Chapter Text
*
July
His phone ringing breaks up Danny's focus, echoing off the bare walls of his campus office.
“Hey Carol,” Danny answers.
“So, I’m going to say something and it’s important that you remain calm, okay?”
He sits up straight. “Okay?”
“I’m at the hospital. CJ's getting stitches.”
“What? What happened? Which hospital? I’m on my way.”
“UCLA Medical. She tripped. She hit her head.”
“Her head?”
“She’s okay; no concussion. But yeah. It was pretty bleedy.”
He grabs his bag from the desk. “I’ll be there in twenty.”
She meets him at the front entrance.
“What happened?” he asks. “She tripped?”
Carol makes a skeptical face. “So she said.”
“Said?” he asks, prompting her to elaborate. “Say more.”
“I mean, I think she’s lying. I think she passed out.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s embarrassing, obviously,” Carol says.
“No, I mean, why d’you think–?” He’s following her up through the stairwell, tryna wrap his head around it. “Has this happened before?”
“Not specifically, but I can not tell you how many times I’ve had to literally shove half a bagel under her nose before she’ll stop for five minutes and chew something. All morning and most of this afternoon we were on the go with the real estate guy, and all I saw her have was coffee.”
Halfway down a hall, she gestures to a door. “This one.”
“Thanks.”
Carol narrows her eyes at him. “She’s an unreliable narrator, Danny. Your wife’s not to be believed about some things. She thinks you can get by on caffeine, salad, and protein bars. That’s not food: That’s water with structure, and chemicals.”
Such is the indignation on Carol’s face that for a moment, some of the tension and uncertainty in him relents. He grips her elbow. “Thanks for looking out. I got it from here.”
“Good luck. She’s in a mood.”
*
CJ’s holding a cold pack against her head. She tips her face to the side in annoyance. “Oh, man. I told her not to call you.”
“Hi, honey, how ya doing?” he says, a little more sarcastic than maybe he should. “You’re okay?”
“I’m fine,” she says through her teeth. “Just mortified beyond belief.”
“What happened?”
“I tripped,” she says, and launches into an explanation that she’d caught her shoe or something on a bit of loose carpeting in one of the offices they’d been scouting and had cracked her head on the polished concrete. She’s doing that thing where she’s offering a lot of unnecessary details. The tips of her ears turn red.
“CJ…” Danny sighs.
There’s a knock outside.
“Yeah?”
The door swings open and a young-ish guy with the nametag Dr. Jimmy Ruiz steps in. “CJ?”
“Come in,” she sighs.
“How you doing there?”
“Tell him I’m fine,” she says.
“Got a bump on your head, CJ.”
“I noticed.”
“Nurse had to glue you up there, huh? Well, that sucks, but better than stitches, I guess.”
She looks at him, unimpressed. “Indeed.”
“Got your labs and blood work here. You’re pretty dehydrated. Not great. Swap out the lattes for a liter of water, will ya?”
“Sure. But I am actually fine, right?”
Dr. Ruiz flips through her chart. “Yeah, you’re fine. Keep some ice on that for the rest of the night and avoid playing tackle football for a few days and you’re grand.”
“I’ll fight the temptation.”
He takes a glance at the computer screen and taps a few keys.
“You are also pregnant, I see,” Dr. Ruiz says. “So hey! That’s fun.”
Danny’s eyebrows shoot up. A muted sense of shock rings loudly in the silence that follows.
CJ frowns. “Who is?”
Danny blinks quickly, turning to look at her.
Dr. Ruiz gives her a glance that says (with maybe a little less professionalism than the moment calls for) are you kidding me lady?
“Who, me?” CJ bursts out laughing. “I can’t have a baby!”
Dr. Ruiz folds his hands, raising one eyebrow.
The smile drops away from CJ’s face as the reality of what he’s saying starts sinking in. “I mean it. I can't have a baby,” she tells him, voice creeping up. “I can’t have– Are you kidding me?! Is he kidding me with this? I can't have a baby! ”
She wrenches her hand away from Danny, pressing her palms nervously together.
“Regardless: You are,” Dr. Ruiz counters.
“I’m really not.”
“You really are.”
“What? I don’t–?” she sputters. “I'm a hundred and fifty years old. This doesn't happen.”
“Actually, you know a lot of maternal health data is based on the birth records of French peasants from the 17th century? Not exactly the most accurate or representative set out there.”
“I don’t–” she starts.
Dr. Ruiz tips his head side to side. “I mean, yes, sure, of course chances get statistically lower with age. But, hey, people still win the Powerball, so…” He shrugs at Danny. “Humans are weird.”
CJ’s eyes narrow with a target acquired level of focus. Danny can tell she’s on the verge of lashing out, or getting antagonistic and defensive.
“What are you, fourteen? Sorry, did you even go to medical school, Doogie Howser?”
Okay, maybe not on the verge, exactly…
Dr. Ruiz flips through the medical file again, unbothered by this accusation. “Nah, I just walked in off the street.”
CJ throws up her hands. “Okay…!”
“They'll let anyone in here,” he breezes, plucking his scrubs. “This? From a casting call.”
“I want a second opinion!” CJ demands.
Sensing her panic, Dr. Ruiz finally lets up his (kind of uncalled for!) bit. “CJ. Take a beat: You are fine and I promise, the many accredited specialists between Emory and Rice Medical School have equipped me with the knowledge to assure you that none of this is outta the ordinary. You are healthy: caffeine intake aside, your blood work is fine, and yes, there is the very real fact that you’re a geriatric case–”
Danny can see the way her chin dips and nostrils flare. “Did you just–?!” She licks her teeth, about five seconds from tearing this guy’s head off out of nervousness and spite.
“Okay,” Danny interrupts before things can escalate. He looks at the doctor, tips his head at the door. Out. Now. “We’re gonna need a few minutes.”
“Sure. I gotta call my agent anyway.” Dr. Ruiz nods, standing. He steps out and closes the door.
As soon as he does, Danny stands in front of her and reaches for her hands. “CJ?”
“Yeah?”
He takes a deep breath, willing her to imitate him. “Breathe.”
“I'm breathing. I’m calm.”
“Are you?”
“I’m calm,” CJ growls.
“Cause you’re—Ah!—Kinda breaking my hand here.”
She lets go, hugging her ribs and dropping her eyes. “Sorry.” She hunches in on herself, looking like the very image of being small and afraid, which is so incongruous, it’s hard to reconcile. Harder still to believe.
He runs his hands down her arms, pulling her tense, twitchy hands toward him again. He traces slow, little circles around the inside of her wrist. “I'm gonna ask a couple questions, okay?”
She releases a little breath. “Okay?”
“What’re you feeling?”
She closes her eyes, nodding as she takes stock of whatever private emotional landscape she’s wandering through. “Freaked out, obviously. Blindsided. Deeply, profoundly unnerved.”
“Okay. That’s all fair. Right?” Gently, without judgment, he offers: “Upset? Unhappy?”
She swallows, a line in her brow forming. “Not unhappy, not specifically, no.”
“Okay. CJ, do you want to be pregnant?”
She opens her eyes and shakes her head, at a loss. “I– I don't know.”
“The answer can be no. There's no terms and conditions here.”
“I don't know. I'm…I don't know.”
*
The drive home is weird: tense and quiet and awkward, and he hates how lost she looks. She alternates between twisting her hands in her lap and pressing one in worrisome little circles against the side of her neck.
“Your turn.” She lets her head fall back against the seat rest.
“For?”
“I mean, talk to me. What are you feeling?” CJ asks.
“Me?”
Eyeroll there. “No, my other husband and co-contributor to this whole zygote situation, Danny. Yes, you. What are you thinking?”
He pulls into the driveway. Turns off the engine and sits a moment, thinking. “I…well. It’s not my decision.”
He opens the car door; from the back, he grabs the purse that Carol had remembered to bring from the office, plus his computer bag.
CJ steps out of the car. “Danny. It is.”
“It’s not.” He unlocks the front door, pushing through.
“Danny, you didn’t knock me up after a fling,” CJ says at his shoulder. “You’re my husband. Better, worse, love, honor, cherish, annoy, whatever. You get a say in this.”
That’s good to hear her say outright, though it’s not entirely encouraging.
He sets her stuff on the couch, trying to project all the sanity and calm that he knows she’s not feelin’, not right now. He holds his palms up. “We don’t need to decide anything tonight.”
“Danny…” CJ puts a hand to her hairline. Her fingers trace the little butterfly bandage. She winces.
“They said seven weeks. We got some time.”
She collapses on the couch, puts her head in her hands. “Seven weeks. I've been cohabitating in my own body for almost two months. What the hell!? How bad am I at this, I didn't even realize?”
Not exactly accurate, but probably not the time to point that out. “Hey. C’mon.” He sits beside her, rubbing her back.
She hugs her arms to her ribs again, shaking her head. “I can't do this.”
