Chapter 29
twenty-nine
Alex
My week goes on like any other, like I haven’t discovered something irreplaceable is missing in my life. Like I haven’t realized the goal I’ve been single-mindedly running toward isn’t quite—isn’t all —I wanted, after all. Like I don’t have to live with that knowledge the rest of my life. Even if I become president, it will always be almost but not enough.
The only thing I have to look forward to is showing off my 1967 Corvette on Friday for a pre-taped segment of a late-night talk show. We had it driven out here from California especially for the show. Any excuse to see it again.
I approve the details on my trip to Philadelphia for July 4—the vice president gets to celebrate at a smaller city’s parade rather than attend the chaotic festivities in Washington—and I pick the local business I want to “surprise” visit while I’m there. I mark up the draft of my speech and finally call my mother back.
On the phone, I insist on changing my RSVP to my sister’s wedding to no plus one. Mom protests, and I wouldn’t put it past her to invite someone meant for me “just in case.” Then she gets quiet and tells me she’s sorry it didn’t work out. She does sound very sorry. My mother wants grandchildren; the more of her children are married, the better her odds.
After I talk to Tim, who agrees, and Toby, who eventually nods, I make some calls to Capitol Hill. I have Deena write a statement about the cannabis legislation, but tell her not to release it until someone asks. I want Cindy to take the lead on this.
I talk to my campaign manager about setting up an exploratory committee, the first step toward running for president. She and Toby have worried that there’s something wrong with me—that my ambition is flagging in the face of the job. I don’t think that is it; my ego is still big enough to imagine myself as president. I have the skill and experience for the job. I also know there are not enough aides to hire in the world to fill the role of a partner.
I’m stuck between what I need and want, but I won’t give up one dream just because I can’t have another.
“Let’s do it,” I tell her. I can remake the presidency. I just have to win it first.
Anita comes to see me the day after locking us in the bowling alley. Tim took one look at me that day in the Situation Room and recognized I didn’t want to talk about it. We focused on business, ignoring emotions like men. But Anita won’t be so easy on me.
“No hard feelings?” she asks, standing halfway in the door of my office.
“I’m honored that I have such a loyal friend,” I answer. My tone is flat instead of teasing, but I can’t help it. She notices.
“I take it it didn’t go well,” she says, coming farther into the office.
“It went fine,” I reply. “Didn’t change anything.”
She “hmms,” sympathetic. But then she hits me with one of her tough love observations: “Then maybe you need to try harder.”
Cindy
Whatever has Martin bouncing into my office like it’s his lucky day, I’m primed to oppose it. But he says, “Have you heard? The White House threatened to veto the Senate bill.”
I exchange glances with Lizzie, who is sitting in the chair in front of my desk. I pick up my “Best Boss Ever” coffee mug and take another sip to hide my reaction from Martin, who doesn’t need any encouragement.
“What about the House bill? With Cindy’s provisions in it?” Lizzie asks.
“Yes,” Martin confirms. “They only support that version. It’s in the Post .”
Sitting back in my chair, I grip the mug between both hands. This isn’t definitely Alex sending me a message, but it’s not nothing, either, for the White House to pull back from an easy win.
Lizzie is pulling up the story on her phone. “‘This is a historic bill, led by Representative Cindy Wight, and we expect it to pass with historic support,” she reads.
“They used my name in the statement?” I ask, sitting up and putting my mug down on the desk, my hands too numb to hold it. He might as well have bought a billboard outside my office. He finally took a stand.
“They did,” Lizzie confirms, raising her eyes to mine with a little smile. “They’re handing it back to you.”
Lizzie gets it. Martin doesn’t. “This is insane!” he says. “We need to act fast to shore up support before they change their minds. ”
“He’s not going to change his mind,” Lizzie says, standing and taking Martin by the shoulder to direct him back out the door of my office. “But go ahead and start shoring up support, Martin. I’ll check in with you later.”
“He?” Martin repeats, before Lizzie closes the door on him.
“You’re going to get asked about this,” Lizzie tells me, as she sits back down. “We should call Max.”
Still staring into my rapidly cooling coffee, I pull out my phone and text the Post link to Max, and then to Kari and Sara.
“But more importantly, how do you feel about it?” Lizzie asks.
I smile a little, grateful to be surrounded by women who can switch back and forth between competent strategists and sympathetic friends. Max, who dealt with most of the fallout from my near-disastrous breakup and interfaced with the overprotective White House team over it, texts me every day to make sure I’m able to get out of bed in the morning.
“It’s great news, obviously,” I say. I sound like a robot, but processing emotions quickly isn’t my forte. “I want this bill to be something I point to as a huge success on my record.”
