Authors: Emma McLaughlin
She let out a laugh, but I knew her eyes were staring wide. “Amanda.”
“Yes. I’m right here,” I said softly, wishing I were.
“Can you come?” her voice was small. “Please?”
Rousing Tom’s pilot from a dead sleep to meet me at the hangar and giving the order for takeoff in an otherwise empty jet felt like confirmation of every hope I had thrown with my change into the stagnant mall fountain alongside Ray Lynne. As the plane climbed so did my certainty that I was securing our future. We leveled in the indigo sky and I set the temperature of the cabin to my preferred degree, putting my feet up on the empty seat across from me. Enroot to the number one morning show in the country, I tried to memorize every deluxe detail around me as evidence that this,
not
the weekend that proceeded it, was my reality, would be
our
reality—Billy and Ray Lynne and mine—as soon as Tom won the election.
What started with a light dusting of snow over Baltimore thickened into a blizzard as we bumped down. The five am drive in from the airport was nail biting and I was grateful it was only just past six when I ran across the salted pavement of Rockefeller Center to the studio. I was shown to a dressing room where I squeezed past the handlers for the other guests, a bevy of hair and makeup women, before finally coming to a stop at Jeanine—reading off her iPad to the closed bathroom door.
“Tom’s a pillar of
strength.
His
strength
saw me through it. The
strength
of our love keeps me going. Amanda’s here.” She stepped aside and I shrugged off my coat. “Seven minutes with Robin Roberts, Lindsay.” The door cracked open and Jeanine jammed her head through. “I want to hear that word in four of them.”
Lindsay tugged me inside and yanked the door shut like we were eighth graders stealing a smoke. I looked pointlessly for a place to put my coat down as I caught my breath. Lindsay was sitting on the closed toilet lid, her prosthesis bra lying across her lap like it’d been spanked. The sight of the two scars across her bare chest conjured the eyebrows of a macabre clown. My hand went to my mouth. “Don’t,” she warned. I blinked back tears. “Not with that out there.”
“Did you tell her to pepper in the ‘unflinchings’?” Michael joined Jeanine on the other side of the door.
“Yes,” Jeanine said. “Three ‘strongs’ and one ‘unflinching.’ Got it?” she called through the door.
“Does it hurt?” I asked Lindsay.
“My surgeon says the scars are angry. Strong, strong, strong. Unflinching. And angry.” She exhaled, laying a palm gingerly over each ragged red line. “I get phantom twinges from the nerves regenerating. It’s worse to feel things against them. For example, two silicon water balloons.” The bra cups dented her skirt. “The pain is distracting—I don’t know how I’m going to keep smiling, keep saying what they want me to. If I take a pain killer I’ll come off like Farrah Fawcett.”
I reached out and took the bra from her. The silicone bags were unimaginably heavy.
“And Linds,” Michael called in. “We’re definitely going with the story of Tom carrying you down the mountain after your sprained ankle on that hike, how he’s always been there for you and now this is your turn to be there for him.”
“Well, uh, we were in our garden,” she muttered to the floor as she pulled her white blouse closed. “And I leaned on him as I hobbled to the porch.”
“Karen’s version,” Michael called pointedly.
Our eyes met in the mirror. I deliberately placed the bra in the duffle at our feet, zipped it closed, then handed the blouse to her. “The book is beautiful, Lindsay. I loved your story,” I said.
“Me, too,” she said with a touch of sadness as she buttoned up.
“The guy’s here with your mike,” Jeanine called.
“Okay, here goes,” she said. It took a second for me to compose myself and then I walked out into a three-way stand off.
“You forgot your bra,” Jeanine said.
Lindsay glanced at me. “No, I didn’t.”
“Lindsay,” Michael tried gamely, as if she was joking. “You’re not going out there like that.”
“Like what, Michael?”
“Without your tits on.” Jeanine exclaimed. “We’re already letting you do this blah Eileen Fisher thing. Now go in there and put it on.”
“I’m a grown woman, Jeanine.” Lindsay said to her. “And
those
are not my tits. My tits are sitting in a landfill. If that makes you uncomfortable then I’m sorry.” She waved the hovering crew guy over to mike her.
