The One That Got Away (31 page)

“And I don’t really know how to fix it,” he continued. “I’ve bid on every job around, but the competition is tough. Every firm out there is looking for work too, and they’re offering cheaper rates.”

“Maybe you could cut yours.”

He sighed heavily. “I wish I could. But I have a wife and family to support. And a school loan and this fucking house—”

He stopped himself and looked away. I was surprised, this being the first time ever that Jimmy had indicated he was anything but ecstatic to be married, with two kids and a fixer-upper. But the shock quickly gave way to more practical concerns. “I could ask my boss for leads. Or Max at Maxim Pest. He works with a lot of—”

He cut me off. “No, babe. Please don’t
do
anything.” I smarted but kept quiet.

“I have to make a decision soon. Keep going and hope it turns around or go back to working for someone else. I don’t know what to do.”

Our eyes met and he added, “Ab, I’m scared.”

Then he put his head in his hands.

Looking back, I know now what I should have done. I should have taken him in my arms and reassured him that everything would work out fine. I should have told him I was proud of him no matter what. I should have promised we’d do whatever it took to keep the business open… that we’d sell the fridge, the car—hell, even my sad, middle-aged body—if it meant keeping his dream alive.

But I didn’t. I just stood there, too focused on my own worries to offer any solace. Too busy formulating a plan to find him a new job with a regular salary. And figuring how much we could get for the mowers and the snowplows on Craigslist.

Now, sitting on the side of the road, the new-car smell mixing with exhaust, I felt lower than low. Ashamed. I would have given anything to go back in time and tell him what I should have that night:
I know it’s hard. I know you’re scared. But no matter what, we’ll get through this. Together. Because I love you and that’s what love means.

The sun moved in and out from the clouds, casting shadows around my feet. I watched them come and go, still too numb to move.

Finally, I rubbed my face, took a deep breath, and folded my limbs back into the low bucket seat. I turned the key and steered the car back toward the city.

There was nowhere else to go.

H
e had been here, maybe even today. He had brushed aside the leaves and cleared away debris. He had wiped the stone free of the last of the late summer pollen. And alongside the purple chrysanthemums he had planted in front of her gravestone, he had added a small Phillies flag.

Miles always knew what would make Jane smile.

I read the epitaph again and sighed. “Jane Louise Lahey 1953–2008. Beloved wife, mother, friend.”

Silently, I added one more: beloved mother-in law.

When Oscar had turned the Suburban onto this street and pulled up in front of the Church of the Holy Redeemer, at first it looked like just another improvised Delaware County polling station. It took a few minutes for me to realize why the church looked familiar. After all, it had been five years since Jane’s funeral. But looking closer, I remembered, and remarked how nothing had changed: a restaurant-style sign advertising Mass times like today’s specials; thin metal handrails trailing up wide concrete steps; and silvery gray stone covering just the facade, with weather-worn brick
everywhere else. As if God couldn’t see that they had used cheaper materials on the sides and back.

My memories colored the church much darker, more somber, than it really was. The sign out front might have offered eternal life, but to me it offered only an ending. Jane was the only person whom I truly loved who had died. Hers was the only funeral service I had ever attended.

And now I stood looking at her grave, while Alex shook hands with voters. I had told him I had to call to check on the children, and I did, but then stole away to the adjacent graveyard, ducking under tree limbs and walking worn pathways until I found Jane’s grave. And now my hand touched the same dirt that Miles had touched, maybe just days ago.

Miles and Jane had weathered so much… put four boys through Catholic school and two through college… survived car wrecks and chicken pox and layoffs… managed to put a little aside for themselves… and finally reached retirement together like two marathoners crossing a finish line holding hands… only for Jane’s cancer to come back and rob them of what should have been their victory lap. Jane held the ultimate marital upper hand.
You’re mad because I didn’t take out the trash? Well, how about I get cancer and die a slow and painful death in front of you and your children? How about that?

But to them, it wasn’t about comeuppance, wasn’t even about which one of them got sick. They were so intrinsically bound by four decades together, it was as if they had both been sick, with Miles feeling every pain, losing just as much hair, and matching her pound for pound, both of them growing gaunt.

I’d never even seen them make jokes at the other’s expense or snipe at each other under their breath. They were devoted to each other their entire lives, and, according to Jimmy, they had been
since the day they met on the corner of Forty-Sixth and Market in 1964—when they were turned away from the last
American Bandstand
taping in Philadelphia. Though they didn’t make it on the air with Dick Clark, or get to do the South Street Shuffle they had each been practicing all week, they would end up falling in love. A pretty awesome consolation prize, plus a great story to one day tell their grandchildren.

