Frosting On The Cake 2: Second Helpings Part 6

"Where do you think we stand? In history, today?"

I matched his nonchalantly false smile. "History is never contemporary. Only with perspective will we know what today means. It could mean nothing."

He nodded. "I know that-what might today become, then?"

"If Jefferson waits until after the Senator's speech this evening, it could mean nothing."

He smiled, slightly annoyed. "I know that too. So you think there's no potential for today?"

"There's always potential. He could call right now. The history of today isn't ours to make."

"Tell me about it."

I shrugged. "Jefferson makes the history today. Historians will remember, but history itself will remember what came of it-it can be fickle about remembering who made it." Winning the general election, having a successful presidency, building a legacy relevant to the future-yet to be accomplished before history bothered with Jefferson or any of us.

I pushed away why I found that thought comforting. "Reporters will be proclaiming this a history making day. It's their job, in the moment, to suggest that it is."

"Historians are always too late with the facts."

I smiled. "If we weren't we wouldn't be historians."

He set aside his empty coffee cup. "If you were writing history, what would you say?"

A glib response died on my lips. Words I would never say, never record in my journal, hammered behind my suddenly clenched teeth, waking up the headache I often had from grinding my teeth in my sleep.

I was spared recovering by the noisy return of "the kids." After greetings all around I returned to our room to find the bed empty and telltale steam drifting from the bathroom. With no one to witness, I lifted her still warm pillow to my face and breathed in the memory of earlier days.

Peering through the bathroom mist, I saw she was nearly done. I wondered if I dared join her, clothes and all, if that would bring back my Sydney, the one who had joined me in the shower, ruining a very expensive suit, to tell me she loved me and would not go on living without me. I missed her. I missed her desperately.

The shower door opened and Sydney, with a dollop of suds on her nose, said, "Want to join me?"

My tilted world righted, a little. Decorum be d.a.m.ned. I stripped off my clothes and joined her, the hot spray soaking my hair. Our lips met in a fever. I hadn't locked the door to our suite. If Jefferson called and an aide came looking for us...

Sydney's fingers knew the way into me. Where to pause, where to tease, where to push. The years only improved her certainty. I gasped at the chill of the marble against my back. She kissed me, I bit her lower lip. She said something that was lost in the shower spray and I begged.

It drew a groan from her that spoke of years of desire, of having and us. No polish, no mansions, no pretense. Us, hot for each other, incomplete without the very thing that marked us pariahs in some parts of the world. We had always celebrated this, appropriately, with l.u.s.t and abandon.

There was water in my eyes, her voice deep in my head. My feet slipped. She carried us both, soaking wet, to the bed and had me again, this time in silence, not a word, not a sound. I know my eyes were screaming. The flush on her shoulders was poetry. And her eyes, velvet brown, wrapped me close in her liquid fire.

"Legs shaky?"

She nodded at me in the bathroom mirror. "So are yours."

I smiled at my reflection as I tried to recreate this morning's hair before someone realized I'd been in the shower again. "Yes and thank you."

"You're welcome," she said lightly, then her smile faded. "The oddest thing happened when I woke up this morning." She turned to face me. "I didn't know who I was."

My eyebrows skyrocketed. "Really?"

"I mean-I knew. But this room was so foreign and I couldn't remember how I got here. I knew my name, but I kept thinking that I didn't know who I was."

I touched her arm in concern. "Syd, are you okay?"

"Yes. Now I am. When I saw you I remembered." She rested her cheek against mine, not spoiling either of our make-up with kisses. "I know."

I slipped my arms around her. "Who are you?"

"Yours."

I blinked back tears. I suspected that wasn't the only answer, but I accepted that it was definitely part of it. Each of us was separately successful, and our work had little overlap. But we defined each other, in part, inseparable, having each given up pieces of ourselves to gain even more.

"Senator? Dr. Fitzgerald?"

We sprang apart, though we were fully clothed.

Sydney called, "Not quite ready-what is it?"

"Jefferson just asked for a meeting with the Governor. We're first."

Polls were already rolling out as the media-blog-cycle went viral with the news that Jefferson had chosen the Pawtucket ticket to negotiate with first. Would he ask for legislation guarantees for his const.i.tuency? Would he make a bid for a cabinet post?

My heart rate had gone up and wouldn't calm. This was it. This was the last eight months of public speaking, travel, photo ops, ever since Pawtucket had made the novel choice to announce his entire ticket and staff early. He wanted Americans to know what they were going to get, no surprises, no key players unvetted by the press. No one had known then that Jefferson would have the final say.

David snapped his cell phone shut. "He's on his way back."

"That didn't take long," Sydney said.

David appeared crestfallen. "No. No, it didn't. That's not good."

I would not let myself feel. I stayed on the knife's edge, dulled the whirlwind by remembering Sydney with me on the bed not fifteen minutes earlier.

The elevator ride for Frank Pawtucket probably seemed longer to him than the few minutes did to me, and I lived several years during them. Years of curling up with Sydney in our Chicago sanctum, getting used to the many privileges and minor disadvantages of her wealth, then her political position. The year of campaigning when she left the Illinois statehouse for Congress, then years of adapting to part-time life in D.C. It seemed that the quickness of the meeting meant those years were over.

