MAYBE RELATIONSHIPS SHOULD HAVE TERM LIMITS?
On Friday afternoon, four long days since the implosion of her personal life, Cady found herself gazing out her office window across the river at Washington’s sun-soaked skyline when she should’ve been reviewing the lineup for next week’s shows. All the adrenaline that had kept her working like a machine all week, and had steadily stoked her fiery anger, was finally running out. It had been a good week at the show at least, and it had been comforting to throw herself into work. She didn’t care what people said; sometimes, a job could love you back, especially when you were feeling like a blowtorch had been taken to your personal life.
The latest ‘Kitchen Hacks with Madison Goodfellow’ had once again been picked up everywhere. Best Day DC continued to be the only show getting any time at all with Madison. Cady had, of course, discovered that was because the Goodfellow campaign’s punched-out press guy had been attempting to keep Madison out of the spotlight. But lucky for Cady, Madison had been determined to sneak away to keep taping her segments. “I like you, Cady, all of you all here,” she’d told her. “I like that you just let me be me.”
Cady knew that Madison had much more going on than anyone in media—or in her husband’s camp—was giving her credit for. She could have played the perfect First Lady Hopeful if she’d wanted to. At some point, Cady would figure out the reason behind her behavior. In the meantime, she would just revel in the attention the show received and in this unexpected friendship.
She tried again to focus on the upcoming Olympics-heavy schedule: pretaped packages with hometown athletes prepping for Rio, tips and recipes for viewing parties. Friday’s show would tape on location at The Grill From Ipanema, that Brazilian place in Adams Morgan, where she and Jackson used to get drunk on caipirinhas when he’d first moved to town and she would visit on weekends. Those early trips had felt like minihoneymoons: they spent their days in bed with no plans, no ambition beyond getting reacquainted, and emerged in their Saturday night finest for dinner and cocktails, sometimes with groups of his friends and colleagues, always at the latest and greatest spots. Thinking back, she had felt more a part of his life then, more woven into his fabric, more a team, than she had since moving in with him in January.
She grabbed her bag, hoping a coffee run would get her through the afternoon, when her phone pinged twice in rapid succession. Jackson: can I come home? And: guess we have stuff to talk about? She sighed and collapsed back down in her chair.
The apologies had stopped coming by Tuesday night and his messages had shifted to this more utilitarian: hello?
are you getting these?
did u change number?
where are U?
U in dc now? She had ignored them all.
Stuff to talk about? She shook her head now and typed back, ya think? saying it out loud as she did, but then quickly deleting it. “Ugh, enough with you,” she said to her phone, chucking it at her desk just as the new, nervous intern materialized with her mail. The girl looked stricken. “Not you, sorry,” Cady said. “It’s just… Never mind. Thanks. You’re doing a great job,” she added hastily. The girl skittered out.
Cady tried to declutter her desk, tossing the couple of magazines, invitations and a poster tube into her inbox, as if doing so could also help clear her mind. She returned to her cell phone. It was just too overwhelming, trying to craft the perfect response. The schizophrenic ups and downs that had been going on in her heart and her head since Monday were too complicated for this form of communication. Yet she also felt sick to her stomach when she considered what it would be like to have to talk to him. And look at him.
Sighing, she tried again and typed, whenever. i haven’t changed the locks. yet. She was kidding but liked that he probably wouldn’t know for sure. She hit Send. Then felt bad and sent: kidding. Then felt like she was being too nice-borderline-doormat and sent for now. Stop, she told herself. No more. She wasn’t good at this. She didn’t have a flair for the dramatic. She had always been the kind of girl guys would break up with, and she’d calmly accept, or actually, more commonly, they would just ghost her. That was even easier.
Why did it feel that in the six months since her move they hadn’t actually had any fun together? What had they been doing? When she stopped to take stock—an exhaustive undertaking she had been doing involuntarily nearly every hour of every day since that train ride home from the convention—it seemed that things had actually been worse since the move. If she were to task the graphics department at work to chart her and Jackson’s joy quotient, it would be a steep and steady decline from the night of that proposal until the rock bottom of Black Monday, as she referred to it. What had changed? It couldn’t all be blamed on his constant travel. They had been long-distance before and managed much better than this. She had questions but, still, her head cautioned her heart that the answers probably weren’t going to make her feel better.
He wrote back thx.
Seriously, he couldn’t even spell the word out? She at least deserved a properly spelled word. Now she was angry, the adrenaline pumping again.
