So Close (7 page)

              She took this in.  We both did.  It was so outside my wheelhouse I might as well have said I was developing an app. 

              “So then you’re just passing through?”  She weighed the credulity of my proclamation, but I could hear her hope.

              “Yup, just came by to make sure you weren’t kicking up your heels,” I did my best impression of her.  “I don’t want to hear nonsense about you playing hooky.  People talk you know, Grammy.” 

              She let out a laugh and then swiped her fingers under her eyes.  She went to remove my empty glass, but instead put her palm to my shoulder.  I reached up and grabbed it, the strength of her grip always surprising me as she squeezed tightly before letting me go.

Since I hadn’t even been able to scare up a job at the Tallyville dump, I’m not sure what made me think I was about to land one on a statewide campaign.  My municipal experience consisted of the Mayor wiping barbeque sauce from his cheek while audibly debating stuffing my tip in my bra.  But as Grammy had tacitly confirmed, Delilah’s growing belly threatened to collar my neck, so reality testing was off the menu.   

Besides, I didn’t invent showing up at a political office with sugarplum visions of a making a just and ordered world.  As Tom Davis succinctly put it, kids aren’t being given shit.  So campaigns are run on the backs of the young and unsaddled, fueled on our fervent belief in a future more tolerable than today.  But it was more than that.  Until I saw Lindsay navigate whatever had transpired for her in that bathroom, and then the grassy circles of the Westerbrook’s party, I hadn’t yet come across a woman I wanted to be.  I definitely hadn’t met a couple I wanted to emulate. 

I returned to the trailer that morning with fifty dollars pressed into my hand and a ham and cheese pressed into waxpaper.  The money filled my tank and the sandwich placated Billy, or so I needed to believe, and I pulled out of the trailer park to leave—as I should have that first time—in the driver’s seat. 

For those who’ve never been to Palm Beach, steps from the ocean you find spectacular wealth.  Inland from that, decaying poverty.  And further in still gated communities of varying pretense linked by stretches of box-store dotted highways.  The hastily assembled Davis for Senate office was in a strip mall between a Laundromat and a Christian bookstore that was sporadically open.  I reached it in a teeming downpour, the grooming I’d done in the rearview washed away in the few puddle leaps required to make it inside. 

Amidst the mess of cartons and half-assembled office furniture, everyone seemed to be attached to a phone and all of them talked at once.  I must have stood there soaking the linoleum a good ten minutes before it registered that I wasn’t on anyone’s radar.  And neither were the two women in rain slickers and the guy slouched on the wall with his arms crossed.  Their impatience instantly oriented me. 

I squeezed out my hair, wiped my hands on my skirt and turned my hostess smile in their annoyed direction.  “How can I help you?”

              Who knows how long they’d been ignored because I had to repeat myself and then they all jumped to talk at once.  The elder woman was there to complain about campaign signs wrecking her lawn.  The younger was supposed to pick up handouts for her church social that had already started.  And the guy had been waiting an hour to do an interview for his college newspaper.  I found the complainer the bathroom, got cups of water for all and, massaging them with apologies, surreptitiously interrupted staffers until I’d located assistance for each one.  Turns out the receptionist had cut out to grab a smoke at some point and, understandably overwhelmed, never returned.

              And, just like that, I was the newest volunteer at Davis for Senate.

I wasn’t the only one who’d heard him speak and felt like Tom was reading his or her mind, but the other zealots were law students whose employment opportunities were drying up faster than the ink on their school acceptance letters.  Used to logging brutal hours, they knew how to keep their brains sharp for the long haul, but not how to be disarmingly pleasant while doing so.  Between Kath and Kurt I’d developed the muscles to complete a Miss America Pageant while dodging scatter shot.  I knew how to triage those with plummeting blood sugar and soaring expectations, how to make a table where there was none, and how to simultaneously fry fries, scoop ice cream, ladle soup, take an order,
and smile
. 

And thanks to Delilah, I knew how to make things stretch.  Paper towels for a coffee filter—a damp one to freshen that stale pizza in the microwave—cold Popeye’s chicken and mustard packets transformed into a quick salad.  I had an MBA in making a dollar out of fifteen cents.  Which is about what that campaign had.  We were the scrappy guys with our sleeves rolled up, jumping in at the zero hour.  Tom, who I caught glimpses of as he came and went from funding, an entourage perpetually talking at him, was encouraged to make the most of his outsider status.  It allowed him to be the fresh thinker he was. 

