Chapter 23
twenty-three
Alex
Anita stands up from her knees in the dirt when she sees me coming. The White House garden looks like it’s about to produce everything at once, the growth nearly overwhelming the edges of the raised beds.
“Are you dating Cindy Wight or not?” Anita stands with her fists on her hips, gardening gloves leaving streaks of dirt on her khaki pants.
“Is this on the record?” Startled, I try to make it a joke.
She frowns at me. “I need to know about the state dinner. Is she your date?”
Now I frown. “Uhhh.”
“Alex. I’m project-managing this shindig and it is not a simple matter to leave one seat empty at the president’s table.”
“She was supposed to be!” I blurt, in my own defense. When I got the request to stop by, I’d expected Anita wanted to talk about the state dinner, since her office manages the production of it. But I didn’t have time to come up with answers for her before I walked over. “And then my staff said it would distract from the prime minister, and I never talked to Tim about it. Plus, I haven’t seen her since we got back after that item in the paper about us.”
Anita starts taking her gloves off, like this conversation is going to take awhile. “Have you talked to her? Is she ready for people to know?”
“I don’t think she’s ready,” I say. I’ve gotten that impression from my phone conversations with Cindy so far this week. She hasn’t pushed to get together, given the risk that we’re being watched for that kind of movement. She still wants to hide.
Anita sighs loudly. “Then I need you to bring someone else.”
“ What ?” I’m shocked. Anita always supports me when it comes to my single status on guest lists. She either manages to find another appropriate person going stag or arranges the tables to hide my aloneness.
“Alex.” I can tell she’s glaring at me through her sunglasses. “The state dinner is a week away. Do you have any idea how many details I have to put in order before then? You think running a country is hard, try event planning.” She turns and starts walking up the wide lawn to the White House.
“Can’t Cindy still sit at our table but not by me? So it’s subtle.”
“A ‘subtle’ date?” Her voice drips with sarcasm. I’ve really made her life harder, judging by how irritated she is. “This brings new meaning to the idea of casual dating, Alex. You want to invite her to a dinner and then sit her across the table from you so people don’t get the right idea?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do.” I have the impulse to prostrate myself across the lawn. I’m exhausted, like I’ve been spinning in circles. I’ve barely slept since California. “Help me,” I add, shoulders slumping.
“Wow, that was pathetic. I hope no one else saw that.” Anita stops halfway up the hill and glances at the Secret Service agents standing at a respectful distance. She sighs again. “You realize if I do this, it means no one at the table can sit next to their significant other. Even the prime minister and the president. Otherwise it’s not ‘subtle’ at all.”
Cringing away from her waving finger, I hang my head. This situation is becoming a mess for more than Cindy and me. “It’s not doable?”
“It’s unusual . We haven’t separated couples at dinners since the last administration. And state dinners, if nothing else, are supposed to be usual. ” But she shrugs, and the irritation drains out of her voice. “This will go down in the history books as ‘that one time’ Anita Meyer changed the seating arrangement. And I can’t guarantee people won’t figure it out!” she adds, waving her finger again. “It’s still an honor to be seated at the president’s table and people will wonder about her being there.”
“She’s on the Foreign Affairs committee. And she’s been working with the White House on legislation.”
Anita turns to keep walking up the hill. “A good enough reason if there wasn’t already a more persuasive theory floating around.”
I walk alongside her for a moment, silent, enjoying the warm sun against my back after working inside all day.
But Anita is one of the most emotionally intelligent people I know, so I have to ask: “What do you think I should do?”
She doesn’t answer right away, watching her feet as we climb. She pauses at the top, where the grass levels out to the sidewalk near the Oval Office. “You need to figure out what future you want and work backward.”
We step into the shade from the White House and I can look at her again without squinting.
“It sounds counterintuitive from all the usual advice to live in the moment and whatever,” she says. “That’s fine advice when it comes to worrying about things. But this is a decision to start something that will last a long time. You need to have a picture in mind before you can build it.”
I recognize wise advice, but worry I’m lacking some of the tools I need for it. “How long did it take you and Tim to...agree on a blueprint?”
Anita smiles and takes off her sunglasses to assess me. I see the sympathy in her eyes that I crave, at last. “We still work on it all the time, Alex. That first ‘blueprint’ we came up with wasn’t perfect. It’s been amended many times. At one point, when Tim wanted to go for the White House, we threw it out and started over. You can’t expect perfection right away from a new partnership.”
“Or ever?” I suggest, thinking of my yearslong partnership with Tim. We get it right a lot now, but not always.
“Or ever,” she agrees, too quickly for comfort. “But you’ve got to start somewhere. The important part is being in agreement on the plan.” She raises her eyebrows at me. “Can’t do that without talking.”
“Right.” I’ve talked to Cindy on the phone since California, of course, but mostly about Thor and the weather already edging into swampy summer territory. We’ve avoided the topic of “us” and what to do about it. She hasn’t brought up my slip of the tongue, the cringe-worthy “I love you” that slipped out from nowhere.