“I mean, I’m pretty sure you can do anything.”
She swallows heavily, shaking her head. She looks ill. “I couldn’t even take care of a fish.”
“Gail’s still alive,” he points out.
She jumps to her feet, throwing her arms wide. “Because I had Carol! And Margaret and, like, an army of staffers! Not left to my own devices!”
“Well, lucky for you, for us, you still got one.”
CJ takes a shaky breath, stalking back and forth in front of the fireplace. She puts her hands to her neck and cranes her head back at the ceiling, the skylights. After a long moment, with more composure, she holds her hands up and decides. “I need air or something. I need to go for a walk.”
“You wanna be alone?” he asks. It’s less her words, and more the tone behind them.
She nods. “I do.”
“Ah-kay,” he sighs. He’s not exactly happy to hear it, and he sure as hell doesn’t like it. But facts are facts, and in all the years they’d known each other, he’d never gotten anywhere with CJ by pushing her boundaries.
She comes over and sits at his side, threads her fingers in his. “We’re gonna talk. Probably a lot. I promise. But I just need to move and think a little. Organize all my crazy before I try to unpack it. Is that okay?”
“It’s okay.”
The gratitude is plain.
He rises when she does. She holds her empty hands out as she backtracks to the door. “I’m not even taking my keys. I’m not making a run for it. I can’t go anywhere.”
Well, she can. She is, in fact. Not that’d it’d be particularly helpful to point that out at the moment. So he pretends he’s fine and lets her go. “I’m not worried about keys.”
“Danny?”
“Yeah?”
“I love you. Okay?”
“I know,” he says, trying for humor. “I’m a pretty lovable guy.”
She rolls her eyes, which is at least a normal response.
After that, he can’t really summon the energy to go through his notes on the draft legislation Zoey had sent him the week before. He’s too unfocused. He gets why she needed some space; the distraction of doing something. He pulls out some garlic and oil, puts a pot of water on to boil. Even if neither of them are probably going to be all that hungry, he’s gonna at least make sure CJ’s eaten something today. For what that’s worth.
He’s not an idiot—he’s certainly thought about it. But at a distance, under the guise of unlikely things, don’t get attached. There’d been distance.
There’s no luxury of that. Not anymore.
They’d talked around it, enough times. He knows she’s entertained the possibility, or had, once, years ago. Course, just because she had then doesn’t mean she’s interested in it now; disbelief met by incredulity, followed by fear, before rejecting the idea outright doesn’t exactly offer a promising look into her current state of mind.
He minces cloves of garlic. Squeeze of lemon, splash of oil. Bit of red pepper. When the pot comes to a rolling boil, he tosses in some salt and then bucatini.
What he’d like to tell her is how fun it would be. Hard and relentless and life-changing and gazing into the dark night of the soul forevermore, and all that—sure. But it is so easy to see how good she would be at it: Not just her fairness or her determination or ability to rise to almost any occasion, but there’s so much about kids, especially when they’re small, that shock you with joy. Their silliness. Their questions. Their way of seeing the world. He’d always loved when the holidays would roll around and he got to spend time with his sisters’ kids, in whatever combination, usually wasn’t all ten of ‘em. Most of them are older now. Hell, Tara is in grad school, somehow. But when they were little, the way they had each trusted him and his place in their lives was like being sucker punched by the universe. You are a grown-up, that trust said. You have been charged to take care of me. It’s a powerful feeling, that acceptance. That unquestioned love and adoration.
All the best parts of her personality just shine, and it’s impossible not to imagine her cracking jokes with some small, fine-boned little sass monster, singing songs and arguing and laughing different versions of that heart-stopping perfect laugh, like the same notes in different keys.
There’s Hogan, of course. Who she loves spending time with and completely adores. Course, she adores Hogan because curious, kind, perceptive Hogan is about the easiest kid in the world to love. (Her younger, sulkier brother reminded him more of CJ’s brothers. Though maybe that’s not fair. He hadn’t spent very much time with him.)
Steam bubbles up. He drains the pasta when it’s almost done, letting it finish in the pan with garlic and lemon on low. He grabs a bunch of basil from the yard and rinses it in the sink.
The truth is, there’s nothing to argue. He’d told her on multiple occasions that he wasn’t going to change his mind on her, or make any kind of demands. No curveballs. He’s gotta be fair to what he’s always said. There is no package deal here. No assumed outcome. What the hell kind of marriage starts with one person taking back everything they’d promised along the way? If he changed his tune on this, tried to talk her into it, then some small part of her would never, ever really believe him again. Not on the big stuff. It’d be there, like a crack in the foundation. An underlying flaw, and the kind no amount of work could make up for. Whatever you built on would be too damaged to hold up for long.
Danny glances at the clock. Almost an hour since she’d left, and well after dark.
He tries to muster the energy to look at some of his work, but really, god, all he really wants to do is to talk. He wants to hear what she’s afraid of, and why. Wants to know everything she’s feeling, even if she doesn’t fully know or understand herself yet.
He looks at the picture on the shelf. The one of her family on some summer vacation when CJ was a kid, before her mom died.
And like that, Danny knows exactly where she is.
He knows exactly what she’s doing.
*
She clocks him just before she takes a shot from the top of the key. The ball bounces off the backboard, hits the net. “How’d you–”
Danny leans against the gate at the edge of the basketball court. “Trade secret.”
“You tracking my phone? Put a tail on me?”
“Yeah, cause all that time I was overseas, I was secretly working for the CIA and MI6.”
A smile tugs at the corners of her mouth. “That’s actually kinda hot, Mr. Cregg.” Another shot: It hits the rim and bounces in. She catches the ball on the second bound and passes it over to him. “Talk to me, fishboy.”
He catches it easily. Spins it around in one palm, watchin’ her. She’s less agitated and edgy, but he can’t tell what’s going on in her head. “You want the truth?”
CJ nods. “I do.”
Well…
“I want everything with you,” he tells her, honestly. “Of course I do. And I know, I know, it’d be amazing.” He passes it back.
Her face is pinched. She looks down at the ball so intensely, it’s like she’s trying to find the meaning of life between the arcing lines, the scribbled letters in black marker that read SM Rec Dept.
“I thought you might say that.”
He’s given his real opinion. Only thing left is the truth.
He holds his palms up in acknowledgment. “But it’s a lot to ask. I know that. And it's okay, if you don’t want to do it. This isn't something we ever seriously talked about. I mean it. It’s not a requirement.”
The glare of lights from a passing car catches her face as she looks up, sending a strange lapse of light along her face that makes time sorta speed up and slow down in the same moment.
“You really do mean that, don’t you?” CJ asks, studying him.
Danny nods, heart in his throat. “Yeah. I do.”
She bites her lip. She takes a breath, struggling to speak for a long moment. When she’s ready she looks up at him, fear written across the familiar lines of her face.
“To be completely honest, at this point in my life I don't think I have an answer to the question: Do I want a child of my own? And I think that’s fairly telling.”
The ache that forms in his throat is sharp and painful. Even expected, the hurt, disappointment, hits hard. The grief of it is fairly stunning. A very small and sad eternity passes before he is able to manage a response.
“That’s okay.” He blinks quickly, nodding.
She bounces the ball a few times, glancing up once more at the sky before she meets his eye guiltily and says, “The thing is: I am fairly confident…or, you know, getting there…”
CJ shoves the ball directly at him.
Danny catches it.
“I'm pretty sure that I'd like to have yours.”
Her mouth turns up.
Then she’s smiling. A smile that isn’t one—just a possibility, a suggestion—until it is. Fully. Completely. Clear as day. Plain as truth.
“Yeah?” he manages again.
CJ nods. Smiles wider but more vulnerable, too, as she hugs her arms and crosses the court to him. “Yeah.”
The joy of what she’s saying is a different kind of ache. One that leaves him too overcome to speak. Her eyes are bright, reflecting the artificial lights around the court like twin stars. With a rare but deeply-held certainty, the kind he’s only experienced a few times before, Danny knows he will remember this moment for the rest of his life.
The words, when he’s able to find them again: “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
“Well, give me some time,” CJ replies. She swipes her thumb at the tears on his face. “I’ll try to top it.”
She looks happy, is smiling, but still has some of that oh my god, what do we do here? panic in her face. He lets the ball drop. It rolls away, clattering gently against the fence as he pulls her into his arms. She tucks her face against his neck. For five, ten, however many seconds it takes to make a perfect moment, there is nothing else but them.
CJ pulls away after a moment and shakes her head. He can see she’s scared but also that she’s facing it. Is willing to be scared. She swallows. “Any chance you can explain how the hell we’re gonna do this?”
He traces circles on her wrist, which usually calms her agitation. “We’ll learn,” he says. “And we’ll be exhausted, and afraid, and thrilled by the most bizarre events and milestones for, as I understand it, basically forever. And life will go on.”
