The next day:

December 11, 2007

"Goodnight, then, Helen."

"Goodnight, Donna. Have a good weekend. Get lots of Christmas shopping done."

"I will. You, too!"

"I will. Goodnight!"

The office door closes behind Helen, and Donna drops her head back and stifles a groan. The platitudes make her feel as if her head were stuffed with cotton wool. She's so tired of being told to have a good weekend. She's beyond tired of telling people that she expects to have one. She's fed up with compulsory smiles and cheerfulness. She's fed up, period.

She's fed up with the tinselly Christmas decorations in the streets and stores, and the jingly Christmas songs on the radio, that have been playing for so long she thinks she's going to go mad if she has to hear them one more time-and she knows she'll probably hear them a thousand more times before the holiday is over. It always used to be her favorite holiday, but that was a million years ago and she must have been someone else then. She's fed up with the weather: rain and freezing rain, and never any snow. She's fed up with leaving the office at 6:00 and beating her way through the slushy streets and appalling traffic to the tiny, overcrowded apartment that she and Josh still haven't found time to replace with something nicer. She's fed up with letting herself in and turning on the lights and making dinner and eating it by herself, because Josh is held up at the office and won't be home for hours. She's fed up, period.

Most of all, she thinks now, she's fed up with herself for not being able to make herself stop feeling this way. She knows it's not Josh's fault, not really. She knew what she was getting into, when she told him last November, at the end of that blissful week of sun and sand and passionate sex all day long, that yes, she'd move in with him and live with him. She'd known what he was like, how much his work had always mattered to him, how impossible it would be for him to take any real time away from this job that he was going into, of all jobs.

She'd thought she could handle it. And she had been handling it-at least, on the outside. What she hadn't realized was that doing that would leave her feeling like this on the inside. So frustrated. So-empty. So sad.

She'd been sure her work would make all the difference, that she'd be so busy and satisfied by her exciting new job-Chief of Staff to the First Lady!-that she wouldn't have much time to spend with Josh anyway, and wouldn't miss his having time to spend with her. And at first that had been true. She'd been thrilled by all her new responsibilities and the excitement of finding ways to carry them out. Having Josh there at the end of the day to make love to her-which he did, most of the time, with all the passion she'd always hoped for-was the icing on the cake, but not the cake itself. And that was just how she wanted it. Or at least, just how she'd thought she wanted it. . . .

Those first few months had been a heady time. There'd been the staff to hire, designers to help Helen choose (for the First Lady's and the children's clothes for the Inauguration and other public events, and for the difficult business of turning the White House into a real home for the Santoses, whose tastes were quite different from the Bartlets', and from most other Presidents' as well).

Then there'd been her own dress for the Inauguration to find; the Inauguration itself to get through; the balls, where she'd danced with Josh at every one of the fourteen extravaganzas the Inaugural committee had planned at different sites across the city; the Santoses' move into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to oversee. And then Helen's schedule to begin to put together. The first Easter Egg Roll to coordinate. The first family trip to Camp David to organize. And, most importantly, the question of the First Lady's public theme to help Helen decide on, and then the events to arrange in order to promote it.

It was all very exciting-and, at times, much more difficult than Donna had anticipated. The worst part was the viciousness of the backlash they'd encountered from the right-wing press. She'd found it hard to believe that people would say anything unpleasant about a First Lady choosing to devote her time to promoting better health for children, but Rush Limbaugh and the commentators on Fox managed to surprise her. She hadn't had much experience dealing with that kind of thing before, and found it much harder than she'd expected.

Her team fumbled some of their early responses badly. Josh wasn't much help. The first time Fox had savaged Helen, he'd said nothing, when she wanted reassurance-and then said all the wrong things when she'd gone fishing for it. She'd been angry with him for a while over that, but he'd been so contrite, and looked so pathetic while he was apologizing and trying to figure out what it was that she'd wanted him to say, that she'd found herself melting all too quickly. But he couldn't change Fox News, and even now, months later, every time Helen does anything in public, Donna still feels as if she's feeling her way precariously along a tightrope strung across the Grand Canyon, with whole packs of ravenous lions looking up at her expectantly, waiting for her to fall.

Josh sent her flowers after that first big fight. He's sent her a lot of flowers this past year, mostly when he's had to work late too many nights in a row. They're beautiful-he's always sent her beautiful flowers. But they don't satisfy her much. What are flowers, however lovely, compared to all these long, empty evenings on her own?

