Domestic Affairs (7 page)

“Mrs. Taylor, that is my fault. Let me call you offline right now and we can get this fixed.” He made the statement in his most controlled voice.

“You can't fix this, Jacob. It's shit. The whole schedule is shit. I'll just have to go and clean up your mess like usual.”

“Clean up your mess” in Aubrey-speak meant nothing more than her canceling every well-planned stop of the day and, most likely, heading off to the salon instead.

Jacob had literally held the phone away from his face, looking in disbelief, then started to apologize.

“You know what, Jacob?” she shouted loudly, her voice then rising into a shrill scream. “The next time you get the urge to schedule something,
go chew on a pencil
.” And then the beep of a caller getting off the call hit the line like a slammed door.

Jacob felt the need to put his fist through the nearest wall but resisted. “Okay,” he said, ending any gossip before it started, “I screwed something up this morning here, that's all that was. Sorry about that.”

He took a short unnoticed breath and went on with the business of the call. When they had finished the teleconference, Jacob asked everyone to pick up their phone off speaker. “Listen, people,” he had said. “We are a family and some days we all lose it. I have seen all of you lose it at least once and you have all seen me lose it more than once. We can laugh and joke about it and move on. It happens. But Mrs. Taylor's image,” he argued to everyone, while also reassuring himself, “is as important to the campaign as the governor's. Our bad day might piss off our family or our loved ones. Her bad day could piss off a country. So, as a family, we are going to respect the fact that she has
a bad day every once in a while and we are going to have her back. It's not going to become gossip. It's not going to become a joke. Even between us. You have to remember the scrutiny we are under. One person overhears something like this, and we all go down. We're in this together.”

Silence followed.

“Not to mention,” Jacob said, “I assure you that if something on this campaign is leaked, I will find out where it came from. I promise.” Jacob was only twenty-four then, and he had surprised even himself by taking such complete control. Of course it helped that campaign workers revered the team mentality. Campaign lessons varied from person to person and campaign to campaign, but lesson number one was always loyalty.

To this day he felt proud of that moment and took credit, internally at least, for the fact that there had been no subsequent leaks. He had also come up with his words of steel, as he termed them:
calm, contain, control
. According to him they were the keys to making it in campaigns, especially when it came to handling people like Aubrey. And so far, they'd worked. The country never suspected that even a single curse could pass Aubrey's lips, much less the daily serving she actually provided.

As he and the governor walked to the car, Jacob laughed thinking of that episode. And he remembered how the events of that day had changed a great deal for him, and for Taylor as well. Jacob had been working late and around ten forty-five that evening when the governor came into his office and sat down. He threw his feet up on Jacob's desk, an occurrence that had not yet become familiar, and said, “So how was the day?”

“Good,” Jacob replied as he listed several of the accomplishments and updated him on endorsements, half wondering if he would be fired as a result of Aubrey's anger.

“Good, good,” the governor replied. “Oh, hey,” he added, “I got you something.” He placed a box on Jacob's desk. Jacob looked down at the box of pencils and laughed.

Ever since then the two had running private jokes about everything. Including Aubrey.

Amazingly, Taylor made it to the Habitat for Humanity event only fifteen minutes late, and Jacob let out his first sigh of relief of the day. Habitat fundraisers were their signature event and accordingly second nature. Aubrey and Landon actually had been two of the organization's first supporters when it was just a small, faith-based community group in Georgia. It was also at a Habitat event where the Taylors met Billy, the governor's trusted adviser, longtime friend, and now chief of staff. He was a young staffer to a congressman then.

On this May morning, Aubrey and Billy were waiting at the entrance to the site when the governor's car pulled up. The governor and Jacob opened their doors and stepped out in tandem. Jacob forced a smile, pushing back his annoyance at Aubrey, who stood with her hand solidly at her hip, where it often seemed Krazy Glued. Obviously out of public eyesight, she turned her cheek to Taylor's kiss.

“You're late,” she said, shooting a stare Jacob's way.

And you're a joy
, Jacob said sarcastically in his head as he turned on as much charm as he could muster. “So sorry, Mrs. Taylor, we did everything we—”

She began talking in the middle of his sentence, and Jacob stopped, knowing he wasn't supposed to give an answer and kicking himself for trying. Aubrey looked at Landon with a smile that Jacob thought was more of teeth grinding than happiness.

“Darling,” she said, transforming that faux smile into pursed lips, “the Angevines are here. Please remember her name is Danielle.”

The governor gave a “Yes, dear” head nod, and Jacob could see one of those momentary pangs of timidity in his eyes and wondered how long it would be before Aubrey let the governor live down not remembering Danielle's name one time last year.

Billy stood back, hands folded in front of him, as always, with the unfazed look of someone who had been watching this same movie for twenty years. Jacob surveyed the chief of staff's face, unsuccessfully trying to picture him twenty years younger. Billy was one of those men who seemed stuck in time, a statuesque African-American man with grayed hair that one couldn't imagine him without. He was always
dressed meticulously in a three-piece suit without deference to occasion or weather. Jacob imagined he had little choice in the matter, having met Billy's wife, Martha Ann. Martha Ann had edicts that would not be broken, and among them was, breakfast should consist of porridge, and a man should be properly dressed at all times. Jacob felt forever awkward in her presence, but especially at their first meeting, when he thought she was kidding about the porridge thing and had made a joke that was, retrospectively, not very funny.
Okay, not at all funny.
In his defense he wasn't aware porridge was something people other than Goldilocks and the three bears ate.

