Clinique or frosty glossy lip shellac at Veronica Kaye, of a field trip to the aquarium in middle school where Cleo had stood so long in front of the shark exhibit that the bus back to school nearly left her, of the scent of Benihana lingering on their clothes after MaryAnne’s birthday every year. Cleo could feel the smudge of the kohl eyeliner, smell the scent of the aquarium, taste the fried rice and egg.
She turned right toward the waterfront. She wished that she’d brought her yellow pad of paper with her 233 regrets on the trip because she’d add today to it: 234. She hadn’t thought much about how she sabotaged MaryAnne in a long time, probably since . . . college? She didn’t know. She’d thought of MaryAnne, sure, from time to time, but not about her role in how, maybe, she had changed MaryAnne’s life as much as she changed her own. Though she didn’t think it was quite that easy. Cleo had worked her goddamn ass off to be the youngest congresswoman and then the youngest senator, and honestly, mayoral internship or not, school newspaper editor or not, it was entirely possible she’d have landed in the exact same position. But could she be certain?
She crossed the street from Second Avenue to First, the incline dropping perilously as if beckoning pedestrians to Pike Place Market. No, she told herself. I can’t be certain. And maybe that made her shitty or maybe that made her ingenious. She didn’t know. She knew only what she did and where it led her, and also that she had been sixteen or seventeen, and sixteen-year-olds and seventeen-year-olds made mistakes. She didn’t know what Oliver Patel was doing with his life now (other than being gorgeous), but she hoped that he wasn’t paying the price for that time his senior year when he went streaking across the baseball field when he got accepted to Berkeley. (He probably wasn’t. Men are forgiven much more easily and much quicker than women, Cleo knew. Hell, everyone knew.) Cleo had not been part of that streaking crowd. In fact, now that she thought of it, MaryAnne hadn’t really been either. Or maybe MaryAnne had been after she and Cleo broke apart, and MaryAnne had forged on without her.
Cleo reached the Waterfront Park right on Elliott Bay, leaned against the concrete ledge, gazed into the black horizon, which shone with lights from homes across the way. Her mom, who never seemed to begrudge that she hung up her pointe shoes when her children arrived, used to come here and paint at sunrise. By middle school, Cleo was always awake—even set her alarm for six a.m. because she’d read that successful people were early risers, so it seemed like a good habit to get into—and sometimes her mom would make her tag along. “Make” because Cleo had never been creative or interested in her mother’s art beyond a simple appreciation for her talent and a bit of reverence for the fact that she had once been a star dancer and had somehow also now honed that spark into a different form of talent. Cleo didn’t much see the point of creative fields. She never said as much to her mom, though her mom was often nudging her to tap into something, even when it was obvious that Cleo’s skill set lay elsewhere.
“It doesn’t have to be painting,” her mom would say, and they knew damn well that it wasn’t going to be dance. At two, Cleo had evidently run screaming from her first ballet class, and her mother, having endured blisters and broken toenails and pulled hamstrings and fractured ribs, all by eighteen, didn’t push it again. Instead, as Cleo grew older, she said: “Anything, anything, sweetheart! Music, art, or pick up a camera! All of this opens you up to new possibilities.” But Cleo had already learned that her parents’ praise was so intertwined with her success, and even though her mother pushed her to simply dabble, dabbling didn’t earn approving murmurs and an extra twenty dollars for spending money and sometimes, a special night out where they all dressed up in fancy clothes and toasted her with wine (her parents) and Shirley Temples (her).
Now, of course, because she was a member of Congress who needed to appear well rounded, she tolerated music and art and theater, and God knows she read too much (usually nonfiction, most often biographies). She supported arts funding and all that, but