Chapter 9
nine
Cindy
So this is 45.
This number is different, somehow making it impossible to deny that my life is half over. The “set up” part of a lifetime is behind me. At this point, my life is established. It’s what it’s going to be.
If I’m effective enough to win reelection, I’ll be splitting my time 50/50 between campaigning and governing, even if I run for another office. I’ll have security people following me around forever, whether event-based like it is now or full-time. I’ll get hate mail forever.
Considering how impossible it is to date under those circumstances, I’ll be single forever.
OK, 45 is a little morose and fatalistic so far.
At least I’m home. Unlike some members of Congress who would live in Washington full-time if they could, I love going back to Colorado. The sun comes out more often than in Washington, the mountains are arguably more beautiful than monuments, and some of my favorite members of my team are based here.
My parents live on the western slope, so I drive the hour and a half from Denver to go see them on Saturday, making work calls whenever I have reception. I don’t mind the drive; the scenery is beautiful and the roads are manageable since I only rent vehicles with big engines and all-wheel drive when I’m in my home state.
My parents don't come down to Denver to see me when I’m in town unless my visits coincide with a supply run to Costco.
Huge rifts of snow are piled up along the highway but the roads are clear, the snow-capped mountains are ahead of me, and I give up on work and start listening to an NPR podcast.
Mom and Dad are loading the car when I arrive. My mom, a wiry woman with the same build as me and the same dark hair but streaked with gray, walks out the front door of their two-story house with an extra snow jacket as I park on the street and walk up. We hug.
“Your father wants to go snowshoeing,” Mom says, like she had no say in the adventure. She’s already trying to force me into the heavier coat. “Do you want to come?”
I appreciate that my parents are fit and stay active, but I wish that just for once they scheduled around me, rather than scheduling me around their busy retired life. I have no choice but to join them now if I want to see them at all. “Sure,” I say.
“John, she’s coming, make a little room,” my mom calls, turning to the vehicle. Dad, also wiry and gray but with a gut from too much Colorado craft beer, waves.
My mom looks back at me. “Dear,” she says. A comment about my appearance is coming. She puts one hand to my forehead and pushes her fingers into the roots of my hair. “You need a little touch up here. More than a bit of gray showing.”
I will never be too old for my mother’s “constructive comments” or my dad’s misinformed judgment. Visiting is exactly like traveling back in time, every time.
“How’s the politics?” my dad asks as he’s driving us to a trailhead. I’m sitting in back, bundled up in the extra clothes my mom keeps for me at the house.
“They’re...the same as usual,” I reply. “Lots of bickering.”
“Don’t know how you do it,” he says, shaking his head and glancing at me in the rear-view mirror. “Especially with those people you hang around with,” he adds. “Bet that trip to the White House was something else, though.”
His use of “those people” makes me cringe. My parents are very white and middle class, and voted blindly for the current president just because he’s from the right party—in sharp contrast to me, the upstart who ousted a more established candidate from doing a job my parents considered “pretty good.”
“I try to work with anyone open-minded, Dad.”
“You ought to do a little more listening,” he replies, shaking his head as though disappointed with me. “You’re new there, shouldn’t come in acting like you know everything already.”
“Now, John,” my mother says, but she doesn’t disagree with Dad because she never disagrees with him. She doesn’t like disagreement, period. “Let’s not talk politics all day. Cindy needs this fresh air to clear her head! Don’t you, dear?”
It isn’t worth it to explain that I’ve come to believe, despite my upbringing, that compromising isn’t always worth the peace. “Sure, Mom. Fresh air always helps.”
“You don’t get enough in that Washington,” she says. “I can tell.”
Watching the trees begin to close around the car as we wind toward the trailhead, I can’t disagree with them. Washington has nothing on Summit County, which sits at around 9,000 feet above sea level. The air is thin and clear, the reservoir is shining from the nearness of the sun, and the trailhead we arrive at is relatively quiet compared to the ones that Denverites regularly crowd.
I strap on the backpack that my mom gives me, which is packed with water, food and emergency supplies. When I buckle on my snowshoes, I fumble a little more than my parents, who do this nearly every day during the half-year of winter up here.
As I follow them on a single track running up a steep hill, I wish for poles like my parents have. When we reach a clearing, I catch up to my mom while Dad keeps pushing ahead. He’s marching like he’s late for an appointment.
“How are you and Dad?” I ask. Despite the evidence that my parents are in better shape than I am, I still worry about them living alone up here in the mountains. Whenever the pass closes due to snow or landslides, they’re shut off from the rest of the world. They moved here from Denver when they retired, so they aren’t that integrated with the mountain community yet.