She sent a group text: 911: he’s coming home tonight. advice? xo.
Reagan came first: have your talking points ready, type them up and print them out maybe? be tough, get answers, leave nothing unsaid.
Then Birdie: yes and book emergency appt at drybar gtown and a mani, tons of good places near there—looking grt is best revenge.
Then Jay: set the mood—for an ass-kicking—make a playlist with your fight songs. you are boss!!!!!! xx.
And finally, even Madison: just say what’s in your heart.
Her nerves and anger receded and in their place, love bloomed. She sent a thank you all so much, spelled out in proper English, and a you’re my heroes. She felt raw from this week and to have this crew swoop in to help, her own personal pep squad, it touched her. They understood her. It meant a lot to her, especially since she still didn’t feel she could talk to any of her old friends about this upheaval. She just felt like they wouldn’t get it, they were too far removed from this world.
With a renewed vigor, she scheduled her appointments, caught up on emails, typed up notes for her Jackson tête-à-tête, organized a playlist on her phone and then caught a cab to Georgetown.
* * *
Cady didn’t mind that the salons couldn’t take her until after eight and that Friday night Georgetown traffic made the trip back to the apartment even longer. She’d secretly hoped he would already be home when she arrived adequately glammed for her showdown. Let him feel what it’s like to not have her at home. Let him notice the empty space in the closet where her dresses had hung. (She had already moved them into a garment bag Wednesday night in a fit of pique, watching Carter speak at the convention. Jackson didn’t deserve to be having the best week of his life when she was having the worst of hers.) Let him see his dishes from the morning he left on his trip still unwashed in the sink (she had cleaned only her own). Let him put the TV on and have it immediately tune to Channel 8, Best Day DC’s station. Let him find the DVR stuffed full of episodes of her favorite shows, his SportsCenter deleted.
She listened to her playlist (consisting almost entirely of Rocky Haze songs) the whole way home, in her own world. When she finally returned to her building, unlocked the door, she found it almost impossible to ignore the jitters: she really should’ve factored in time for a glass of wine somewhere along the way.
The apartment was pitch-black, silent.
“Hello?” she said into the abyss, already knowing she wouldn’t get an answer. She hated him even more now. Why wasn’t he here yet? She went straight to the kitchen, their sparsely populated wine rack. No, she could do better than that. She opened the fridge and found it: the bottle of Veuve Clicquot gifted to them for their engagement. It was really nice, the kind of champagne that deserved to be saved for something important. Like tonight.
She unwrapped the seal, popped the cork neatly and poured a generous amount into a Best Day DC coffee mug. She settled in on the sofa, draining her mug, keeping her shoes and dress on: whenever he came home she would tell him she had only just gotten home herself. She was busy and important too, and had been out having fun and living her life, and look at all that he would be missing by leaving her. Just look.
* * *
When she woke up, Seth Meyers was on TV, the apartment still desolate. “Hello?” she called out. She almost expected her voice to echo back, it was that empty and lonely. Her phone showed no signs of life, save for Reagan two hours earlier: how’s it going????? Cady wrote back, blood boiling: I’ve been stood up. To get dumped. But my hair and nails are on point. Great.
* * *
She didn’t sleep well, in fits and starts, tossing, turning, thinking too much. Cady’s anticlimactic night brought one bit of clarity: she really liked the idea of not being around when Jackson arrived. At six in the morning, she was already dressed and shoving things into a bag. She wasn’t sure where she would go or how long she would be away, just that she wanted to be in control. To be the one that he had to put effort into seeing if he wanted to “talk.” She didn’t want to be the one here, waiting around.
Ted was home for a few days, so she wouldn’t burden Reagan. But Sky was probably still on the trail with Rocky Haze, and Jay might be up for company. She’d wait until a decent hour and call. In the meantime, she collected her most frequently worn items into a suitcase, her makeup, hair dryer, the essentials. As she began tackling the shoes, the door rustled. That can’t be him, he would never come home this early. He never could get himself anywhere before seven on a weekend.
He pushed open the door, suitcase wheeling in first. “Cady?” he called out, his voice deflated.
She didn’t speak, just sped up her packing as though this movie had been put on fast-forward. The very sound of his voice made her furious, brought her back to that hotel room, that hideous, beautiful Willa creature that he had probably been shagging nonstop for the duration of the convention.