Lizzie nods, but she’s clearly unimpressed by my assessment. “I think he loves you,” she says, gently. It’s the kind of thing I gave her implicit permission to say as a senior member of my staff, as well as someone I consider a confidant.
My phone buzzes twice with responses from two other women I trust the most.
Kari: Wow! It doesn’t get any more ‘grand gesture’ than this in that town.
Sara: This is going to make a great behind-the-scenes book someday.
Unable to keep sitting while talking about this, I stand. I take a deep breath and try to focus on the bubble of emotion in my gut, the one that is going to pop if I examine it. I go to the window and gaze down at Independence Avenue and Longworth, the House office building next door.
It’s nearly lunchtime and it’s beautiful out, so the sidewalk is full of congressional interns and staff. They’re all in formal business clothes. Tooth-achingly young. All of them are full of ambition and dreams. I take deep breaths.
“I think he does, too,” I answer Lizzie. Love . I've always thought of it as intangible, easy to say and then steal back. But this love...this is something concrete. Kari is right. “What better way to show love than to give up leverage, in this town,” I murmur.
Lizzie snorts. “It’s true.”
“But what about my leverage,” I add, gaze still focused out the window. I’m standing in an office I fought hard to win. “Do I have to give that up to love him back?”
Lizzie doesn’t say anything at first. We’ve both poured sweat and tears into building my status in this job and don’t want to tear that down. It’s so hard to see the future. The decision I make now could be one I regret the rest of my life. Or it could be one of the best of my life. There is no in-between.
“What would happen if you just gave it up... with him ?” Lizzie asks. “I honestly don’t know the answer,” she adds.
“Leap of faith,” I murmur. “What a terrifying thought.”
Even though the words are flippant, I’m scared. My hand is shaking a little as I put it on the window.
“Totally,” Lizzie agrees. “Most people aren’t worth the faith, in my experience.”
I sigh and nod. I’ve taken the leap before and painfully flopped. “In my experience, too.”
“But,” Lizzie adds. “I guess we have to be open to being surprised once in a while.”
Glancing over my shoulder, Lizzie is still sitting there in front of my desk, waiting for me to decide one way or the other. My decision affects all of my staff.
I’m scared, but the right path is obvious. It’s to walk toward the challenge, not run away from it. If I’m going to take a risk, it’s going to be reaching for an opportunity, not avoiding it.
Alex
I’m filming a video in the East Room of the White House for social media. It’s one of my least favorite activities, because it requires a lot of effort—make-up and production values and time—for a few minutes of content that I suspect less than a million people watch.
While I wait for the production team to prepare, I’m reading the print editions of the major newspapers that Kaylee, all smiles, brought me. “VP pushes White House to the left,” reads one headline. The story includes a section high up that gives me credit:
Vice President Drake worked behind the scenes to urge the president to collaborate with a progressive coalition that has worked for years on the bill, according to two senior White House officials familiar with the matter.
“He said the win only matters if we do it right,” one official said, citing multiple meetings between the vice president and the firebrand freshman congresswoman who wrote the bill. “He made multiple direct calls to senators to urge them not to take a nibble when they could have the whole apple.”
Toby threads his way through the excessive number of people in the room setting up equipment and nods at the paper I’m holding. “I have more good news.”
“Really? That’s your ‘good news’ face?” I fold the paper and sit forward. Toby’s face is impassive. “Tell me. I could use some.”
Toby raises one eyebrow. “Getting credit for giving credit to someone else isn’t enough for you?”
I smile. “It was a heroic effort by Kaylee and her team to reframe what happened. They did an excellent job, despite going entirely against my wishes.” I raise my voice on the last part for the benefit of Kaylee, who is talking to Maggie and Deena behind the camera set-up. She gives me a thumbs-up. Somehow, I’ve come out looking like the good guy in the press, despite how close I came to stealing Cindy’s win.
It turns out making waves is surprisingly fun.
“They did what I asked,” Toby replies, shamelessly calm about contradicting my instructions to quietly direct attention back to Cindy and the House version of the bill. “For the greater good.” He slaps a folder down in front of me. “New polling.”
I grimace. “Let me guess, the good news is everyone is OK again with the status quo.”
Toby waits, somehow making it clear without saying a word that he’s exercising extreme patience with my attitude. “We ran the same questions we did a few weeks ago, with one addition accounting for success with the cannabis legislation. ”
“Really?” I sit forward and open the folder. “Why?” I don’t care why; I’m morbidly curious about the answers. I run a finger down the topline results and have a jolt of excitement before I remember that this hypothetical poll is meaningless now.