“We’re good, sweetheart,” my mom says. “We worry about you, alone in that awful place.”
“It’s not that bad,” I reply, but it’s a weak answer. Sometimes, Washington is awful. And sometimes I do feel very alone. I listen to the crunch of snow with every step. The air is the kind of cold that’s crisp against my skin. The District never smells this clean.
“You have no time for a personal life,” my mother says, watching where she’s going. Her cheeks are rosy and her breath comes in regular clouds of air. “Are you dating anyone?”
“No, Mom,” I reply, like I always do, whether I am or not.
Before I took office, I’d been in a vicious cycle: go on an awkward date filled with silences around things we don’t want to talk about, like party politics, or filled with incredibly dry policy talk that might as well happen across a desk in an office. Then stop dating for a while because it doesn’t seem worth it. That’s where I’m at in the cycle now. Give me another few months and I’ll get lonely and try again. But I don’t have time or energy to date, and there aren’t a ton of prospects who aren’t a security risk or part of my chain of authority now.
“You need to take your future husband into consideration. Is there space in your life for a man?”
This sounds like it comes straight from some self-help book my mom’s been reading. “Mom,” I groan.
“You think worrying about a hypothetical is a waste of time, but if you don’t plan, you might never get married, dear,” she says, navigating a large root in the path.
I open my mouth, but my mom continues, “I just want you to have what we have, Cindy. What would I do without your father? At this time of life, can you imagine me living alone? I’d have to be in one of those communities. ” She shivers as she says this, and not from the cold.
“I’m glad you have Dad,” I agree, hoping that’s the end of the admonishment. It’s true, I can’t imagine my parents without each other. I’m lucky to have grown up with happily married parents, even if their happiness relied on my mother’s agreement with everything my dad demanded.
“Oh, I can’t cry in this weather,” my mother says impatiently, pausing to push the strap of her pole around her wrist and flick a gloved hand at her face. I pause, because I can’t ignore how strongly my mom feels about this.
“Mom...you don’t need Dad. To be happy. You could be happy in one of those communities, if you needed to try one,” I say, tentative because I’m not at all sure that pushing back on this is worth my energy. Is it ever possible, as a child, to convince your parents there’s another valid way to live?
From my mother’s expression, I might as well be turning blue. “Cindy, don’t even suggest such a thing.” She turns and pushes forward, following my dad, who is extending his lead without checking on us behind him.
I sigh and follow, which has always been my role when it comes to my parents. At least visiting them keeps me feeling young.
Alex
When people line up with matching awestruck expressions on their faces, it’s hard to take them in as individuals. I often find myself going into subway mode, staring straight ahead and turning the crowd around me into visual white noise.
But retail politics is all about connecting with a crowd as individuals. It triggers anxiety, sometimes. If I can focus on one person at a time, I find some enjoyment in shaking hands and kissing babies. It’s all about touching lives who will then, hopefully, go on to share their personal experience with friends, family or social media.
Thor makes the whole process easier. Thor loves strangers and being the center of attention, and he gets plenty of both when we make “unplanned” stops at local small businesses in the District. My little dog slurps a puppuccino from the coffee bar and the people at tables and lining the walls around them all document his whipped cream-covered muzzle.
“Have you ever seen such a spoiled dog?” I grin at the owners, a married couple who have been serving a sandwich named after me for the past year. The Drakewich. It’s a mouthful, both to eat and to say.
My staff put the little bookstore/cafe on the list of places to visit once the sandwich started appearing on lists of “must eats” in the area. It’s an overstuffed reuben pierogi. “Meaty with a touch of vinegar, just like me,” I’d joked when I took a bite.
Amanda and T.J. have a display set up at the front of the store of local authors and I pull a few off the shelf that the two women point out. I have cash on me specifically for this purpose.
“Got anything along the lines of ‘How to survive your fifth State of the Union’?” I ask, prompting an easy laugh from everyone within earshot. The reporters on duty for the press pool that day are busily typing up every word I say on their phones.
“How about a coloring book?” Amanda asks.
I laugh. “If I got caught coloring during the State of the Union, the president might never speak to me again.”
“We wouldn’t want to cause an international incident.” T.J. smiles, hugging her wife. They’re nervous, but they’re doing a great job demonstrating why their bookstore/cafe is so successful. The whole point of my visit is to shine a brighter spotlight on entrepreneurs doing well.
