The day everything changes starts like any other day. You wake and check the temperature. You pee and scroll through your emails, maybe scan the news. You have coffee and eggs or tea and cereal or milk and toast. But, of course, it’s not just any other day. It is the seventh day of your Senate confirmation hearing for a seat on the Supreme Court.
At the witness table, Margot sits up straighter. She has been answering question after question with the precision of a laser-guided missile, always on the lookout for gaffes, terrified she will lose her patience and answer emotionally. Both the Drinkers and the Cooks are suspicious of her motives. Even though Margot did the tour, and Jay called ahead to preach her bona fides, the Drinkers find it confusing that a president from the Party of Lies would nominate a judge from the Party of Truth. The Cooks, meanwhile, may believe in bipartisan compromise in spirit, but in practice they’d rather have a liberal. They worry she’s a Trojan horse, sent to trick them. And yet neither side can find an actual objection to a jurist as qualified and dignified as Margot. And so they agitate, looking for flaws they can sink their teeth into, and what seemed like a slam dunk a month ago has settled into a quagmire of grievances.
Behind her, Remy keeps his eyes focused on the bench. He wears a crisp blue suit with a white pocket square and horn-rimmed glasses. Hadrian is at the hotel with the babysitter, though Hadrian hates it when they call her that, seeing as he is fourteen.
Every day at lunch and dinner Margot and Remy review the day’s testimony, along with their lawyers and White House staff. After dinner, Margot washes down two Advil with a finger of whiskey and tells herself she still wants to be a justice on the Supreme Court. That the lifetime appointment is worth the struggle and sacrifice of this gladiatorial contest in which she’s engaged. In the years since the God King left office, electoral politics have begun to look more like those of the early days of American legislature, where representatives would pull guns on one another on the House floor. Margot’s instinct is to rise above the fray, to maintain an air of objectivity, to put herself above politics. And yet the definition of politics has changed dramatically since her youth, and now the act of rising above the daily contest for power is no longer considered a virtue. Those who hide their politics are treated with suspicion.
And so she takes her Advil and washes it down with whiskey, and Remy rubs her back and then her feet and tells her she’s almost there.
One more day.
On Friday she wears her ivory suit with sensible shoes. It’s been four weeks since she stood on her daughter’s dead lawn in Austin, Texas, waiting for the FBI. She has fended off attacks on her records, endless interrogations into how she will vote on issues from abortion to presidential power. She has remained thoughtful and measured, but strong. It is 3:17 p.m. Lunch was an hour in which she pushed lettuce around on her plate and listened as the deputy communications director and her primary lawyer discussed procedural measures the Cooks could take to derail her nomination. They debated whether she had the votes from the Other Party of Truth to overcome the concerns of more progressive senators hoping for a champion of their own.
Margot tuned them out. She would be approved or she wouldn’t. All she had to do was walk back into that hearing room and answer a few more questions, then endure the closing arguments from both sides. She would smile and thank them for the opportunity. She would tell them that her story is America’s story. Once again she remembers her daughter standing before a packed assembly, her tiny fists clenched, her eyes closed.
And the rocket’s red glare.
The bombs bursting in air.
Her eyes are on her plate, and she’s confused to see something drip down onto the ceramic. It’s a tear. Then a second. She reaches up and touches her eyes. They’re wet. Only then does the feeling hit her, a crushing wave that takes her breath away. She is a mother whose daughter is missing and presumed dead. What the fuck is she doing sitting here eating a beet salad and talking strategy?
Remy looks over, sees her on the brink of collapse. “Babe?”
She stands quickly. “Excuse me.”
She hurries to the bathroom, past the DC elite, keeping her back straight, fighting off a sob, and then she is in the bathroom, pushing her way into a stall, the door slapping the flimsy inner wall and bouncing shut. She weeps, her face pressed into her fists, her body jammed into a back corner. The sobs she can’t swallow burst from her lips, an animal sound, as if she is a ragged bagpipe played by invisible hands, unable to control the notes or their volume.
They were young once. All of them. Citizens of Brooklyn Heights wandering idly on a spring evening with laughter in the air. Is this the price of a dream? To lose everything that matters, to trade love for a fancier top line to your obituary? Her breathing is ragged, her legs literally trembling, and she worries she will fall into the toilet, so she puts both hands on the walls and lowers herself like a drunk to sit on the porcelain seat. She has never had a panic attack before. It feels like she’s dying.
There is a quiet knock on the stall door. “Hon?”
It’s Remy. He has risked the women’s room to make sure she’s okay.
“I’m fine,” she says in a whisper.
“Can I—do you need anything?”
“Go away!” she screams.
For a stunned minute he is silent. Then he turns and leaves. Margot listens to his footfalls recede, to the swoosh of the swinging door as it shuts behind him. She tears toilet paper from the roll, wipes her eyes. The paper comes away stained with mascara. It’s the great betrayer of female emotion, mascara, like that chemical they put in the public pool that turns blue where you pee. As her breathing stabilizes, she checks her watch. Five minutes. Five minutes to put her face back together, to get the red from her eyes and find her center.