The Hopefuls (17 page)

I was tempted to call him right back, but I was the one always telling him not to be on his phone while he drove, so I didn't. It felt like forever before I heard his key turn in the lock, and I ran down to meet him at the door, which made him laugh.

“Finally!” I said. “I've been dying here. What happened?”

He kissed me hello and then I followed him up the stairs, waiting right behind him as he took off his jacket and hung it on the banister. He was smiling, looking like he had a good secret and was enjoying making me wait to hear it.

“So you know Dan Cullen? He's the state senator for District Sixteen?” I nodded even though I didn't really know who he was, but the name sounded vaguely familiar and I wanted Matt to keep talking. “Well, it turns out he's thinking of retiring, which means his seat would be open in 2014.”

“And?”

“And they wanted to know if I'd consider running for it.” Matt looked puffed up at this point—his chest and cheeks big, like he was actually going to burst.

“I can't believe it,” I said.

“I know,” Matt said. “I mean, it's still over a year away, and nothing's definite. He just wanted to float the idea, to see if I'd be interested. That's all.”

But I could see he was already picturing it—the house in Maryland, the campaign, his dream becoming a reality. In his mind, it was a done deal.

District 16 covered the area where Matt's brothers lived, not too far from where he grew up. It contained parts of Bethesda and Silver Spring, which were a couple of the towns that he always suggested would be nice for us to live in one day. We'd been up there a bunch, of course, to spend time with his family, and it was nice and suburban and still pretty close to DC, which Matt always used as a selling point.

When Matt told Babs the news, I could hear her scream through the phone. It's possible she was even more excited than he was. Probably, she was just thrilled there was a chance Matt would be living even closer to her than he was now. The two of them talked on the phone for over an hour that night. I could only imagine how many more times we'd have to listen to the story of Matt dressing up as Ronald Reagan over the next year, and my heart broke a little in advance for Patrick.

I asked Matt if he was going to tell Jimmy and he told me he already had—which meant he'd called Jimmy from the car, which bothered me although I pretended it didn't so it wouldn't ruin Matt's excitement. It meant that instead of calling me right after his meeting, he'd chosen Jimmy. And I knew that Jimmy understood more of this stuff, that the two of them talked about it all the time, but still. I was the one he was married to.

Each time Matt discussed the possibility of running, he made sure to say in a serious voice that it was still too early to get really excited, but you could tell he was just saying it as a formality; a superstition so he wouldn't jinx himself.

Matt started sending me links to houses in Maryland, sometimes over ten a day, and I'd click through them and try to picture living there, examining hardwood floors and remodeled kitchens. None of the places were that far from where we were currently living; distance-wise, they were all less than ten miles away. But it felt like so much more, like it was a whole other world.

One Saturday we went to an open house. “Just to get a feel for it,” Matt said. “Just to see what the market's like.”

I felt like a fraud taking one of the flyers and walking through the house—surely they'd notice that we weren't really looking, that we couldn't possibly be moving to Maryland. But Matt chatted with the agent, shaking her hand on the way out, telling her we'd be in touch. It was a charming brick house on a hilly street with a little cobblestone path that led from the front door down to the sidewalk.

“What'd you think?” Matt asked as we got in the car.

“It was nice,” I said. “Expensive.”

He looked over at me. “It doesn't sound like you liked it.”

“It's not that,” I said. “It's just overwhelming. This is all happening so fast.”

“I know,” Matt said, grinning at me. For a second, I thought he was ignoring the fact that I sounded unhappy about the whole thing, but I think he was actually too excited to notice.

“It's hard to wrap my head around it,” I continued. “The whole thing still doesn't seem real.”

Matt drove to the end of the block and braked at the stop sign, waited an extra beat to look around at the neighborhood before continuing on. He sounded cheerful, but also a little firm as he said, “But it is, Beth. It is real. This is happening.”

And then just a few weeks later, it was over. Matt came home from work looking miserable and told me that Dan Cullen had decided to run again. “He said he felt like he still had more to give,” Matt said.

