Work Text:
i. in which HM meets CD
The first time Henry meets Conrad Dalton, they’re at a dive bar not far from Langley, for birthday drinks for one of Elizabeth’s colleagues. Jon or Jim or Tom or something. Who cares? He only tags along because in a few days’ time he’ll be back overseas, and then it’ll be another six months if not more till he sees Elizabeth next, and he’ll be damned if he’s going to waste a single second of this week that they have together.
(Also, since being deployed, he might have forgotten how to be alone, might now be afraid of silence, of what lurks in it, waiting for a chance to strike. How many bombs has he dropped? How heavy is his soul? What is the imperial equivalent of a human life?)
So, he goes with her to this dive bar. Picture it however you like—then make the lights grungier, the floors stickier, the decor a couple more decades out of date. He wonders what, aside from its proximity to Langley, is its appeal, exactly. But the prices chalked in blue on the blackboard, the free pool and karaoke, and the air of indifference which meets the shouts of the crowd spilling out from the booth at the back answer that. The spooks can get as rowdy as they like while they enjoy a drink or two or five—no calls for them to simmer down, no dent to their pay checks.
When he and Elizabeth make it far enough inside for their lungs to have filled with the fusty, dive bar air, a call echoes out of, “Bess!”
To his surprise, Elizabeth responds: her face brightens and she grins—literally grins—at the man who clambers out of the booth.
The man strides over, and Henry can’t help but frown at him. He must be the same height as Henry, though the confidence with which he carries himself makes him look six inches taller; he, like Henry, also fulfils the dark and handsome elements of that classic, good-looking trifecta; and he, it appears, just as Henry does, has his own special name for Elizabeth. Bess… ‘Babe’ sounds so common in comparison, so generic. ‘Babe’ could be anyone. But Bess…? It’s like the guy’s laid claim to some specific part of her.
It’s decided long before the guy reaches them: Henry does not like him. (Does. Not. Like. Him.) But even if the ego and the looks and the intimacy curled in the S’s of that ‘Bess’ hadn’t been enough, then the way that Elizabeth looks almost…giddy…as she introduces him, “Henry, this is Conrad,” definitely would have cinched it.
Henry Does. Not. Like. Him. And the next one hour, fifty-seven minutes of watching Bess and Conrad together gives him no reason to reverse that opinion. It only becomes more entrenched.
Elizabeth giggles—yes, giggles—at Conrad’s jokes; she gazes at him with something like awe as he regales the group with anecdotes; in turn, she receives his favour in the form of fond looks, compliments on her contributions at work, the first drink to be handed over every time he returns with a fresh round from the bar.
Each interaction lodges itself in the grooves of Henry’s mind, ready to be replayed over and over—and over and over—on their drive home, until, no longer content with mere reality as a means to torture him, his imagination decides wouldn’t it be fun to insert other interactions into this never-ending loop too: Conrad crushing Elizabeth against a wall and kissing her, Conrad pushing the hem of Elizabeth’s skirt higher and higher with each sweep of his palm hot on her thigh, Elizabeth screaming out Conrad’s name as he—
Think of bombs. Think of your soul. Think of the weight you have to bear for the rest of your life.
///
“So…Conrad…?” Henry says later, when they’re at home, in their kitchen, and he’s using a teaspoon to squeeze out the teabag against the inside of Elizabeth’s ‘Back The Beagle’ Snoopy mug. He doesn’t know where he was going with that, so he lets the words hang while he tries to come up with something polite or tactful or innocuous to add. “He seems…” He trails off again, still drawing a blank.
“Go on,” Elizabeth prompts. She’s sitting at the table behind him, so he can’t see her expression, can’t confirm if he’s right in thinking there’s a teasing note to her tone.
He lifts the teabag from the mug, gives it a quick shake for good measure, then pulls out the cabinet with the in-built trash can and flicks the teabag onto the pile of cauliflower leaves. “It’s just…”
“Uh huh?” she says when the pause lingers again.
(No doubt about whether or not her tone is teasing this time.)
“I don’t…” He shakes his head as he sets the teaspoon down on the counter next to the sink. “I don’t like…”
…that he’s tall, dark and handsome; that he’s a Marine like me and maybe you have a thing for Marines; that you look at him the way that you do, the way that he looks at you, the fact the two of you have some kind of chemistry…
“Henry, look at me.”
Her tone sobers just enough to make him stop concocting ways to keep his back to her, turn around and look at her.
She’s hunched forward in her seat, elbows resting on her thighs, hands folded loosely in the space between her knees; her gaze is lifted, ready to lock onto his.
“You don’t have anything to worry about,” she says.
“I didn’t—” he starts to protest.
She arches her eyebrows at him; if she weren’t so set on being a spy, with a look like that she’d make an awesome teacher. “You think I didn’t notice you pouting all evening like a two-year-old who’s been forced to share his favourite toy?”
“I wasn’t pouting.” (He pouts.)