I was sure they fought—Jimmy said they had some real screaming matches, both with fiery tempers—but by the time I met them, their relationship was one of bemused adoration and steadfast loyalty. And even now, separated by death, the devotion remained. Miles tended this grave carefully, creating an arrangement that looked just like the window boxes she had fussed over for forty years, as if telling her,
Despite the separation, you still matter to me. You’re still my number one person.

I thought of the countless times I had silently cursed Jimmy because he wasn’t someone like Alex. And how I might now curse Alex because he wasn’t Jimmy. But how did each man really feel about me? If I died, would either of them visit my grave, covering it with wildflowers and fashion magazines and Krispy Kreme doughnuts? Was I capable of earning this type of devotion? Was I capable of giving it?

I reached out and touched the wet headstone. “Good-bye,” I whispered to her. “Rest in peace. You deserve it.”

As I walked back to the group, I noticed they were no longer standing near the church door greeting voters but huddled beside the black Suburban in the parking lot. As I got closer, I saw their eyes were glued to Calvin’s iPad. Good news, I hoped.

“What’s up?” One by one they raised their faces to me with
bewildered expressions, though no one said anything. Alex started to but then stopped himself. Instead, he opened the Suburban’s back door and barked, “Get in.”

Oh shit. I ducked into the truck and scrambled into the backseat. Alex folded his long limbs and scrunched in beside me, Frank and Calvin hit the middle row, and Sunita sat up front. Oscar slipped into the driver’s seat and started the engine.

Beside me, Alex’s face was grave. He wouldn’t look at me, even when I touched his arm.

My heart began to beat faster. What had I done now? I reviewed the past few days. Had Alex heard about the Friends of Lafayette debacle? No, I couldn’t imagine him really caring about that. Had he found out I’d gone to see May? If that was the case, I had an excuse ready—we were just there to return the lost bag. Then I remembered. The e-mail to Larry. Somehow he had found out about me leaking the Ariel story. Oh no. That would be much harder to explain…

“Alex, please don’t be mad,” I said, even though I could tell he already was. “I wanted to help you. I hated seeing you so conflicted.”

He looked at me with disbelief.

“And no one knows it was me. I swear.” I held my hands out in emphasis.

“Really?” He grabbed the iPad from Frank and shoved it under my nose. “Not you? This I have to hear.”

I forced myself to look at the screen, expecting a front-page Philly.com story linking Alex to Ariel to Father Wallace to the Brindles to God knows who else. But instead I saw a grainy YouTube video. I pressed play.

The scene looked familiar. But it took me a moment to figure out why. And when I did, I felt my stomach turn over.

It was cell phone video of me sitting at a bar in Chinatown, laughing, drinking, and awkwardly flirting with the man beside me at five
o’clock on a Monday. It was shot from an angle, and from behind the bar, but even in the dim light my pink suit, gray pearls, and blond hair were unmistakable. Beside me, his face half-hidden by his cap, was Jimmy.

To my horror, the video had a title: “Candidate’s Wife Caught Canoodling.”

But the words didn’t make sense. It was all so strange. “What is this?” I whispered, still struggling to understand.

Frank asked, “Did you go to a bar yesterday? Some place called Wok Ling’s?”

“No! I mean yes, I mean—” I was still too shocked to make much sense. “I went there. For a drink. But it was just a drink. I swear.”

I looked down at the iPad again, and reasonable thought began to percolate. I guess Jimmy hadn’t been the only one to recognize me from CNN. So had that young bartender. The whole time I thought he was texting or playing games on his phone, he was filming us. He must have posted it online—Instagram, perhaps—and from there it went viral. Already this YouTube video had more than seven hundred views.

Frank was frantic with disbelief. “How could you not notice someone filming you?”

“I saw a guy with a phone, but I thought he was just texting or something,” I replied, anguished. “He was just a teenager. I can’t believe he knew who I was. And even so, I was just stopping in for a beer and a bite.”

“Well, the problem is it doesn’t look like that,” Frank continued. “It looks like you and this guy are—” He stopped himself to look back at Alex for permission to keep speaking, knowing he was treading on something that was personal, not just political. But Alex nodded, as if everyone in the car had a right to hear, and Frank repeated his thought: “It looks like you and this man are…
well…
together
.” The word hung in the air like a sickening smell. Like something lurid and altogether nasty.

I couldn’t tell Frank what I really wanted to:
That’s because we
are
together. He’s my husband!

But, of course, that was the problem. When you looked at the two people in the video, they looked to be more than friends, more than just two strangers sharing space at a bar. The shy smiles, the laughter, how we leaned into each other, the moment I closed my eyes and breathed him in.

The video was burning up the Internet, implying I was cheating on Alex, because there
was
something to it: Only a woman in love looked at a man that way.

Still, I also knew I hadn’t done anything wrong. Jimmy and I had barely even touched. And besides, I wasn’t the one running for office. My husband was. “Why does it matter? Who cares what it looks like?” I asked defiantly.