Her voice is small as she looks him in the eye, all that fear laid bare. “What if something goes wrong?”
Danny folds her hands in between his, feeling the twin bands of their wedding rings against his palm. “Then we will be sad,” he answers her, plain and simple. “And life will also go on.”
“How do you know that?”
“I don't. But I got four sisters with kids, and a fair amount of friends who’ve done what people have always done. Not the same as actual experience, but I’m pretty good at paying attention to the details.”
(Here, she smiles.)
“I think I’ve got a handle on the process,” he tells her.
She takes a very deep breath and says, “Just so you’re aware, I think it’s likely I’m going to go even more insane for the next seven months. Try to bear with me on that.”
“I’ll manage, somehow.”
“So much for no curveballs, huh?”
“That was probably wishful thinking.”
She nods and flexes her hands in his. “So: New things, right?”
“New things. Big things.”
Her eyes go wide. No kidding.
He slides his arm around her shoulders. “C’mon. Let’s go home.”
“Hang on.” At the gate, she suddenly stops, seized by some unknown compulsion. “One sec.”
CJ reaches for the ball and turns to him, her back toward the basket. She glances over her shoulder. Holding it in one hand, she drops her shoulder and curls her arm back, sending the ball arcing backwards through the air.
She watches the ground, listening to it bounce off the backboard and a metallic clank. Smiles. Her eyes flick up at the sound. “I make it?”
“Yeah,” Danny nods.
She tips her chin, narrowing her eyes. “Are you lying?”
He holds out a hand. “Yep!”
*
Much later, with the shock of it a bit more settled in and CJ curled up against him in bed, Danny traces the curve of her hip and says, “Can I ask, what changed your mind?”
She sets her chin on his collarbone. “It wasn’t made up. I wasn’t averse, exactly. Just scared. Not gonna lie and say it’s something I’d never thought about. But that’s different from being, you know, presented with the sudden reality like a bolt from the blue.”
“Yeah.”
“Still scared, by the way. Like, really, really scared. And I know I’m gonna mess this up and be a complete freak about absolutely everything since I don’t really have any decent frame of reference to work with here. I got stuck on that. How much I would make a mess of it.” She scratches idly at his t-shirt. “But the more I thought about it, more I thought about us…The less panicked I was.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because, even if I’m not sure at all how to be someone’s mother…God. Danny.” She shakes her head, beaming. “You would be such a good dad.” Her eyes shine.
He has to close his eyes against the well of emotion. “You think so?” he manages, after a moment.
“I know so,” she whispers against his mouth. “I’m really smart.”
There are no words for a while after that.
*
She’s singing in the kitchen when he comes downstairs. He can’t quite place the song at first, but then she sings a little bit louder. From some distant memory, he places the lyrics to Light of a Clear Blue Morning.
“I can see-hee-hee the light of a clear blue morning,” CJ sings, handing him a cup of coffee and pressing a kiss to his cheek before turning to her email and the morning paper splayed out across on the island counter. “I can see-hee-hee the light of a brand new day.”
Sometimes he has to shake his head, because a year, or three, or seven ago, something resembling this would have been a laughable fantasy. He’da called it a saccharine storybook ending. The tidy bit of fiction.
Hell, a year ago she was heading into a possible nuclear meltdown, while trying to de-escalate tensions in a messy post-Soviet geopolitical nightmare scenario. Could barely finish a conversation without snapping or running out. Cut to present, and the anxiety-ridden bureaucrat has a fairly straightforward 9-5 (the bi-weekly one-on-ones with the ninth richest man in the world notwithstanding) and a habit of both taking up most of the bed while kicking off all the blankets in the middle of the night.
May wonders never cease.
He sips his coffee. The morning sun’s pouring in while CJ’s singing a pretty old song in the tidy kitchen that’s finally furnished. There’s a sonogram on the fridge; a set of rings on her finger; a smile playing on her mouth. Four decades and change into a fairly fulfilling and well-lived shuffle on this mortal coil thus far, and he’s just now getting that the main arc of his life will be spent following the contours of that smile, to whatever end. He’s done for, really. Game, set, match. Never stood a chance.
He’s fairly certain most stories don’t actually end like this, despite what Carol had called some kinda love saga.
For a second he thinks about the thing Charlie had said, back at the farm in New Hampshire. Years on, and something’s still kicking. Ten years of trials behind and a thirty year mortgage ahead. New jobs and old friends. Maybe there’s something extraordinary about how ordinary it all is.
“Everything’s gonna be alright, it’s gonna be okay,” CJ sings brightly.
“Morning,” he says, hugging her to his side as he glances at the headlines.
“Herbal tea is garbage,” CJ sighs, snaking an arm around his neck. “C’mere: Make out with me.”
*
A FedEx box addressed to her shows up in late August from a return address in Georgetown. Inside is a box and a note:
Claudia Jean,
For some reason, the Smithsonian wasn’t interested in bolstering the collection. Whatever, losers. As such, and as requested, I am hereby entrusting this rare and precious artifact to your safe-keeping, now and for evermore.
(Though I reserve the right to use it in my memoirs, for obvious reasons.)
In a tasteful black and gold frame is a 5x7 photograph, taken in some long-ago off campus apartment. It’s all bad eighties walnut cabinets; laminate countertop sheen; faux Italian tiles. The sharp focus of a film camera, and the bad lighting of a flash.
She’s seen thousands of images just like it, though none before have ever been of her boyish-looking husband—scraggly auburn beard and long hippie hair, a Red Sox hat even—beside the earnest, undergraduate baby-face of none other than Josh Lyman.
When she’s done laughing, CJ wipes her eyes and sighs, the giggles still caught in her throat. She pulls out her phone and finds the name she’s looking for.
The one and only Amy Gardner.
*
Later, she’s studying the photo in its new spot on the living room wall, amused by the fairly ridiculous skew they’ve got going to the collection so far.
“I know what you’re thinking.” Danny looks at her down the hall from the kitchen as he says it.
“What’s that?” CJ says. She rubs at a sore spot in her lower back, wandering into the kitchen.
Danny beams brightly. “You’re wondering what that handsome guy is up to right now.”
She snorts. “That’s not what I was thinking.”
He hands her a plate piled with bibimbap and spicy eggplant. Ugh, beloved.
“Sure,” he teases.
She breaks the chopsticks apart, mouth twitching. “I was thinking that I can’t believe I got knocked up by a guy who used to wear cartographic suspenders to the White House.”
“President complimented me on those once. He thought they were snazzy,” Danny replies, entirely too merry about it. Smug, even.
CJ shakes her head, smiling despite herself. You really have to love a guy who takes great pride in playing second fiddle to the world’s biggest nerd.
Or, well, she does, anyway.
She clicks her chopsticks at him. “Shut up and give me your kimchi.”
“Word to the wise, kiddo,” Danny says, addressing the small but increasingly distinct curve of her belly. “When Mom says shut up, she means I love you.”
CJ chews thoughtfully. “I should probably work on that, huh?”
“Little bit.”
*
Sunshining summer becomes an imperceptible autumn. The weeks and months change, but the time seems caught in an unending stretch of marvelously warm, bright days. This is why people live here.
Danny’s teaching political reporting to graduate students and the basics of beat reporting to undergrads. They’re such timid kids—children, really, even the twenty-somethings—and so uncomfortable getting out of their element. They’re used to email and texting for information, aren’t used to asking hard questions, pushing for what they want, wanting what’s in their rights to ask for from the people whose job it is to know things. They’re so concerned with being nice.
“I’m sure you’ll cure them of that soon enough,” CJ points out when he offers his observations.
“I was nice to you.”
She actually laughs at him. “You were not nice.”
He scowls at her. “I was!”
“You were almost never nice, and when you were, it was because you wanted to make out with me.”
“Which was always.”
“You were tough, shouty, and tricksy.”
“Tricksy?”
“You–”
“Tricksy? ”
“You were!”
“When?” he challenges.
“‘Fifteen pens, CJ, how’s he gonna use ‘em all?’”
He laughs. How she remembered…
“‘The vermeil protesters are creating a ruckus out there…’”
“They were!”
“Which is why, Daniel Dae Kim, there is photographic evidence in half the rooms in this house of the various shouting matches we’ve had at one another.”
“Well, I was allowed to be ticked atcha from time to time. You played favorites. And you weren’t always all that nice to me.”
“Yeah?” CJ challenges.
“Yeah,” Danny shoots back.
“Well, guess what?”
“What?”
“I still play favorites,” she says, brandishing her left hand, light glinting off her wedding rings. “So shut up.”
Well, there is that. Danny rolls his eyes.
“Not nice, this guy says,” scoffing at the curve of her belly. “You believe the trouble he’s still causing?”
*
“Oh my…” Katie Witt almost drops the bottle of wine in her hands. “CJ!”
“I know, aren’t they great?” CJ says, looking down at the ample (relatively speaking) cleavage she’s developed recently. “Oh, you mean the other part. Well, that’s nice, too.”