A subtle smile tugs at the corner of her lips and laughter dances in her eyes. “You’re lucky I think you’re cute when you’re jealous.”
“I’m not…” He lets the protest die with a huff.
She’s enjoying this too much. He’s never going to win.
He leans back against the counter and folds his arms across his chest, lets his gaze fall down and to the side, away from hers, debates going back to his drawn-out tea-making.
A moment passes. Elizabeth rises to her feet. She ambles across the black and white tiles towards him, stops in front of him, lays her hands on his folded arms, her fingertips digging in just enough it’s like she’s trying to either coax or prise his arms free. She stares up at him.
“Do you trust me?”
His gaze meets hers in an instant. “Yes.”
She holds that look, lets the word ring through them, lets them both bask in its truth, in its strength. Then she nods. “Okay then.” Her fingertips curl tighter, more insistent. “Conrad’s my mentor. That’s all. I’m a new recruit. That’s all. You don’t have anything to worry about.”
He both believes her and wants to believe her at the same time.
Conrad’s probably just trying to make her feel welcome, to make sure she integrates properly into the team, and any praise he gives is surely earned: she’s smart and perceptive and passionate about her work, not to mention she has uncanny instincts. And as for her? The way she looks at him and laughs at his jokes is probably just a healthy respect for her superior. It’s good she has a mentor she can truly look up to. It’s good she’s found someone who appreciates her talent and will take and nurture all that raw potential. He’s probably just reading into things which have nothing in them to read.
The problem is ‘probably’.
There’s a world of fear hidden in it.
What if there is something more there? What if that chemistry is more than just a healthy collegial relationship? When two people are working together closely in a high pressure environment, for instance the kind of high pressure environment that exists at the world’s most powerful intelligence agency, and there’s a spark between them—a spark of any sort, a spark no matter how they might initially define it—it doesn’t take much for that spark to catch, for it to spread, for it to burn down boundaries and integrity and marriages.
So, yes, he trusts her.
But, still, some part of him won’t stop worrying about it.
Maybe the best he can do is to hide that fear—because if she thinks he doesn’t trust her, it’ll be the undoing of their relationship.
“So?” she says, still staring up at him. “We good?” Another tug on his arms, encouraging them unfold once again.
And he wants them to be good. Needs them to be good. Doesn’t want this feeling, this fear, to wreck them. Especially not when it’ll pass. It will pass, won’t it? So, he nods and forces his arms to relax and to fall away from his chest. He runs his hands up and down the outside of her upper arms. “We’re good,” he says.
“Good.” Her smile, soft at first, quickly turns impish. “Because I noticed you made our bed this morning—hospital corners and all—and I was kinda hoping I might get to help you…unmake it.”
No need to tell him twice. A moment later, she’s hoisted over his shoulder, laughing and squealing and slapping his back. “Henry!”
He carries her to their bedroom, a man on a mission. Only one week in every twenty-six to spend with her. No time to waste.
(His name will be the only name she screams that night.)
///
ii. in which boundaries are drawn
Jealousy is caustic, Henry knows it; if given a chance it’ll eat away at the trust, at the belief, they’ve built in their relationship, turn good bones porotic, so he takes great care not to show it again.
At least, not in a way Elizabeth might recognise.
He pretends her frequent mentions of Conrad don’t bother him; he pretends he doesn’t notice the way she looks up to Conrad with an almost saintly reverence; he pretends he doesn’t hear secrets curled into the contours of each S every time Conrad calls her ‘Bess’. He stores it all up and then releases it when they have sex, turning the act into something animalistic and possessive, which might not be entirely healthy, some rational part of him realises, but rationality doesn’t much come into this, and Elizabeth certainly enjoys it—multiply enjoys it—so how bad can it really be?
This is his cycle. Rinse and repeat.
One time, he slips—lets his feelings about her and Conrad break through in a way he will always regret and yet simultaneously find himself grateful for. It comes fifteen years after that night in the dive bar. Sometimes it feels like that dive bar might be the one thing in their world that hasn’t been touched by time: there have been kids, there have been career changes, there have been promotions…
Towers have fallen.
What happens is a result of this perfect storm.
“So you remember that report I was working on?” Elizabeth says as she stoops down and picks up the trail of items—sweaters, teddy bears, wax crayons—the kids have breadcrumbed across the dressing room floor. “The one reviewing our operations in Baghdad?”
“Sure.” Henry sinks into the armchair at the end of their bed and unties his laces. “I mean, not the details of it, obviously. But, sure.”
“Well…” She dumps the items in a hamper, to be sorted—or just strewn again—another day. “…turns out the NSC saw it.” She gives a huff of a laugh; it sways between pride and disbelief. “Now I’m gonna be the new station chief in Baghdad.”
“Station chief?” he echoes. “Babe…that’s an enormous job.”
She’ll be running the interrogation operations, she says, she’ll be keeping things ethical and putting an end to the use of torture, she says, she’ll be doing her bit to help the nation heal.