“Fuck
me
, it’ll make
America
uncomfortable, Lindsay,” Jeanine spat.
“Jeanine’s right,” Michael added. “It’s way too high risk.”
“It’s not like I’m going topless!” Lindsay cried as she took the tiny microphone from the crew guy and attached it to her collar. “So, there’s a little extra fabric. I’m going out there to talk about a double mastectomy for God’s sake.”
“You’re going out there to talk about your strong husband so he can be the President! It’s seven in the morning! People are standing in their kitchens. They don’t want to be depressed, Lindsay! You have to serve this with a spoonful of fucking sugar!”
“I disagree.” They turned on me and I swallowed, but kept speaking as I mentally flashed to Delilah murmuring about Disney World with her dress up over her thong. “People don’t want her trying to look twenty years younger than she is. Or like she hasn’t been through what she’s been through.
That’s
depressing. They want her to act her age with elegance and dignity. No more bullshit, that’s the campaign, right? Lanier’s government-as-usual and we’re the real people—authentic. What’s more authentic than this?”
Lindsay gave me a look of such unmitigated gratitude it burst my endorphins like a shaken soda can.
“We have to go
right now
.” The producer said from the door. “You’re live in two.”
And despite Jeanine and Michael’s terror they had no choice but to let her walk to the set just as she was.
As we hurried to watch in the greenroom Jeanine muttered that this was it, she quit. She didn’t need
this
.
But it turned out other women did. Hundreds of thousands of them.
As terrified as Lindsay looked in the first few seconds, Robin, no stranger to illness herself, immediately put her at ease. “As mothers and wives with cancer,” Lindsay confided, “we do so much to make our families feel comfortable when we’re not. That’s necessary work. But to wear something that makes you more uncomfortable just so the strangers who we see while grocery shopping can feel comfortable seems, to put it in political terms, like an unsound use of our resources.” Michael was riveted to the television as Lindsay talked about Tom, telling an unexpected and endearing story of how he’d made her laugh during her radiation treatment by pretending her jar of Aquafor was talking to them like an old Parkay tub. Jeanine’s cell rang and she silenced it. Then it lit up, and lit up again. Robin embraced her at the segment’s end.
When Lindsay was handed back to us like a child at school pick-up Jeanine leapt from the couch. “The View, CNN, The New York Times. All want you. Do you understand? I don’t think you understand. This is pre-Christmas media. You’re bumping heavy hitters hocking A-list holiday movies and electronics. This. Is. Huge.”
Unable to stop smiling, Lindsay put her hands to her cheeks. “My face is out of practice,” she said happily to me as we went to grab our coats. Michael took us to the St. Regis for breakfast where, high from this turn in public opinion, we studied our phones as the hollandaise sauce congealed. Karen kept refreshing Amazon to see the memoir inch up to the top ten. A pair of older women came over and bashfully asked for Lindsay’s autograph, confessing that they couldn’t have agreed with her more.
“It’s Lanier’s sweet spot,” Michael said like he still couldn’t quite believe it. “And we just pissed all over it.”
“I wear what I want.” Lindsay pointed at Jeanine, who’d have granted her going naked at that point. “Say what I want. And Amanda is with me for all of it.”
Having been Tom’s body man for the VP run I thought I had the relentless pace down. But I quickly realized the twins never factored into his schedule—and they dictated ours. We would leave after their bedtime, arriving around midnight, get up at five to do the local morning shows, head to the local bookstore or cancer center for a book signing event, then back on the plane to Jacksonville be home in time to do dinner with the kids. It was punishing, but Lindsay was thriving.
Empowered and appreciated, she was in constant communication with a reporter or reader. I used the skills I’d learned analyzing geriatric data for the Davis center to immerse myself in breast cancer research, leveraging academic and philanthropic contacts to reach experts at the forefront of the field and keep Lindsay briefed. When not on her phone Lindsay met with various women’s organizations courting her as a spokesperson, thrilled just to have her mention them in a Tweet. Followers flocked to Tom and Lindsay’s social media sites, but Lindsay was most proud of the sudden influx of donations towards Tom’s candidacy. Contributions from individual women were up tenfold and while their hefty checks were cause for celebration it was the women who could only afford to give a few dollars that meant the most to her.