“C’mere!” Katie gives her a massive hug. “Congratulations!”
“No smoking ‘round these parts,” CJ cautions.
She waves it off. “Scott harped on me for years to quit. Finally gave in. The kind of compromises you can look forward to.”
“So I’ve been warned.”
“You know what’s annoying?”
“What?”
“Everything actually is better without it.”
“There’s also the whole live longer thing, I guess.”
“Whatever.” Katie waves it off. “When are you due?”
“February.”
Katie exhales in frustration, shaking her head. “So help me, CJ, if you have this kid on Valentine’s Day…”
“Due the 28th,” CJ says in her own defense. “At the moment, I'm more worried about the fact that 2008 is a leap year.”
“You have this kid on February 14th,” Katie continues. “I will have no choice but to do the most appalling human interest bit on it. You know those treacly filler bits that run at the end of World News Tonight? I’m talking full love story garbage. It’s gonna be disgusting, CJ.”
“I don’t think I get much of a say in the process,” CJ points out.
“These guys are old news,” Steve Inskeep says, bottle of wine in hand. Mark and Chris are with him, taking in the new house with interest. “Now Gordan Weirs and Miss Bhutan, that’d be a decent story…”
CJ kisses his cheek. “Really? Still?”
“You didn’t hear?” Katie asks.
“They’re engaged,” Mark says.
“Really?”
“Not surprised,” Danny says. “Post always had the handsomest reporters in the game.”
“Did they?” CJ teases. “You know any?”
“Mazel tov, Claudia Jean,” Chris offers. “In your honor, I’ll be drinking for two.”
Carol shows up not long after, making it a night of proper nostalgia. It’s like one of hundreds of nights out on the road, but completely different, too. There’s no jostling for answers or trying to choose words with care. There’s just laughter and revelry and catch ups with these old friends, who are amused to no end by Carol’s frustration-filled recap of their civil ceremony; by CJ’s imperious thoughts on color theory; by Danny’s apparent culinary skills.
There’s a lot of industry shop talk, too, especially given the journalism conference they’re all in town for.
“You got out at a good time,” Mark says. “Layoffs are getting bad. Most mid-sized papers aren’t bothering to send anyone to D.C. anymore. They’re just using the pool reports and the wires.”
“Three hundred-year-old business model’s falling out from underneath ‘em,” Danny sighs. “Press room must be starting to feel empty.”
“Yes and no,” Katie says. “There are actually a ton of new folks in the group this year. Lotta digital outlets have been requesting to join,” Katie says. She’s the current head of the White House Correspondents Association, and responsible for organizing the rotation of folks in the room.
CJ sips her Perrier. “I know the times are a’changing, but honest to god, I can’t imagine being up there and calling on someone from Buzzfeed.”
“Not the same without you,” Steve says.
“As another one bites the dust,” Mark says, pointedly.
“You’re leaving?” Danny asks, looking at Steve.
“Moving to host, actually,” Steve says. “Doing the morning show.”
“That’s big!”
“It’s early. 2am start. But Emily’s in college–”
“Emmy’s in college?!” Carol exclaims. “That cannot possibly be true.”
“UVA,” Steve nods. “And Lila’s only a few years behind. Time to steer the ship for a while. Sarah can be the ambitious one for the next decade.”
“Smart man,” CJ says, smacking Danny in the back of the head affectionately. She points at Steve. “Shoulda listened to him.”
Mark gestures around the table. “Might be one of the last time’s we’re all in the same place.”
“Oh!” CJ presses a hand to heart, feeling more emotional than the situation really calls for. Thank you, procreation. She looks at Chris and Mark, beseeching. “Please don’t tell me you’re giving up the ghost, too?”
“And miss out on the Santos Show?” Mark replies. “No way.”
“Ha!” Chris laughs. “They can wheel me outta that place. Like Helen Thomas. Really thought that’d be you,” she says to Danny. “A lifer, in it to the end.”
Danny shrugs. “I like seeing things through to the end. But different kind of life, maybe.”
“And so the cynic becomes the sap,” Chris accuses, playful.
“Ain’t that the truth.” Danny nods.
“What I’m most interested in these days–” Katie pours herself another glass of wine. “Is when Washington’s best dressed media darling is gonna throw a party for the ages.” She waggles her eyebrows.
“Why, you looking to dust off that Chanel you wore to the last Correspondent’s Dinner, Witt?” CJ leans back in her chair, hands resting on her belly.
“Not for this kinda shindig. I’ll spring for a new one, just for the occasion,” Katie winks.
“Seeing you all get dolled up is reason enough,” Danny says. “Next summer. Keep June open.” He glances at Mark. “There’ll be at least one more gathering on the books for this auspicious group.”
“I’m gonna hold you to it, Concannon,” Mark replies. “I wanna hear the toast Jed Bartlet has to give.”
“That’s gonna be a long speech,” Carol groans.
“I’m not sure he does any other kind,” Steve agrees.
*
By ten, Danny can tell CJ’s getting tired. He slides his palm across her back as she stacks a couple plates in the sink. “You okay?”
She smiles sleepily. “I’m good. Just tired. I’m gonna head up soon, I think.”
He tips his head at the door. “Let’s kick ‘em out.”
CJ smirks. “While directing the herd to the exits would be a fun throwback, it's fine. Hang out. Catch up.”
“You sure?”
She nods. “I am.”
CJ bids Steve and Mark goodnight, and walks Carol, Chris and Katie out; the latter have early conference panels in the morning. Mark and Steve stick around for a nightcap. They needle Danny a bit about teaching, but listen with interest about the work he's done so far going through Leo's papers. Though, both of them think he’s more than a bit nuts taking it on after they get a glimpse of the boxes stacked in the guest house.
“If I didn't think you were crazy already, I would now.” Mark raises his glass to Danny. “Godspeed, you lunatic.”
“Please,” Danny says, dismissive.
“NPR has independently corroborated and confirmed these reports,” Steve jokes. “Course, we all knew that years ago.”
They sit around the back patio, trading stories from all the years they'd spent together: Lassiter; Taylor; The '98 campaign year; snowstorms in Iowa; upsets in South Carolina; and a dark horse of a candidate from Nowhere, New Hampshire, running away with the whole thing. The good years when everyone's circulation and revenue was up, and the bad ones that looked like they'd only get worse. All the lines they'd put on the page and the faces in the mirror through all the long nights that turned into early mornings, writing those early drafts of history. The good kind of brutal it had all been.
“Know what?” Steve says.
“What?” Danny asks.
Steve looks through the kitchen, taking it all in: the art and photos, the stacks of dinner plates and empty wine glasses, the evidence of playing host for the evening. But Danny knows he’s getting at more than just the bare domesticity of the scene. He means the house, and where it is; the LA-ness of it all, and the scale of all the changes it had taken to get him and CJ here, to this place. To what they were.
Steve’s eyes flick back to Danny's. “It makes a good story.”
*
Hogan’s face brightens in recognition as she ducks through the arrivals door. She takes one look at CJ before her eyes go wide and a sound emerges from her throat at a frequency previously unfamiliar to human ears.
She hurls her backpack to the ground at their feet and more or less tackles CJ (though gently).
“You awful, horrible woman! Why didn’t you tell me?” Hogan screeches. She hugs CJ, pulling her around and around in an uncoordinated twirl of aggravated excitement.
“It’s kind of an in-person thing, if you can help it,” CJ reasons, hugging her back.
Hogan exhales her exasperation in a long hiss before retrieving her bag and slipping the strap on her shoulder. “Two strikes. I didn’t even get to be there for your wedding,” she says through her teeth.
CJ slings an arm around her shoulder. “We didn’t have a wedding. We just signed some papers and made out in the courtyard,” CJ explains. “You’ll get your chance. We’re gonna have a party. Just…after this one gets here.”
“Hmm,” Hogan hums. “I’ll allow it, I suppose.”
They get ice cream at the boardwalk and talk about Hogan’s friend group drama back at school, the courses she’s taking, whatever internship she feels like doing next summer.
“Just say the word. Happy to use whatever clout I have left to sing your praises.”
“Thanks, but I’ll figure it out,” Hogan says, wry.
CJ groans at an elbow or foot to some soft and vital part of her anatomy. “Ugh, this brat.”
“Can I–?”
“Go for it.”
Hogan makes a face at the sensation. Cool but also gross?! “That’s so weird.”
“Tell me about it.”
Hogan nudges her leg. “Hey. Know what this means?”
“I’ve well and truly lost my mind?”
“You were about my age, right? When I was born?” Hogan’s mouth twists into a full-blown smile. She holds her chin high. “Now I get to be cool Aunt CJ.”
Which. Just. Oh.
“Oh, my god, this is so annoying.” CJ sniffles, failing to hold back a little sob.
“Feelings. Terrible,” Hogan teases. “Can you imagine expressing them?”
