Opportunity Cost
by the stylus
There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep, and still be counted as warriors.
C.J. goes to meet them at the plane because Josh is hovering outside the War Room or in conference with the President and Nancy. Some days she hates her job. The tarmac is only slightly warmer than the grey February morning and smells like gasoline and haste. She waits outside the limo, shivering slightly under her ankle-length camel coat. She thinks it is the least she can do, to stand out here in the cold. It is her small gesture of commiseration: her faint shadow alone by the dark car, trying to atone for the very human scope of things on a huge, endless swath of flat black land.
The plane lands cleanly in the distance and taxis in until it looms over the knot of waiting people. Leo emerges first, his suit slightly rumpled. Zoey and Ellie follow him; Ellie, in back, has her hand on her sister's shoulder when they reach the top of the stairs. The Secret Service stand warily but unconcerned; the only people meeting this flight are also under their purview. Abbey steps out of the plane last, her face clear and her dark coat pulled tightly around her. At the base of the stairs she hugs both of her children tightly, saying something to them so softly that C.J. cannot make out the words, only that both Zoey and Ellie look less uncertain as they move off toward the cars that will take them back to school.
Leo, who has been at a respectful distance, moves closer to Abbey, his hand hovering near but not quite touching her back. C.J. straightens as they approach. "Ma'am. Leo. It's good to have you back."
Leo sighs a smile at her. "C.J. Good to see you."
Abbey's voice is gentle. "Yes, it is nice to see you. Although I didn't think my arrival would merit a welcome party. I suppose you're here to see Leo?"
C.J. winces a bit, wavering. "I am here to brief Leo. But I volunteered to come. It's good to have you back, ma'am."
Abbey smiles tiredly at C.J., touching her shoulder as she moves past the taller woman into the waiting car. Leo follows her, turning to mouth "Thank you" before ducking his head. C.J. follows them into the warm interior and tries to collect her thoughts.
"...and that's where we stand. At least, it was when I left."
Leo nods again and she can almost see the information being filtered in his head, sorted and collated and fit in alongside everything else he knows. That the situation is precarious goes without saying and so she doesn't. She refuses to even think about the fact that in the time their short journey has taken everything could have changed. The President and the Joint Chiefs have hardly been out of each other's sight for the last thirty hours. The last time she saw Josh, his hair bristled out from his head like he had been trying to pull it up by the roots.
"What is Nancy predicting?"
"I don't know. When I talked to Josh, she was meeting with the intelligence guys to go over what we know from satellite and fly-over surveillance. I don't think they were hoping for a lot of new intel, but she wasn't going to call it before they knew for sure."
"Okay. Who's doing the briefings?"
"I am. Every two hours. Henry took the 8am, though, since all we could say was 'We have no new information at this time.' I'll do one after we get back, at ten."
He nods, distractedly, already mentally in the Situation Room. She shuffles most of the papers she has brought over onto his lap and he begins to move steadily through them. Satisfied that she has done as much as she can, C.J. settles back into her seat, glancing over at the car's third occupant. Even in the warmth of the interior, Abbey still has her coat wrapped tightly around her and held in place by her arms crossed firmly over her chest. She is staring unblinking out the window, although C.J. would be willing to bet that she is not seeing any of the scenery they are passing. Up close, the wan light throws into relief the angles and planes of her face, the set of her mouth and the shadows under her eyes. C.J. looks away, feeling slightly ashamed for staring at the drawn, resolved woman across from her.
Soon enough they are slowing to a stop in front of the White House. Leo leans over, kisses Abbey on the cheek, squeezes her elbow and slips out of the door. He is met almost immediately by Margaret, who has more files in her arms. Abbey, her stillness broken by his departure, unfolds herself from the seat. C.J. moves to gather her purse. When she exits the car, the First Lady is waiting by the door. She touches C.J. on the arm again, lightly. "I know you didn't have to come," she says. "Thank you."
"Ma'am," C.J. responds by way of acknowledgement, inclining her head a little as if admitting to the fib. She stops, unsure of what to say next and uncomfortable that words, of all things, have failed her. "Abbey, if there's anything I can do..." The sentence dangles limply, already half-finished but too common for what she hoped it would say.
