65
I was exhausted, and my feet hurt. But I wasn’t going anywhere. “Would anyone notice if I slipped off my shoes?” I whispered to Nancy.
She looked down at my feet. “Those are way too high. Have you even sat down today? Take mine.”
I glanced at her shoes, which were brown. “They don’t match my dress,” I said. “My mother would have a heart attack.”
“Your mother is three sheets to the wind and wouldn’t notice.”
“Trust me,” I said. “She could be dead and still notice my shoes. Besides, there’s press here.” I gestured with my chin toward the photographer roving the crowd. And it was quite a crowd. I had told the club to plan for two hundred people, and it would appear I underestimated.
“It’s a good sign,” she said, looking around the room.
She wasn’t wrong. And everyone looked so festive, almost like New Year’s Eve. The only underlying tension came off in waves from our core team, and it was an effort not to bite my nails, something I hadn’t done in at least fifteen years.
We had televisions stationed in three separate corners of the room, each tuned to a different channel, but no one expected returns to begin in earnest before eight. And we had sent Charlie to Annapolis with instructions to call the phone that Paul was manning as each district came in. Counties reported their results individually as their polls closed and they tallied votes. It would still be an estimate until we got official word from the state capital, but keeping track of the county winners would give us a solid idea of where we stood. And none of us wanted to wait a second longer than we had to.
Robbie and Debbie were yawning but running around with friends. I grabbed Nancy’s wrist and saw it was a quarter to eight.
“Fifteen more minutes or so,” I said.
Nancy shrugged. “Want me to take an inch off your shoes while we wait? I keep a hacksaw in the trunk.”
I would have laughed except I knew she was serious. But then someone touched my arm. “Mind if I steal Bev for a few minutes?” Michael asked Nancy.
“I hope you take more than a few minutes,” she said, grinning wickedly.
“Nancy!”
Michael chuckled, then led me out into the hall.
“What’s going on?” I asked him. He suddenly looked like Robbie when he had done something wrong. “What is it?”
“I got you a present,” he said. “I was going to give it to you after but—if we don’t win—”
I held up a hand. “You stop that kind of talk right now.”
“Okay. But, Beverly, I—I just want you to know, win or lose—” He stopped. “I’m mucking this all up, aren’t I?”
I looked at him, suddenly suspicious. “You’re not proposing, are you?”
“What? No! Oh no, is that what you thought?”
“Just making sure,” I said. The official decree of divorce had come to Greg’s office, but it was still a little too soon to be thinking about any of that.
“No. I just—you’ve been so amazing these last few months. And I wanted to say thank you.” He pulled a long, rectangular jewelry box from a pocket. “So I got you this.”
“What is it?”
“Open it and see.”
I took the box and opened it. Inside sat a lovely gold watch. I looked up at him questioningly. “Is this a retirement gift?”
“I hope not,” he said. “I just noticed you didn’t have one and were always looking at everyone else’s.”
“It’s not because I’m late so often?”
He looked confused. “Who would give a gift with a reason like that?”
I smiled, taking it out of the box and fastening it on my wrist. “It’s perfect,” I said, meaning it. “Thank you.”
Stuart came out into the hall. “Charlie called from Annapolis—Sam got Garrett County.”
Michael’s shoulders sank, and I touched his arm. “We knew we wouldn’t get Garrett. Or Allegany for that matter. But like Stuart said when we went out there, there aren’t many people. Montgomery, Prince George’s, Anne Arundel, and Baltimore are the big ones. They’re the ones we need, and they’re where we’re strongest.”
“We should get in there,” he said.
I checked my new watch. “More results are about to come in. Let’s go.”
Paul was stationed at a table in the corner with a phone, Claire at his side, a notepad in front of her as she tallied up the number of votes we got from each county. Every once in a while, he signaled for quiet, which Stuart yelled for. “Allegany is Sam,” he said. “We got Carroll!”
“One is a start,” I said. “It’s not over until it’s over.”
“And sometimes not even then,” Stuart said. “Dewey defeats Truman and all that.”
I smiled as I saw Fran enter the room. She looked around uncertainly, no longer a member of the club. But Sheila Meyers, who had been her friend prior to her divorce, greeted her warmly. Maybe my status had started a shift away from that stigma.
Between calls from Annapolis, Michael brought me to a table where an elderly couple sat, looking out of place. “Bev, I want you to meet my parents,” he said. “Mom, Dad, this is Beverly.” They both smiled warmly, and I sat to talk until Stuart called for me.
“I hope we see more of you,” Mrs. Landau said, putting her hand on top of mine and squeezing it when I got up to leave.
“I would like that.”
The crowd thinned out around nine as the parents of young children took them home, wiping out a good chunk of our volunteers.
Debbie was asleep on my mother’s lap. “They should go home,” she said.
“Are you volunteering to take them?”
“Absolutely not. I worked just as hard as you did for this campaign. You think it’s easy chasing kids all over creation at my age?”
She had a point.
I took Debbie and laid her on a pallet I made out of coats in an out-of-the-way spot on the floor, then found Robbie and coaxed him with the promise of ice cream the following afternoon to lie down with her for “just a couple minutes.” He was asleep as soon as his head hit the floor.
By eleven, we were neck and neck, with Montgomery, Prince George’s, and Baltimore Counties still tallying votes.
“It shouldn’t be this close,” I said quietly to Stuart.
“The Soviets,” he said back. “If they could have waited another month to build those missiles, we’d have had him.”
“Helen won!” Paul called out.
Stuart threw a fist in the air. “That means we took Baltimore!”
“Not necessarily,” Michael said. “But good for her.”
“Good for everyone,” I said. “I hope she runs for president next.” The men chuckled, but I meant it. If she was born a hundred years later, she would be running the world.
“We got Baltimore!” Paul yelled.
Michael, Stuart, and I looked at each other and then suddenly we were hugging, laughing, and jumping up and down all at once.
“We’re gonna win this,” Stuart said. “We’re gonna win!”
The room took up the chant. “We’re gonna win! We’re gonna win!”
“Prince George’s went to Sam,” Paul said.
The room fell silent. It came down to our county. The most populated and wealthiest in Maryland. And a Sam stronghold in the last election. The polls had given Sam a lead here, but a slim one at 50.4 to 49.6.
The only sound was the televisions in the corners, where newscasters worked late into the night providing updates from around the country.
Five minutes ticked by. Then ten. And then—
“You’re sure?” Paul asked into the phone. “It’s official?”
I grabbed Michael’s arm. I had never fainted in my life, but the edges of my vision began to darken.
Paul looked up from the phone, his face breaking into a wide smile. “We did it,” he said.
The room erupted.
I was spinning through the air, and everywhere I looked, people were hugging. Claire had jumped into Paul’s arms. My parents were making out like a couple of teenagers. And Stuart—where was Stuart?
I scanned the room only to find him locked in a kiss with Linda. I knew it, I thought triumphantly.
And then Michael was in front of me.
“You did this,” he said. “Bev—I—”
But I cut him off. “Fire me.”
“What?”
“Fire me. Right now.”
He looked confused. “I’m not firing you. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”
I sighed and rolled my eyes, but I was smiling. “Do I have to do everything myself? Fine. I quit.” And then I threw my arms around his neck and brought my mouth to his.
“What just happened?” he asked when we surfaced for air.
“A United States senator can’t date someone on his staff.”
He laughed, his eyes shining with tears, and I found my own cheeks were damp. “No. Then I suppose it’s a good thing you’re not employed anymore.”
“No,” I said as he leaned in to kiss me again. “My work here is done.”