1748 South Dixie Highway was the exact opposite of where I’d been my whole life—everyone was there because they wanted to be.  As braced as I was for the other staffers to cop an attitude with me, it was hard to imagine a doctorate could have garnered more respect than a well-timed Pepsi.  There were just too many fires to put out for anyone to get bogged down with my credentials.  I alternated sleeping in the back of my car, when it was cool enough, and the floor under my desk.  I was the only volunteer who sort of, kind of, really lived there, but a quick wash-down in the bathroom and I was good to go.  I may have essentially been marooned in that strip mall, but I was practically high from the experience. 

Lindsay Davis rarely came by because her smile was needed in a thousand other places.  Her and Tom’s white board schedule, which was perpetually being re-drawn, indicated that the campaign required as much from her as her husband. 
[INSERT SCENE-LET OF IVF REVEAL—LINDSAY IS BALLSY ABOUT IT] 
Even still, at the same time every month days were exed out for her and Tom to go back to their IVF clinic in Jacksonville.  Undeterred by the miscarriages she was determined one of these cycles would work.  I couldn’t help fantasizing about giving my pending sibling to her and solving all our problems.

If she remembered me from either of our two earlier meetings she didn’t let on, but she did notice the orange flowers I’d taken to cutting by the road and arranging in the greeting area.  Those, plus a few magazines and a bowl of candy and, as Grammy imparted, people felt greeted instead of shuffled. 

“Oh.”  Lindsay had stopped on the way to Tom’s office.  “Right.”  She nodded, taking in my handiwork.  “Smart.” 

Outside the walls of Grammy’s Victorian that adjective had never been assigned to me. 

September arrived, forcing the departure of a handful of staff for their fall semesters, which meant those of us who remained shifted up.  While my title still didn’t entail a salary, it did embolden me enough to move from the floor to the sagging couch by the copier.

              It was surprising I was the only vagabond who’d drifted into our offices, as there was always an open box of donuts and a pizza on offer.  I’d become skilled at sink showers, reminding myself that any Jane Austen heroine made do with a bowl and a pitcher. 

              Other than the donuts being more dependable than whatever Delilah could scare up it really wasn’t much of a stretch from how I’d grown up. 

When we won the Special Election and Tom became the official Democratic candidate I bought a postcard for Grammy at the neighboring bookstore with a picture of Mary and Joseph attending their newborn.  Pressing a Davis sticker on it I wrote, “Love, Amanda Beth, (newly appointed) Head Volunteer of the Inn.”  I was finally part of something bursting with potential that wasn’t my mother. 

One afternoon, about a month later, I was making my way back across the steady traffic that separated us from the Office Max.  Four bags straining with discounted printer ink slapped at my calves as I saw the Davis’s car pulling in from a fundraiser.  They were on their way inside when Lindsay froze, her hand still in her purse.  “It’s not here,” she called to Tom and he spun back.

“Everything okay?” I asked as I approached, blowing my bangs from my eyes.

“No,” Lindsay shook her head in concern.  “It’s not.”

“How can I help?” I asked.

“Let’s not lose time on this,” Tom said, checking his phone.  “I’ll just run back to the luncheon and grab it.”

Lindsay took me in for a second before reaching out a splayed palm in revelation.  “You know them.  She knows the hosts,” she paused Tom from turning to the car. “Wait, this will work.”

“Let’s just send a staffer,” Tom said.

“I’ll get someone for you.”  I went to go in as Tom switched his folded blazer over to his other arm.

“No.” Lindsay stopped me.  “I don’t want—I know her,” she said to Tom.  “She’s discreet.”

She did remember me.  “Amanda.”  I turned back, seizing the opportunity to re-introduce myself.  “Head Volunteer.”  I put down the bags to extend my hand to Tom.

“Yes.”  He shook it firmly.  “The Amanda who figured out how to open the window in the bathroom.  Your reputation precedes you.”

“There was gum on the hinge.”

“Well, we’re dammed glad to have you.”

“Happy to be here.”  I tried to temper my grin.