“People don’t like compromise, but they love results.” Toby shuffles his feet, the equivalent of rolling his eyes. “And your successful professional risk has the ricochet effect of approval for you taking personal risks.”
“Relatable,” I say, paging through the poll results to see how the individual questions were worded. “I don’t like compromise as a concept, either. Just sounds like selling out until you sit down and hammer out a bill that can become law.”
“Good line for the video!” Kaylee pipes up from across the room.
“What is the theme of this video again?” Toby frowns, creating deep lines on his forehead. “I thought we were focusing on Independence Day this week.”
“Coalition-building is patriotic, Toby,” Kaylee says, walking toward us. “We thought we’d try something and see how it goes.”
“Waving flags in the background, rah rah?” Toby asks, deadpan.
She smiles. Kaylee is young and blonde, but she can hold her own against Toby. “Let’s leave the visual strategy to me, shall we?”
If only my staff included a relationship strategist who could manage my dating life as well as these two manage politics and messaging for me. Maybe then, this poll really would be good news, and not a sign that in hindsight, I should have been less cautious.
I glance at Deena, who holds my phone, and almost ask again if Cindy called. But she would have told me immediately. So I stay silent, and promise myself: Next time I’ll make it clear what I want when I have it.
But I’m afraid there won’t be a next time.
Cindy
A press availability with the Speaker and the Whip means standing in a stuffy, windowless room in the Capitol. I’m on display with my colleagues in front of a whole army of reporters and cameras and nothing but a podium and mostly unwritten rules separating the two groups.
The Speaker murmurs to me before we go into the room, “Nicely done on the bill. Getting the White House to stand down is no small feat.”
I feel a little flutter at the rare compliment, even though I’m aware that the rest of the leadership team left me on my own to pull off negotiations and didn’t expect me to succeed. “Thank you, Madame Speaker,” I say, swallowing down the negativity. Baby steps.
“I spoke to the Judiciary chairman,” the Speaker continues. She raises her eyebrows and I brace myself for the worst. “And Randy can stuff it. This is your win.”
After that affirmation, I float into the room. The Speaker has my back in front of the press, too, telling them the cannabis bill is scheduled for hearings within the month and will be “brought to the Floor in a timely manner.”
Then I get the questions Lizzie predicted.
“Congresswoman Wight, do you believe you pushed the White House to the left on this legislation?”
“Congresswoman, do you know why the White House pulled back their support for the Senate bill? ”
The Speaker and Whip make room for me at the podium, where the microphones are.
“They made their own statement about their reasons and I won’t guess beyond that,” I reply, and take a step back. It’s the answer Max suggested on the phone as I rushed here, running late. We’d tried to plan for every scenario, but now that I’m faced with this room, I’m uncertain.
I know the expectations surrounding this legislation, and at this event I’m supposed to stand in the background and let party leadership pretend they’ve supported me all along. There’s a line and I’m willing to cross it, but I’m not sure when is appropriate.
“Congresswoman, have you spoken to the vice president about the bill?”
Reluctantly, I step back up to the podium. “I have not.” I pause. “In a few days.” I step back again.
“The Post is reporting he plans to launch an exploratory committee for the presidency next week. Did the two of you discuss his plans?”
The last bit of doubt in my heart lifts so suddenly, my insides jump. Alex is going after what he wants. He listened to me. I’m not just a prop. I’m someone he listens to on the big decisions.
I glance at the Speaker and Whip, who have retained their neutral expressions for the sake of the media but are shuffling their feet a bit as this turns into the Cindy Wight press conference.
Time to go with my instincts.
Straightening my spine, I lift my chin, and step back to the podium once again. “I’ll make a simple statement,” I say, and the reporters’ hands all go down and back to their pens and notebooks. The room falls silent but for the sound of tension.
“The vice president and I worked closely on the cannabis legislation to ensure it included the provisions most important to the communities it impacts. The vice president impressed me with his forthright communication style, his negotiation skills, his ability to multitask, his love of his dog and his kindness to everyone around him. He was an excellent partner in the negotiations over this bill.”
I take a breath and then I say it: “And I’d vote for him. Every time, every office.”
Stepping back as the room explodes around me, I watch reporters yelling questions without waiting to be called on. I raise my eyebrows at my colleagues, mouthing, “That’s it.”
We gather in a huddle and leave, surrounded by aides.
“Taking party unity a bit far, aren’t you?” the Whip murmurs. The Speaker meets my eyes and just smiles a little, the smile of two women letting a man think what he wants.
As we’re leaving, someone asks: “Do you think the vice president will be our next president?”
And someone else calls out: “Are you going to marry him?”