So Close (12 page)

“Not at all.” 

              “And you’re not with the Bodtender?”

“Definitely not.” 

She sighed.  “I thought the fact that I wouldn’t have to listen for the monitor meant I was going to sleep for fourteen hours straight, but I can’t even close my eyes.”

“I’m sorry.  Maybe a Tylenol PM?”

“Tom stayed for drinks with Merrick’s camp after the fundraiser,” she hedged.  “I’m kind of coming out of my skin.”

I spat my toothpaste.  “How can I help?”

She was waiting at her front door in navy pajamas, holding out a glass of wine for me.  “Oh, I’m good,” I demurred.

“Amanda, you drove over here in the dead of night so I can get a grip, at least let me give you a drink.”

I took a polite sip and set it down on the entry table with my wallet and keys.  “So, we’re getting a grip?”

“Look at this.”  She pointed at the neglected paint samples still striping the foyer wall.  “This house makes me want to put a pillow over my head and ask you to hold it.”

“That’d get a no.”

“I’m so glad you’re here.  Come upstairs.  There’s just so much to be sorted, so much to be given away.  I started in my closet because it was the closest thing to my bed.”  All the lamps were on in their bedroom and CNN was muted.  The remaining contents of her walk-in were laid out on every surface. 

“Wow.”

She pointed at each pile.  “The suits I wore pre-twins.  Those dresses—I could starve myself for a year and
maybe
fit one thigh in.  The era of bathing suits is definitely out for the foreseeable future.” 

“I’ll get some bags from the kitchen.”

“Great.” 

I ran down to where the counter held bins of mostly junk mail that I’d been collecting for them over the last months.  I grabbed a box and jogged up the stairs as Lindsay emerged from her closet with an armful of jeans. 

“Load number one,” she called and dumped them in.  “And everything on the bench goes, too.”  Rolling up her sleeves she pulled out every dresser drawer and even went through their ski clothes, becoming, as one does on such a mission, more ruthless in her tossing with every passing minute.   We filled five bags and were half way through the sixth when she came out of her closet with a massive box.  “My wedding dress,” she said, blowing an errant hair from her face as she passed me. 

“Oh, you should keep that.”

“One of my daughter-in-laws might want to make a table-cloth out of it?”

“Definitely,” I said as I followed her to the other side of the hall.  She balanced it against the wall while fumbling for the knob. 

“Oh, here!”  I grabbed the box just before it dropped.  The knob gave way and the hall light spilled onto the pink carpet, a triangle of a four-poster bed illuminated.  Lindsay, who had been in a manic motion since my arrival, suddenly froze.  She took a half-step back, her chest visibly rising.  She blinked for a moment.

“You don’t have to sort everything tonight,” I said quietly.  

“Where will you bring all this?” she asked into the darkness the way one distracts a child with mundane questions as all hell is breaking loose.

“Goodwill.  There’s a drop box around the corner.” 

“Do they still have those Dress for Success programs?  Give-the-homeless-a-suit-so-they-can-get-a-job sort of thing?”

I didn’t say that they weren’t all homeless.  That some had perfectly fine trailers and just needed to look decent for an interview at the dealership where they’d end up dating the married owner.  “Yes, I mean, they did in Tallyville.”

“They don’t need cocktail dresses.  That’s something Nancy would do,” she said, meaning Merrick’s wife, the heir to a condiment fortune.  “You take them.” 

“Me?”

“Yes, take the cocktail dresses.  You’re the right size.” 

I was two sizes smaller but I would never have said that.  “Oh, I’m happy to bring those in to Goodwill for your deduction.”

“No, you’ve been a great help.  I’d like you to have them.  Ashleigh was always borrowing my things without asking,” she said into the empty room, “We’d have such fights.  I’d ground her.  Then Tom started covering the dry cleaning for her so I wouldn’t know and I just—“ She abruptly took the box from me, dropped it in and pulled the door shut.  She turned to me, catching her breath.  “Take them, okay?”

We heard footsteps coming up the front walk and Lindsay jogged down the stairs before I could answer.  Tom wedged the door and, seeing us coming, swung it all the way.  “You’re awake!” he exclaimed, walking in with the deliberate motions of a man who’d knocked a few back.  “What’re you ladies up to?” 