CJ fans her face, trying to force the saline back into her stupid, traitorous tear ducts. “Be silent. You’re a horrible influence and I won’t let this kid within a time zone of his awful cousin.”
“His?”
“Educated guess.” She wipes her eyes, and eats another spoonful of ice cream. “I’m still cool, though, right?”
“So cool,” Hogan lies, perfect angel that she is.
Well, maybe this won’t be so scary after all.
*
Of course, a weekend with Hogan does bring up the fact that she hasn’t spoken to her brothers since the funeral. One evening the following week, she calls Andrew, who offers his awkward congratulations, grateful to learn there would be an actual event to attend (probably so he can schmooze some new potential clients from the guest list, CJ figures, then feels bad; it’s not like she’s been all that great a sibling either).
“Any other surprises?” Drew jokes.
Here we go…
“Well, there’s the fact I’m pregnant.”
“Yeah!” Drew laughs. “That’d be funny.”
She stabs her tongue in her cheek. “I’m four months. And change.”
Awkward pause. “Seriously?”
“Do you know people who joke about having a kid?”
Long pause.
“Andrew…”
“I mean, congratulations! Again!”
“Ding, ding, ding. There we go. Finally!”
“Usually, Laurel…You know, this kind of thing.”
“But you’re so effusive and thoughtful.” She looks at the kitchen ceiling. Idiot. She shifts her hips, trying to crack her back, annoyed. God help this kid and any of her family’s genetics he gets stuck with. “Really. It’s too much.”
“Do me a favor, text me Danny’s number.”
CJ makes a face. “Why?”
“So I have it.”
“So you have it,” she repeats, dubious.
“Yeah.”
Something’s off, here. “Andrew,” CJ warns.
“What, I can’t have my brother-in-law's contact information?”
“Not without a reason.”
“How you figure?”
“How do I figure?! Because I’ve met you!”
Drew exhales down the line. “Well, ‘cause I feel bad. I was a jerk to him.”
Her eyes widen. “When?”
“The funeral.”
“We were organizing a funeral—and I mean we in the broadest possible interpretation of the word—and you found time to intimidate my boyfriend? What am I, fifteen?”
“I did not say that.”
“What did you say?”
“It doesn't matter!”
“Andrew!”
“What!?”
“It does matter! This is my husband, you moron. What did you say to him!?”
“Nah, I just…”
“What!?”
“Said you didn't seem to trust…relationships.”
“Oh. My. God.”
“Clearly he knew not to listen. It worked out.”
“ANDREW!” she shouts. “Are you seriously so self-involved you’d trash talk me to my boyfriend? ”
Danny ducks into the kitchen, eyebrows up in question. “What’s–?”
“You. Haha!” she mean-laughs in accusation and stabs a finger in his direction. “I’m never leaving you alone with one of my brothers ever again.”
“Why?”
“Cause they’re dumbasses. From now on, you’re wearing a wire!”
“Look, in his defense–” Drew tries.
“Shut up!” she yells at the phone. Glares back at Danny. “When I get done with this one, we’re gonna talk about why you didn’t say anything about this little gossip sesh y’all had.”
Danny snorts, remaining serene. He pours himself a glass of water from the sink. “Yeah, cause that’s exactly what you needed to hear at the time.”
“We will talk, mister!”
He flicks water at her, refusing to be baited, then heads back to the guest house and his research.
CJ hangs her head in her hands. Says into the phone, “I’m asking myself what I have done in my life that you are oh-so determined to make it so much harder.”
“Look–”
“I could have you killed. I should have you killed. Except, no, no—See? No—that'd be too nice. That’d be letting you get away with it. I should have you beaten. I should make you suffer.”
“Claudia Jean…”
“I should have you set adrift on an iceberg and cast into the Arctic for killer whales to hunt for sport.”
“Look–”
“Enjoy you as a lil snack or something."
“I'm apologizing!”
“Yeah, well you're bad at it. You're bad, and I'm gonna need to hear it again a few more times before I let you off the hook.”
“I'm sorry–”
“Again!”
“I’m sorry!”
She huffs. “Okay.”
“So?”
“So what?”
“Can I, you know, call him?”
“In all honesty, I’d prefer you never speak to him again.”
“Look. I am sorry, Cee.”
“Don't call me that!” she snaps.
“Okay.”
“Can we get back to the actual…You're having a baby!”
“No no, the shock isn't offensive at all.”
“Well, I’m shocked! You just never seemed interested.”
She draws a long breath through her nose. “Drew, I don't mean this as any kind of judgment but: How would you know?”
“Yeah.”
She looks at the ceiling, closes her eyes a moment. Says it as plain and simply as she can. “I’m happy. Be happy for me, will ya?”
“You must be. Husband, house, baby…”
She rolls her eyes. “A veritable triple crown of heteronormative achievement.”
“This husband got a job yet?”
“Several. He’s writing a book. Teaching. Freelancing. Honestly, he's busier than I am.”
“Yeah? How well does writing pay these days?”
“First of all, shut up. Second of all, who cares?! I bring home the bacon in this family.”
“Okay.”
“Girl's gotta be able to buy her own Manolos, y'know what I'm saying?”
“I'm just making sure he's taking care of you, is all.”
It's coming from a good place, she realizes. Stupid as he is, her brother does actually care, in his own dumbass way. “Andrew, believe me when I tell you, Danny takes better care of me than I ever was willing or interested in doing myself.”
“That’s good.”
“Yes.”
“You should tell Rob. Call him, will ya?”
“Fine.”
“I mean it. He's gonna be excited.”
“He's gonna be obnoxious, is what.”
“Is he ever anything but? Hey, you know he's got a partner now, too.”
She laughs, skeptical. “He does not.”
“Swear to god.”
“I don’t believe you. Say more.”
“So, I don't know everything, but I guess…”
*
CJ sweeps into the office after she gets home one evening while he’s working on some research and announces: “Snap to it, Simba. It’s time.”
Danny’s ears perk up. “Is it sexy time?”
“No,” she says. Thinks about it. “Maybe. Possibly. After. We do this first.”
She’s carrying a little pocket digital camera and wearing one of his Washington Post t-shirts. White script letters on black fabric. She grabs a Post-It from the desk and scrawls on it in red marker:
Story developing…
“Aww. That’s cute.”
“Yeah, well, such is my cross to bear,” CJ says, sweeping a hand out with grandeur.
His mouth ticks up. “The kid, or the cuteness?”
“Both, I suppose.” She sighs. “It is time. We tell people who aren’t, you know, Josh and Donna, your mom, our siblings, Carol. En masse. This isn't gonna be a secret thing.”
“You ready for that?”
She gestures, palm up, at the ceiling. “Well, despite briefly entertaining the idea of springing a small human on my brothers as–”
“Thanks for their near-constant devotion and support?” he jokes, leaning back in the chair.
“–a mean if satisfying bit of comeuppance—one they’d deserve, too—I ultimately decided against it. Such is my, you know, whatever.”
“Benevolence?”
“Indifference might be more apt,” she says, a little distant. Despite Hogan’s sunshine-ing presence the prior weekend (or, actually, now that he’s thinking about it, maybe, because of it), there’s something close to the surface there. A sadness, or insecurity or just a problem she doesn’t know how to solve.
“Anyway,” she breezes, pushing past it. “I don’t want to keep putting it off. This is good. It’s fine. We’re fine. He’s fine. It’s all fine.”
“CJ? Said fine about four times in six seconds there,” he points out. “Kinda makes ya think, you know?”
“What?”
“Maybe you’re not fine?”
“I am.”
“Okay…” He waits her out.
She wrings her hands. “I’m nervous, is all. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, being a biologically ancient, paranoid nutcase with a terminal case of wanting to control the narrative.” She presses her palms into prayer, summoning an air of calmness. “But I’m working on that.”
“Gonna be a lot you can’t control.” He tugs her over closer to the chair, puts his arms around her waist.
“So I’m told. And that begins with putting the information out there. No more holding on to this. I want people to be happy for us.”
“That’s very sweet,” he says, diplomatic.
“Don’t let it get around. And we are not putting it on Facebook. Just email. To actual people we actually know.”
“That’s fine.”
“I don’t trust that little creep,” she grouses, kissing the top of his head, grumpily. She shoves the camera into his hands and stands back. She smiles tightly.
Danny pauses. “Wow. Try not to look so thrilled.”
“I hate having my picture taken.”
He definitely rolls his eyes at that. “Maybe if you pretended you were married to Daniel Cregg…”
CJ laughs, as always, against her will, failing completely to hold her scowl in place. “Arrrghhh. I hate when you say that!” She says this, and yet it makes her crack up every time, and the fact of it annoys her so, so much. Danny grins. Seeing the two competing emotions play out at once might just be, in all honesty, his absolute favorite outta all her many and captivating expressions.
“Sure,” he smirks. “Let's try this. C’mere.”
