Loving the Candidate (Capitol Affairs #2) (5 page)

“I’m asking for an early death. I’m getting too old for this. Hello, Prudence. Olivia wouldn’t come out here if I promised her diamonds. How are you both?”

“Good. I wanted to get away from the press for a few days, so we came here where there was no one around. That damn shit won’t go away, and I needed time to get ready for the convention,” Alex said.

“Jesus, what happened was awful. I wanted to call you about it, but didn’t want to intrude. I figured we would have our chance to talk, once we were back on the Hill.” He breathed hard, trying to talk, with his hands on his hips.

“I want to put it behind me and move on. The press don’t see it like that. They keep digging and digging for something else. I’ve dealt with them before, and I can deal with them again, I suppose.”

“It’s a damn shame you have to run from them. Are you ready for the convention?”

“I am. You don’t ever think you are completely ready when you give a speech. I hired Mark Albright to write for me. He is one of the best. Obama had him for his first term.”

“He’s good. How about we golf today? We can catch up, and you’re going to need to practice if what I hear about you is right. The rumors are swirling about a possible presidential bid.”

Alex looked at me and smiled. “Rumors, Esposito, only rumors.”

“I always said I could picture you as president. You have that JFK aura about you. People automatically listen to you. This beautiful wife of yours may be the next Jackie.” He smiled at me.

Still not used to compliments, my face flushed.

“Listen, I don’t know what the future is going to hold. Who knows if it’s true? You may be right up there with me as VP,” Alex said. He still wasn’t comfortable talking about it with anyone.

“Me as vice president? You certainly don’t want me. I’m too old. I’m half-dead running a mile.” He looked toward me. “Olivia is going shopping for the day, Prudence. I’m sure she would love to have you around to help her burn up her credit cards.” He deftly changed the subject, about sharing the ticket with Alex.

“Oh, no, I have a full day of snooping around to do. You should go golfing though, Alex.” I insisted. He looked at me.

“I will. I haven’t golfed in a long time. Are you sure you don’t mind?”

“Not at all. You need this. I need time to go rummaging around the old house.”

Alex grabbed my hand and kissed my fingers.

“Great. Meet me on the course around noon. You had better not run too much, Conrad. I’m doing eighteen today.” Esposito laughed.

“Speak for yourself, Esposito. I’m a lot younger than you. Do you want me to run and get Olivia and have her bring the golf cart down here?” Alex teased.

Senator Esposito ran off laughing with his dog in tow, and Alex and I finished our run.

“Are you serious about him as VP, Alex?” I asked as we ran in the other direction.

“I’m dead serious. I don’t forget when someone is good to me and to you. He’s stood behind me on tough issues, and didn’t make comments about you and me behind our backs. I don’t forget those things. He would be excellent. We share the same views and have worked together on numerous Bills.”

After Alex left, I used my time alone to explore the house. The attic had been enticing me since I’d discovered it a while back. Every time I walked past the door, I wanted to go up there and see what I could find. There could be something of my mother’s stored from the summers she’d spent in the house before she ran away from home. I remember my mom telling me how much she’d hated it here. She always said it was a nightmare, something from a horror story. She’d seemed to hate everything about her life. One particular conversation we had when I was about ten stuck out in my memory. We had been sitting outside the trailer waiting for one of her boyfriends to bring us money for food and she told me how much she despised her parents.

“Mom, where are your mom and dad?” I couldn’t understand why I didn’t have grandparents when everyone else did

“I’m not letting you near those assholes. They fucked-up my life and they will fuck yours up, too.”

I still could remember sitting there while she blew cigarette smoke in my face, after I’d brought the subject up.

“I want to meet my grandma and grandpa.” I kept on. I knew she was getting aggravated because she lit up another cigarette before the last one was out. When her boyfriend drove up, she told me to stay where I was.

“You’ve pissed me off. I can’t look at you right now.” Her boyfriend, an older balding guy, sat silently in his expensive-looking car.

“This will teach you to never bring those assholes up again. You can sit here and think about what you’ve done,” she yelled at me as the man smiled a creepy smile.

