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CJ struggles to be there to raise her children once Leo’s job falls in her lap, or at least that’s what it feels like in the dim light of 2 AM in her new office too many nights a week.
More of the West Wing staff has begun to realize their new boss is serious about providing an activity and care center where their children are welcome throughout the day and after school. It brings a new lightness into the West Wing that has been starkly missing since the first rough year of the administration, and more so since the head of all of its inner workings had a massive cardiac episode. It is also a great placement on Hogan’s early childhood education masters transcript, CJ truly beyond proud of the work her niece is managing to do.
The kick in the gut is that the very flexibility she has created for her staff is not available to her.
It is a small comfort that Nancy’s sons have found a spot in the center. Nancy, CJ knows in the way you do, is like them in many ways. The difference between them is simple and stark – Nancy is a single mother.
Theoretically, her children could be brought into the center in their legal capacity as the children of the Deputy National Security Advisor. That had been the subject of more than a handful of the couple’s late night conversations of late. The risk of Josie – either of their children, really, though their five year old is a far more likely culprit – calling CJ “mama” by accident in front of someone who shouldn’t hear is too high, and CJ can hardly promise to leave as wide a berth from the center as she would need to avoid that from happening. Beyond that, Katharine is too much the spitting image of her biological mother to avoid question once they’re side by side.
So, yes, most nights her children are well asleep by the time she gets out of the White House. Even weekends with them uninterrupted by an emergent page or already scheduled over are difficult to come by. She fears becoming, to them, what Kate inevitably struggled with becoming over the course of her extended assignments for the CIA. She fears what spending more of Tenny’s formative years in this office running herself ragged will do to their relationship in the long run as nine turns to ten turns to sixteen.
She’s blessed with the fact that Kate understands. With, unfortunately, the fact that her partner still feels the guilt of the circumstances surrounding CJ’s pregnancy and Tenny’s birth.
CJ had been at Triton Day nearly a year under Isobel’s lead after leaving Emily’s List when she had felt the weight of Kate’s long and mysterious deployments asea lift off her shoulders with a permanent secondment to the CIA. They had promised Kate a job ashore for at least two years when the posting order had come in, a fitting move after a grueling command tour. They had jumped at the chance to start a family. It might have had to look like surrogacy, or a career woman being supported by a close friend while she tried to have a child alone, depending on who was asking, but the end would be more than worth the journey.
Until big shots at Langley had folded to DOD pressure to put Commander Katharine Harper back in uniform to handle a swiftly evolving – or devolving – situation in Afghanistan, a week after their final appointment.
Until she found herself staring at two red lines in the guest bathroom of their California house, having been unable to sleep in their shared bed since Kate shipped back out, and it was another three months until a consistent mailing address found its way to her.
Until months passed without her partner at her side, her body changing in ways that knocked her off her feet at times.
Until the only connection Kate had had to their growing child in nine months was a single cassette of their child’s heartbeat.
Until the news of massive movement in Kabul broke the same week Kate’s mail stopped arriving, the same week her water broke.
CJ had held back her tears for the better part of forty weeks. She had paced, and raged, and fought, but she had not cried. The moment their first child – their daughter, head full of soft auburn fuzz and eyes as blue as a June day was long – was placed in her arms, the tears fell.
Her mother was dead and had been for years. Her father would prefer to love her and her choices from afar. Her brothers had their own busy, involved lives in other states.
The love of her life could well be dead in the rubble overseas.
And somehow, with her new daughter in her arms, everything had changed just as nothing had.
She’d named her new baby after the man who had made Kate a widow in her early twenties and her partner who may have widowed her . She’d spent an hour letting hot tears run down her cheeks before signing her rights as a mother away to Kate for the legal protections of being the recognized child of a member of the armed forces.
On her daughter’s birth certificate, her name was printed Katharine Allen Harper. CJ’s name was not on it.
By the time Kate had returned, gauntly tan with her hair desert-bleached, their daughter was crawling and CJ had lost her job at Triton Day, her life a blur of politicking.
In the years and second child the very image of Kate since, CJ knows they have both been as present as they could be for their daughters. Even as Press Secretary, she had found her way out of the office early enough for dinner and bedtime at least every other day, even if it meant going back into the White House thereafter.
Her children were the beginning and the end of each thought, each extensively weighed decision.
If they weren’t, it would feel less like her absence now was a sign of her failing them in a significant way. It would feel less like hiding them was a selfish acceptance of cowardice rather than in their best interest, even if telling the world the truth would be its own implosion in their lives. It would feel less like that knot in her stomach would force its way to her throat and choke her on her own bile at the very likely prospect that both Tenny and Josie would look back in fifteen years and despise her for being a coward at the highest levels of government.
Her best friend steps into her office at 2AM and bundles CJ up into her coat wordlessly under clear instructions from CJ’s wife – which is how she thinks of Kate under layers of exhaustion, frustration, and anger that have unraveled her ability to shore up against the compromises they make daily. Margaret has long left her post, per CJ’s own directions. Donna drives CJ’s baby blue convertible – the kind of car that guarantees no one would suspect her of having a family – back to their rowhouse. The front light has been left on, glowing amber through the edges of their heavy curtains. Donna all but pushes the taller woman out of the car once she has flawlessly parallel parked the car, wordlessly squeezing CJ’s shoulder as she watches her take in the silhouette of her family home hollowly.
Eventually CJ finds her feet under her. She walks in the door and through the house, shedding the layers of the White House Chief of Staff along the way. Her shoes and briefcase lean against their entryway. Her suit goes in the hamper. She gulps water from the kitchen sink desperately.
She walks into their bedroom and every ounce of yearning for her family rolls off her shoulders as the wind is knocked from her lungs. Kate holds Josie close on the left side of the bed, Tenny half sprawled across the middle with one hand gripping her baby sister’s firmly. Her other hand, CJ notes as she emerges from the bathroom with a hastily scrubbed face and an old Navy shirt, is bunched up in the fabric of CJ’s pillow, which Tenny’s face is nestled up against.
CJ slides herself into the jigsaw puzzle of her entire world in the bed. Tenny’s hand moves instinctively from the pillow to the neck of her mama’s shirt, grasping at the fabric and holding on with her head on CJ’s chest like she used to fall asleep as a baby, back when CJ had thought she might just have to raise Tenny alone.
For the first time in months, CJ stops holding her breath. Her mind is quiet. Sleep comes.