“We’ve met before, though, right?”

Eager to get me on my way, Lindsay interrupted him, “Sorry, but, Amanda, I’ve left Tom’s talking points at the luncheon.  In the hostess’s sitting room—right on her desk, where I set down my bag.  One of the programs that . . . I’d rather not have just sitting around.  We have a meeting or I’d go back.  John will take you, but if you could just slip in and grab it we’d be grateful.”

“No problem, let me just run these in and—”

“I got it.”  Tom lifted the bags, his arms dropping.  “Oof.  You’re tough.”  Lindsay grabbed his blazer before it hit the asphalt.

“Scrappy,” I demurred.

He laughed.  “Thanks, Amanda.  Seriously.”

“Yes, seriously.”  Lindsay opened the car door for me.  “Just bring it by our hotel on your way back if you could.”

              I happily stepped into the back seat of the sedan, which immediately peeled out.  Of course, the minute I replayed the conversation I realized where I was headed.  We only had one luncheon host in common—the Westerbrooks.  I looked down at my jeans, wishing I was at least wearing a blouse, instead of a tee-shirt.  But the odds against seeing Pax were in my favor.  It was the middle of a weekday, for God’s sake.  The guy must have a meeting or golf game or hangover.  And the whole point was to get in and out without drawing attention to the fact that I’d been sent.  He’d never know I was there. 

John’s talk radio droned as he took me over the bridge and under the towering palms.  He dropped me in the Westerbrooks’ drive behind the caterer’s van and I slipped into the loop of people breaking down the luncheon and in through the staff entrance of the stucco mansion.  I tucked my head as I made my way quickly through the kitchen to the dining room.  Through the oversized French doors I saw a tent off the pool where women milled about air-kissing goodbyes.  The Westerbrooks were hopefully still out there.  And in Pax’s case, out there out there.  Spain, ideally. 

Whatever Lindsay assumed, my last visit hadn’t seen me past the foyer so I had no idea which room was allotted for his mother to sit.  (Mine preferred a duct-taped recliner close enough to the TV to change its channels with her toe.)  Planning to dodge behind an urn if necessary, I quickly traversed the grand hallway.  I passed a living room, a library with a wall of duck prints, a concert space containing only a grand piano, and eventually arrived at a pale coral room that had to be my destination.  On one side of the door was a tufted settee facing a marble mantle and on the other, a curving antique desk between sumptuously draped windows that looked out over a shaded patio.  The ocean sparkled in the distance.  I couldn’t imagine what their other houses looked like that would make them ever want to leave this one. 

Amidst the sterling desk accessories I found a program from the luncheon, and turned it over to see notes scrawled on the back.  Suddenly, I heard someone coming.  Grabbing the tasseled fringe of the drape, I went to step behind it, but the idea of being discovered hiding there was too mortifying.  Across the room I spotted an open archway next to the fireplace.  I raced through it only to discover that it was not an exit, but a deep alcove of glass cases.  Porcelain figurines were displayed on every shelf; slender women holding infants, picking flowers, dancing.  And I was trapped beside them.  Stepping back into the shadow, I regretted not just staying put and explaining myself.   

“Tom’s a doll.”  In the reflection of the cases I could see Cricket enter the room with Taggart.  In a fitted silk dress, she was slipping off her earrings. 

“I’m worried we were a little premature throwing him into this.  He says what he thinks to a fault and he’s so green he’ll take advice from damn near anybody,” Taggart said gruffly.  He dropped in a chair beside her desk and extended his loafers as if to inspect them.

“Isn’t that what he’s supposed to be doing right now, taking advice?”  She slid open a desk drawer and withdrew a leather-bound date book.

“As long as there aren’t too many cooks,” he mulled. “He does seem to actually believe what he’s saying.  Haven’t seen one of those in awhile.”

She said something as she perused the binder.

“Mmm,” Taggart answered, staring at his lap.  “Hot, though.”

“It was.”

“Not as bad as August.”

“No.”  She flipped through the pages.  God, what if they were hunkering in?  Do husband’s sit in these rooms for any length of time?  Is that allowed?

That’s when I realized that the couch, with it’s floral back to them at the desk, had a person on it.  In washed out red pants and a pale pink shirt he practically blended in.  He was sleeping.  He was Pax.