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She had lived life for years like she had more hours in a day than most. There had always always more things to do – more agendas to work towards, more bills to push through the House, more causes to fact-find about, more campaigns to run. Even from the time her parents had given her autonomy over her extracurriculars and AP classes, Andy had been determined to do more , to stand out, to make herself the best qualified version of herself she could be so that she could do more, be more, and achieve more for the people who had built her.
That, after all, was how she made it from overcrowded, underfunded classrooms on the Eastern Shore to Barnard, then from Barnard to Berkeley to Capitol Hill in a decade and some change.
Slowing down had never been in the cards for her. Slowing down was for rich boys with Senator uncles, for legacies and the children of families with money whether new or old. Slowing down was not for the undergrad who worked three jobs while taking six classes, or the young associate trying to cut her teeth in the courtroom in a suit that still felt like she was playing dress-up.
Certainly, slowing down was not for the still too-young Congresswoman in a safe enough seat that she could never be sure she would remain unchallenged in the primaries.
Somehow, in the whirlwind of her late twenties she had found it in herself to begin a relationship that made it to the chuppah. Toby’s arms had been where she found her moments of peace for a while, nearly a decade. When they had first met, he had been in the throes of unraveling his own religious observance. The fringed undershirt and curling sidelocks had come and gone within eighteen months of their fledgling relationship, but they had met while he was shomer shabbos, and she grew to appreciate the breath in time that they created around them. When he had drifted from the practice the year before they had gotten married, she had clung on a while longer, before she too had let her tenuous hold on time slip out of her hands.
Children, a family, had been a pipe dream for them, she’d learned, and holding the rush of space and time at bay in a house that would never be filled had felt futile.
When she left him – six months after they’d left each other, really – she hardly let herself notice the difference.
She loved him, sure as the North star she loved him, but they spent too many hours not-talking by talking about the problems of everything bigger than two-of-them, and too few living in the space that held just them both.
Even after Huck and Molly were born, after she had broken Toby’s heart anew, the ceaseless rush of her life only intensified. Her children were a fountain of joy and despair, of boundless love and limitless anger over their absent father. They became the fuel for her blazing fire. She had a clarity of purpose she had lacked previously – the base need to leave a better world behind for her children. Loneliness she could handle, she figured, but not the lack of a legacy for her children.
She put fitted suits in neutral colors over turtlenecks and sweaters like armor, rather than the satin blouses she used to wear. She let her hair out of its updos, painted her lips in dark, unsaturated tones.
Banter, the prolonged dance of teasing to finally lead into the end goal, those gave way to clipped tones and nascent anger directed into hyper-efficiency.
Then the car in front of her blew up in the middle of the desert.
Then she heard a voice she had fought not to hear for the decades since Berkeley in the background of a harried call as the dust settled, clear as a clarion call.
Joshua Lyman sat vigil in Germany, Gail Fitzwallace mourned her husband, the country raged and roiled, and Andy paused.
She cradled her phone in the palm of one hand as they landed jerkily in Andrews, thumb hovering over the green call button, number already dialed. Shifting her thumb, she canceled the last dialed number and called her mother instead to let the balm of her toddlers wash over her as her other hand curled around the handle of her duffle bag.
The wind picking up around her whistled around the phone that was pressed to her ear as they were ushered off the transport plane, wiping out the tail end of Molly’s babbling. Her mother cut in smoothly Molly’s voice faded, either because the phone had been taken away from her children’s perpetually sticky hands, or because she had toddled off after her brother.
“Andrea,” Her mother started, “Experience is something you’re always going to lack until after you need it, and that don’t mean your whole life has to be a marathon to get every lesson out of the way before it catches up to you.”
“What are you talking about, Momma?” Andy ran a hand through her wind-swept hair and tried to tame it as she spoke.
“You’re only gonna get so many lessons, so many messages, before you lose your chance,” Her mother explained.