"Thanks, C.J. I'm okay. But I do appreciate your offer. Come by for dinner sometime. We'll open a bottle of wine, you can make me laugh, and we'll consider your duty done." She is almost smiling, but it is an effort, like the lightness of her tone.
"Okay," C.J. agrees, not at all certain that it is. And she makes her hands into fists because she wants so badly to touch the other woman, to somehow make her seem less alone. Instead, she steps back to allow her to follow the agent who has finished unloading suitcases from the trunk. She watches Abbey move off toward the Residence: slowly, at first, but her steps coming with increasing speed as she nears the White House, and her spine draws up a little bit straighter. C.J. bites back whatever bleak empathy is churning in her stomach. There is so much to be done.
It is more than three days before she sees Abbey again. They have diffused the latest crisis and C.J. has even managed five hours of uninterrupted sleep in her own bed. The President, never at his most cheerful during armed conflict situations, has returned to his old self. There is even the rumor that Sam had to fake an appointment and beat a hasty retreat after twenty minutes of lecture on the etymology of "absquatulate." "'And the worst part was, I already knew all that,'" Josh had imitated his friend, snickering, as he relayed the details of the event. She and Toby had laughed, picturing the plaintive sincerity of Sam's face. Carol had come in then with phone messages to be returned and the boys had scattered, leaving her still laughing quietly at the return of their normal absurdities.
Later that afternoon she headed for staff meeting early, wanting some time to sit outside the Oval and organize her thoughts. Walking with her head down and leafing through her notes, she didn't recognize Abbey when she passed. It was only the other woman's perfume that made her look up quickly and, turning, watch her move down the hall, trailed by two dark-suited silent agents.
Working late in her office amid the unaccustomed quiet of the gone home, the receding image haunts the edges of her consciousness. She cannot quite concentrate it out of her mind. And so, frustrated with herself and restless, she leaves her office and walks, not quite aimlessly, toward the East Wing. She is unsurprised to find a strip of light bleeding from under the door of Abbey's office into the darkened corridor. With a nod to the agent seated outside, she knocks lightly.
"Come in."
She does, closing the door behind her. Abbey's head is bent over her desk and she finishes reading something, uncaps a pen and signs her name to the document with a firm stroke before looking up. C.J. uses the time to study the older woman in the uncertain light of the student lamp on her desk. She looks tired, weary beyond sleep and beneath her skin; and she is carrying it in such a way that it makes C.J.'s insides ache dully.
Setting the pen down, she looks up, smiling. "Hello, C.J. Have a seat." She motions to the red leather chairs across from her desk. C.J. sits. "What are you doing here? Hiding from the boys?"
"No." C.J. has to smile at this question. She has done that before, retreated to Abbey's company on days when Toby and Josh have been particularly irritating. It started during the campaign, the two of them "sneaking off" for lunch, laughing like girls when they returned to find the boys befuddled both by their absence and the fact that it had taken them so long to realize that the two were gone. For C.J. it had been a chance to get to know better someone she'd come to like very much. Abbey had once confessed that the lunches were a relief from the politics of it all; C.J. hadn't realized until then how much it cost Abbey to be Mrs. Bartlet.
The silence goes on just slightly too long. They both notice.
"How's your dad-"
"How're you doing-"
They pull up short. C.J. is a little embarrassed. "You first," she gestures to Abbey.
Abbey smiles again. "How's your dad?" she asks. "I meant to ask you about it sooner, but things have been a bit busy around here lately."
"He's... he's not doing so well. He forgets things."
"Little things?" Abbey is in doctor mode now.
"No. I mean, yes, little things, but not just little things. Not anymore". C.J. looks down at her hands entwined in her lap. Her knuckles begin to whiten. "It's getting worse."
"Oh, Claudia," Abbey says and it is suddenly all there in her voice. "I'm so sorry."
"I know." C.J. nods, her head still down and her hair sweeping across her face. She feels a hand on her cheek and gazes up. Abbey has moved around the desk and is crouching by her chair. In the yellow light of the office, her eyes are impossibly dark as she scans the face of the woman seated in front of her.