“Not international,” I say, dragging out the joke. “But definitely domestic.”
“Maybe the president is the one who needs the coloring book?” Amanda suggests.
Appreciating how easy the banter is with them, I laugh. “Good idea, show me what you’ve got and I’ll see what he thinks.”
Of the two of us, Tim dislikes retail politics more. He’ll do it, but he’d prefer to wave from the car and stay on stage during events.
Part of what I brought to the ticket was my facility with “regular people” that balanced out what focus groups described as Tim’s East Coast elitism. I’m accessible and quirky. Tim is predictable and soothing. Together, we are the perfect parents to this country.
Amanda and T.J. bring over two coloring books: one for kids with cars, and one for adults with swear words.
“Oh, this is a tough choice; I’d better take both of them,” I say, again projecting my voice for the press and the crowd in the cafe. After all this practice, my pitch is perfect. Loud, but not forced. The people around me feel included, but not marketed to.
“The president might need the one with cussing, but the one with cars is staying with me,” I continue with a grin. “This is as close as I get to driving anymore.”
As I exit the bookstore, I wave at the people lined up outside, held back by a row of police and Secret Service. I’m holding Thor in one arm and pause to wave a doggy paw, prompting a collective “awww.”
My short walk to the black SUV is covered by an awning and the vehicle takes off immediately after I’m inside, all seamless protective measures I barely give a thought anymore.
Dan is sitting in the backseat with me, tapping away at two phones. “Effective trip, sir,” he says. “Lots of pictures and video already on social media.”
I nod, loosening my tie, and then pick up one of the books I bought that an aide tucked into the SUV. Another book I won’t have time to read.
“By the way, sir,” Dan adds. “It’s Cindy Wight’s birthday. Deena found something on her official feed.”
“Is it?” I’m oddly pleased that my staff knew I’d want to know this. “Can we send her a tweet or something?”
Dan’s face tells me it’s a bad idea. “Um,” he says. “We haven’t done that before…from the official feed?”
I nod. “Right, right.” It would be odd to call her and wish her a happy birthday. She would assume it a work call, interrupting, while perhaps she’s out celebrating. I sift through the pile of books again and pull out the swear word coloring book. “Send her this, will you?”
Dan takes it, his face impressively neutral. “Of course, sir.”
I’m pleased with the idea because it toes the line between personal and professional. Retail politics means more than kissing babies, after all, doesn’t it? Sometimes work partnerships require a personal touch.
Cindy
“Happy birthday,” says Max, my press secretary on the campaign side, as I join her at the table. We’re grabbing a beer at a little craft brewery near my district office. I’ve never been here before, because I’m not in Denver enough to identify the best places anymore.
I sigh a little as I slump onto the high-top table. I trust Max with some honesty. “Let’s not talk about it.”
“You are the most badass 45-year-old I know, with no ceiling for the future,” Max says seriously. “There’s no way I will have accomplished as much as you by the time I turn 45, congresswoman.”
I’ve seen Max go through her own turmoil, but now she lives where she wants to live, with a dog and a boyfriend, and does her job without breaking a sweat. She doesn’t have any reason to be jealous. She doesn’t sound jealous, either. She sounds content. The real problem is I’m not .
“Cindy, please,” I say instead of dwelling. “Nobody needs titles at happy hour.”
“Except in D.C., where happy hour is an extension of work,” Max says mildly. “Don’t get me started on some of the dates I went on that turned out to be networking.”
I grimace, but I feel better already. My conversations are rarely this apolitical these days. “I’m glad I don’t have much experience in that.”
Max raises her eyebrows but says nothing until she comes back with our beers from the bar. “So, no juicy flirtations with middle-aged white men in the Capitol?”
It’s a joke but the vice president floats—very inappropriately—through my mind. “No, I don’t have much time for that kind of fun,” I say.
“You hesitated!” eagle-eyed Max declares, astonished. “What’s been happening back in the District?”
I shake my head, looking anywhere but at Max, who knows me too well. “Nothing, nothing. A tiny flirtation. It’s not going anywhere. That’s all.”
Max is wide-eyed, already half-way through her IPA. “Maybe you shouldn’t deny the possibility?”
“I don’t think I want to have any expectations in this case,” I say, cautiously. Even in a friendly environment, I don’t want to say too much. I’ve probably been in Washington too long, but I’ve learned to be careful. “It’s cliched, but well...we work together and it’s complicated. And,” I add quickly. “I’m not sure I like him like that. I just find him...interesting.”