“Matt, that sucks,” I said. “He called you himself?”

Matt shook his head. “The director called me. He told me not to get frustrated, that there would be other opportunities.”

“Well, that's good,” I said.

“It's not good. It's bullshit. He told me there would most likely be a seat opening up in the same area in the House of Delegates.”

“And you're not interested?”

“No,” Matt said. His words were clipped. “Last election, a twenty-three-year-old kid got an open seat. I don't want to waste my time with that.”

“Matt, I'm sorry. I know how much you wanted this. But just think how fast this all happened. You'll get another chance to run if you want to.”

“It's not that easy,” Matt said. He went upstairs to change out of his suit, but didn't come back down like he usually did. Finally, I went to look for him, found him sitting on the bed on top of the covers, slumped and looking at his BlackBerry.

“Hey,” I said. “Do you want to order dinner?”

He shrugged. “I'm not really hungry.”

“Okay,” I said. “Maybe I'll order some sushi. I'll get some extra for you to eat later?”

“Whatever.”

I walked over to Matt and kissed the side of his head, then walked downstairs without saying anything else. I was afraid if I stayed in the room too long, if I tried to comfort him any more that he'd figure me out, if he hadn't already. Because when he'd told me the news, my heart broke for him—but right before that, for a split second, I have to admit that I felt relieved.

Vivienne Rose Dillon was born on February 14, a couple of weeks early, but healthy. Ash posted pictures of the baby just hours after she was born, with lipsticked kisses all over her head and face. The caption read: “Our little Valentine is here!”

“Look at this,” I said to Matt, holding it up for him.

“Huh,” he said, and then turned back to the TV.

“It's probably not superhealthy to put lipstick on a baby that's like two hours old, right?”

Matt shrugged. We'd been doing this for a few days, since he found out about the senate seat—I tried to bait him into conversation and he replied with as few words as possible. It would take time, I figured, for him to shake this off. And in the meantime, I'd just be cheerful and supportive.

“I told them we'd come see the baby tomorrow,” I said. “You should text Jimmy.”

“I did.”

I tried to think of something else to say, some question to ask him so he'd have to keep talking to me. This version of my husband was hard to handle—usually he was the upbeat one, and I was already exhausted by the level of pep I was trying to maintain. I sat there for a few minutes, but when I couldn't think of anything else to talk about, I got up and left him alone. He didn't really seem to notice.

The next night, Matt got home as I was in the middle of tying a bow onto a bag of little gifts for Ash. “Hey,” I said. “Do you think you'll be ready to leave in like twenty minutes?”

He stared at me with a blank look for a second, and so I said, “For the hospital?”

“Oh right,” he said. “I forgot. Do I really need to go?”

My hands were still holding the ribbon, and I stopped tying and stared at him. “Are you kidding?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

“We already told them we were coming,” I said.

“I'm sure they'll live,” he said. “I really don't feel like it. Just tell them I'm busy.”

“Matt, they're going to know that's not true. Come on, it will just take an hour.”

He sighed like he was being unfairly treated. “Fine,” he said. “If it's that big of a deal, I'll go.”

We drove the five minutes to GW in silence and I almost regretted insisting that he come. I didn't want Matt to be sulking in the corner and I really didn't want him to announce the reason for his bad mood either—Ash had gone into labor before Matt could tell Jimmy about Dan Cullen's decision, so they didn't know that anything had changed.

“I know you don't feel like doing much,” I said as we parked the car. “But I think this will mean a lot to them.”

Matt turned off the ignition and said, “Whatever. Let's just get this over with.”

But when we arrived at their room, Matt put on a smile. Jimmy was holding the baby in a light pink blanket, and Ash was sitting up in bed, eating chocolate pudding. Her face was a little puffy and her eyes looked tired, but she had makeup on and her hair was curled. “My mom did my hair,” she said, when I told her she looked great.