“Who cares?” said Frank. “The whole goddamn Internet; that’s who.” He lifted up his phone and started reading from a Twitter feed:

“‘The van Holts join long list of political hypocrites…’”

“‘I thought they were so in love…’”

“‘If she doesn’t want him, I’ll take him…’”

“‘Not quite the fairy tale after all…’”

He started on the next one—“‘What a…’”—but Alex cut him off.

“Frank!” he shouted. “We get the picture.”

“Sorry. But we don’t have time to candy coat this,” Frank explained. “And that’s not all. There’s even a meme. Someone cut together her ‘fairy tale’ comments from the CNN interview with clips of her at the bar. It’s all over the place.”

He pulled the iPad out of my hand and started to cue it up. I put my hands to my face in embarrassment, then started to cry. Alex asked the others: “Can you give us a minute?”

Frank, Calvin, Sunita, and Oscar clicked their belts and somberly exited the car, leaving Alex and me alone.

I quieted myself and waited for him to speak. When he didn’t, I began to plead with him.

“Alex, I only stopped in that place for a beer. I wasn’t even gone an hour. Please don’t tell me you think I’m having an affair.”

He frowned in annoyance, then raised his hand to cut me off. “Calm down. I know you’re not having an affair.” Thank God whatever problems the van Holts had in their marriage, suspicion of infidelity wasn’t one of them.

But he was still furious. “What those Internet trolls say doesn’t concern me,” he said. “I just don’t understand how you could be so stupid. You of all people should know better.”

I hung my head as he continued, his fury giving way to exasperation. “I don’t get it. For the past six months, you’re the one who has been telling me to watch every move. That I can never be too careful. That everything I do sends a message. And now, one week before the election, you turn into a PR disaster. First, you fall down an escalator. You write Fergie that check. And now
this
.” He looked at the iPad in disgust, then looked back up at me. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were trying to sabotage this campaign.”

“Oh, Alex, no. I swear I’m not. I just made some mistakes.”

“Mistakes? Abbey, please. It’s more than mistakes. This week you’ve been acting so…
strange
.”

So he had noticed. And honestly, I couldn’t blame him. Viewed individually, every misstep had a reasonable explanation. But collectively, they added up to some seriously schizoid behavior. I realized I owed him a real answer, and one that was more convincing than “I’m just tired.”

I looked down at the carpet, avoiding his eyes. “The truth is, Alex, I am completely overwhelmed,” I told him. “I thought having all this
help and money and the best of everything would make things easy, but they don’t. I guess I’m just feeling the pressure.” To say the least.

“Pressure?” He leaned toward me like he couldn’t believe what he’d heard. “You think
you’re
under a lot of pressure? What about me? You think I don’t want to call a time-out sometimes? Get lost in some dive? That sounds pretty fucking nice to me right now.”

I looked down, face burning with shame. He was right. I hadn’t thought of what he was dealing with: months of campaigning, a child in the hospital, a rogue father, and—let’s face it—a disaster of a wife who had now turned into his number one political liability. He continued: “But no. Not me. I’m out here killing myself every second.”

“I know you are,” I said, my voice wretched with regret. “And I’m sorry. I just messed up. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Well, I hope it was worth it. You may have just cost us the election.”

Then he rapped on the window, signaling to Frank and the team he was ready to go. Signaling to me that the conversation was over.

The fully loaded Suburban swung back and forth around double-parked cars and slower traffic as Oscar tried to get us to Center City quickly. I was being taken back to the apartment, where the plan was to keep me under house arrest for the remainder of the day. My ears blazed in humiliation as I sat listening to the “grown-ups” decide how to fix the damage of my childish disobedience.

“There’s no time stamp on the video, just the date it was uploaded,” pointed out Calvin. “Maybe we can spin it that this video is old… from a few years ago.”

“No, it’s pretty obvious that it was taken yesterday,” said Frank. “She’s wearing the same outfit she wore on CNN.”

From the front seat, Oscar began to speak, and because it was out
of character for him to chime in, his deep voice startled us. We listened intently. “Maybe you say family is off-limits. Like Obama did when Sarah Palin’s daughter got pregnant.”

“I hear you, Oscar, but it wasn’t Alex’s kid in the video,” Frank replied. “It was his wife.” The way he said “wife” made me feel invisible, as if the person he was referring to wasn’t sitting two feet away from him.

“The Bullock camp must be thrilled,” he added. “God—what a gift for them. On Election Day, no less.”

“Maybe we use that against them,” argued Calvin. “Talk about how Amanda’s spreading the video. Slinging mud.”

“No,” interjected Alex. “Leave her out of it. We can’t prove she had anything to do with this going viral. Besides, it’s our mess, not hers.” Alex was taking the high road and it made me feel sick inside. Once again, he was showing why he would make a great congressman. And now, thanks to me, he might never get the chance.