“Idiot.” She sits on his lap. He opens up the camera app on the Macbook and takes a few shots. CJ smiles a bit more genuine and relaxed, but bright as it is, it’s too posed.
“Eh?”
“Eh. We’ll try somethin else.”
“And here I thought you knew how to take a picture, mister did all my own field photography?” she chides.
“Audio, too. Of an occasion.”
“Got a triple threat on my hands.” She wraps her arms around his neck in semi-aggravation, peppering his face with her highly particular brand of deeply annoyed kisses.
The camera flashes. He hadn’t realized he’d clicked the button for camera delay.
In the image, he’s looking at her, teasing. She’s grinning back, looking only slightly exasperated, the Post-It note is just off center of her rounded belly. Overall, it’s kinda perfect.
CJ shakes her head. “Well, there’s the money shot.”
“Obviously,” he nips her ear. “But we’re not putting that in the email.”
She snorts and smacks his shoulder.
“Scandalous, Claudia Jean…” he says against her neck.
“Hush. Be silent. No talking.”
“You know those all mean the same–”
“I’m working on alternatives.”
“Ah.”
*
“Stop it.”
Danny looks up from his laptop, listening.
“Stop it.”
What–?
“Hey! Stop that right now.”
He gets up from the chair.
“I mean it.”
“CJ?” He walks from the office to the living room.
CJ looks up from the couch. “Yes?”
“Who ya–?”
She makes a face of despair and groans loudly. “Come here.”
She presses his hand to her side. The movements have been gentle, little flutterings so far. This is a lot more forceful.
“OH!” She winces. “That hurts! God. Tell this kid to be nice to me!”
He sinks into a cushion at her side. “Hey, quit it. Mom’s doing a lot of work here. She's giving up her bones for you.”
Her head pops up. “...I am?”
He shrugs. The book said as much. “Basically.”
“Wow, this deal just keeps getting better and better,” CJ sighs, rolling her shoulders. “You'd think a creature who’s gonna depend on me for the whole care and maintenance thing would make this process a little easier. Ow, I need that! Danny! The little beast! Kid’s playing soccer with my internal organs!”
“I’m sorry.”
“Eating my bones…”
He lets her lean back against him, listens to her complain and rant a little bit while rubbing her lower back. It does really suck, the whole gestation thing. But it only makes her more badass in his eyes.
CJ’s eyes pop open. “Hey. He stopped.”
“He?”
She stretches awkwardly, groaning. “Of course it’s a he,” she says, dismissive. “I can tell by how annoying he is.”
“Okay.”
“Gonna start calling him Josh.”
“Ooooooh, no way. Absolutely not,” he warns. Once that got out, there’d be no shutting Josh up. You gotta draw a line somewhere.
“Right,” she sighs. “I forgot, briefly, about his ego.”
“How nice for you.”
“C’mon.” She snaps her fingers and, struggling to her feet, holds out a hand. “We do sex now.”
Danny shakes his head and lets her pull him along. “You know, when you asked me to run away with you–”
She turns on the stairs, giving him a glare of such outrage. “It was a mutually determined agreement!”
“–I somehow expected cohabitation would involve fewer booty calls.”
“Oh, please.”
“Insane, I now realize.”
“You’re insane.”
“No arguments here.”
*
She shifts from foot to foot, scowling.
“We're going with this one,” she announces. CJ quickly swipes a paint sample from the display and walks away.
“I'm sorry, what color is that?” Danny smirks, trailing close behind. She’s refusing to look at him, but she can hear it in his stupid voice.
“It's gender neutral,” she says, evenly.
“I can see that.”
“We don't want to know, so we're going with a simple, basic color.”
“Of what shade exactly?” he heckles.
“It’s nice.” She ignores him.
He plucks the swatch from her hand. “‘Early spring,’” he reads.
“Yes.”
“What a lovely shade of pastel green. ”
“Danny…”
“Much like sage, or pistachio, or mint one might say.”
CJ sighs, looking for the guy who does the whole mixing thing. “I miss having a pool I can shove you into.”
Later that evening, she checks in on his progress. The pale green is, tragically, quite lovely, especially with the little hanging mobile of leaves and birds that Jill had sent the week before. A couple illustrated animal wall decals are scattered across the floor, to be added after the paint dries.
CJ considers the room, hugging her paint-splattered, workerbee of a husband to her. “You realize we’re having a child, right? Not a lemur or something.”
“Are we? Musta missed that.”
“You’ve got a whole menagerie thing going on.”
“It’s cute, no?”
“It is. It’s very cute,” she agrees.
Danny tips his head toward one illustration in particular, over by the box with the crib they’ll have to put together eventually. Elephants. Tigers. Zebra. Flamingos.
Ohhh…
She laughs at the adorable little goldfish swimming in the seafoam green depths of a cartoon kelp forest. CJ bends her head to his shoulder, slightly overcome by it all. This keeps happening. One moment she’s fine. The next, she’s devolved into a teary mess, sucker-punched by her own emotions. All this guy’s fault.
“You know, Gail’s a nice name,” Danny offers.
Annnd moment over.
She shoves him away. “Oh my god…”
“I’m just pointing out the obvious!”
She throws a little stuffed cat at his head.
*
Late in the evening. CJ's curled up in bed, cycling through her process of starting to read something, falling asleep, waking up and pretending she hadn't fallen asleep, then falling asleep again.
Danny's flipping through one of Leo's journals. All his tidy, military-precision script, all the same brand—a New York stationer that had supplied his Italian leather notebooks for over thirty years. He's up through the winter of 1970, when Leo'd been with the Alpha Pegasi defense group out of Syosset.
December 9th, 1970,
My daughter, Mallory Anne O'Brien, was born today. Her mother's name, and, God only hopes, her mother's everything else. 6lbs, 8ozs, all holler. Mad as hell, and just getting started. This kid's gonna be something.
I keep thinking about my father. About his father, and his father's father. Back into time beyond all hope of memory, and so much of it shaped by their hurts, their coldness, by the booze and the hardness of the circumstances of their short and difficult lives. I look at that little girl and I see something better. Something more than the dead kings of lost kingdoms. I see her name and her mother's, side by side, and swear to God, it's like a spell. A hope in time. A prayer, if you will. Some kind of act of irrational, sustaining optimism.
I expect a day will come, eventually, when she'll be grateful for it. The distance, the deniability. God knows I would have.
He reads the lines again, remembering Mal telling him the story that afternoon months ago in Rock Creek Park.
An act of irrational, sustaining optimism.
Say what you will about Leo McGarry: There was a lot the man had done in service of his country. A lot he'd gotten right, and his nation better for it. And, also, plenty of mistakes he'd made, though most of that had come back down on him, more than anyone else, in the end. There was plenty to find fault with, over the years. But this?
Danny smiles to himself.
The man wasn't wrong.
*
His article is published in the early November issue of The New Yorker, and generates a fair amount of buzz for a wonky one-off feature about seismology forecasting, or whatever; even the category it’s published under (“Annals of Geology”) seems dusty. And yet, it makes a couple local news stations in and around Seattle, and Danny’s one true love, Rachel, does a little shout out on the final segment of her show. People seem to share it a lot on Twitter, for whatever that’s worth.
Danny spends a couple days catching up with all the folks he talked to in the course of writing it. Some are pleased with the final product, others less so. She hadn’t realized how much of reporting was a form of diplomacy; a live-wire act between give and take. Or maybe she did realize, and had just forgotten. The short distance to the press room might as well have been miles, at the end there.
CJ frames the article page and puts it in the office, beside his framed Pulitizer certificate (you’re welcome, nimrod) and the medal version. A series of his other prizes are hung on the walls. She’s curated a cozy little diorama of their various accolades, which sit beside the actually hilarious photo of them screaming at each other over some long-ago argument about access and sources or quotes or conditions—whatever it is, it’s lost to time.
She looks from the medal to the awards and everything, and remembers with sudden clarity that, as with government administrations, one of the primary means by which the success of a piece of investigative reporting was measured was by any legislation that resulted to serve the public good.
All that shouting, and annoyance and momentary ill-will she’d held at times for those pushy, nosy do-good, wordsmithing nerds…and not one iota of that long-held irritation mattered to her any more. Opposite sides of the same coin (ish) all along. No wonder she’d married one of them.
(The guy from Fox was still a prick, though.)
She adjusts the angle of his New Yorker story, in its tidy frame. In the first column, fifth graph, she finds the section that stood out upon her re-read the night before.
“Change, as a rule, is slow. But sometimes, once in a rare while, under the right circumstances, the biggest, most transformative shifts can happen all at once.”
She gently taps her stomach. “Remember that, little bit.”
*
She snaps her fingers. “Alright. Give it to me.”
“CJ.”
“I’m ready.”
“Love the enthusiasm. I really do. But there’s nothing to prove here.”