“But Mom, I’m starving. I’m sorry. Please let me go with you.” She sped off with her boyfriend and left me in the trailer by myself with no food till the next day. She told me it was my fault she had to go and party so she could forget her life. That was the last time I ever brought them up until the night she threw me out and I was forced to call my grandmother. I didn’t understand, because I would have loved to come here during the summers as I was growing up. How could she have hated someone who gave her everything? My childhood summers were filled with poverty, chaos and fear. They included drunken parties in the trailer park, bonfires in the yard, and my mother’s occasional arrest. How could her life have been any worse?

I brewed a cup of coffee to take with me up the creaking stairs to the attic even though it was hot as an oven. I found a light switch covered in cobwebs and flipped it on, and a mouse scurried across the floor. I screamed as he ran off into the darkness. Rows and rows of dressers and chairs covered in dusty white sheets lined the attic, looking like odd humans waiting to attack. Each one I uncovered set off a cloud of dust. The attic was a treasure trove of antiques and memories. I rummaged around, and found old dresses from the fifties, hats and letter sweaters.

A fishing vest with the lures still in it, and old fishing rods leaned against the wall. I spotted an old record player, with a record still in it. I cranked the player and a woman’s voice broke out in the blues through the crackle of the wobbly, black disc. I let her husky voice serenade me as I continued exploring. There was an old fan, which I switched on, and dust went up like smoke. The attic seemed to go on endlessly. I spent over an hour looking at vintage clothes, pictures, and furniture. In the back under several old records from the sixties and piles of eighties-style clothing, was a green trunk with Bon Jovi stickers covering the outside. It opened easily and to my surprise, journals, notebooks, and teenage girl keepsakes filled the inside. There were at least ten journals, books, and pictures.

Old tarnished jewelry, and rock concert shirts, movie ticket stubs, and old Seventeen magazines from the eighties were strewn all over inside. Leafing through one of the journals, I read my mom’s words in her perfect cursive handwriting. Unable to bear the heat any longer, I decided to take them downstairs with me. I turned off the record player and fan. Dragging the trunk down the steps to the first floor by its handle was no easy task. It was so heavy and loud, clunking down the wooden staircase. After I pulled it down the many steps, I dragged it further, into the front living room, put on more music, turned up the fans, and got settled in to read.

It was like any normal teenager’s journal. The first few entries didn’t say much. She went to a Bryan Adams concert and had her first sip of beer with a boy named John. She liked him, but he had bad breath and laughed too much. There was a formal dance and she did not want to attend. She hated the dress my grandmother had insisted she wear.

The color, she wrote, was “gnarly” and way uncool. She stressed over honors courses, and like every teen, she hated her parents. I went through about four of these, reliving my mom’s high school experience through a notebook with Beatles lyrics doodled all over. I grabbed another from the pile. The writing became sloppier. I was shocked at what I read. It had to be a mistake.

Chapter 4

With sweat dripping down my forehead and back, I forced myself to read on. Coffee wasn’t helping. I needed wine. A vat of it. I went to the kitchen, grabbed a glass, and sat back down with the entire bottle. There were more secrets and lies than a soap opera. I honestly didn’t think anything could shock me after the way my mom lived, but I was wrong.

By the time I finished reading, I had drunk a bottle of wine, and got up to look for another. Thankfully, Alex came walking in the door.

“Baby, you’ve been drinking. I see you went snooping. What is this stuff?” asked Alex as he came in and sat, pulling me back down on the floor with him. I was surrounded by notebooks, pictures, an empty bottle of wine, and wadded up tissues. I kissed him, dizzy from drinking too much.

“Alex, you would not believe what I found.” I sniffled. My eyes were bloodshot and my hair looked a mess. I was sweaty, smelly, and plain nasty.

“What? Tell me. You don’t need any more wine, do you?” He kissed my neck and nuzzled his face against me. He smelled so good and looked so tan.

“I need a lot more wine, Alex. In fact, you may need to go buy more for us.” I stood up again to go to the refrigerator to get another bottle, but I wobbled on my feet. He was right, I didn’t need any more.