She'd rather have a really good conversation with him, the kind they used to slip into sometimes, when he was working late and she'd stay with him, and he'd get onto some subject that interested him, and she'd ask questions and argue with him, and he'd argue back. He always seemed to like that. She'd liked it too, of course, more than she'd ever let him know. Or when she'd get onto something that interested her, and he'd tease her for a while but then suddenly get serious, and it would be him doing the questioning, and her teaching him, even though he'd argue with her-he'd seemed to like that, too. She loved it, all of it. Nothing had ever made her feel so mentally engaged, or given her that special kind of intellectual and emotional high that, she sometimes thought, was everything foreplay really ought to be, but wasn't.

It's been a long time since they talked like that. She tries to remember when their last conversation like that was, and can't. Sometime before she left her old job. Before she left for Gaza, even. She doesn't know why they stopped, but they've never really got back into the way of it-they didn't talk like that during the campaign, or even on that otherwise-wonderful vacation together. And now they're living together, and they never have those wonderful conversations at all. He isn't there to have them with.

She has plenty of work to fill her evenings at home with, of course. And when he comes back, there's the sex, which-when he isn't too tired, and usually even when he is-is terrific, even though they don't engage in that other, oh-so-satisfying kind of mental foreplay first. Still, the physical kind is very good. A year ago, she'd thought that a really great job and really good sex almost every night was all she'd ever want. She'd been wrong.

She wonders now if, really, it isn't time to end this thing. Maybe what she truly needs is someone like Amy Gardner's woodcarver-a man who isn't in politics, who works at home and greets her every night with a glass of wine and the warm smells of something delicious cooking on the stove. A man who has the time to talk to her for more than five minutes about her day. A man whose job isn't so much more important and difficult than hers that talking about her problems makes her feel inept and ridiculous, and so she never wants to take more than those five minutes to talk about them, anyway.

Or even a man who'd talk about the problems he'd had in his day, which was something else Josh didn't do anymore. Someone whose work wasn't so confidential that he couldn't talk about it, or so exhausting that he didn't have the mental energy left to say more than, "Fine, and yours?" when she asks him, or to do more than eat the leftovers she's saved for him, and brush his teeth and fall into bed to make almost-silent love to her.

For just a minute, Donna envies Amy what she has now, and thinks seriously about going home, packing her things, and moving out of Josh's apartment, so she can look for another man. She's still young and attractive enough; it isn't too late yet. And she's done it before; she's left Josh before. Why shouldn't she do it again?

She shivers. If she leaves him now, she knows, it's forever. So that means never feeling his arms around her again. Never letting her lips melt into his again. Never falling asleep curled up against him again, or waking to hear him breathing steadily and reassuringly alive and there beside her again. . . .

Donna drops her head into her hands and squeezes it, trying to force back the headache that's starting up behind her temples. She really doesn't think she can give all that up. But she doesn't know if she can go on like this much longer, either.

The only thing she does know is that, if anything is going to change, it's going to have to start with her. Josh is never going to do anything differently. Their one-year anniversary in November has come and gone without any of the discussion of their future that she'd been hoping he'd use the occasion to bring up. She wonders now why she'd thought he would. He never will. Some men might be waiting for Christmas to surprise her with the question and a ring, and the kind of conversation she needed would flow naturally after that. But not Josh. He'll go along the way he is for as long as she lets him. It's the way he's always been.

She can force a discussion with him, of course, if she has to. But she doesn't want to have to, because, really, she has no idea what to say to him anymore, or how she wants things to change at all.

Donna rubs her temples again, sighs, and forces herself out of her chair. She needs to go and get some coffee, and then do that Christmas shopping Helen was talking so cheerfully about. She's done most of it already, on Amazon-everything she needs for her parents, her sister and brother-in-law, her nieces and nephews, her old friends. She's found gifts for her staff, books for Peter and Miranda, even something for Helen-that last a real challenge, as Donna knows better than anyone that Helen's tastes are naturally spare and simple, and that she already has everything she wants by the dozen, as well as far too many things she doesn't want and dislikes having her life and her family's weighed down by. But Donna is a mastermind at gift-shopping, and has found something she thinks her boss will really like.

But she still doesn't have anything for Josh.