“Danny…” She stops her pacing, glare from the muted TV giving her a sharp glow. “Will you please?” Her shoulders slump in aggravation. “This is important!”
He shakes his head in a dramatic fashion. “Fine. Three.”
“Don’t give me the easy one first!”
“Fine: One.”
She reaches a hand in the air, as if plucking bits of information from the ether.
“Mary Margaret Shaheen, goes by Maggie. DA for the US District of Minnesota. Husband, Tom. Kids, Tara and Lydia, 25, and 20; grad student at UWash, go Huskies, and a senior at Carlton. Maggie went to Michigan and UChicago Law. Likes cars, because you’re all absolute freaks,” she rattles off.
She does a little self-satisfied shimmy and snaps her fingers again. “Another!”
“Two.”
“Oh, you wanna do oldest to youngest? You’ll have to try harder than that, kitkat: Sister number two would be Maura Eileen Concannon-Long. Finance administrator, Northwestern Memorial Medical Center. Husband, Dave. Kids, Aiden, Logan, and Natalie; 16, 14, and 12. Natalie plays basketball, so, you know, she’s already in the running for my favorite.”
“You write a biography for each of ‘em?”
“Only one biographer in this family, sunshine,” she says with a wink and flutters the fingers of both hands, ready for the pass. Bring it.
He kicks his feet up on the coffee table, puts his hands behind his head, since he’s no longer needed for this (ridiculous, endearing, actually pretty affecting and adorable) pantomime.
“Three! Caroline May Twellman, Associate Director, EPA Region 5. Husband, Brian. Kids, Alexander, 13, twins are Caitlyn and Claire, 7. Which leaves sister number four, Jillian Theresa Concannon. Associate professor of immunology, University of Michigan. Partner, Sarai Markowizc. Kids, Oliver and Hannah, 10 and 8.”
“Four for four.” He peers over at the file open on her computer as CJ makes a fist of victory. “Did you write a memo?”
“Hey, why’d your sisters all go to Michigan?” CJ asks, ignoring him.
“Cause they’re weird.”
“Seriously.”
“You’ll have to ask them. Why’d your brothers both go to OSU?”
“Cause they’re herd mentality morons who cared more about fraternities and football at the time,” she breezes. “Why didn’t you?”
“Care about football and frats? Not my thing. Football’s fine. Don’t get me wrong, nothing better than seeing Michigan lose, but it’s sorta hard to really enjoy a game where someone needs to get checked for a head injury after every play.”
“I meant why didn’t you go to Michigan,” she corrects. “Though, good and yes, yes, yes, obviously.”
He tips his head, challenging. “Haven’t you figured that out by now?”
“I’m simply asking, my love.” She says it overly sweet, and a little sultry, sliding next to him on the couch. Which, even when he knows exactly what she’s doing, as a tactic, works to every advantage she intends it to pretty much every time. “Though, I imagine it sprung from your contrarian’s desire to break the mold via bold and rugged individualism.”
“Bold and rugged?” he repeats, amused.
“Among other things.”
“Mild form of rebellion, as rebellions go,” Danny says.
“Man, you’re something.” She snorts in laughter. “You gotta ask yourself, if you’re turning to the Catholic Church for a bit of intentional insurgency, what century are you living in?”
“Didn’t have as much of a grasp on what counted for apostasy back then.”
“Antagonist tendencies aside, a conservative religious school seems an odd choice for you.”
“Well, who needs education when you’ve got rugged individuality?”
She raises an eyebrow.
Danny just shrugs. “Yeah, it was kinda dumb. But worked out, in the long run. Endeared me to this one guy, a few decades after the fact.”
“Glad to hear you didn’t have designs on the priesthood.”
“Possibly even less back then than now,” he flirts.
“Hmm,” she side-eyes him before grabbing her laptop, making a note of something in her computer.
“What’s that?”
“Interview prep.”
“You’re giving an interview? Since when?”
“Several, actually. But not giving…” Her eyes flick up. “Why you think I did all this work? So many sisters, so little time…”
“You don’t believe I love and adore you?”
“Oh, I do. But isn’t something like ‘trust but verify’ one of your dumbass personal mottos?”
“Touché.”
“Fact checking. You love it.”
He grins, and shakes his head.
I sure do.
*
Michigan is about eighteen degrees and there’s already a little snow on the ground when they pull up to the house. A cozy-looking Victorian on Huron Ave.
“Ready?”
CJ steels herself. “Yes. Charm Offensive set to full force.”
“Outta curiosity,” Danny asks, grabbing the wine and desserts from the back. “You ever see Home Alone ?”
“The one with the little kid? Yeah.”
“Remember the beginning? When the house is like ten kinds of chaos?”
“Vaguely. Why?” she asks, suspecting the answer.
“May strike a chord.”
He opens the door. Kids are shouting upstairs and music’s playing in some other room while what sounds like a video game of some sort and a chorus of spectators is somewhere completely off-screen.
“Hey!” Danny shouts.
About seventeen people turn or duck out of doors and speak all at once, all saying the same thing: “CJ! ”
Danny just stares them all down. “Wow. Nicely done.”
A woman with bright, sharp blue eyes and brown hair, graying at the temples pushes forward. Maggie smiles at CJ, and says her name again.
“You rehearse that?” Danny asks her.
“So good to meet you!” Maggie beams, ignoring him.
“Maggie, right?” CJ asks.
“Not at all overwhelming. Very relaxed.” Danny critiques, taking CJ’s coat.
Maggie shoots him a confused look. “Sorry, who are you?”
“I don’t know this guy,” CJ says, jumping into the bit, jerking her thumb at him. “He just let me in the door...”
Caroline ducks out of a side room, sidles up and gives CJ a hug.
“‘We’ll go easy. It’ll be laid back’ she said,” Danny quips.
Caro smiles blithely at her brother. “Oh, go write in your diary, will you?”
He rolls his eyes. “Great to see you, too.”
“Welcome to the zoo, hon,” Maggie smiles, pulling her along. “Glad to have you.”
*
From there, the banter only ramps up. Question by question, joke by joke, CJ falls slightly in love with this family of mostly mouthy, argumentative, quick-witted women (plus a few husbands), and presided over by Mary Ellen Concannon, former high school English department head, whose caftans and protest-movement youth are equally notable. CJ feels as though she’s been adopted into their bizarro semi-coven, and laughs harder than she thought possible with people (aside from Caroline) who had been all-but strangers the week before.
“What was the most surreal part of working for the White House?” Maura asks. “You know, that’s not classified or whatever?”
“You never asked me that,” Danny points out.
“You worked at the White House, nor for it,” Maura returns.
“Why would she?” Jill snorts. “That’s kinda like the guy who sells hot dogs outside Wrigley Field calling himself a Chicago Cub,” Jill offers, which elicits a chorus of eerily familiar mean cackles.
CJ wipes the tears of laughter from her eyes. “Oh, god. Where to begin? I’ll tell ya: the strange and extraordinary places I’ve found myself deserve to be cataloged.”
“Give us mere mortals a taste,” Maura urges.
“Time I wore an evening gown to the Situation Room stands out.”
Danny looks at her sidelong, trying to puzzle out when that mighta been.
“Ellie’s wedding,” CJ clarifies.
“Ah. Kazakhstan?”
She tips her head, glancing around the table. “Nothing quite like asking for the delta on Russian troop movements from the last Keyhole satellite pass and realizing that the Secretary of Defense has been checking out your cleavage.”
Mary laughs and the many sisters laugh and their husbands laugh too, and this, she supposes, is what some families are like.
“In fairness, you do cut a more statuesque figure than Leo ever did,” Danny says.
“Danny,” Mary tents her fingers, calling down the table. “I have some thoughts–”
The table groans.
She raises her voice over the naysayers. “I have some thoughts– ”
Jill shakes her head. “Ma, leave the red pen for the night.”
Mary puts her glasses on. “I will never.”
“Deaf ears. You know they got their own in-house editorial style, right?”
“Thank you, Daniel, being famously ignorant and unfamiliar with basic grammatical standards, I had no idea,” his mother says over her glasses, dry as a bone.
CJ cackles. His own mother!
He holds his hands up. “I only get so much sway,” he defends.
“Well, it’s stuffy. Snobby. Anyone who insists on the diaeresis in coöperate is just showing off.”
“We know your thoughts on this, Mother,” Caroline snarks.
Maura gives CJ a look. “Every year...”
“Write a letter to the editor. Best I can tell ya,” Danny offers.
“Diaeresis?” Maura’s husband, Dave, asks. “Which one’s…?”
“Exactly the one you’re picturing,” Maura tells him. “Two dots over a vowel.”
“Thought that was an umlaut?” Brian says.
“Umlaut’s just in German,” Caroline explains.
“Two dots,” Dave frowns. “I thought that was a dipthong.”
Maura looks at him in pity. “Aww, honey. No.”
“No?”
“Big no.”
“Stick to finance, Dave,” Tom adds.