Jimmy put the baby right in my arms, and she was so light it made me nervous. I slowly lowered myself into a chair, and then pulled the blanket back to get a better look at Viv. Her hands were clasped together, like a little worried old lady. Viv had a headband on, with a bow so large it looked like it might harm her. (She was wearing this bow in even her earliest pictures, and I can only imagine that Ash had barely finished pushing her out before leaning over to strap it on her head.)

“We've been telling her all day that her godparents were coming to see her,” Ash said.

Jimmy laughed and said, “So that's our way of asking if you'll be Vivienne's godparents.”

“Of course,” Matt said. “We'd be honored.”

Matt and I looked at each other across the room then, and I smiled to thank him for pretending to be in a good mood. Jimmy saw us and said, “Oh, I know what that look means. I bet someone has baby fever.” Matt and I managed to make ourselves laugh, and I hoped we were the only ones who noticed how fake it sounded.

Colleen had her baby just a few days after Ash, a little girl they finally named Bea after a great deal of discussion. “Bruce wants to call her Theresa,” Colleen told me when I visited her in the hospital. “Theresa Murphy. It makes her sound like a nun.”

I didn't ask Matt to come with when I went to visit Colleen. It didn't seem worth an argument, so I went back to GW myself, right back to the maternity floor where we'd just been. And when I told her that Matt was busy at work, she just said, “Oh, that's fine,” as if it hadn't even occurred to her that he would be there.

But it bothered me. I knew Matt was upset, but he'd always been the kind of person to brush off disappointment, knowing somehow that something better would come along. The way he was acting now was different from anything I'd ever seen before and it unsettled me. I didn't say any of this to Colleen, of course. Instead I just cooed over the baby, smiled, and said, “He so wishes he could be here.”

Later that week, Matt and I brought dinner to the Dillons. Matt wasn't in a good mood, exactly, but for the most part he'd stopped pouting. He was quiet, but when I told him we were taking dinner over there, he just nodded in agreement. He did say, “That's so midwestern of you,” but it didn't sound particularly mean, so I just said, “I know.”

I was expecting the Dillons' place to look like a disaster area—bottles and diapers everywhere, but when we arrived it was neat and tidy and Viv was sleeping. They even had a fire going. “Everything looks amazing,” I said as I hugged Ash. “You two are superheroes.”

“Oh, Celeste came today,” Ash said. “She's going to come a few times a week until we get a hold on things.”

Celeste was the cleaning lady we both used. We shared so many things with them—vacations, secrets, dinners—that it only seemed right that we shared her too. It was the Dillons who'd found her first and raved about how great she was.

I'd wanted a cleaning lady for a long time, but Matt had resisted, saying it was just the two of us and we could handle our own mess. Babs was always suggesting that Rosie come to our house, saying they were out of town often enough that she didn't have enough to do there.

I tried to decline this offer, but Babs waved me off. “She used to the do the same for the other boys,” she said. “But now they all have their own cleaning ladies, naturally.” I was uncomfortable with this arrangement for a lot of reasons—was I the only one to see how strange it was to have Rosie “lent” to us, like she belonged to Babs? (The answer to that was yes, because when I brought it up, Matt looked at me like I was crazy. “No one,” he said slowly, “thinks anyone owns anyone else.”)

It didn't make sense to me that Matt was against hiring a cleaning lady, but completely okay having Rosie do our cleaning. We argued about this, and I felt like I was never going to win. But after the Dillons hired Celeste and kept insisting we should do the same, Matt agreed. “Sounds perfect,” he said. “We've been looking for someone for a while.”

I almost choked on my soup, but didn't say anything. If Matt's Single-White-Female attitude toward Jimmy was going to get us a cleaning lady, I was happy to keep my mouth shut.

Right after we got to the Dillons' that night, I put the lasagna in the oven and the salad on the table. Ash had insisted that we could bring dinner only if we stayed as well, and when I tried to say that seemed to defeat the purpose of being helpful, she said, “We want to spend time with you two. That's the purpose. You have to stay.”