Title: And So It Goes
Author: Kelley
Rating: PG-13 to R
Category: J/D
Feedback: The quicker I get the feedback, the quicker you get the story!
Disclaimers: AS owns J/D and anything WW related; Billy Joel owns the song; I own everything else because we live in a cruel, cruel world
Notes: This is the fifth story in my "Love" series. It follows Do What You Have to Do. If you don't want to read those, the basic gist of it is that Josh and Donna are married with two daughters. Their older daughter, Emma, was born to Donna before she ever met Josh and he's since adopted her. Josh and Donna's other daughter that they had together is Natalie. President Bartlet resigned after Abbey died in 2003 and Josh is now a Senator from Connecticut with Toby as his C.o.S. Sam and Josh are estranged and he is running for governor of California with the help of C.J. and Leo. The divided groups of the Bartlet administration don't really speak anymore. Donna has two siblings, an older sister Nicole, who lives with Toby, and a younger brother, T.J., who is married to Eleanor Bartlet and they have a son, Shawn. Josh's closest friend and ally in Congress is Representative Bobby Harrington, who's wife, Helen, is a friend of Donna's. This story starts off a few months after DWYHtD ended, in June of 2005.
Langley House: June 24, 2005"Donna!" Josh bellowed from their bedroom, which looked more like a war-zone. They'd arrived back at Langley House that morning from their Georgetown brownstone. The current session of Congress had ended just days ago and the Lyman family was eager to get back to their roots and away from the city. He'd just carried several suitcases up to the master bedroom at their Connecticut home, after the friends who'd helped them move back had gone, and when he had opened them to get started on the unpacking, he quickly realized he had absolutely no idea where any of his clothes went, as usual. "Donna!" he tried again.
"She can't hear you," a voice that was not his wife's informed him. He turned around to see his seven year-old daughter, Emma, coming in from the doorway with the family cat, Lulu, tucked in her arms. "She's downstairs in the study."
"What's she doing down there?" he asked as he moved a suitcase from the bed. He patted the spot and helped Emma to climb onto the four-poster bed.
"Calling Lily. Again," she told him, Lily being Donna's best friend and Emma's godmother. "That's all she does anymore, talk to Lily on the phone or email Lily or go to see Lily in New York…"
"Well she has to," Josh patiently explained as he tried to locate where the rest of the hangers were. "The magazine is going to come out soon and Mommy and Lily want to make sure everything goes right so it's a big success."
The magazine he was referring to was the woman's magazine that Lily was publishing, Woman. The daughter of a publishing magnate and herself a reporter her entire adult life, it had been Lily's dream to have her own magazine for years. When the opportunity finally arose, she'd offered Donna a job as a columnist. Deciding it was what she needed to do with her life then, after all the turmoil she'd faced in the previous months, Donna had accepted and she and Lily had been working night and day to get the magazine off the ground with a strong start.
Said turmoil was a disastrous fight and a period of almost three months separation that Josh and Donna had recently experienced. The fight was caused by Donna revealing a long-kept secret to her husband that he took in the worst possible way, tempered by his ongoing battle with PTSD. She'd taken Emma and their then eighteen month-old daughter, Natalie, with her up to Canada and away from Josh. She'd returned the girls a month later but had traveled for another month or so on her own to confront many familial demons from her past. Upon her return, she and Josh had made the decision to stay married and try their best to work through their problems. Problems they were still dealing with to this day but at least dealing with them better than had before the separation.
"Daddy?" he heard his daughter ask him as he crawled around the floor, peering into boxes and suitcases.
"Yes sweetie?"
She looked up at him, with her big blue eyes that never failed to turn him into a quivering pile of goop, no matter what he was feeling. "Would you be mad at me if I asked a question that you might not want to answer?" she asked quietly as she set the cat down beside her.
"Emma Antonia Lyman, I would be madder at you if you didn't ask the question in the first place," he told her sincerely, kneeling in front of her. "You should never be afraid to ask me anything, ever." Her face didn't convey any fearful emotions she might be feeling so Josh relaxed slightly. "What do you need to know that you think I don't want to tell you?"
She looked down and petted the cat with one hand, while chewing on the thumbnail of the other, something she did when she was nervous or unsure. Finally, she looked up at him. "Why does Mommy have to work?"