I would not let myself feel.

The door finally opened. Frank's escort faded to the side and he came in with a heavy tread. I wondered where Mrs. Pawtucket was-probably grooming children and their spouses, making sure all looked perfect for the cameras when they emerged from the hotel. She was better at this than I was. Of course, Sydney's parents, her brother and his family, her many relatives also in public office, needed no help from me to look right for the cameras. My own family stayed home. They always had.

The man looked like he could use a hug.

He glanced around the room and gave a wan smile. "Thank you, everybody. I couldn't have asked for better."

"What happened?" David leaned against one of the tables, pale.

"His price was too high."

"What was it?" That was Sydney, moving from my side into Frank and David's equal line of sight.

"Too high," Frank said again. He looked every day of his sixty-one years.

"Give it to him," she said.

"No. That's out of the question."

I had the feeling that Sydney knew exactly what the price was.

"That decision is partly mine." She crossed her arms.

David gaped. "He wouldn't have the b.a.l.l.s for that!"

Sydney gave him a droll look. "We're talking about Jefferson, the biggest little ego on the planet. He lost this race-didn't even come in second. He came in a lousy third. Now he's a spoiler. And he wants the world."

David was shaking his head. "No, it would destroy every message we've been crafting for over a year."

"I don't think so," Sydney said. "We are a coalition. If we can't show flexibility and inclusion, a willingness to broaden our tent stakes, then we've been lying." She turned her head to give Frank a long look.

"No," he said.

"Give it to him. Call him now and give it to him. I'll go with you. Or we all go home. Everybody who worked for you, who went into their local machine and got people who never agree to sit down and talk for decency and sanity and the strength of compromise-they all go home. If we don't succeed, no one will try it our way again. And I think our way is the only way our country is going to survive against fearmongering for profits and lies for news."

The sunset had not foretold this momentous day. I was watching it unfold and as Sydney and Frank left together, I didn't know what I had seen.

The convention floor was deafening. The excitement at Sydney's impending speech had awakened the crowd after a dull procedural afternoon. The word had spread that Jefferson had decided, and that his camp was in contact with the Pawtucket camp, indicating his probable support in the voting later tonight. Crazy convention schedule, arranged around television and momentum. If Pawtucket had Jefferson's support, they could take the nomination with a single vote of acclamation, in prime time, with Sydney's speech the run-up to the call for a vote. Tomorrow night, for his big speech, Pawtucket wouldn't be campaigning for his party, he would be campaigning to the country. It was the scenario the networks wanted, that the image consultants wanted.

The music was building to a crescendo as it segued from "Chicago" to "New York, New York." Sydney's mother took my hand. I'd explained to all the Van Allens how it was going to unfold. Her father had said, finally, "Why am I surprised? It's so like her."

There was so much glitter falling that I wondered they would have any left for tomorrow, when Pawtucket accepted. The ceiling was heavy with balloons in nets. Tonight the balloons were all the colors of the rainbow. Tomorrow, nothing but red, white and blue.

The Van Allens and I were all arranged in prime box seats. Visible to cameras from around the world, I knew that at any moment my image would be on televisions across the country, and they would label me "Dr. Faith Fitzgerald, Senator Van Allen's wife." Fifteen years ago we had thought just the whisper of my existence in Sydney's life would kill her political chances forever.

Not then. Maybe now. History would tell.

I knew that transcripts of her speech would be available, so I listened with my heart. Even though we were not that far away, she looked tiny on the big stage, but regal. The big screen behind her showed her tall and a.s.sured, and the audio carried her voice realistically. At times soft with pa.s.sion, it also rose in fervor. She paused and the glimmer of tears were real, when she noted the tragedy of flooding in the Everglades and resurgent traces of oil rising with tidal action, back into the life of the Gulf Coast. I heard the laser-point of her resolve to champion an effective, permanent response to climate change before Florida was underwater.

Then she spoke of politics. Too true, the adage that like sausage, if you loved politics you should never learn how laws are made.

"I came into politics when we talked to each other. When I would think about a change I wanted to see enacted and find a counterpart on the other side of the aisle, and we talked over the issues and found where we agreed. It was a time when we gave up what we wanted and took what we could have, knowing we could talk again another day, and that was how progress was made. We all grew to understand each other better. And often, we made good law. I've watched those days die, and wondered if it was time for me to get out. Then I met Frank Pawtucket."

From here I couldn't really see her eyes, but I could imagine them. I knew there was not the least shadow of regret. She would not look back. It wasn't her way.

If the cameras caught Faith's mother wiping her eyes, they would a.s.sume they were tears of pride. They'd be right, for the wrong reasons.

I recognized the cue of her final, hastily composed paragraph, coming after two minutes of praise for Governor Pawtucket and his inclusive style of coalition and compromise. It had worked in Michigan. It could work for all of us.