“Momma, I just got off a transport plane that went from Gaza, to Berlin, then back stateside,” Andy pleaded, exasperated, “Can we stop speaking in riddles?”
“Some lessons you’re only going to learn when you let yourself, Andrea,” Beatrice Wyatt explained, “And you aren’t never gonna let yourself learn them because you keep running like a hamster on a wheel to avoid it. Tell me honestly, darlin’, if you’d been in the other car, if you had been one of the Congressmen on this trip, would this be the life you want to have left behind?”
Andy braced her hand on her forehead, and tried to breathe.
“Momma–” She squeezed out, her throat tightening.
“I’m your Momma, darlin’, it’s my job to ask you the hard questions sometimes,” Beatrice soothed.
Andy sighed, the air still struggling to enter and leave her lungs.
“I’ll kiss the babies for you, Andy-girl. You just get on home safe now,” Beatrice said, hanging up.
Andy rubbed at the crease of her brow, trying to will away the headache that was gathering behind her eyes when her phone rang, then stopped just as quickly as it started. She flipped the phone open to try to call the number back, just as a car pulled up in front of her.
“It was just me, Andy,” A voice cut through her confusion, as the passenger window rolled down, “Get in, I promised your mom I’d get you to her place.”
“C.J.” Andy breathed.
“Hey, Andy,” C.J. replied.
“It’s only four P.M.,” Andy protested, “Who’s briefing the press corps?”
C.J. put the car in neutral, and got out of the car as she replied, “I briefed before I came. Toby or Will can brief if there’s anything big, and anything else can wait till tomorrow. Some things are more important, Andy.”
Andy stood stock still as C.J. rounded the front of the car. Three quick strides, and C.J. was right in front of her, jacket shrugged off and thrown in the back of the car, the sleeves of her blouse rolled up to the elbow. She gave Andy a cursory once-over, before cautiously, gently, placing her hands on Andy’s shoulders.
Her hands shook, Andy realized, before they settled.
They moved down her arms, barely applying any pressure at all, in line with C.J.’s gaze, as the taller woman peered closer. It was as if C.J. was trying to make sure there hadn’t been any injuries she had failed to hear about in the chaos of the last few days.
Neither of them breathed, really, until C.J. raised her eyes to meet Andy’s again an eternity later.
C.J. brought a steady, gentle hand up to Andy’s cheek and brushed a thumb over her pale cheekbone, her voice like drizzle on the pavement as she spoke, “You’ve got more freckles, Red.”
A blush threatened to bloom under C.J.’s thumb.
“I’m alright, C.J.” Andy reassured, “Donna’s going to be alright.”
C.J. tugged Andy closer, wrapping her other arm around Andy as she murmured into the curtain of Andy’s hair, “I was so scared, Andy. We all were. For both of you.”
Andy dropped her duffle bag, her now-free hand coming up to stroke C.J.’s hair as the other arm wrapped around her waist, “I’m alright, Claudia.”
She felt C.J.’s breath hitch against her collarbone, then a pause.
“I couldn’t bear the thought–” C.J. cut herself off with a shake of her head, then continued, “There is so much I haven’t said, Andy. So much I’ve almost said so many times. So much I should have said years ago but I was so scared then, but I was so much more scared at the thought of losing you.”
Andy allowed herself a breath, then a small smile. She felt C.J.’s arms around her tighten ever so slightly as she spoke just loud enough to fill the air between them, “Everything was burning, everything was upside down and chaotic, and all I could think about was the look on your face the first time you met Molly and Huck. The grief in your eyes even though you had the biggest smile on your face. I just wanted to take that grief away, C.J. I only ever wanted to do that.”
“We’ve run from this long enough, don’t you think, Andy?” C.J. murmured, her lips next to Andy’s ear.
“I don’t want to run anymore,” Andy admitted, turning slightly so her next words were spoken against C.J.’s lips, “This is too precious to run from.”