“So?” Lindsay asked eagerly as she stopped on the last step, making them head to head.  “What did they say?  Did they decide?”

“Everything.  Nothing.  The DNC still wants Stapleton.”  The Governor of Iowa.  “They talk in circles, but Goddamn do they like to talk.”  He attempted to hang his blazer on the banister twice before getting it right, swinging his arm around her. “How are you still upright?”

“Are you joking?”

“Oh.”  He dropped his chin.  “Bad news, babe, they only want me joking when there’s an audience.  Will you be my audience?”

“Did they give you any sense of timing?” Lindsay asked, putting a steadying palm on his chest. 

“They have a final requirement.”

“Final?”

“That’s how they put it.”

“And?”

“If they choose me I have to resign from the senate.  They don’t want me ‘conflicted.’”

She blinked at him.  “That’s crazy.  That leaves you nothing to go back to.”

“You heard them, I’m going to be Vice President.  I don’t need anything to go back to, right?”

“But what if you’re not?  We worked so hard to get you there—to be in a place where you could make a difference.  That was the goal.  They can’t ask you to gamble that.”

“They’re not asking—they’re telling.  And if that’s what it takes to be able to make an infinitely bigger difference for infinitely more people then so be it.  And, Linds, for the next few months they want us in the home we raised Ashleigh.”

“Well, you’d be on the trail so
I
will be in the home we raised Ashleigh.” 

“I should say goodnight.”  I gestured past them to the door, but they didn’t move.  I was stuck on the stairs.

“We can do this,” Tom said, his voice slurring.

“But I don’t want to,” she said simply, tears splattering her pajamas.   “I don’t want to live here.”  She pulled his arm off her. 

He stared at the floor for a moment as her statement made its way through the whiskey.  “I don’t understand.  You want me to tell them to just forget it?”

“Tom, no!  I’m just—it’s a lot of uncertainty, a lot of risk, and it’s been weeks of this and you aren’t telling me anything about when I’m supposed to—”

“The minute I fucking know one fucking thing about what I am fucking doing I will tell you.”

“Tom.”  Her eyes flashed to me.

He sat heavily on the stairs.  “Babe, I’m useless.   Please can’t we figure this all out tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow.”  She took a controlled breath.  “
We
have to fly back up to D.C. for Chip’s physical therapy appointment.  They’re going great, thanks for asking, his coordination is almost at Collin’s level.  Then
we’re
going to the pre-school meet-and-greet for accepted families at the school you have yet to visit.  After which
we
have to buy the new caps for swim class in minnow green because our kids are minnows now and that starts Friday.  So, no.  Now is the time
we
have to talk about you leaving the United States Senate.”  She turned to me, realizing I was stuck on the steps.  “Amanda, you all set?”  She made space for me to pass.

“Yes.  Good night, guys.”  I let myself out, none of us optimistic it would be.

I stayed up all night running the numbers, figuring out if Tom said yes, how long it would be before I lost my car, my apartment.  In the morning Tom’s selection was officially announced—my phone buzzed with the news only seconds before I watched it on my television.  Tom was leaving the senate. 

              This was it.  The end of health insurance and panty hose.  I was going to be back at Jacksonville’s equivalent of Catfish Heaven.  I would never accomplish anything with my life to earn another cookie.

              My heart collapsed like a cheap beach chair. 

              For three days I watched everyone around me surreptitiously update their resumes and slip out multiple times a day for ‘personal calls.’  I had no calls to make.  Each person who could put in a word for me was frantically asking everyone they knew to put in a word for them. 

Sunday morning I was researching state schools and seeing if I could waitress my way all the way through this time when I got Lindsay’s text. “
S.O. Fucking S
.”

The Davises were bringing the Merricks to Sunday service with the minister who’d married them and christened all three Davis children.  It was to be followed by an  “intimate luncheon” at their Riverside home—and a 20/20 interview. 

Apparently, Lindsay frantically filled me in, the caterer was so rattled by the secret service casing the house and the weed he’d forgotten to remove from his glove compartment that he gulped half a bottle of sherry.  Even the unflappable Rhonda was overwhelmed.  With my solvency hanging in the balance, I suited up and raced over there.

