The Hopefuls(81)

“You seriously want to have a baby in Texas?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said. “Why not? We wouldn’t be in Texas when the baby was born anyway.”

“Why not?” I asked. “Why not?” was his reason for wanting to have a baby?

“Yeah, why not?”

“Right. So, let’s say I got pregnant right now. Then I’d be back in DC looking for a job while I was visibly pregnant? That timing doesn’t seem great.”

I was aware then that Viv was watching us, and while I knew she didn’t understand what we were saying, I still felt strangely guilty having this conversation in front of her.

“I don’t think the timing is ever completely right,” Matt said. There was a challenge in his voice.

“Maybe not,” I said. “But this timing seems completely wrong.” I didn’t say what I was really thinking—which was that I couldn’t imagine having a baby with someone who was so angry all the time. That he barely talked to me lately, that he didn’t seem like himself and the thought of negotiating the complications of a child while he was like this seemed impossible, or at the very least, the thing that would end us.

Also, a tiny part of me thought that maybe he wanted a baby because it was something that Jimmy had, that it would be a way to even the score between them. But I just stayed quiet, because it seemed that telling him any of this would most certainly lead to a fight. And finally he sighed as though I were deeply disappointing him and said, “You know, you can’t keep making excuses forever.”





Chapter 17


“Did you see this?” Matt asked, pointing to his computer. We were all in the kitchen eating breakfast and Matt’s laptop was in front of him, but I didn’t know if he was talking to me or Jimmy or all of us.

“See what?” I finally said.

“The Dallas Morning News reported that Candace Elroy raised ten times what we did last quarter. And half of the money came from donations from oil and gas companies. This is so f*cked up.”

“I’m so sick of this shit,” Jimmy said. He was pouring himself a cup of coffee and my heart jumped for a second, thinking he was talking about Matt’s constant delivery of bad news. But then he went on, “How can people not see how corrupt this is?”

“I thought we made a rule about these things at breakfast,” Ash said, lightly tapping the top of Matt’s laptop. He gave her an apologetic look as he closed the computer and placed it on an empty chair. A couple weeks earlier, Matt had sat at the breakfast table and read us an article about Jimmy that picked apart his career, claiming he had no experience with anything remotely related to oil and gas, that his résumé was fluffy and light, that he was trading on being Obama’s aide. We all stared at Matt as he read out loud, and I kept thinking he’d stop eventually, especially when it started to get nasty. But he just kept going. The article had appeared on some conservative blog, but Matt said it got a lot of traffic, that plenty of people would read it. After he read the last line, “A Democrat hasn’t been elected to the Railroad Commission in two decades,” he finally looked up and realized that he’d just ruined everyone’s day, all before 8:00 a.m. It was after that that Ash started insisting everyone (meaning Matt) keep the computers off the table while we ate.

That morning, even after the computer was gone, Matt kept muttering about Candace Elroy. “We need everyone to stop reporting on how little we’re raising. It’s taking away from the real issues of the race.” No one responded to him—we knew he wasn’t looking for an answer, just thinking out loud.

“What’s on the schedule for today?” Ash said in a cheerful voice, a little louder than normal. She was toasting a loaf of sourdough bread and carrying it over to us, four thick pieces at a time. She’d already set out butter and fancy strawberry jam, and a bowl of hard-boiled eggs sat in the center of the table. When I got up to help her carry things, she’d put her hands on my shoulders and said, “Don’t you dare,” which even with her friendly southern accent, sounded a little bit like a threat.

“We’re leaving for Odessa today,” Matt said.

“Oh, right. That’s today?” Ash set down the last four pieces of toast and then finally sat down herself and picked up her coffee. “I almost forgot.”

“How could you forget?” Jimmy asked. “We’ve been talking about it all week.”

My eyes met Ash’s across the table just for a second, and then we both looked away, waiting to see if this would escalate. Both of us let out a breath when Jimmy changed the subject, knowing that our breakfast—for that day at least—would be argument free.

The Odessa trip was a point of contention—Jimmy thought it was too far to go for such a small event (a round-table discussion with oil field workers), but Matt insisted it was important and argued with him until he gave in. The plan was to leave Tuesday morning and drive eight hours to Odessa, where they would spend the night and have the round table first thing in the morning, then drive to San Antonio for a fund-raising dinner and return home late Wednesday. All of the campaign trips involved a lot of driving, but this was pretty extreme with the quick turnaround.

I’d woken up at 4:00 that morning and found Matt sitting on the couch outside our bedroom, his laptop balanced on his knees. “What are you doing?” I’d asked, half asleep.