other girls. (Friends she’d made in the Club Against Homelessness!, a.k.a. CAH!, which she enjoyed—they visited shelters twice a month and brought gently used clothes and read to and played with the kids—but she knew looked great on her résumé, to be honest.) By the time she got an appointment at student health and saw the ultrasound, she was almost through her first trimester. Sure, her breasts had been a little sore, but she hadn’t been sick, her stomach wasn’t pooching, she hadn’t been exhausted in the way she figured pregnant women were supposed to be. The doctor (a man) told her the news with a moderated tone, a neutral expression, and Cleo wondered how, for someone so smart, she could have been so dumb.
“Listen, it’s ten o’clock,” Cleo said now to her son, that blip on the ultrasound fifteen years ago. “I’m not going to litigate why I’m a single parent with you right now. I’m just encouraging you to not be a jerk to these girls.”
Lucas flexed his jaw. Cleo tried to envision his father doing the same, if he’d look like him while doing so, if they shared these mannerisms. In truth, she couldn’t really remember all that much about him, and that both embarrassed and relieved her. There wasn’t much to tell Lucas because, well, there wasn’t much to tell.
“Fine,” Lucas said. “Duly noted.”
“Thank you. That’s all I’m saying. I’m out here on the front lines fighting for legislation that makes women true equals, and if I end up raising an asshole . . .”
“I got it.”
“Right, of course. You’ll do the right thing.” Cleo relaxed. She thought she might brew some coffee and get back to the list once he went to bed. “Oh, but did you come in here to tell me something?”
“First of all, can I stay home from school tomorrow? I have a headache.”
“No.” Cleo sighed. She didn’t know why this had become a thing lately, Lucas squirming out of school. She’d asked Emily if there were any bullying rumors or drama, but she’d heard of nothing and said, “Benjamin does the same thing. I think it’s teenage boys. They want to hibernate.” So Cleo, who had let him skip the first two times he’d groused about a nondescript ailment, had started putting her foot down. “Take a Tylenol,” she said. “You’re fine. But what did you want to tell me?”
“Fine,” he huffed, then softened. He chewed his lip. (Did his dad also do this? Cleo had never chewed her lip a day in her life. Or at least certainly not since she held an elected position. Lip chewing implied equivocation, and elected women were not allowed to look equivocal.) “Well, I just hung up with Esme.”
Cleo sighed.
“Do you want to hear this or not?” Lucas barked. “I’m, like, trying to be helpful. A good son.”
“I’m sorry, yes, continue.”
“Well, her mom. She’s, like, still pretty pissed.”
“Yes, that makes sense.” Cleo nodded. MaryAnne could harbor a grudge with the best of them.
“And I guess she’s running a full-page ad tomorrow in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.”
“A what?” Cleo yelped. “An ad about what?”
“About you,” Lucas said. “Or against you.”
“Jesus Christ!” Cleo screamed.
“I don’t know,” Lucas said and even seemed a little bit sorry for her. “But it seems to me that this is war.”
NINE
The ad went more viral than even the YouTube video. Frankly, a lot of people thought that it made MaryAnne look a little bit unhinged, which left Cleo conflicted. On the one hand, Cleo appreciated that the tide of public opinion was tilting toward her, but on the other hand, she didn’t appreciate the notion of a woman being deemed “psycho,” as she was frequently seeing online, because once you called one woman crazy, you opened the door to call all of them crazy. And more often than not, women were not only saner than men but actually less hysterical. Cleo and her colleagues had trained themselves to hold their voices firm, their posture unwavering whenever any of their hearings were televised or whenever a reporter tracked them down in the halls within the Senate building. They couldn’t afford to look emotional, couldn’t risk even being called emotional. As if emotion were something that made them less capable at their jobs. Often it made them better.
One of Cleo’s colleagues, Helene Boxer, learned this lesson the hard way. During a particularly contentious Supreme Court justice hearing, Helene had the audacity to rise from her seat and point her finger at the nominee when