Tom and Lindsay’s schedules finally aligned in Chicago the Wednesday before Christmas so we brought the twins with us. Now seen as fully immersed in the campaign, Jeanine wanted Lindsay to stay up late with her brainstorming over a late room-service dinner as if the linen-draped cart were a campfire.
The text that Tom had landed safely the next morning was eclipsed by the editor’s call to inform us that
Mother, First
was premiering at number one on the
New York Times
Bestseller list.
Following a round of champagne, Lindsay dashed at her newly energetic pace to meet Tom at her lunch-hour reading where she was going to be signing books for a few hundred fans. Then lunch with the team followed at last by a break—meeting up with the boys so Tom and Lindsay could take them to see Santa. Followed by a media op for Lindsay.
As I entered the hotel lobby the twins and their nanny were just coming from the elevator bank. “Thank God,” she said. “Chip needs to pee. Collin just spilled water all over himself on the way down.”
“Lindsay’s outside in the car. Tom just went up to change his shoes.” This was a typical conversation for us—logistical updates lobbed at each other like military coordinates.
“Any chance you can run up and grab me his other jacket?”
“On it.” She handed me the key card and I jogged to the elevator as they beelined for the lobby bathroom.
I let myself into the kids’ room only to be startled by the bleating electronic siren of Chip’s new Hess truck that none of us could figure out how to silence. It took me a second to realize it was coming through the open door to Lindsay’s adjoining room.
“Tom.” I heard Jeanine landing hard on the last letter of his name. “Put the toy down.” I went over to the closet.
“I just don’t—why do
I
have to go tonight?” Tom snapped in a way that made me freeze.
“Because
People
magazine is sending a reporter,” Jeanine explained, and, judging from her tone, not for the first time. “Because
Entertainment Tonight
will be there.”
The Hess siren bleeted.
“Tom!”
Something clattered to the floor. “No! We’re not canceling a campaign fundraiser for this for fuck’s sake.”
“I’ve already spoken with the Lake Shore Drive organizer. Your fundraiser’s being rescheduled.”
“What? When? I never approved—”
“Tonight Lindsay will be giving out Christmas presents to children who’ve lost their mothers to cancer,” Jeanine’s voice strained for calm. “Foster children. Children caught up in the ‘bullshit’ as you say on the trail.”
“But why do
I
need to hang on her side there?”
“Because being photographed on the arm of America’s most popular mother as she ministers grieving families is worth infinitely more than being un-photographed in a room of execs who’ll probably write you a check regardless.”
“Probably? What the fuck?” Tom exploded. “I’m God dammed arm candy now? This is supposed to be my campaign.
I’m
running for President—not her. And tell her to stop fucking saying ‘our’ message. It’s mine. My message.”
I grabbed the little coat and hurried for the door.
“Tom, you’ve landed Santa Clause as your fucking running mate! She is beloved—and as long as her Q-rating rivals Kim Kardashian’s, you’ll be her lollipop ring if that’s what’s required. Or do you not want this anymore?”
I quickly closed the door behind me, trying to steady my breath.
“Just the girl I’m looking for.”
I spun to see Lindsay stepping from the elevator.
“I have Charlie’s jacket. Did you need something else?” I walked toward her, heading her off from whatever was going down in the suite behind me.
“Oh, just my husband, who is apparently getting pretty for his elf photo-op,” she said with mock annoyance. Her cheeks were flushed from her day. “Actually, Flora told me you were up here and I wanted to catch you in case I don’t see you later. I couldn’t let such a big day go by unnoticed. Here, I’ll trade you.” She put out her hand for the jacket and then placed a slim rectangular navy box in mine. Smythson of London.
“Oh, Lindsay, you didn’t need to—”
“Just open it.”
I slid off the thin ribbon, lifting the lid to find a robins egg blue leather wallet with my initials discreetly embossed in gold at its corner. It was, by far, the most elegant object the Luker ‘L’ had ever come in contact with.
“I noticed yours was on its last legs.” She studied me with an eager smile. “Do you like it?”