C.J.'s breath hitches a little at the nearness of her, the scent of her. Her stomach clenches. She breathes slowly, consciously through her nose and refuses to look anywhere but straight ahead. The words come before she knows quite what is happening. "The doctors don't think there's much they can do for him. I mean, physically he's fine, his body-- not his brain-- but... We're thinking about putting him in a home. He hates the idea, but I'm afraid he'll hurt himself living alone. Or go out to the store and not remember where he lives." She trails off, aware she is babbling and unsure why she is now ready to tell all of this to someone when for days she has not even been able to form the thoughts in her own mind.
Abbey rises to sit in the chair beside her. The unexpected coolness of the air against her cheek where the warm hand had been makes C.J. shiver. She bites down hard against the response, feeling the bones of her cheek bow in protest.
"I know you'll make the right decision. Just like I know it's not easy."
"Yeah." It comes out mostly a sigh. Staring at the dark, carved mahogany front of Abbey's desk she remember why she came and turns her head to the right where the other woman has curled into the deep chair, her feet tucked up underneath her. "How are you doing?"
Abbey looks at her levelly for a long time and C.J. finds herself pinned in her position by that stare, elbows on her knees, her hands clenched, her neck stretched a little too far for comfort. Abbey looks away before she speaks. "I'm ok. The girls are adjusting, even Annie. This was her first funeral, and she loved her Gammy. But Mom had been sick for quite awhile. It was really just a question of when."
Abbey is wearing her political face now, the one that she always seemed to have instinctively, all her features drawn into a perfectly straight line. It is the kind of face that doesn't actually change when she smiles, the edges of her mouth just flatten outward. It goes well with the sober suits she started wearing at some point during the campaign near Indiana. C.J. still feels guilty about that, sometimes, that part of the campaign when they dropped her title and started to position her in photos-- just a little to the left, hand on his arm-- like a very, very nice piece of scenery.
"Abbey," C.J. starts, feeling the word stretch in her throat, "are you sure you're ok? When we buried my mom, I cried at cotton commercials for a month." The first two nights after the funeral, Toby had walked softly into her childhood bedroom after the rest of the house was asleep and curled his body around hers. He'd been there every morning, too, warm and solid in the California June.
There is a snort from her companion, an acknowledgement of the odd impertinence of grief. "Honestly, it's just one more thing in a year already too full. The last few months after it metastasized, well, she wasn't even terribly coherent." Abbey chuckles and it sounds like fire crackling through dry leaves. "She didn't understand the Congressional hearings or the censure. She thought Jed had had an affair, that people were angry at him for cheating on me. I didn't have the heart to tell her the truth, that probably the only thing to come of the whole deal will be me losing my medical license. It didn't seem worth it."
"Yeah." There is nothing to say, really. Nothing that will set any of it right. C.J. is acutely aware that as much as she feels for her, she works for everything that is working against this woman. She thinks about apologizing, but for what? She desperately wants to ask questions, but can't bring herself to that yet. I'm sorry your husband couldn't attend your mother's funeral because halfway around the world, two countries decided to rattle their nuclear sabers at each other. Is it true that she lapsed into a coma and you made the decision to terminate life support? I'm sorry your husband loves this job enough that it might kill him and is good enough at it to get reelected. When he looks at you, does he have trouble breathing, too? I'm sorry that of all of us, this is costing you more than I can imagine. Is it wrong to be grateful that I don't have to find out if I am that strong?
She moves a hand to her throat where the words seem to catch.
"Oh, C.J.," the voice breaks softly, like a caress. "You're blaming yourself again. Stop it. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to dump all of this on you. I guess I'm just tired and you caught me off guard with your concern."
For a horrible, interminable moment C.J. is afraid the other woman will cry and she will not know what to do or how to place the fact of it. Then it passes, as quickly as a cloud over the moon, and Abbey is simply small and slightly worn and acutely beautiful in a blue suit late in the evening.
"You should go home, get some sleep," Abbey continues.
"So should you, ma'am."
"Oh, so we're back to 'ma'am' now?" her tone slightly teasing.
"No. I mean, you know what I mean." C.J. unfolds herself from the chair, feeling a flush rise to her cheeks, wondering where it got away from her. She had only meant to offer her condolences and her empathy and has found herself in over her head, not quite understanding all the shifts in mood and tone.
"I do." Abbey stands, too. C.J. feels herself loom over the smaller woman who had kicked off her shoes long before the interruption in her evening's work. "And you're right. But Jed's out of town again and he and Leo bullied my staff into clearing my appearances this week, so I don't have a lot to do."