She had had a plan. Why had ALL of her plans been completely upended lately? She had planned to be gone, or at the very least here, looking amazing, Rocky Haze’s “Notes from the Underdog” cranked up, bags packed. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go down. In her ripped jeans and old white T-shirt, that stain from her iced coffee. She knew she shouldn’t’ve made that morning Starbucks run. Where were her talking points? Why had she only printed them and not emailed them to herself? Why were they on her computer at work?
“Cady?” he said again; it sounded like he was in the kitchen.
The anger couldn’t be absorbed anymore, it bubbled up, seeped out.
“Yeah, still here, but on my way out so you’ll be free to hook up or whatever.” Her voice came out like a toxic spill. “Hey, leave a tie on the door so I know if it’s not cool for me come back for the rest of my stuff, okay?”
He appeared in the doorway of the closet in jeans, a sport coat and a button-down shirt open at the collar. She hated how attractive he was. She wished he had somehow become instantly repugnant-looking the moment he’d cheated on her, completing the metamorphosis from prince to horny toad.
“Hey,” he said cautiously, as though waiting to be stabbed with the stiletto in her hands.
Madison’s words came to her first. She took a deep breath, looked away, her heart spoke. “I can’t talk to you right now.” She said it firmly, zipped up her suitcase. Hopped up to her feet, slipped on the first pair of flip-flops she saw, worn-out and beat-up, not her best, oh well.
“Are you going somewhere? Now?” he asked, confused.
She pushed past him. “I can’t do this now.”
He followed her through the living room. “I had been wanting to talk to you, but there wasn’t a good time,” he said to her back as she kept walking to the door.
“That’s because there’s never a good time to talk about bad stuff, so you fucking make time,” she said, more controlled than she had expected, proud of herself. She pulled open the door. “Or else I guess you just find someone else and figure it’ll work itself out. Look, I gotta go, I can’t—” Without finishing, she walked out, started down the hall. She meant she couldn’t handle this right now. She didn’t want to do this. At all. She didn’t even care about anything he had to say; looking at him now she realized she couldn’t be with him anymore. She just kept seeing that hotel room.
He followed her down the corridor.
“I didn’t mean for it to go this way,” he said, passing their neighbors coming back from a jog, glistening and cheery. “Don’t go, let’s just talk for a minute.”
She kept walking to the stairwell; she always hated that there was no elevator here. She didn’t want him to watch her struggle with her suitcase so ungracefully on the stairs, so she distracted him with a question: “We were apart for thirteen months. What was going on then?”
“Nothing, just you,” he said. “This other thing was just the one time… Willa.”
“I don’t want to hear her name,” she blurted out.
They’d reached the bottom of the staircase.
“Sorry,” he said.
“So why was it so hard to be with me when I was here if you could be with me when I wasn’t?” she said almost to herself, thinking out loud as she shoved open the front door. It closed on him.
“I don’t know,” he said, pushing through the door a second later.
“What do you mean you don’t know?” she asked, sweating from the stairs. She stopped at the corner, hand in the air for a cab.
He stood in front of her, tried to look in her eyes, but she kept turning away, searching for a cab. “I don’t know, maybe it’s because I proposed.”
“Well, who told you to go and do that? Not me. Not. ME,” she said, seething. A taxi pulled up, but she was so fired up she forgot to open the door and get in.
“We’re good,” he said, smacking the back door and the cab took off.
“Fuck,” she said. “Why won’t you let me just get the hell away from you?” She set off walking, no clear destination. “What I need is a cab. Not a ring.” She had worn it to work to avoid having to talk to anyone about what had happened but had taken it off last night, leaving it on top of Jackson’s pristine dresser. She had already made the teary calls to her parents and brother during the week, which she tried to cap at ten minutes per call, but had still somehow amounted to a full-on ugly-cry festival that had left her feeling emotionally spent. She would just email her friends the news, at some point when she could do so without a modicum of emotion.
“I thought you wanted that.”
“I didn’t need that to happen the minute I got here. Especially if it was under duress like you were some kind of hostage,” she said, eyes straight ahead as she walked toward Dupont Circle. The morning sun already blazing, her T-shirt sticking like flypaper in the thick humidity. Her pulse raced. She wasn’t going to let this go. “I never said a word about getting engaged,” she spat. Early-morning joggers began to notice their quarrel, glance at them and look away. Sure, she had hoped one day they would get engaged, you could be an independent woman and still hope for stuff like that. But it wasn’t as if she had harassed him about it.
“Maybe I thought I would be a better boyfriend if I proposed?” he said.
“How’d that work out for you?”
