“So what’s the verdict?” Spencer asked his siblings as he leaned against the oak tree.
JJ stretched his legs out into the grass, which was drying quickly with the returning afternoon sun. “I say we leave this decision to Mom.”
Mary-Beth made a face.
“What?”
“I don’t know if your mother will tell you what she wants. She might say she wants to continue with the campaign as long as your father does. I don’t even know if she knows what she wants.”
The Brights considered this possibility as they sat together in the shade of Philip’s tree.
Charlie stopped massaging Chelsea’s shoulders. “This is going to make Dad really mad.”
“I don’t care,” JJ said. “The only way I’m staying on this campaign is with Mom’s blessing now. After everything he has done to her...”
Spencer nodded. “Me, too. It’s the least we can do.”
Ian was incredulous. “You guys could just quit. That has always been an option. It’s probably unwinnable at this point, anyhow. Just quit for fuck’s sake.”
“No,” Spencer said. “It has to be up to Mom. And I don’t think we can assume that she wants us to quit.”
“I think that’s right,” Mary-Beth agreed. She looked around. “What are we going to do about the cameras?”
They looked back at the house where Farah had a camera pointed at them. She surely couldn’t hear them or see anything interesting from that distance. But the camera was still there, watching, waiting for their return.
“This looks worse,” Spencer said. “The longer we stay out here, the longer it looks like we have something to hide.”
“Who cares what it looks like?” Philip said. “We haven’t done anything wrong. This is Dad’s problem.”
Charlie stood. “Let’s just talk to Mom. We’ll know what to do after we talk to her.”
Everyone nodded and got up, brushing the grass from their behinds and stretching their legs.
Mary-Beth walked back toward the house with her husband. She was proud of them all, for coming together and facing reality.
As they approached the deck, Lucas dribbled a soccer ball over. “What were you guys doing out there?”
“Just talking,” she said curtly. “Stay off the internet today, okay? Tell your brother.”
“What did we do?” he whined. “Are you serious about this?”
“You didn’t do anything wrong. Just try, Lukey, please.”
Mary-Beth knew that she couldn’t keep her boys off the internet and away from their personal promotion campaign, but she had to try. She was almost glad—on this day only—that their own vanity might shield them from some of the ugliness of the internet. She thought perhaps that their preoccupation with their own brand management might diminish the perceived size of this news about their grandfather. They seemed to exist in an entirely different cyberuniverse from her own. Today, she hoped it.
Mary-Beth and JJ were intentional with their parenting, to the extent that anyone could be. They’d done everything they could to create a safe, stable and predictable environment. They’d been explicit about their values and expectations in an effort to present a sort of moral map for their children, devoid of guesswork. More than anything else, they showered the boys with genuine affection. Mary-Beth said every day all the things that she’d wished her parents had said to her in a lifetime. I love you and I’m interested in you and I’m lucky to have this job of being your parent—all the things that Mary-Beth’s parents probably felt but couldn’t say because they were of a different generation and disposition.
It wouldn’t have occurred to Mary-Beth to feel cheated by her parents’ lack of affection—until she met John and Patty Bright. It was from John and Patty that she learned that parents from prior generations could be effusive in their love and that, contrary to her training, such affection didn’t rot one’s soul like candy in dental work. John and Patty had told the Bright boys that they were loved and special every day since the day they were born, and even if it had perhaps contributed to their inflated sense of self, what better by-product of misguided parenting could you hope for? As long as there would be unintended consequences, Mary-Beth decided long ago, let them be of the self-love variety. JJ and his family gave Mary-Beth permission to parent in the way that her soul begged to parent—not only for the boys, but for her younger self.
But there had been unintended consequences to this approach—the risk of raising children with outsize egos. It wasn’t the worst thing you could do to your kids, but it was a thing she felt she needed to acknowledge having done.
“We’ll try to stay off the internet, Mom,” Lucas said.
And she smiled, knowing they would not.
Upstairs, JJ knocked on his parents’ bedroom door, with all his siblings and the extras behind him. Farah was with them now, too, cameras rolling.
“Mom, can we come in?”
There was a pause, and then the door unlatched and cracked open. JJ, Spencer, Charlie and Philip filed in first, in birth order, followed by Mary-Beth and Ian. Chelsea stayed outside, which Mary-Beth thought was wise, given her tenuous stature in the family at present.
The door closed abruptly.
Inside the bedroom, JJ got right to it. “Mom, we’ll quit the campaign if that’s what you want. We’ll just end it today. It’s up to you.”
Patty stood on the other side of the made bed. It was piled with throw pillows decorated with embroidered knots. She folded her arms across her chest and looked sternly at the group. “Is that what this little ambush is all about?”
“It’s not an ambush,” Spencer said. “We’re trying to just do what’s right here, Mom. We know you don’t want to talk about any of this...stuff...which is fine. But you do need to tell us whether it’s gotten to be too much for you.”
“That’s a decision for me and your father.”
JJ shook his head. “Not to us, it’s not. You get to choose here.”
Mary-Beth thought their adamancy was sweet. She’d assumed Patty would think so, too.
“Well, you’re being ridiculous,” Patty said. “I’ve been doing this longer than some of you have been alive, and I’m perfectly capable of handling a little bad news.”
Her sons were taken aback.
Patty went on. “You think any of this happens without my permission? Your father may be the candidate, but he’s not the only one running this show. I’m always in it, even if you don’t see me. So while I thank you for your chivalry—or whatever this is—I don’t need your help. No one’s quitting the campaign.” Her voice quivered for a moment at the end, betraying something more. “But thank you. I do love you boys.”
Charlie stepped forward. “But Mom, we’ll probably lose this, anyhow. Is it worth it?”
“I don’t know about that. Has anyone seen the news in the past hour?”
They shook their heads.
“There was another attack on the electrical grid. It was on the West Coast this time. Most of Portland is powerless right now. Your father’s got the strongest security platform in the race, and he’s pulling some moderate Republicans to his court right now. This could be enough to bump all that other stuff off the news pages and refocus on substance.”
Charlie looked at his brothers. They nodded. This cyberattack could, maybe, reclaim media attention and provide an opportunity for John Senior to pivot back to the issues. Everyone seemed to agree, it could be good news for them.
And so the Brights left the bedroom and went on with the campaign.
The sons joined their father in the study, where they made fund-raising calls and assiduously avoided the press. They wrote a speech for the national security summit that John was still scheduled to attend, and Patty picked out his shirt-tie combo for it. Farah’s video cameras followed because the show must go on. And no one said another word about the three women whom John Bright had long ago (but not that long ago) slept with.