“Sorry, I blacked out for a second,” Jill’s partner Sarai quips. “Was someone talking about thongs?”
Everyone laughs and Mary continues to knock the editor of the foremost literary publication in the English language while her kids all roll their eyes and every now and then their spouses add their own jokes and thoughts and complaints and gentle digs at one another, which is to say, that they’re a family, loud and affectionate, and even the throng of nieces and nephews are outgoing and energetic and interesting, organizing their own contests and games that erupt in the occasional maelstroms of laughter over in the next room, and the whole thing is about as far from the last few holidays as she could ever have imagined; it’s all some kind of wonderful.
CJ feels a little kick in her side, and thinks, We better get used to it, kid.
*
December is quieter. They stay in LA, since it’s getting down to the wire. The foundation closes for two full weeks around Christmas and New Year’s, because that’s the kind of thing you can do when you run the show.
She considers the tableau of greetings and faces—friends, family—that covers the fridge: Christmas cards and holiday season letters and photos from their more organized friends and every single one of Danny’s sisters, who, between the full set of them, have become an entire distributed support network of professional badasses and working moms. File under “Things she hadn’t known she needed.”
Andy Wyatt had sent picture of the twins and an invitation to talk sometime in the new year. Another thaw in the ice. Another resource in the whole how to have it all (or at least try to) thing.
The old year passes into the next, and somehow it has been a decade since an otherwise unremarkable January day in Manchester.
She’s sleeping like a rock these days, but one morning, not long after the new year, CJ wakes in the foggy blue light before dawn, unable to fall back to sleep. Forgoing the morning chatter on MSNBC or Morning Edition, she drops a note on the pillow and puts her phone in her pocket before ducking out into the low-hanging mist, waving to neighbors out on the morning dog-walk, the brave souls who are facing the day before there is, you know, actual daylight.
Amazing, somehow, to think that was her life a year ago.
The walk to the promenade path above the cliffs isn’t far, a bit over a mile. It’s a good stretch, and more of an effort, by now. Leaning against the spot (their spot, she’s come to think of it as, such is her complete descent into utter and shameless sentiment these days) by the fence, right at the cliff edge, she watches the surfers in the waves, the runners and cyclists on the boardwalk below. She can hear a container ship’s foghorn echo off the water, somewhere through the low-hanging marine layer, offshore and out of sight.
She thinks of paths not taken. The ghost ships, gone off course.
She thinks of troops and shuttles and genocide, of carrying the unendurable weight of it all, and for so much longer than she’d thought herself capable.
It’s just after six a.m. Pacific, nine Eastern. A couple thousand miles away, she’d already have been awake for more than four hours. Would have slept poorly and alone, before going off to the races, cajoling world leaders, herding ambitious House Dems and snide GOP Senators and an entire central bureaucracy toward her goals, all trying to serve and save a world she hadn’t belonged to for years.
Her baby rainbow kicks her ribs, like a striker at the top of the box, and as CJ eases a hand along her side, silently willing this one to get here soon, she thinks about how simple would have been to have let the fear and uncertainty win out, only a year ago. About how close she had come to missing this. All of it.
*
She goes into labor on a Sunday afternoon in late January, almost a full month early. It’s scary at first, and then really, really properly scary, because it’s actually happening, no excuses or delays, no take-backs. After nine long hours, her baby lets out a great cry and when the doctor places her small, squirming body on her chest, her little girl blinks her father’s blue eyes. Despite the hurt and fear and the pain and the complete, soul-shaking exhaustion of it all—For the life of her, CJ cannot stop smiling.
She touches the perfection of her daughter’s crown, where a spiky stripe of red-gold runs down the middle of her head, like fox fur.
“You're really here,” CJ laughs (cries; whatever), astonished. “You made it.”
*
It catches up with her again in the small hours, later. The secondhand loneliness, even still. The ghost ship of a choice she had been so close to making.
She pulls her husband close, overcome by the thought. Danny tucks his head to hers, and the baby sleeps in the blanket in her arms.
Her heart lurches; cracks; aches. God, the grief of it is leveling. It’s Leo. It’s her father and Jed Bartlet, keeping his secrets. It’s Toby and Sam and Josh—everyone who had left and yes, yes, they’re still there, still part of her life, but none of them had been, not at the end. Not with her. There had been no one to share it with, all too bruised or broken, too disillusioned by the years they’d been through.
Everyone except for this unreasonably brave idiot here.
The baby blinks up, sleepily. Her tiny mouth curls into a little O. She makes the most perfect little sound.
“You okay?” Danny asks, when CJ sniffles and wipes her eyes for the eleventy-ninth time in about three minutes.
“I keep thinking about that argument we had. Before we left DC.” She takes a shaky breath. “How I almost couldn’t do it. I was so scared. I’d have missed this.”
Danny’s eyes are soft and sweet. He’s still here, somehow. After all the cruel write-offs and playing around and power-tripping she’d done to try and wrest control of their equilibrium for so many years, here he is. This idiot she adores. Still. Still. God. What kinda luck was that?
“You didn’t miss it.”
An old conversation.
CJ wipes her nose again, biting her lip a moment to keep the ache at bay. “We missed a lot,” she confesses.
He shrugs. “We did a lot, too. And that’s okay. We did this.” He smooths the stripe of hair along the baby’s impossibly soft, scarily small little head.
She shakes her head. The ghost ship, it’s out there. “You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met.”
He chuckles. “You're the lionheart here, honey.” His eyes crinkle, wry and amused and just a little challenging. “I’m just along for the ride.”
The baby yawns, and the sound is so much like a very tiny roar, CJ can only sob happily. She bites her lip, laughing. “Danny. I know what her name is.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Tell me.”
She does. And he smiles.
He touches his daughter’s fire-bright mohawk and says, “It’s nice to meet you.”
*
Literally about ten minutes later:
“Danny!” CJ seethes. “What the actual hell!?”
“What?”
“You got her name wrong.”
He tucks the baby into his arms, unconcerned. “No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did!” She stabs a pen at the birth certificate.
He shrugs. “Looks right to me.”
“This is my name, dumbass.”
Danny says to the baby, “Mom’s a smart lady, huh?”
CJ scowls, wincing in discomfort, annoyed and wanting to fix this. “Can you be serious?”
“Eh, occasionally. If I must.”
“Cuz you’re not being serious.”
“You want serious? Okay. Listen up.” He perches on the bed by her side, giving her his whole Hey, I’m an authority on some things, like this, for instance schtick. “Yes, that’s your name. Which, if I remember correctly from, you know, the six and a half million times I’ve written it, not to mention the wedding license, couple property deeds, and a whole lotta other paperwork, isn’t the same as my name.”
“Danny, I swear to god–”
“And yes, I made a call. Cause I’m a notoriously selfish guy. And I want my little girl to grow up saying the name of the smartest, toughest, most amazing and badass woman I know every day for the rest of her life. That alright with you?” He gives her a challenging look, daring her to argue.
“Danny…” She shakes her head. But there she is again, outfoxed. “Man. You’re something.”
“Well put.”
“Shut up. Give me my kid.”
“Because you asked so nicely…” he says, handing her over.
“Where’d we find him, huh?”
“I like this. For her. Plus it’ll give Josh a reason to heckle me, so there's a chance she might meet her godparents sometime in the next decade.”
“Where’d this come from?”
“It’s a tradition, actually. Started with Leo.”
She makes a face at him. A moment of realization. “Mallory?”
“He called it something like: an irrational act of sustaining optimism. There’s a bit in one of his journals about it, when Mal was born. I liked that. Reminded me of all the time I spent tryna to convince this one woman I knew that the world wouldn’t go to hell in a handbasket if she had dinner with me.”
She leans her forehead to his. “Didn’t, did it?”
“Nope.”
“It really doesn’t bother you?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
She looks at her daughter. Her blue eyes blink open. “What are we gonna do with this guy, Simba? Huh?”
“Hey! Thought that was my name?” Danny pouts.
“Well, you stole mine and gave it away, so I stole yours. How you like me now?”
He wraps his arm around her, no fight in him. None at all. “I like you just fine.”
“Good.”
They watch their little girl yawn again, and probably it’s lack of sleep or else maybe the whole comical hypothetical of it all, but it really does sound like a soft little rawr.
*
The alert pops up on her laptop. Abbey almost drops her coffee at the photo in Danny’s email. “Oh my...Jed! Get in here! CJ had the baby!”
“What?! Let me see!”
“Oh, look at that hair. Oh, sweet thing,” Abbey laughs at the photo. “She's got Danny’s coloring for sure.”
“Where are my glasses...? Read me the message, would you please? I can't make it out.”
“A new constituent arrived,” she reads. “At 12:48 am on January 28th.”
“What's her name?” Jed asks.
Abbey presses one hand hand to her chest.
“Oh, Jed.” She reaches for her husband. “Leona. They named her Leona.”
*