind of trouble she had in mind, but I would always hope it was the naked kind.
I lean forward, whispering into her ear, “What if we did something else crazy? Let’s sneak away, take a drive to the mountains, maybe grab a pizza on our way. The weather is too nice to be stuck inside.” I’m tired of polling numbers and conversations with strangers. I want one small break for one morning before the whirlpool of our lives resumes.
Cecilia raises her eyebrows and my hope soars for a moment. “Except we have two children asleep upstairs and a house full of strangers,” she says.
“I know. It’s perfect. Built in babysitters. Come on, Cecilia. We need this.” It’s an understatement because the intensity of the campaign has only magnified the long-simmering issues in our marriage.
It looks like she’s considering my suggestion, and I feel the tension in my body begin to disappear. Mentally, I’m already driving down Route 15, watching houses fade away from view as the Blue Ridge Mountains roll across the horizon. But then Cecilia’s shoulders hunch, tenseness overtaking her, and I realize I’m wrong. She’s not considering the suggestion; she’s criticizing it.
“I’m not leaving our children with a bunch of campaign interns. The last thing I need is a day away from my children right before they leave for six weeks. Besides, you need to prepare for this fundraiser.”
And just like that, the bristly version of Cecilia is back, listing all the practical reasons why we can’t ignore our responsibilities. We used to steal moments away all the time. She’d meet me at the office with takeout and a bottle of wine. I’d sneak home in the middle of the day to hold the twins while she showered, and she looked at me like I was a living hero. We liked making each other’s lives better and spending time together. Now a kiss on the cheek falls somewhere on the nightly checklist between teeth brushing and phone scrolling.
There is a litany of things we should discuss: how she really feels about the campaign, the tidal wave of change on the horizon if I win the election, why we seem to piss each other off more than make each other laugh. But we only make time to talk about logistics and the kids’ schedules. Maybe it’s better this way, because if we’re too busy to talk, then I don’t have to worry about the truth slipping out. And she won’t have time to notice that my entire body seizes every time Tess’s name is mentioned.
Cecilia returns to her standard morning routine, setting out bowls of oatmeal for Declan and Hudson that they will complain about but eat reluctantly, the momentary chink in her rigidity repaired.
“I’ll see you this afternoon, Grant. Don’t forget to change your clothes.” She starts to leave the room, but I reach for her arm, stopping her.
“Cece, I know this campaign is a huge sacrifice, especially for you and the boys. I promise I will spend my life making it up to you. We just have to get through the next few months and everything will be different.”
She pauses, sweeping the wisp of blond hair that has escaped her ponytail behind her ear. “Oh, Grant. I love that you believe that.” She walks away before I can respond.
I debate following Cecilia but know there’s no point. I’ve been married long enough to understand there are fights best left ignored.
Dispirited, I walk toward my study, hoping to find my campaign manager, Stuart. We were going to work out of my house today to minimize distractions before the donor dinner tonight.
Stuart’s known me for years. We met at St. Albans, as scrawny and insecure boys navigating boarding school, with parents rarely around, left alone too often. Stuart fell hard for D.C., a political junkie through and through. He lives and breathes campaigns, bouncing around from one to another. He’s too experienced to be my campaign manager, but we both know this is just step one in his plan. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that his plans excite me.
When he first approached me four years ago about running, I said no. But Stuart was persistent. And a pain in the ass. He wore me down, and last year I announced a leave of absence from my hedge fund to start the campaign. Stuart has been by my side for most of my life, except for the one summer that changed everything.
I walk into my study, staring down at my phone, wondering if I should call Tess back. Wondering if I should finally tell Stuart everything.
“Cecilia seems pissed,” a deep voice rumbles from inside the room.
My fist clenches instinctively, surprise and then anger in my eyes. It isn’t Stuart; it’s my father.
“Why is your wife pissed?” Richard Alexander asks with amusement in his voice. “Did she find out about your old girlfriend?”
“What do you want , Richard?” I ask, my disdain cloaking pure hatred. He still has the ability to rile me up.
The last time I saw my father was the twins’ ninth birthday party. Cece rented a laser tag company to set up a course in our backyard. I was watching the boys, in their mock spy gear, rolling around and laughing with their friends, when my father put a hand on my shoulder and said, “A bit juvenile, don’t you think?”
I did not think so. I thought it was a fucking awesome party, one I would have loved as a nine-year-old. When I told him all of this, it devolved into a screaming match having very little to do with birthday parties and more about the pain and mistakes that fueled our hatred. Cece thought the presence of the boys’ third-grade class and their families would cause us to act civilly, but it didn’t.
I used to understand Cece’s attempts to maintain a connection, but after a while, I resented her efforts. Because I never acted the way Cecilia wanted me to act, and she didn’t seem interested in how I actually felt. Thankfully, Cece doesn’t try to orchestrate family reunions anymore. Left alone, my father and I are content with zero contact. Which is why his appearance in my study is so jarring.
“Can’t a father visit his son’s home?” he asks. He is pretending that there is some semblance of normalcy to our relationship.
I stalk across the room and point to the door. “I don’t have time for this. Leave.”
His steel eyes meet mine. His voice is quiet but full of force. “Close the door, son. We have things to discuss.”
I wonder when a day will come when I can tell my father no. I never could do it as a child, but I thought that would change as an adult. It hasn’t. My house is full of eavesdropping strangers and there is a fragile campaign in the balance. I close the door, hoping that my life is moving closer to the day of standing up to this man instead of further away.