"What do you mean?" he asked her, a little taken aback by the question.
"None of my friends' mommies have to work," she tried to explain in a plaintive tone that only children can get away with. "And we're not poor, like other families are where mommies work. Why does Mommy have to?"
"Well, your friend Freddie's mommy, Helen, works as a doctor, remember?" Josh attempted to answer her with an example.
"That's different," Emma countered. "She worked way before she had Freddie and I know Mommy worked before I lived with her but that's different. Ever since then, she's always been here. Why can't she just stay here with me and Natty?"
The picture was starting to become clearer to Josh. For the first four years of her young life, when Donna had worked for Josh on the campaign and then at the White House, Emma had lived with Donna's grandmother in Wisconsin. Her biological father, the infamous Dr. Freeride, had never been a part of her life and Donna had felt Emma could have more stability in Wisconsin than in DC. No one Donna worked with, including Josh, had even known Emma existed until Donna had become frightfully ill and had required a bone marrow transplant, which only Emma could provide. Since then, nearly three full years now, Donna had been fully available for Emma and her baby sister. That would all change though when Donna started writing her column, and it seemed that Emma could sense that. It shouldn't surprise Josh that she was that perceptive; she had skipped a full grade after all.
"Because," he started, taking her hands in his, "it's something that Mommy needs to do for herself, to make her happy."
She immediately went on the defensive, like any true politician would when confronted with unwanted information. "You mean we don't make her happy anymore?" Emma asked, her bottom lip jutting out.
"No, no of course not," Josh quickly clarified, gently squeezing her hands in comfort. "This family, our family, makes Mommy very happy. But sometimes people need other things in their lives for themselves that make them happy, besides their family. Take you for example. You do things by yourself that make you happy that we don't all do together. Like soccer, for instance; you love playing that with all your friends on your soccer team but Mommy and I don't play."
"No, but Aunt Nicole said that's because Mommy doesn't like getting dirty and because you have no athletic prowess whatsoever," she said, smiling smugly at him, lightening the moment.
"Oh really," he smirked back at her. "Well remind to tell Aunt Nicole the next time I see her that I happen to be the four-time frat house champion of the Del-Alpha Fraternity Soda Can Bowling Tournament."
"What's a frat house?"
He thought back to his college days and the antics of himself and his fraternity brothers. "Something I'll try to make sure you never see the inside of," he said seriously, almost shuddering at the thought that his daughter might one day date a guy like the one he was in college. "But back to you, young lady. Do you understand now why Mommy wants to work?"
She shrugged listlessly. "I guess," she mumbled. She looked at him thoughtfully. "Daddy?"
"Yes?"
"What if having a job doesn't make her happy though? Will she leave again?" she asked, fear evident in her voice.
It was a question Josh had been secretly asking himself for weeks now. Donna seemed to be pinning all her hopes on the basis that having a regular job was what was missing from her life and keeping her from being completely happy, but what if it wasn't? What if she needed something more? What if the magazine flopped? Where would they all be then? Where would this family be? It wasn't fair to any of them but it was especially unfair to Emma. Natalie was just a baby and didn't really understand what was happening around her but Emma did. She remembered what it was like when their family was ripped apart and she lived with the fear that it could happen again. No child should have to live with those kinds of thoughts and it made Josh's blood boil as he thought about how unbelievable selfish his wife had been over the past six months.
He took Emma's face in his hands and pulled her down to place a reassuring kiss on her forehead. "It's going to be fine," he promised her. "No matter what happens, I'll make sure it's fine. I'll do anything I can to make sure you don't hurt anymore."
She reached over and wrapped her arms around his neck, hugging him close to her. Their relationship as father and daughter hadn't started out the conventional way, that's for sure, but Josh felt on some emotional, spiritual level that God had always meant for this child to be his. He'd loved her from the first moment he'd laid eyes on her, with a ferocity that still surprised him. He'd even admit to being afraid when Natalie was born that that love he had, with his biological child, would somehow be different than his love for Emma. Deeper and stronger perhaps, but it wasn't. Josh realized that when he was holding his baby in his arms, the baby that had his brown eyes and that same dimple on her cheek, and looking over to his side to see Emma, beaming down at her newborn sister. It was a strange feeling he had then but it felt almost like his heart was expanding inside of him, growing to make room for both these little girls.