Absurdly, a laugh bubbles up in C.J.'s throat. She tries to suppress it and makes a choking sound. Abbey glances at her sharply, evaluating; thankfully, she lets it pass. Before something else can happen, C.J. makes for the door.
"C.J." She pulls up short. "Why don't you come by Friday for lunch?"
"I'd like that," she says softly, unwilling to meet the other woman's eyes for fear of giving something away.
"Say, noon?"
"Noon is good."
"Okay. Goodnight, C.J."
"Goodnight, Abbey."
She doesn't make lunch on Friday. At noon, she is in the middle of fielding a question from The Times' White House correspondent regarding the identity of an alleged suicide bomber in the Middle East. It has been a four martini kind of day. So late in the afternoon she blows off a meeting with a Mr. Somebody from the Something Union and glories a little bit in telling Carol: "This is why I have deputies." She only gets to come and go from her office when the light is threatening to blaze up or die, so she shuts her blinds against the bloody sky and locks the door behind her. Her feet just sort of point themselves toward the East Wing and start walking.
She has to wait, but there is coffee that is not more than a day old. Abbey finally shows her visitor out the door and C.J. catches the way she runs a hand through her hair wearily and wonders what it feels like to leave a child at kindergarten for the first day. Abbey sees her lurking in the shadows of the outer office and smiles.
"C.J.! What a nice surprise."
"I thought maybe we could have that dinner. Since I had a suicide bomber for lunch."
A snort. "How was he?"
"Rather tough."
That mediocre joke gets her a full-on smile even over the tiredness of the other woman's face. C.J. waits while Abbey methodically stacks the papers on her desk, gathers her few belongings and locks the doors behind them. They head for the residence at a leisurely pace, trailed as always by the agents. It took C.J. a long time to be able to walk near the President. In the beginning, she found herself wondering if the agents were watching her walk and then thinking about how she walked, and then the ground seemed to be a different distance from her feet or she seemed to be hitting with the wrong part of her foot first. It made her feel better when she saw Toby give his first speech as White House Communications Director. He was horrible and nervous and she told him afterwards that he'd been wonderful, neither of them really caring that she lied. But she'd thought: so at least I can do that.
They resolutely talk about inconsequential things through the first bottle, a middle of the road Cabernet that goes straight to C.J.'s head. Not the weather but movies, books they read before they had to read all the newspapers every day, how to grow roses. Abbey changed into dark slacks and silk shirt and she looks smaller without a suit on, sitting in her chair with one leg tucked beneath her and the other swinging, foot not quite on the floor. C.J. kicks her shoes off and works hard until she gets a real laugh from her companion, one that starts somewhere in her belly and rises up, catching them both by surprise. Then she sits back and enjoys the company.
"More wine?" Abbey leans up, stretching out the neck of the second bottle toward C.J., who shakes her head and says something about having to drive. Abbey mentions the guest bedrooms and refills her own glass from the wrist. A drop or two of Merlot stain the tablecloth as she rights the bottle and she follows C.J.'s gaze to the burgundy nebulas hemorrhaging on a white sky. Her voice is sharp, defensive: "What?"
C.J. says nothing, shakes her head.
"It's not like I have surgery tomorrow. Or any time in the near future. I don't have to drive or watch children or operate heavy machinery."
She sits back and the fight goes out of her. "Sorry. I don't know what got into me."
C.J. still says nothing.
Abbey looks away for a long moment, staring out of the window of the dining area into the darkness of the winter night. "You know," she begins, "I thought about developing a drinking problem. Just for the oblivion of it." One pale finger traces the rim of her glass: around and around. "To be able to blame this on something other than..." Her voice trails off.
She is wondering about Leo, C.J. is, sitting across the table from Abbey's profile. Wondering how much Abbey had seen, had known. Probably all of it, she decides. In one of his paternal moments with her, the President had once called his wife "my priest" so softly that C.J. hadn't been sure she'd heard correctly. But she's pretty sure that he's not the only one to come here for absolution.