"I agree with Frank Pawtucket. We are twin political children of very different mothers. And that is why I am withdrawing my name from consideration as vice president and instead nominating Randall Mayhurst Jefferson for that office. Our party and our goals do not need people who agree in lockstep. We need reasoned challenge, rational debate and different points of view."

Over the rising murmur of disbelief and discontent, she continued. "I was proud to be part of the negotiation to bring this change to our platform, and I am even more proud of the way the staff handled the change, and realized how much stronger this makes us. For years we've listened to people painting willingness to compromise as weakness instead of inspiration. Our ticket-your ticket-offers you a broad spectrum of ideas and hope that aren't born in expediency, but were forged when Randall Jefferson walked with southern family farmers and marched with miners in West Virginia."

The rest of her words washed around my ears in clear blue conviction. For her, it wasn't spin. Their hope had always been about changing the way politics were conducted so that something got done. I knew she would go on campaigning for the ticket. The restless crowd would quiet. They would listen.

The grace with which she stepped aside and the sheer energy she gave to Jefferson's nomination made me proud. I was so often proud of her, and just as often awed by her astuteness and generosity and willingness to live her convictions. Being outrageously wealthy helped, no doubt, but money hadn't built that spine of steel.

I didn't really like Jefferson much, but then I didn't know him. Sydney was in her second hour of briefing him on the machine she'd put in place and the staff roles that would open up tomorrow for his own people. I had retired to our suite, but left the door open. My tiny laptop in front of me on the desk, I was thinking how to begin describing what had happened today. Eventually, how it had all happened wouldn't be more than a blip in history. Only students of campaigns would recall it when we were all long gone.

No doubt some advisors will say she's been duped into playing the part of the always sacrificing woman. That she's betrayed feminism, her own const.i.tuents and little girls everywhere. In time I'm sure she will speak to that. I have a lot to think over as well. What I know is that she acted in the only way she could and still be who she is. She is a woman. She can't have made anything but a woman's decision.

I hesitated, realized I was censoring myself, but still, I turned my thoughts from the gamut of emotions I had felt-those I would not name this morning, and those I would not name now.

Anyone who dismisses her now as having shot her political wad is wrong. History says so, and I am the number one scholar in the history of Sydney Van Allen. She has closed a door. She will rest. She'll make up the lost time to the people of Illinois who sent her to the Senate. In time, she will open a new door, surprising even me with her choice.

In the meantime, we go home.

She had woken up this morning not knowing who she was. When they had come back from their meeting with Jefferson, she had taken me in her arms, comforting me of all people, and whispered in my ear, "This is who I am."

I pondered her words, knowing in part she meant she was my wife, my love, that the future held me. But I also knew she meant the practicality of stepping aside. The choice was give Jefferson the nod or end the dream she believed in because she didn't get to be a leader. She was not an I-win-at-all-costs person. If winning for everybody meant sacrifice from her-that was who she was, always had been and always would be.

I am so proud- I stopped there. It was true.

If I continued I would be censoring history. Pride, though it brimmed in me, was the least of my feelings.

This morning I had been so afraid of losing our life forever to history. But I'd also been angry with her for risking all that we had built together for each other, for changing us so much. It was disloyal to feel it, unsupportive to think it. I believed in her dreams. We were inseparable and her dreams became mine, but the deeper we were in this particular dream the more I wanted no part of it. It was wrong to be angry with her-she had given me the power to say no.

And known that of course I wouldn't use it. This morning, under it all, I had been frozen with helpless rage I could never let out.

My hands were shaking. From fear and anger, I had been catapulted to joy. She had held me tight, comforting me after announcing she had ceded the nomination to Jefferson, and all I had felt was a resounding joy. We could go home. Deliriously happy, I also felt like a traitor.

She had become the embodiment of sacrifice and service, of graciousness and intelligent pa.s.sion, and here I was selfishly glad it had come to nothing. I knew she would do something else, that it would stretch us, and test me again. But there was no way I was letting history know that I loved a wild eagle with both of my feet stuck in the mud.

I had no awareness that I was weeping into my hands until I smelled Sydney's cologne.

She pulled me into her arms, shus.h.i.+ng me like a child. "It's going to be okay."

"I know," I mumbled.

"My parents want to have lunch tomorrow."

"Yes, please."

She rocked me for a while. I calmed enough to marvel at how serene she was. Finally, she said, "It didn't show."

"What didn't show?" I arched back to look into her face.

"How relieved you were."

I tried to deny it for about two seconds, but stopped. I was stunned that she'd known and then thought that of course she had known.

"This morning when I woke up, and for a moment I didn't know who I was, I realized you weren't there, in my head. You have been there every morning for all these years. My first thought. I've always told you that and whether you believed me or not, it was true. This morning I had to consciously recall you, touch my wedding ring like a totem, and ground myself in reality. I don't think I knew until then how scared I was at what this job would take from me. It was going to change us and I am not sure for the better. I'm not ready to fade into my elder years-and I'm not ready for our love to do that either."

I had no capacity to speak. I tried to look my truth at her, all of my guilt and lack of faith, my selfishness.