63
I received another interesting call in mid-October, this time from Miss Dubois at the Washington Post.
“Mrs. Diamond,” she said by way of greeting. “Have you given any thought to your career after this campaign is over?”
“I—uh ...” My hand hovered over the press release I had been editing in pencil, the phone cradled between my ear and my shoulder. “I’m sorry, is this for an article?”
“No, Mrs. Diamond. I am an editor, not a reporter.”
“I see. I haven’t—I don’t have a real plan. I’m going back to being a full-time mom, I think. Win or lose.”
“Are you open to another option?”
Was I? “Maybe—but likely not until my daughter is in school. My mother has made it clear she doesn’t intend to be my babysitter past the election.”
“I’ll speak plainly, Mrs. Diamond. Your column was popular. Wildly so. And I would like to offer you the opportunity to write for us on a weekly basis. I would assume that is something you could do even with a daughter at home.”
I didn’t speak for long enough that Miss Dubois asked if I was still on the line.
“Yes, I’m sorry, I’m here.”
“I will need an answer, Mrs. Diamond. I am quite busy.”
“What would I write about?”
“It would be a political column, Mrs. Diamond. About what you feel women voters should know.”
I started to say I would need to think about it. But what came out was “Yes. I would love that.”
“Your first column will be due on November 19. Five hundred words. And I don’t tolerate tardiness. Good day, Mrs. Diamond.”
She was gone before I could reply.
I wasn’t my cousin Marilyn by any stretch. I would never write a novel or be a famous author. But I had learned in the last few months that I had a voice and a lot to say with it. And especially without a husband to cater to, I could write while Debbie napped or after the kids went to bed. Apparently, it was possible to have it all in the modern world.
The morning of October 22 started like every other. I woke up to the sound of my alarm at six. It had taken two months before my body adjusted to sleeping past five, and now, if I didn’t set an alarm, I slept until the children woke me. Which, with Debbie’s new fondness for my bed, wasn’t typically past six, but we would get there. I quickly showered and dressed and made the kids their breakfast, then slipped outside to grab the newspaper from our front step while they ate. My mother had taken to arriving at eight, usually driven by my father, and just in time for me to leave. With them living together again, she had graciously granted me the use of her car.
I returned to the kitchen and set the newspaper at my place at the table, ruffling Robbie’s hair as I went to grab my coffee from the counter. Then I flipped past the front section to Metro, as had become habit. It was where news of the campaign would be, along with issues that were most pressing to local people as opposed to national events.
My toast was halfway to my mouth when I dropped it.
The top headline on the front page of the section read “Maryland’s Senator Gibson paid young woman to lie about opponent’s affair.”
For a split second, I thought it meant me and Michael. Then I read the first paragraph.
Linda’s sister must have agreed to talk to them, I thought. But as I read further, the source was named as a member of Sam’s campaign staff.
I leaned back from the table, looking at the kids, but not seeing them. Could it have been Larry?
Everything I knew about him said he wouldn’t sabotage his own campaign. Even after his acknowledgment that he was leaving, and that Sam wasn’t a good person. But who else could it plausibly be?
Either way, I raced to the office as soon as my mother arrived, waving the newspaper triumphantly like a flag as I entered.
Michael picked me up and spun me around, and Paul, whose classes began at noon that day, popped the cork on a bottle of champagne that someone had gifted Michael and poured it into paper cups that Claire passed around. She returned to his side when she was finished, and he pulled her in for a long kiss that didn’t look like a first. I smiled even wider and raised my paper cup in a toast.
But once we finished celebrating, our conversation turned to the same thing I had wondered, with Michael asking if it was possible that Larry was the source.
“Anything is possible,” I said. “Just look at us.”
“It wasn’t Larry,” Stuart said, taking a sip of his champagne.
Michael and I looked at him. “How do you know?” I asked.
Linda ducked her head, and Stuart’s face spread into the most genuine smile I had seen from him yet.
“No,” I said. Linda nodded. “Why?”
But she wasn’t smiling. “Because he’s controlled my family for too long,” she said. “I don’t want to be scared of him anymore.” She looked up at Stuart. “But Stuart said I didn’t have to be.” He wrapped a protective arm around her, and I found myself swallowing a lump.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“I appreciate that you trusted me,” Linda said. “I wouldn’t have been as kind as you have been if it were me.”
I held out a hand to her, and she took it, and I looked around at the people gathered, who had become my second family. “No matter what happens two weeks from tomorrow,” I said, “we’re all going to be okay because we did this together.”
Then Stuart yelled at me in typical Stuart fashion for being maudlin when this article was a clear indicator that we were going to win in a landslide.
“I love you too, you big lout,” I said. “And just so you know, if we do win, I’m pouring a whole bottle of champagne on your head.”
He grinned.
And then that evening, everyone forgot Sam Gibson existed.
President Kennedy addressed the nation, telling us that the Soviets had built nuclear missile launchers ninety miles from Key West, in Cuba.
My aunt Rose called the house in hysterics, telling me I had to talk some sense into my cousin and get her to fly home to New York immediately. I said I would try, which wasn’t good enough for her, but the reality was that if Khrushchev launched missiles from Cuba, it didn’t matter if Marilyn was ninety miles away or nine thousand. And to be honest, she might be better off being closer if it came to that.