"I resent my father," C.J. finds herself saying. "He calls me all the time but we can't have a conversation because he doesn't remember anything- what day of the week it is, where I work. Last week, he called because he wanted to know if I knew where Mom was. I had to tell him that she wasn't coming home again, ever." She looks down at her empty plate and blinks back the tears that suddenly threaten. "I keep wondering why, why if he forgets all that other stuff he can remember my number." She looks up, stricken and stretched thin to find Abbey looking back at her and the understanding in that face only makes her want to weep again. "I wish he would forget it."
"Claudia," Abbey breathes. She reaches out one hand and lightly strokes the inside of C.J.'s wrist which is lying forlornly among the silverware and water glasses of dinner. Something hot skitters down C.J.'s spine.
They stay like that for a minute, only just touching, and C.J. is afraid to breathe. Finally, she sniffles and offers a watery smile. "That's it? I ply you with wine and dinner and I can't even get a hack diagnosis, just some sympathy?"
Abbey leans back in her chair again and runs a distracted hand over her face, stripping off the last bit of makeup from the day. "I could use words like plaques and tangles and progressive course, but I think I'd rather leave that to someone else and just be your friend."
C.J. thinks: her voice is so tired that it is fraying around the edges. She has a sense that she would very much like to put her arms around Abbey. Instead she tries to offer her something else.
"You know that it drove your husband crazy with worry that he couldn't be there, right? I'm sure Leo told you, but I thought you should hear it from someone who was here."
"Yes." Quietly.
"I mean, it nearly worried him out of his skull. He, in turn, nearly ran Josh to death checking with Leo to check on you. I think Nancy wanted to have her goonies cuff him to the Sit Room table and gag him just so they could get some work done."
Her face gentles briefly but the eyes are restless. "I know, C.J. I know. He's a good man, my husband. Often better than I deserve. And any other time, he would have been there."
C.J.'s stomach knots up a little and this time she recognizes the signs of guilt in them both. She loves her job, but it costs her so much to do it: frozen dinners and instant coffee and nothing but C-SPAN on the tv. It costs them all so much. At ten, she thought she wanted to be a marine biologist when she grew up, before she realized that she was deathly afraid of being trapped under water and running out of oxygen. This is the same tightness in her chest and the same desperation, because Abbey makes her fingers tingle and her head light, and she makes her think about an open grave in the February New England earth and the sound of a monitor flat-lining.
"You know, I hate this place." The vehemence in Abbey's voice startles C.J. out of her reverie. "I hate this place."
"I know," C.J. says, but she's not sure she does. She knows about long hours and talking when she's so tired she needs toothpicks to prop her eyelids open. She knows that some nights she and Toby fumble in the dark without even talking, as if the words could hurt worse than anything their bodies might do to each other. But she looks at Abbey and runs through the calculations of that grief in her head and thinks: they don't tell you in any of the books about love that it never comes out even. That sacrifices are not the same as compromises.
It frightens her, what she sees there. She has often wondered what it would be like to love someone the way those two do. She has envied them their intimacy, the fights which were a sort of public caress, the touches, the brilliance of their minds together. Toby takes up exactly the right amount of space in her life and in her bed. Suddenly, she doesn't want any more; she wants, in fact, to pin him exactly where he is like a butterfly in a museum collection.
They finish with dessert and more wine. C.J. accepts the offer of a room, more tired than tipsy. Abbey accompanies her there and even finds some old shorts and a t-shirt that will serve as pyjamas. As she crosses over the threshold, C.J. turns back to find Abbey standing close behind her. They hesitate, caught in the hall of the White House in their bare feet in the last hours of a Friday.
Abbey licks her lips and breathes deeply. "Thanks for dinner. For listening."
C.J. tilts her head to the side a bit and smiles softly. "You're welcome. Anytime." Her hand comes up and cups the smaller woman's cheek. "Thank you."
Abbey's eyes close and she brings up her hand to cover C.J.'s. For the space of a breath they stand there and C.J. can feel Abbey's pulse under her jaw. She opens her eyes and her voice rasps a bit. "Goodnight, Claudia Jean."
"Goodnight, Abbey."
C.J. watches until she has disappeared around the bend in the hall and then steps into the bedroom, shutting the door softly behind her. Her palm burns and there is a slight ringing in her ears and she is not sure she will be able to sleep tonight.
Fin
All characters are the property of their creators. The author makes no profit from this work.