Tracy Flick Can't Win (Tracy Flick #2) (24)

I’ll crush you, Tracy.

Part of what irritated me was his condescending tone, the breezy assumption—without any evidence whatsoever—that I was an unworthy opponent and my defeat a foregone conclusion. Also, I hated that word: crush. The harshness of it, the utter finality, as if you’d been flattened beyond recognition, like a bug under someone’s shoe.



* * *



You’re a nobody.

That was another bad phrase orbiting my consciousness that fall.

No one knows your name.

I needed to pee.

I was sure of it.

But then I took a moment and remembered that I’d peed right before I lit my candle. I did that sometimes when my thoughts were making me uncomfortable. Distracted myself. Tried to escape.

Stay put, I told myself. Focus on your breath.

Be the flame.



* * *



I never wanted to be famous, not really. It was more that fame was the necessary precondition for, and inevitable by-product of, the thing I really did want, which was to be the first woman President of the United States.

I know, there’s nothing more pathetic than a person talking about a dream that never happened, one that never even came close. It just makes you look like a fool. But being President wasn’t some girlish fantasy of mine, some cute little idea that dissolved at the first contact with reality.

Being President was my ambition, not my dream.

There’s a difference.

And it wasn’t a crazy ambition. Whatever it is that a person needs to reach a goal like that, I had it in me, I knew I did. Even back in high school. Especially then. I was smart, I was tough, I had an incredible capacity for hard work, and I believed in myself. No imposter syndrome for me. And beyond that was my actual superpower, which was that I wanted it more than anyone else. Trust me, you didn’t want to get in my way.

I could see the path laid out in front of me. I graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Georgetown, and worked as a congressional intern for one glorious summer. I remember how amazing that felt, flashing my ID, nodding to the security guard as I entered the Capitol Building in my navy-blue pantsuit, like I’d willed it to happen, like I’d granted my own deepest wish.

I went straight from undergrad to law school, also at Georgetown, because I knew what I wanted and where I needed to be.

I saw myself as a budding prosecutor. Those were years when being tough on crime was considered a virtue, and that suited me just fine. I liked rules and laws—I still do—and I believed that people who broke them should be punished to the fullest extent possible. Eventually a high-profile case would come my way, and I would go on TV and talk about order and justice and the righteous vengeance of the state, and people would remember my name. When the time was right, I would run for office. Congresswoman Flick. Senator Flick. Attorney General Flick. And who knows, maybe even…

Then I got the phone call.



* * *



My mother was everything to me. My fiercest advocate, my best friend, my entire family. The source of my dreams and my determination. She couldn’t use them, so she passed them onto me. They were my inheritance.

It was hard for both of us when I left for college. Long distance was expensive back then, so we only talked on the phone once or twice a week. Mainly we communicated through the mail. She wrote me every single day. Long handwritten letters full of advice. Newspaper clippings about successful women. Old photos of the two of us. Brief affirmations scrawled on blank postcards.

You’re the best!!!

Congrats on the Dean’s List!!!

I’m the luckiest mother in the world!!!

The phone call that changed everything didn’t come from her. It was from our downstairs neighbor and longtime landlord, Shirley Del Vecchio.

Tracy, honey. I’m sorry to bother you. I know how busy you are.

No worries, I said, though I was already worried, because Shirley had never called me at school before. Is everything okay?

No, honey. Things are not okay. They haven’t been okay for a while now.



* * *



My mom was sick. It turned out she’d been diagnosed with MS during my sophomore year in college, but I didn’t know that, because she hadn’t told me. She’d meant to, she later explained, but it was always the wrong time to break the news—I had midterms, I had finals, I had that long research paper on Adam Smith. I had that obnoxious neighbor who kept me awake at night. I didn’t need any more stress in my life.

What’s harder to understand is my own blindness. Didn’t I see that she was weak and feverish, having trouble reading and getting around? I did and I didn’t. Sometimes when I was home, she seemed fine, her old self. And if she was having an attack, all she ever said was that she wasn’t feeling well.

It’s no fun getting old, honey.

The truth is, I didn’t get home that much or stay very long when I did. You could blame me for being self-absorbed—I certainly blamed myself—but that was the deal my mother and I had struck a long time ago, probably on the day I was born. I was the one with the mission; she was just support staff. That was the way she wanted it, and that was the way we lived.

The deception only worked as long as it did because her symptoms were mild at first, and her remissions lasted for months. The Del Vecchios helped a lot too. Shirley drove my mom to the doctor’s when she couldn’t get there on her own, and she nursed my mother on days when she couldn’t get out of bed. And she never said a word to me.