Larry called, asking if we were okay. I said we were, but it was a lie. No one was okay.
And for the next week, all we could do was watch the news in absolute terror.
“Jack has a good head on his shoulders,” my father said of the president the following morning. “He’ll de-escalate this quickly.”
“ Jack ,” my mother snapped, mocking his familiar use of the president’s nickname, “is practically Beverly’s age. What does he know about avoiding nuclear war?”
“Would you rather have Nixon right now?”
“This doesn’t help anything,” I said. “And you’re just scaring the children when you bicker.”
“I don’t see how you can send Robbie to school and then go off to work in times like these.”
Part of me agreed. I wanted to hold him and Debbie and never let go. If the end was going to come, I wanted them in my arms when it did. And the idea of Robbie cowering under a school desk broke my heart. But I repeated the president’s words to my mother. “The greatest danger of all would be to do nothing,” I said. “That’s what the president told us. We can’t stop our lives and hide.”
“If Khrushchev attacks, there won’t be an election.”
I looked at her from the doorway. “If Khrushchev attacks, there won’t be a world. If he doesn’t, I want to make sure that world looks safer for my kids.” She started sputtering arguments, but I just couldn’t. “You decide what to do with Robbie,” I said. “I trust your judgment. But I’m going to the office. I love you both.”
Stuart had brought in a small television, and we kept it on in the corner all day, watching to see if the programming would be interrupted with an update. Campaigning slowed to a crawl. The phones stopped ringing, except for the odd call asking what Michael would do to stop the situation with the Soviets if he won.
Sam, on the other hand, launched a television ad toward the end of the week. It was him, speaking to the camera, talking about the situation in Cuba and the importance of not changing horses in midstream.
“He does know a single senator can’t do a damn thing to stop a nuclear war, doesn’t he?” Stuart asked.
“He does. But he’s hoping voters don’t,” Michael said.
“If this is still going on, no one is coming to the polls.”
“If it’s not still going on, we might all be dead,” I said. “And by the time this is over, no one is going to remember the Post story.”
That was the salt in the wound. We had him. And then we didn’t.
“Let’s worry about what we can control,” Michael said. “This is scary for everyone. Marilyn’s ad is better produced, and Sam has to be running his budget into the ground with his.”
“What can we control right now?” I asked.
Michael smiled tightly. “Let’s use Sam’s playbook. We talk about de-escalation tactics and our desire to make sure the world is a safer place for our children.”
“You already talk about making the world safer.”
“Can we tweak our flyers to the situation though?”
I grabbed one off the top of the stack at the front of the office and picked up a pencil. “Better than sitting around waiting to be blown to kingdom come.”
Linda typed up the changes once Michael and Stuart approved them, and I used rubber cement to affix a photograph of Michael to it before going to get them photocopied. Our volunteer squad had dwindled down to ten of the hardiest, who felt that sitting around worrying wasn’t helping, and we dispatched them around town to hand out the new flyers.
And like the rest of the country and world, we waited, hoped, and prayed.
Then, as quickly as it began, the threat lifted—well, mostly. On October 28, Khrushchev announced he would dismantle the missiles, and we went back to work. But the story about Sam and Linda’s sister was dead in the water. And the latest polling numbers had us trailing him by seven points.
“Polls are notoriously unreliable, especially for local elections,” my father warned. “A lot of people who answer don’t vote, and a lot of people who vote aren’t polled.”
The Post issued their endorsement, in an editorial listing their selections for all the candidates in the DC metro area, and Michael was the clear choice. They cited Sam’s filibustering of one of the civil rights acts and the situation six years ago.
But as I got into bed on November 5, exhausted from our last round of efforts, I couldn’t sleep, wondering if I had achieved anything these past months. This wasn’t a case where there was glory in coming in second. It was a firm win-or-lose. And if we lost, I wondered how much more I would lose. Would Michael still want to pursue a relationship if I failed him? Would the Washington Post still trust me to provide insight for women voters? Debbie would be too young to remember my months of working, but would Robbie view it as nothing more than his mother’s pitiful attempt at revenge? And as I looked down at Debbie’s sleeping form next to me, I realized my absence during the day was likely behind her refusal to sleep anywhere but at my side.
Had I upended all our lives to chase something that would remain just out of reach?
In a perfect world, of course Michael would win. He was the better man. The better candidate. We had all the passion of nobility on our side.
But if the past few weeks had shown me anything at all, it was that our world was far from perfect. And greed, corruption, and scheming were often rewarded over virtue.
I sighed as Debbie snuggled in tight to me, her little body fitting itself perfectly into the nooks of my own. No. I did this for her as much as for me. Because I wanted this little girl to grow up to know she could do so much more than just marry well and make the perfect brisket. I wanted her to see that she could do anything, be anything, from a wife and mother to an astronaut. Okay, maybe not an astronaut. I’d worry too much. But the doors that had been locked for my mother’s generation were merely shut firmly for me. And by the time Debbie grew up, I wanted them open, so she could walk right through, to whatever future she wanted. Because she deserved to be the person she wanted to be, not just who the world expected her to be.
And come what may tomorrow, I would make sure she learned that lesson, just as I had these last few months.