“I don’t know, maybe it’s not my fault. Maybe there should just be term limits or something.”
“What?”
“For relationships. Term limits.”
“That’s great. You’re an actual caveman. That’s basically just a fancy way of saying you don’t believe in monogamy. Which, aside from being a totally boring excuse for what you did, is also a conversation we should’ve maybe had before you asked me to move in. And marry you. You didn’t run on an antimonogamy platform.”
He shook his head. “Can we just talk?”
She crossed the street, running into the park at the center of Dupont Circle. The wheels on her suitcase squeaking like they might fall off. He followed her, cars honking and almost hitting him.
“We’re talking now. We’ve been talking for like, half a mile, while I walk in fucking circles. And I’m enjoying this even less than I enjoyed surprising you in Philadelphia.” She still didn’t know where she was going. She just cut through the center of the circle past the fountain, its mist cooling her down, past where people lay on blankets reading, where they did yoga, walked dogs, sipped coffee, all trying to politely ignore this traveling soap opera.
“Don’t you want to, like, sit for a minute?”
She glanced back and was pleased to see he was sweating. She kept on.
“I just don’t even know what I’m doing here,” she said.
“I don’t either. Where are you going?”
“No. Here here. Why am I even here, in Washington? Why did I fucking move here if we’re not together?”
“What? You said you didn’t move here just for me.”
“I was lying! Of course I fucking moved here for you.”
“Well, why’d you do that?”
She closed her eyes, squeezed her fists; it was all she could do not to scream in the middle of Dupont Circle. “I should’ve known it was a bad sign, like, cosmically, when you dropped the ring.”
“Well, I guess,” he said, hesitating. “I mean…I never actually dropped it.”
She stopped walking finally, faced him, sure she had misheard. “What?”
His eyes shifted, looking everywhere but at her. “No, I mean, I was having, I guess, second thoughts? Before you got there? And—”
“Then why did you propose?” she yelled. “Why didn’t you just not do that?”
“I… I don’t know… I…don’t…know… I just…maybe I thought the cold feet would go away or something? I mean, I was there and I had planned it out and all, but then all of a sudden I was dry heaving—”
“Gross—”
“And leaning over the edge, and I thought if there was no ring, then maybe it wasn’t so much like a real, official proposal and I could just ease into the idea and then give you the ring later.”
“You’re insane, certifiably.” She could barely contain herself.
“So I just put it back in my pocket.”
“The ring. In your pocket,” she repeated. She couldn’t believe this.
“But then those guys made it into this whole thing at Rose’s Luxury that night—”
“Jay and Sky. This is so not their fault—”
“No, but then it seemed okay again. It was exciting and I was good with it.”
“With being engaged.” She shook her head.
“So I hired a guy on Craig’s List to walk the ring into the office.”
“Into your office? Are you—I mean, you’re, like, a sociopath basically.” She realized she was still standing there on the street corner and crossed Connecticut Avenue. The sign for the Metro, an oasis.
“I just wasn’t ready, and, and, and, I guess,” he said, flailing as though understanding time was running out to make his case. “And I was working a lot. And then I guess you were working a lot too, which made things kind of hard, like when you just had to go to that fund-raiser and other things and I kind of was spending a lot of time with Willa, you know, as a source for her articles, but we were just friends until Air Force Two and—”
“Whoa.” She stopped just before that endless escalator down to the Metro platform. A couple behind her wove around them with a nasty look. But Cady couldn’t move. She thought back to how hot and cold he had been these past months, the Arnold fund-raiser he hadn’t wanted her to cover, all the times he had belittled her work.
“Is this really because—” she almost couldn’t say it, like she was giving herself too much credit. “Because I’m actually kind of doing well here?”
He looked away, squinting in the sun. “No, that’s crazy, now you’re the crazy one,” he said. “Willa just was there and, you know, she respected my work and all the things that have been happening for me with this election.”
“Oh, okay, sure.”
“She was impressed, and you’ve just been too busy to—”
“Too busy? You mean, busy doing my job well?”
“Too busy to—” He seemed unable to find a single word to defend himself.
“Too busy to what? To fawn over you like some kind of groupie? To stroke your ego? Is that what this relationship was supposed to be?”
“I don’t know. You just didn’t look at me the same way. I wasn’t as big a deal or whatever, and she made me feel—”
“I’m so not listening to this.” She had heard more than enough. She stepped onto the escalator, didn’t say goodbye or storm off, just one light step and it took her down. She closed her eyes to keep from checking to see if he was watching.