Last night, I’d called her after midnight, crossing my fingers she wasn’t asleep. She’d been in bed and asked sleepily if this was a booty call.
“Only presidents get to make booty calls,” I joked. “And then only to their wives, in the bedroom across the hall when the daily agenda is finally clear.”
“Reasons I never want to get married,” she’d grumbled, and I thought it was a joke but rather than let it go, I’d responded: “I’m not sure how America would react to an unmarried couple in the White House.”
After a pause on the line, she said, her voice less sleepy, “Are we talking about this?”
I’ve conversed with despots and tyrants, and once even with the pope, but in that moment, I felt real fear. I’m not ready for us to end. “I don’t know, are we?” I asked, and she backed down.
“It’s probably too early,” she said. “Or too late.”
We’d ended the conversation after that.
Now, I tell Anita thanks and walk back to my office, where I ask Toby for an update on the polling. I sit down at my desk and see the adult coloring book I sent to Cindy weeks ago. The note on it reads: “This was returned marked failed delivery.” I flip it open to a page that says, in flowery outlined letters: Fuck this shit.
Toby walks into my office looking annoyed, but I try not to take it as a bad sign because that’s Toby’s usual expression.
“People hate the idea of you dating,” Toby announces.
I collapse in my chair. This is the worst-case scenario I feared.
“It’s the in-between part they hate,” he adds. “You coupled-up in a committed relationship, people like that. You single, people are used to. The ‘maybe’ part, they hate.”
“Me and them both,” I sigh.
Toby slaps a file on my desk. “I gave you toplines as well as the details. But that’s the main takeaway. The good news is people got excited about the idea of you getting married. Across the board, no matter who you marry. Huge bump for your likeability and, weirdly, your hypothetical job approval score goes up, too, because this country makes no sense.”
Agreeing, I pick up the folder and open to the first page of results. It’s true, the country is out of its mind. A person’s relationship status shouldn’t have anything to do with the perception of how well they do their job. But of course it does. Just as the color of their skin does. This is why politicians are so obsessed with optics. It’s impossible to accomplish anything if people hate you.
“And the bad news?” I ask.
“The bad news is you take a huge hit on both stats for dating a member of Congress who is perceived as influencing your policy. For example, by being further left than you. You take a hit for dating, period, but that’s the worst result of all the hypotheticals we surveyed.”
“Great,” I say, dropping the folder onto my desk. “My life is a worst-case scenario.” I consider asking one of the staff aides to find me some colored pencils so I can work on the open page in this coloring book.
Toby pauses, which is how I know he’s about to make a suggestion I won’t like. Toby doesn’t hesitate if his ideas are going to get pushback, but he does when they’ll make someone cry. I’m dangerously close already, and I never cry.
“Can we bring her in here?” Toby suggests, charging on. “Talk about a way forward that helps everyone? I’ve talked to Max, from her office, and she appears to know what she’s doing. But that’s containment strategy stuff. We need to talk mitigation.”
I can’t tell my chief of staff I’m nervous to have a conversation about the future with my girlfriend. It’s the truth, but it’s not good optics.
“Sure,” I say. “We’ll do it after the state dinner.”
That will buy me some time to figure out what the hell I’m doing.
Cindy
My calendar reminder goes off with a ping as I’m walking back up the National Mall from a pre-work run. This early in the morning, the Mall is filled with other locals on morning jogs, like me, and entirely empty of the tourists that will pack it later in the day.
The reminder reads: Talk to Alex .
I remember adding this to my phone. My smile tastes bitter in my mouth. I’d been so optimistic that we would know what we were doing and what we wanted within a month.
And I’d thought that if we still weren’t sure by now, I’d be able to walk away. Impossible. The idea of never having another weekend like the one we spent in California creates an ache in my heart.
Deciding it was time, I’d told Lizzie the night before. My chief of staff had been more horrified than Sara but less shocked than Max. “Are you trying to keep it secret until the legislation passes?” she’d asked.
I hadn’t framed the timeline quite like that, but it makes sense. We both need this legislation to pass, and our relationship could be a distraction. If I’m going to blow my career up, it might as well be after one of my biggest achievements rather than before.
My phone rings and I answer, picking my way at a walk around people on the gravel path leading back toward the Capitol looming up ahead of me.
“Please hold for the first lady,” a woman’s voice says over the phone after confirming my identity. I pause, taking stock of my running capris and yanking on my sweaty shirt, as if the White House can see me. I step off the path to a bench nearby.
“Cindy?” Anita Meyer comes on the line.
“First Lady Meyer. Good morning.”
“Good morning!” Her voice is cheerful. “Anita, please. Alex told me you were an early riser, as am I, so I thought I’d try you now. I hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time?”
“No,” I say. “I’m cooling down from a run. Any excuse to walk, really. My knees can’t take long runs anymore.”
“Are you out on the Mall? I used to love to run on the Mall. Now I’m only allowed to exercise outside at Camp David.” Anita is chatting so casually it’s almost hard to remember she’s the first lady and we’re not friends. Almost. I watch people pass, the Washington Monument in the corner of my eye, and somehow the setting won’t let me forget this conversation is loaded.