Martha Ann had since come to like Jacob—well, at least he thought she did.
Maybe “tolerates me” is a better term
, he thought, remembering the searing look of disapproval she'd given his khaki pants the last time they were in church together.
Must work on that
, he thought, piling it onto his ever-increasing list of resolutions.
Impress Martha Ann and Billy.
He smiled, knowing it was a near-impossible task. They were as elegant and meticulous as Billy's old three-piece suits.

The governor approached Billy and the chief of staff leaned in a bit, speaking with his usual calm. “Senator Del Giudice is here. He's warm on section 2A of the spending bill.”

And that goes on the list too
, Jacob thought, watching Billy ask the governor to do something without ever actually asking a question and vowing to adopt the technique. Jacob constantly felt as if he were begging for something to be said or done. Billy had a way of just mentioning a fact that would immediately spur Taylor to do just what he wanted him to do.
Of course
, Jacob thought to himself,
he also always has every domino piece in place before he asks for the push.
Like his perfectly put-together outfits, Billy laid things out well before they ever needed to be done. Everything he did was slow and methodical—one might say painstakingly slow—but he was always prepared.

Jacob often wondered how Billy managed to stay with Taylor, who was basically his polar opposite in terms of planning things out.
Opposites attract
, he thought gratefully, as he also couldn't imagine Taylor, or any of them, without Billy. Everyone loved Billy, even Aubrey, who now interrupted their conversation to say, “Thank goodness for my dear man Billy. Otherwise I would have been here by myself.”

Billy smiled, ever the peacekeeper, and stayed a careful three steps behind the governor and Aubrey. He turned to Jacob and began speaking again, not exactly in a whisper but in a tone that only the person he wanted to hear his words could make out. “Good job, kiddo. I thought we were in for at least twenty more minutes.”

“We almost got here early!”

Billy grinned again and continued walking quietly behind the governor.

Jacob sprinted ahead to Taylor and began grabbing the business cards that the governor was receiving from all sides and slyly passing off. When Jacob saw Aubrey grab the governor to pull him over to the Angevines, he knew he'd have at least five minutes to himself and he took the opening to run up to the stage, which was built out on the side of one of the houses under construction.

Double-check there is water on the podium. Yes. The mic level has been adjusted. Check. The right amount of chairs set. Check. The Taylor sign perfectly straight on the front of the podium. Check.

He rushed back to the Taylors' side just in time to hear them moving on from Aubrey's friends.
Calm, contain, control
, he reminded himself as he watched Billy, still steps back, clearly and serenely catching each person he needed to talk to. Jacob watched him move closer to the governor as Senator Del Giudice approached him. He barely looked as if he was moving but when the senator said, “Hiya, Billy!” sure enough they were so near to the governor that Taylor simply turned his head and was in the conversation.

When the speaking program finally began, Jacob walked back behind the hundred or so people crowded in the middle of the four houses that were being built and slid back, leaning onto one of the erected support beams. He looked around at the scene in front of him, thinking it was an exact replication of every Habitat event they had ever done, including the very first. Not that Jacob was there, but he had heard about that first event so many times, it was clearer in his mind than some of his own memories. He wondered if maybe the stories had evolved, as all political stories do, with the passing of time; it seemed less likely that they would be able to re-create the same event so many years in a row. Although they did have it down to a science. Even their
stage positions stayed the same: Taylor at the podium, Aubrey stage left looking adoringly at him, Billy in back of the crowd listening intently. It was like an old rock band playing a thirty-year-old hit song live. They could do it in their sleep, but the crowd still loved it, and so did they.

Billy, who met Taylor at that first event, explained the scene to every interviewee that stepped into Taylor's offices, including Jacob, as if describing a Norman Rockwell painting come to life. “It was a cool Georgia day unsuspecting of its imminent importance,” he would say. The high school quarterback, now the matured law professor, was at the podium with his beautiful wife by his side. Her blond hair blew in the subtle wind as she looked intently at him, nodding as if he were preaching her life's religion. The half-built house in the background and the hammer that Taylor had accidentally taken up with him and clumsily placed on the podium as he was speaking seemed unprofessional to Aubrey, who apparently later scolded, “Can't you juuuust fuckin' keep it together at least for the pictures?” Billy never told that part. To him the scene was “directly analogous to the country's house—desperately needed, but only half-built—and Taylor held the hammer to get it done.”

Billy, then in his late twenties, was the legislative assistant to an elderly congressman whom Aubrey, a young, self-proclaimed trophy wife, just a year out of UGA, had convinced to be the featured guest speaker of her event. Aubrey could convince anyone of anything without their even realizing they had been convinced. As far as Jacob could tell, even before she won the Miss Georgia crown, the spotlight seemed to follow her around.
The universe is probably under direct orders never to let the light dim
, Jacob thought, recognizing he had spent more time than he cared to admit trying to figure out what it was that made her unacceptable behavior so acceptable to everyone else.

He was sure that it was more than just her pretty face framed by locks of always-perfectly-sculpted blond hair, though neither of those things hurt. It was something inherent in her personality. When she demanded things, people treated her as if she were doing them a favor. And as far as Jacob could tell, it was a talent she was born with.

“She kept me working!” Aubrey's mother was known to say. Which was actually fact, he had found out, not just a cute phrase. Aubrey's
mom had once told Jacob that she planned on being a stay-at-home mom but went back to work because when Aubrey was in the second grade, she had marched downstairs, one hand on the hip of her frilly beauty-queen dress, and announced that she would “no longer put up with a public school education.”