"I love you so much," he whispered into his daughter's ear, pulling her a little closer.
"I love you too," she said slowly, "but Daddy…?"
"Yeah?"
"What did you do to your closet?"
He craned his neck around to see what she meant. What he saw was his closet, half-filled with his clothing and other items. "I was organizing it," he explained. To that, Emma burst out a short snort of laughter that she tried to cover up. "What was that for?"
"You call that organized?" the child asked incredulously, getting up and standing in front of the closet, pushing stuff aside to see better.
"Well, its hard," Josh tried to defend himself, joining her. "You think you could do it better?"
She looked up at him with genuine sympathy in her eyes. "Daddy, I love you very, very much," she said patiently, "and you're a very smart man. But Daddy, Natty could do this better than you."
"What are you talking about?" he cried, slightly offended.
"Look at these shirts." She pointed to the garments hanging neatly in the closet.
"What's wrong with the shirts? They're all together in one spot so I can find them."
There seemed to be an almost pained expression on her face as she shook her head. "You have them all bundled together instead of separated into sections."
"Into sections? What kind of sections?"
"First, you have to group them by type, like formal or business or casual. Then, you group each section into groups by color in alphabetical order. Then those colors are grouped by shades, like off white or beige and then you group those into sections by length or use. It's really not that hard," she explained, stepping up on a small footstool to reach the shirts and start getting things straightened out.
Josh stared at her warily, wondering if a pod person had somehow replaced his daughter without his knowledge. "Emma, sweetie? Where did you learn all this?"
"From Mommy," she said as she was concentrating on her task.
"Yet another reason why your mother needs a job of her own," he said under his breath.
"What's another reason?" Donna asked from the doorway. She eyed her husband carefully as she came in, carrying Natalie in her arms. The baby was squirming around in Donna's arms, tugging on her mother's hair or pulling on clothing, which Donna hardly noticed anymore.
"The crazy organization gene that seems to run among the female members of your family has reared its beautiful yet disturbing head in Emma," he said, gesturing to the child, as she was busy rearranging the closet.
Donna raised an eyebrow at him. "And why is that a reason I need a job of my own?"
"Because…" he tried to stall, shoving his hands into his pockets. He cringed inwardly. "There's no good way for me to answer that and I should just shut up now right?"
"While taking this human jellyfish out of my arms," she finished, setting Natalie down so she could walk over to Josh, who promptly picked her up. She walked over to Emma and lifted her off the footstool. "And you, my mini little Martha Stewart, are going to help me set the table because the Chinese food just got here."
"Who's Martha Stewart?" the ever-inquisitive Emma asked as she and Donna left the room. "Is it good that I'm like her?"
"It's a good thing," Donna said in a fake Bostonian accent as she followed her. She turned back to Josh. "You coming?"
"Yeah, we'll be down in a minute."
"Okay." She peered into his closet and made a face. "Do me a favor though, Josh: Please, I beg of you, don't unpack anything else." She winked at him and left.
Josh just shook his head and chuckled quietly. It astounded him how he could just be so angry at her one minute and then the next he'd be falling in love with her all over again. Sometimes it made his head spin; sometimes it made him want to throw something against the wall in frustration.
"Do all men on this Earth a favor, Natalie," he told the toddler, who was biting on his shirt collar. "Don't ever, ever date because if you're anything like your mother, you'll drive men out of their minds. Will you do that for me, honey, please?"
She looked as if she were seriously thinking about it for a second before she answered the way she always did to questions, no matter what they were: "No."
He turned his up towards the ceiling. "Please God, let my genetics kick in sooner rather than later," he prayed jokingly before taking the baby downstairs.
Later that night, after the girls were tucked in and a good portion of the unpacking was done, Josh and Donna were getting ready for bed. Josh was brushing his teeth in the bathroom but what he was really doing was watching Donna in the reflection of the vanity of the mirror. She was sitting on their bed, applying lotion to the impossibly smooth skin of her arms. She was wearing her traditional nighttime apparel of a white tank top and flannel pajama bottoms and her hairs was swept up in a casual upsweep. 'She really doesn't know how beautiful she is,' he thought to himself with a smile. 'I can't believe she's my wife sometimes.' It was as he thought that that he stopped his brushing as he realized something else, something that hadn't really hit him before now. Quickly, he spit the foam out of his mouth and rinsed before walking back into their bedroom.