“Interesting is a better start than most things,” Max says. “Is there chemistry?”
My gym date with Alexander Drake comes to mind, and how I wanted to lean into him and touch that soft-looking t-shirt.
“There is,” Max answers for me. Her eyes soften, the expression of someone whose romance worked out. “Honestly, Cindy, I think you should go for it,” she says. Her tone is the one she uses to give me talking points before an event when she says, Repeat this as many times as you can in as many ways as possible . Make sure this is what people take away. “You need something besides work in your life. I mean, do an asshole check, of course. But you have good judgment. I vote for a one-night-stand, at least. Or tell yourself it’s a one-night-stand if that helps you psychologically. Then...see what happens.”
Unconvinced by the advice, I only give her a neutral smile. “Usually the person who gives up power in a one-night-stand is the woman. ”
“Ugh,” Max says. “You’re giving me flashbacks to D.C. and how everything is a power struggle. You want another beer?”
I hesitate.
“I’ve never seen you drink more than one, but come on, it’s your birthday.” Max grins. So I nod and she brings me another.
“Ask this guy to agree, when you’re together, to set aside politics,” she says, as she’s sliding back into her seat. “If you can trust him, you should be able to trust that he’s not going to use sex against you.”
My entire body cringes at the idea I could trust Alex Drake—or any man—not to use my vulnerability against me. Experience tells me that’s impossible. For example, the man I was dating when I decided to run for Congress. He’d called me “too hot to make it in Washington.” He’d thought it a compliment, I think.
“Try a drink to relax next time you see him?” Max suggests. “Or some weed?”
“Still a federal employee,” I remind her. “So is he.”
“OK, first fix these ancient prohibition laws and then celebrate with this guy,” Max says, waving her half-full glass around to make me laugh.
By the time I finish my next drink, I have almost forgotten about my birthday and politics. But I can’t quite push the vice president—or that vision of him in his sweaty t-shirt—off my mind. So I’m thinking of him when my phone rings and the caller ID says Unknown. I can’t not pick it up with a chance it’s him, so I hold up a finger to Max and answer. “Hello, this is Cindy Wight.”
“Hello, Cindy Wight. It sounds like I’ve caught you at another inopportune moment.”
“Ah, hello…” I trail off, not wanting to identify him out loud. I smile at Max as I slide off my tall chair and look for a quiet corner .
“Is it him ?” she mouths at me. I make a face and don’t confirm, but she widens her eyes and mouths, “Ask him!”
“Not inopportune. I forgot to mention I was going back to my district.” I wince as I say it. Why would I tell the vice president my schedule, like he’s going to mark it down on his personal calendar?
“Are you visiting old haunts?”
“No, new ones. Enjoying a drink with a colleague.” I step outside, where the patio is filled with people playing cornhole under the waning winter daylight.
“I’m sorry to interrupt.”
“No, no, I’m happy to hear from you. I mean, I’m happy to talk about the bill anytime.” I end up pacing between Subarus in the parking lot, where at least I can hear the way his voice expands to fill the space between us. Is that voice the mark of a seasoned politician or just this man?
“I got a request from a couple of chairmen to set up a meeting. The House Judiciary Chair-”
“The fucker,” I interrupt, the words hissing out of my mouth without thinking. “Never trust a man named Randy .”
The vice president’s laughter curls up in my ear. There’s so little laughter in most of my relationships in D.C. It’s unusual. Not special, just different.
“Your next piece of legislation?” he asks. “Outlawing Randys?”
“I wish.” I pause, in the darkness between two vehicles blocking out the overhead outdoor lights. This is not a call with a girlfriend. Sober up, Cindy. “What did you tell him?”
“I told him I’d be happy to meet at the convenience of the entire coalition.”
“Oh,” I say. Grateful, horrifying tears pop into my eyes.
“I’m not about to meet with them without you…congresswoman.” Hi s pause suggests he wanted to say my name, and suddenly I want to hear it in his voice. Badly.
“That’s really nice of you,” I murmur.
“You’re right,” he says. “And I don’t know why. I hear you didn’t vote for me.”
His voice is good-humored, but it embarrasses me that I’ve gone around characterizing him and the president as mere figureheads for an old-fashioned system. He’s much more real to me now.
“There’s always next time,” I say.
“You think I can win you over?” I can tell from his voice that he likes a challenge as much as I do.
“I do,” I say simply. “If you try.”
“Oh, I’m trying,” he replies. I stand in the parking lot smiling and somehow I know that 1,600 miles away, he’s smiling too.