I sit behind my desk and lean forward. “What? Just say whatever you came to say and then leave.”
My father takes his time, settling into the chair across from mine, leaning back with smug satisfaction and commanding more space than he actually occupies. He’s always been such an imposing figure in my life. His dark hair is mostly gray and there are deep lines creased in his face, but it’s his permanent expression that makes everyone around him sit taller, speak less. There’s no joy in his face, only business. Everything is a job. To a boy, he was terrifying. To some grown men, I suppose there is something aspirational about my father’s demeanor. But to me, a product of all that misery, it’s just sad.
Richard shakes his head as he says, “Only you, Grant. Only you could bungle this kind of opportunity.”
“Do you want to issue general criticisms or get into specifics? What opportunity have I handled so poorly?”
“You’re going to lose to that country trash,” he says, waving his hand dismissively into the air.
Everything about him infuriates me. I stopped trying to make him proud long ago. But he can’t even acknowledge the work I’ve put in to get to this place. Any success I’ve had in life, from school to career, could have been better. I should have graduated with highest honors instead of honors. Nothing was ever good enough. But it’s not the assumption that I’m going to lose the race that makes me stand and scream at him.
“She’s not trash,” I say, and I’m immediately eighteen again, having the same fight that destroyed everything I loved.
He laughs. Because my attempt to defend Tess now is just as pointless as it was then. “You sound like your mother. I never understood what either of you saw in that girl.”
“Don’t bring up my mother,” I snap, aware that no walls could ever contain our exchanges.
“Your mother was a drunk. Don’t try to defend her, Grant.”
My eyes widen and it takes all my restraint not to wrap my hands around his neck. “Don’t ever talk about my mother!” I shout into his face.
He stands. “I wouldn’t make an enemy out of me, Grant. I know secrets that could destroy your future.”
“Secrets that would destroy our futures. That’s the problem, right? Our names tie us together despite the fact that both of us wish otherwise.”
“You’re ungrateful. For all the opportunities I’ve created for you. None of this life would have been possible without me.”
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard him proclaim his greatness. I used to try to reason and defend myself. But now I know it’s pointless. “You’ve never understood that I don’t want it. I never wanted any of the so-called opportunities you created for me.”
My father scoffs, a response he practices frequently in sterile boardrooms and oak-walled studies. “Grant, everything you have—the beautiful wife, the adoring children, the money, the political ambitions. That’s all because of me. Because I provided and planned and created access for every single detail of your life. You’ve never appreciated my power to give. But you understand my power to take it all away. I could make just one phone call and destroy you.”
“Do it,” I say, holding my fist behind my back so that he can’t see it shake. For a moment I wonder what would happen. Because he’s right, about his control over my life and how quickly everything could disappear. My stomach churns.
He reaches for the door handle and smiles. “No. My son, the governor has a nice ring to it. I’ll keep quiet for now.”
“What does that mean? Did you say something?” I ask too quickly.
My father’s eyes widen. He smirks as he says, “No. I didn’t.” He tilts his head sideways, examining my face as I try to hide my concern. But I could never hide anything from my father.
“You have a leak, don’t you?” he asks. I look away, frustrated that he seems to always be right. “It’s a good thing I have a plan, Grant.”
“Whatever you planned, forget it,” I say. “I can handle this.”
He laughs, a short, loud bark that echoes throughout the room. “I’ve lost count of how many messes I’ve fixed. You could never handle anything involving that girl.”
“Stay away from me,” I say, voice rising. “I don’t want your help.”
“It’s not your choice,” Richard says.
He leaves and I wonder why he even came. After a year of not seeing each other, when I am focused on the biggest development in my professional life, why does he reemerge?
But then it’s clear. My father has never been able to go long without asserting his control. I watched him do it to my mother for years, only I was a boy and didn’t understand the nuances of their relationship. His tactics may be different, but he might as well have slapped me across the face. He’s in charge and I should be afraid.
My face is cradled in my hands, my body leaning against the wall for stability, when Stuart walks into my office, quietly closing the door.
“Don’t let him back in here. Ever again,” I say.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t see him until it was too late.” Stuart’s face is full of regret. He doesn’t know everything, but he knows enough about the dynamic with my father to realize that this isn’t a distraction I need right now.
I blow a slow stream of air out of my mouth, trying to exhale all of the feelings of anger and inadequacy that accompany every interaction with my father.
Stuart wants to go all the way to the White House. He’s been saying it since his first campaign. He’s gotten one candidate to the top of the ticket but suffered a painfully close loss. When he approached me, said I was the horse he was betting on, I felt a sense of pride. Stuart can get me onboard with even the most dreaded campaign tasks with one whisper of “you’re my winner.” That’s how Stuart’s dreams became my dreams. Because if I was the governor, or the president, it would finally erase my father’s claims that I was a failure.
I don’t want to let Stuart down, and yet, in every step of this campaign, it’s a fear I confront.
“What was the fight about?” Stuart asks. His face is neutral and his question is genuine. If Stuart overheard our discussion, he wouldn’t have been able to hide it from me.
“It’s always the same,” I say, trying to recover. “My father doesn’t believe in me.”
“Well, he’s wrong,” Stuart says. “I’m looking at the next governor of Virginia. You will beat Tess Murphy.”
I force a small smile, hoping Stuart is right. I’d like to be more than a mistake my father fixes. But my father is rarely wrong. I can’t admit that when I lost a fight with Tess more than two decades ago, it was the most painful loss of my life.