“Let’s sit down and you tell me what you found first.” He grabbed my arm and pulled me back down to him. I fell into his lap. Alex’s hair was messy, and he wore his khaki shorts, and a golf shirt. Not my favorite outfit on him, but he looked good. If I wasn’t so upset, we would have been making our way to the bedroom.

“What are these notebooks, and all this mess everywhere? You went up in the attic, didn’t you?” he asked.

He kissed my neck, and I reached up to pat his sweaty head. He grabbed one of the journals out of the many strewn around us. I had them in dated order and I wanted him to read them that way. I had shorts and a T-shirt on, minus a bra. As soon as he caught a glimpse of my breasts, his hands came up, and he cupped both of them. My nipples responded to his touch.

“You aren’t wearing a bra?”

“Alex, please. I don’t like to wear them when we’re here. You take them off all the time, so what’s the point? Look what I found,” I said.

He grabbed one of the journals and took my wineglass.

“Wait, you have to read them in order, Alex. These are my mom’s journals from high school. They were upstairs in the attic, buried under a ton of other treasures.”

He put on his glasses that he’d had hanging off his golf shirt and started reading. His face grew serious. I took that as an opportunity to look for another bottle of wine.

We spent the night reading those journals. They contained the reason my mom ran away and became a drug addict, why she hated my grandparents.

On the outside, they were the perfect, political, well-to-do family, the envy of all the political families. My grandfather was known for his quick wit, staunch stance on family values, and of all things, woman’s rights. In private, it was a completely different story, the real story, told by one of the women who knew him best. In those journals my mother told about the wild parties that went on right where Alex and I now sat. She told of women my grandfather bedded, which my grandmother allowed on several occasions. In one entry, my mom had walked in on my grandfather, my grandmother, and another woman in bed. I was shocked and sickened by it.

My mom wrote that my grandfather forced her to sleep with a senator who had come on to her. The man ripped her dress off and slapped her. She didn’t mention his name, but did say he was a good friend of her dad’s. When he finished with her, he thanked my grandfather and told him he would see her next time they were in town. They didn’t tell my grandmother. Each day my mom became more depressed, more withdrawn. She wouldn’t tell Beulah, my grandmother what was going on.

Later, my mom went to a party where someone offered her weed, and she smoked for the first time. It made all the bad things go away. The weed was “the perfect escape from my fucked-up life,” she wrote. She mentioned meeting an Alex Conrad, who was cute, but a little too shy for her.

“I remember that day, Prudence. Your grandparents invited my parents over for dinner. We saw each other in school, and I tried talking to her that day, but she acted so depressed and distant. We had never talked one-on-one before,” Alex said.

“How weird were things when you met her?” I asked.

“Things, I remember, were pretty normal. I didn’t sense anything weird. We sat there, and Deidre, my mom looked upset and bored. I remember drinking lemonade and sitting on their porch. She and I hardly spoke to each other.”

“How did my grandfather act?”

“He acted fine and had a great sense of humor. In fact, I went on a few fishing trips with him and my dad. He was like any other guy. He used to call me Curly because of my hair.”

The things I’d read elsewhere about my grandfather had to be lies. The real man was in those journals. He was a drunk who would go up to my mom’s bedroom and call her a slut and a loser for hours until he passed out and my mom could go to sleep. By the time she ran away, she didn’t want to see either of them. She wrote that Beulah would be off volunteering or with friends while grandfather abused her. Beulah was too busy to care, so why tell her?

Alex drank and read journal after journal. He held me close as I sat between his legs and rested my head on his chest. I listened to his heartbeat. “Well, this explains a lot, don’t you think?” he asked, still reading.

“It does and it doesn’t. No wonder she didn’t want me around Beulah and had a fit when you came to get me. Did you sense any of this? Please tell me you didn’t,”

“I didn’t have a clue. Like I said, when we went over there, everything seemed normal. I don’t remember anything out of the ordinary. I thought your mom ignored me because she was stuck-up. My dad worked with your grandfather, and he never talked about anything. They sure hid it well, Prudence. Your grandfather was one of the best senators of his time and was considered the front-runner for the Presidency. Your grandmother didn’t mention any of this to you?” he asked, sipping his wine and kissing my head.