Donna looked up at him, standing at the foot of their bed with an apprehensive look on his face. "What is it?" she asked as she put the lotion down on the bedside table.
"We haven't slept together in more than five months," he blurted out
"What?"
"We have not had sex in more than five months, Donna," he repeated as he walked around the bed and sat in front of her.
"Oh come on, that isn't true," she said lightly, trying to put him off.
"Yes it is. The reason I know it is was because the last time we slept together was the night that Lily sent you that record," he argued. 'And I finally realized something was wrong but was too chicken shit to push you for an answer,' he berated himself. "In fact, to the best of my knowledge, we haven't even kissed since you've been back."
"We've been busy, with work and the kids and moving back here from the city. So what's your point?" Donna asked, already knowing there was no way this conversation could end well.
"Well shouldn't we, you know, do something about it?" he asked timidly, gesturing his between them.
Donna pulled her knees up to her chest and stared at him thoughtfully. Slowly, she reached out to take his hand and weave her fingers through his. "It's been a long day," she finally said, not meeting his eyes. "And I think we're both tired so…"
"What is it really?" Josh interrupted her seriously. "Because I know it's not that."
"Josh, come on. It's been a long day, I'm exhausted…"
"Three weeks after you had Natalie and you weren't sleeping for more than an hour and half at a clip, you pulled me into the janitor's closet at the Hilton at that fundraiser," he countered. "And don't even get me started on all the sex we were having right here in this bed. Now what is it really?" He could see she was still hesitating so he tried a different tactic. He squeezed the hand he still held. "Donna, we promised we'd do it different this time." He could see by the look on her face that he'd hit a nerve. "We have to be honest with each other and ourselves to have a chance at making this work. Please tell me, I can take it."
Even though she didn't really want to tell him, she knew he was right about being honest so she answered him. "Before I left," she began slowly, "I was trying to get pregnant because I felt that if I had more children to love and care for, all those voices in my head that were telling me how nothing I did mattered anymore would just shut up. But after a few months passed and nothing happened, I just thought what the hell was the point? Not being able to get pregnant again was just another glaring example that I couldn't do anything right. And I wasn't feeling particular attractive emotionally or physically--"
"You are beautiful," he whispered, lifting his hand to her cheek and gently brushing it. "There is not a single part of you that isn't and I have never felt nor will I ever feel that way." Donna smiled at him softly and he felt so guilty, still, that she'd ever thought this about herself. He knew he was irrational, that he hadn't done anything to intentionally cause it, but it still cut him to the quick that he had waited so long to see it. He was going to make sure though that it would never happen again.
Without speaking, he released her and brought his hand up to her other cheek. Taking her face into his hands, he wiped away the nearly invisible sheen of moisture that was peeking out of her eyelids with his thumbs. When she closed her eyes, he took the initiative and leaned in closer to her face. Just as his lips were almost touching hers, when their breaths merged as one, he heard her whisper, "Don't," and then pull his hands off her face before leaning back against the headboard.
He turned away from her, snickering angrily as he felt months of sexual frustration radiating from his body. "And the record for the most days between sexual intercourse in the Lyman household has been extended," he murmured.
"It's not that I don't want to," she tried to tell him apologetically, eyes still closed.
"Then what the hell is it?"
"It's a lot of things, the first of which being I haven't taken the Pill in quite some time and the last time I checked, we didn't have a ready supply of condoms available. I think you'll agree with me that this is not a situation we want to bring a child into."
"So I actually get to be consulted on the number of children we get to have this time around as opposed to you deciding for us?" he asked sarcastically.
She turned away from him and got up from the other side of the bed. "If you're going to be a selfish jerk about this then--"
"I'm the selfish one?!" he cried out, going over to her. "You kidnap my daughters from me for nearly two months then abandon them to 'find yourself' and I'm the selfish one in this conversation?"
"Can we not go into this now?" she pleaded with him.