But no sooner had I benched the chef and delegated a meal Kath would have been proud of, than ABC’s lighting equipment short-circuited the cooling system.  I called four electricians, promising double to whoever got a generator installed first, then ran out to buy bomb-sniffed box fans for every room. When I got back Merrick’s staff was showing the segment producer every conceivable furniture configuration that might achieve 20/20’s Floridian vision.  “Fuck! Not one fucking palm tree print?!  What the fuck?”  (And back to K-Mart.)

              Lindsay was the first through the front door, where she was promptly felled by a displaced ottoman.  Mrs. Merrick, one hand on her Hermes scarf, the other wrapped around her waist, made her way in as if stepping around dog shit.  “How quaint!” she called over the whir of the fans. 

              “Oh, thank you!” Lindsay said as I helped her to her feet.  “You’ll have to come back when we’re not under siege!”  She gamely led her guests around the barricade of furniture to the dining room.  Charles Merrick automatically took Tom’s place at the head of the table, causing Tom to stop short.  Lindsay nudged her husband to a side chair and handed him a glass to raise. 

He cleared his throat.  “It’s a real honor to welcome you both to our home and, of course, be given this opportunity to support you.”  Merrick cupped his ear as I shifted the fan from blowing napkins in their faces.  “We’re giving this everything we’ve got!”

              “I should hope so.”  Charles Merrick picked at the black-eyed peas.  Suddenly, the generator chugged to life.  Cool air streamed from the vents.  Lindsay dropped her head back in relief and Nancy Merrick asked for salt.  Clinking silverware was the only sound that followed. 

Lindsay told me later that she’d already given up.  To explain the Merricks Tom invoked Chris Rock: there was Oprah-rich, and then there were the people who signed Oprah’s checks.  The Merricks were the check-signers and privately put off by the masses whose votes they were courting.  Masses who thrilled to Tom’s rallying cry. 

You would never have guessed any of this once the 20/20 cameras rolled. 

Just before sitting down with Elizabeth Vargas, Merrick gamely rolled up his sleeves and Nancy unwound her scarf.  I watched from the back of the living room as the banter between the two couples took on the ease of old college friends, prompted by Lindsay, who exuded warmth enough for all of them. 

She was spectacular. 

As the last ABC van pulled out and I picked up my purse Lindsay turned to me.  “We’ve been told Tom needs something called a body man.  Basically someone who’ll trail him minute by minute—a kind of personal assistant on steroids.  I’d been wracking my brain, running through all the guys in the state offices, but, of course, you’re the man for the job.”

“Really?”

“You’ll be switched onto the campaign payroll starting tomorrow.  And Amanda?”

“Yes?”

“Do you own a suitcase?”

I bought two.  One for overnights.  One for the longer hauls.  That evening the click of the Davis front door shutting was the starting gun on an energy-drink-pounding, vending-machine-dining, chair-sleeping marathon that blessedly left me without a brain cell to think about anything I was missing, Pax, or the idea of him, included.  I was either in a vehicle, a tiny plane, a motel, hotel, or scrum of suited security, handing Tom cough drops, tissues, notes, local baked goods, the bag to throw them up into, fresh shirts and a thousand other things a man perpetually selling needs.  At one point I realized I’d reached into the wrong carry-ons and he was wearing my deodorant.  His knees became inflamed through jumping onto stages from fields, factory floors, and parking lots.  His hands grew swollen from relentless shaking.  His voice constantly gave out.  But Tom thrived on it.  “I can do this, Amanda,” he would say to me as he was buoyed, yet again, by the realization.  “I can really help these people.”  I’d have to remind him to lay down so at least his body could rest—“Yes, even if you can’t sleep”—just like I used to do with Billy.

              Not that I would have opted to step away for even a moment had I been greeted as he was wherever we went.  Men in expensive suits stuttered to ask his opinion, babies were lifted for his kiss, and women of every age—well, it reminded me of the scene in Indiana Jones where Harrison Ford practically lectures a room of students out of their panties.  While, as Senator, he’d always had interested audiences, people were suddenly rapt.  The thousands at his rallies wore such fervent expressions it seemed they were trying to beam him into the White House with their eyes.  If Lindsay’s praise had made me feel like a grown up, this must have made Tom feel like a God.  It was, by any standard, intoxicating.