“I won’t take too much of your time,” Anita says, her voice taking on an extra layer. Still friendly, but more to the point. “You’re coming to the state dinner, yes?”
It doesn’t sound like a question. “Yes?” I’m not sure it’s a smart idea, but I’m also not going to turn down an invitation to an official White House event. I’m a junior member of Congress and it’s a room full of decision-makers.
“Wonderful. I’m looking forward to seeing you. Here’s the problem: The vice president has a few official functions to perform at a state dinner that require a partner. I would love to be going through the explanation of how to perform them all with you right now, but I understand from Alex that you’re not quite at that point yet. So I wanted to confirm with you that you realize for the purposes of this dinner, there are no formal or informal obligations between you and Alex?”
I’m trying to catch up to Anita’s words, but I understand the gist of the first lady’s tone and it’s, Don’t make a scene . “I understand he does not belong to me,” I say. I’m being paranoid, but I avoid saying his name aloud in such a public space.
“Unfortunately, that would be the case even if you were married, but we can talk about that some other time,” Anita says. Her voice is like steel wrapped in velvet. I’m holding my phone so tightly, trying to catch everything she says, I can feel my ear getting hot. “When we spoke, Alex indicated there’s no understanding between you two yet, no rules to be broken, and I wanted to confirm that’s also your take on the relationship.”
I frown, watching the people passing me: Joggers and walkers, earbuds in, holding phones or water bottles. “I’m not sure I know what you mean by that.”
“Would you say that you are dating?” Anita asks the question without inflection.
“Yes,” I say.
“Do you have an end goal in mind?”
“Um…” I flounder. I take a sip of my water, because my mouth goes dry.
“That’s what I mean, then,” Anita says briskly. “In our line of work, we don’t talk about a deal until it’s signed. I’ll have my social secretary send you a few notes on what to wear and I look forward to seeing you at the dinner.” She hangs up without saying “goodbye.”
My hand grips the phone, now sweaty from being next to my face. I wipe off the screen with a corner of my shirt. I understood the meaning behind Anita’s sheathed, Southern-sweet words: We’re all running out of time.
Alex
I still haven't told Cindy about the Majority Leader’s reversal. I’ve been on the phone all week with the leader and the whip, trying to convince them they can go a little further with the bill.
The Majority Leader keeps saying, “Why give up the win, sir?”
The problem is, it’s a good argument. The midterm elections are coming up. A popular middle-ground vote will lure more people to sign on than a risky vote that gives ammunition to the other party.
Our party, led by Tim, has sky-high political capital right now. Between that and the popularity of the topic, we might peel off a few votes from the other side of the aisle. We could pass the bill without Cindy and her progressive, do-more coalition and it would still be progress.
And, yes, it would do a lot for the country.
But it’s her bill. It would be a betrayal to pass it without her participation.
I should call Cindy and talk it out with her. Maybe find a solution I’m not thinking of. Or maybe, with her quick temper, she’d accuse me of using our relationship to double cross her and refuse to listen to a word I said.
Head hurting, I call out to anyone in the other room in my office suite to bring me ibuprofen. Deena hurries in, pills in one hand and phone in the other. “It’s your sister, sir.”
“Sasha or…?” If it’s one of the others, it’s an emergency. Sasha knows my schedule is too tight for a personal call during the middle of the day, but she doesn’t care.
“Sasha,” Deena replies.
“Sure, OK.” I’ll talk to her while I wait for the medicine to kick in. I can call Cindy later.
“Big brother,” Sasha greets me, barreling forward without waiting for a response. “Since you told her you might be bringing a date to the wedding, Mom is already talking about how she’ll have to relocate to D.C. to help plan your wedding.”
I’m appalled. My mother visited Washington, D.C., for both inaugurations. And both times, she complained about the weather, the traffic and how “cottage-like” the White House is in person.
“We’re definitely not there yet,” I say. Years of diplomatic experience keeping my voice calm when I want to freak out are coming in handy. “It’s not even public.”
“Obviously, or all of the tabloids I’m looking at in this store would be full of your face.”
“You’re calling me from a store? Sasha.” I sit up and scan the room, like my Secret Service detail will come flying in the windows to stop me from this security mistake.
“Blah, blah, ears everywhere,” she says, her voice mocking. “You can’t keep it a secret forever if you’re bringing her home to meet the family.”
“I’m hanging up now.” And I do. I’m not about to make another dumb media mistake over the most important relationship in my life. Well, one of the top two relationships in my life, alongside the president.
I could call and ask Cindy whether August is too soon to go public with our relationship. But I remember her resistance to the idea of going public at all. I don’t want to rush her, and yet the problems with secrecy are starting to pile up. It’s not fair to her; the bias toward stability and pressure on me to settle down with a wife shouldn’t force Cindy into choosing before she’s ready to decide whether she wants to share my complicated life or not. I need to give her more time.
So I’ll keep putting off the conversation, not wanting her to realize the pressure is increasing. Besides, I have a briefing to attend in the Oval Office in 15 minutes, so clarity will have to wait.