"Do you know what our daughter asked me today?" he said, ignoring her. "Emma asked me if this wonderful job you have doesn't make you happy, if you were going to leave again." He saw the intense pain that the statement caused her and a part of him wanted to comfort her but the other part that was still so angry at her was already on a roll. "She's terrified that if you become frazzled by some little thing, you'll leave again and you'll either drag her along with you or you'll leave her without saying goodbye. And you know what, Donna? I couldn't tell her that was ridiculous; I couldn't tell her that you'd never, ever leave her again because I don't know. I don't know what's going through your head anymore. All I know is that this family is sitting on a ticking time bomb and you're the one holding the detonator!"
She stared at him evenly. "Josh, I want you to take a deep breath and calm down because until you do, I refuse to be in the same room with you," she instructed him, her tone soft but serious.
Forcing himself to take deep breaths, he strode over to one of the walls and placed his back straight against it. While he was slowly calming down, Donna walked over to the balcony doors and stared out the glass at her property, her dream home; the place where she and Josh would raise their children and spend the rest of their lives together. 'Some dream,' she thought sadly.
"I'm better," she heard him say after a while, in a lighter tone than before. He didn't approach her and she didn't turn back to him.
"Are you going to apologize?"
"How can I if I think it's the truth?"
Donna swallowed back her tears, forcing herself to be strong and not crumble. "After all the begging I've done," she said, still looking out the window but not really seeing anything, "you just can't let it go can you?"
He was silent for a minute and she heard him come up behind her. She flinched slightly when he placed a hand on her shoulder but he didn't remove it. "Imagine the person you love most in this world rips your heart out of your body because it's the only way they can save themselves," Josh whispered into her ear. "They tear you down until you can't pick yourself up anymore and when you finally do, when you finally start to heal, they come back and that pain is there all over again. You'd understand eventually why they did it, sure, but it would take even longer to forgive them for it."
"So how can you be with someone if it takes so long to forgive them? How can you live with someone, raise a family with them, spend the rest of your life with them if a part of you can't forgive them?"
"Because your life is better with them than it could ever possibly without them," he replied, as he cautiously put his arms around her and hugged her to his chest.
There was nothing Donna wanted more at that moment than to just give herself completely to Josh; to let him fix her and take away all this pain and anxiety she felt inside of her. But she couldn't do that anymore; she had to put more faith into herself than she put into another man no matter how much she loved him.
"I was selfish, you're right about that," she replied, still letting him hold her. "But I have to be now. I have to have this job; I have to have this identity. Otherwise it's going to kill me, becoming someone I don't want to be; that I don't want our daughters to be." She turned to face him and took his hands in hers, placing them between the two of them. "I've loved you from the first moment I saw you and I'll love you every moment until my last. I want to make love to you every night in our bed; I want to raise Emma and Natalie to be the best of both of us; I want to do the same with every other child that God blesses us with; I want to stand beside you each and every election night as you give your victory speech; I want to be gazing at you adoringly when the Chief Justice swears you in on the Capitol steps; I want to die laying beside you at the same time you do because I don't want to live my life without you." She paused to take a deep breath. "But what I need right now is what I'm doing. I have to become the person I want to be because if I don't, we won't get to do any of those things together. I can only imagine what this is doing to you and the girls but I need to do it. And until I figure all this stuff out about me, I can't…" she trailed off, daring for the first time to look him in the eyes.
That was the problem, he didn't understand; he wanted to, very much, but he couldn't. He couldn't understand why his wife wouldn't let him honor his marriage vows to her. He'd promised to care for her through better or worse and now when they were facing the worst, she was trying to be strong all on her own. He'd be so proud of her if he weren't so pissed at her for it.
"Josh," Donna whispered. "Please say something."
He didn't say a word; he just leaned in once again but this time, only a second after his lips touched her soft ones, he was the one to pull back. He took his hands out of her grip and gently rubbed her shoulders. "I've got some memos I want to read," he said almost inaudibly. He gave her arms one last squeeze and turned away, grabbing some folders from his bureau. When he reached the doorway, he paused. Staying where he was not facing her, he asked her, "Please figure all this stuff out soon."
As he left, Donna hugged herself although there was no chill and turned to look back out the doorway. "I'm trying," she told him, even though he could no longer hear her promise.