But he doesn’t want a job summary, doesn’t need her to explain how important the work is; what he wants and needs to talk about is the part where she says she’ll be moving to Baghdad, leaving him and the kids, living there for ‘at least a year if she’s to be effective’.
He has concerns.
Reasonable concerns.
Concerns to do with her safety. Concerns to do with him and the kids; concerns about how they will cope with their mother’s absence; concerns about the strain it will put on their marriage. Concerns to do with the fact each time she goes to Baghdad it changes her a little bit—but this, moving there for ‘at least a year if she’s to be effective’—could well see a stranger coming back to him.
He knows war, knows what it can do to the mind: Death isn’t the only way a person can die.
So, yes, reasonable concerns.
Though, perhaps not so reasonably presented.
She sleeps on the couch that night.
///
In the morning, he tries again. Helping her prepare vegetables is his peace offering. He chops celery while she peels carrots over the sink; the steady knock, knock, knock of the knife against the wooden board and the scrape, scrape, scrape of the peeler fill the kitchen. When he tells her he doesn’t want to fight about this and she snipes at him, ‘Well, great. We’ll just skip right to the resentful silence,’ he abandons the celery and turns to her.
“If you feel you have to go to Baghdad, then go,” he says, “but I can’t pretend it’s not going to affect me. It’s definitely going to affect the kids. The one thing it’s not going to do is take back 9/11.”
This time, he keeps his cool. It feels like she’s opening up to him about her real reason for wanting to take the position, her need to fix a world that’s been falling apart since that infinitely blue September morning; it feels like he’s getting through to her, persuading her their own world needn’t collapse just because the world all around them is collapsing; it feels like he’s winning her over, that she’s coming to see the lack of integrity which now runs rampant across continents, throughout governments, isn’t a reason for her to leave him and their family and move to Baghdad—she can find that integrity in herself, she can change the world right from where she’s standing.
But then she says it, her expression nothing short of imploring:
“Conrad is depending on me.”
And now…
Now, he sees.
All his concerns, all his arguments count for nothing—she hasn’t listened to a single one of them. Because the real reason she’s taking a job halfway around the world has nothing to do with her being the one who wrote the proposal or her feeling the need to rid the world of the monster 9/11 unleashed, and it has everything to do with her caring more about Conrad and not letting him down than she cares about himself, their marriage and their family.
The words he says next come automatically:
“If you go to Baghdad, I…I don’t know what it’s gonna look like when you come back.”
It’s an ultimatum.
Well, technically, it’s two.
To her, it’s a choice between her job and their family.
To him, it’s a choice between Conrad and himself.
Regardless of perspective, they both know what it means. If she chooses to leave, it won’t matter if she returns unscathed in a year. This world that they’ve built together—he—won’t be waiting.
He wants her to answer immediately. He wants her to tell him of course she won’t go. She chooses him. Always, she chooses him.
But he denies her that chance—denies himself the hurt he’d feel if she hesitated. (The melody of an ice cream truck floats through the silence; it feels jarring, too light and too carefree for the gravity of the moment.) He turns and walks away, goes back to their bedroom and swaps his pyjama bottoms for yesterday’s jeans, then rounds up all three kids and straps them into the car.
He drives around aimlessly for ten minutes before the whining begins—Where are we going? Are we nearly there yet? We’ve been driving for hours… I wanna go home! This is boring!—and he decides to take them to one of those indoor playgrounds with a rope course and vertical drop slide and ball pits and a jungle gym, along with the stodgy, overpriced pizza and burnt coffee that are par for the course at such establishments. They make a day of it.
It’s only on the way home that he realises maybe, on some level, in leaving Elizabeth alone all day like he did he wanted to give her a glimpse of what her life would be like without him and the kids should she choose to put her commitment to Conrad above her commitment to their family and their marriage, and although he knows it probably makes him sound like a jerk, he can’t say he feels bad about it. After all, she’s the one who wants to leave; all he’s doing is being honest with her about that decision having consequences.
But then he swings the car onto the driveway, the late afternoon sky backdropping the house in a rosy orange, and everything changes.
Elizabeth is perching on the bottom step of the porch, knees hugged to her chest, wearing the same pyjamas and pink robe she was wearing that morning when they left, like she’s been sitting there all day, watching down the road, hoping… hoping… hoping… at any moment their car will appear around the corner and finally she’ll be able to breathe again, knowing they’re safe, they’re home, and he sees it isn’t only a glimpse of her future that he’s given her but also a long, hard stare into her past, for while the kids have been running around and screaming and throwing themselves down slides (going feral in general) and he’s been sipping on bad coffee and eating pizza that really wasn’t worth the calories, she’s been reliving a day she’d give anything to forget, another Saturday, from twenty-two years ago, when she spent hour after hour perching on the bottom step of the porch, watching down the road, waiting… waiting… waiting… for a family that never came home.
Fuck.
(He really is a jerk.)
“Stevie, take your brother and sister inside,” he says as he kills the engine with one hand, while the opposite thumb jabs the release button on his seatbelt repeatedly.
The kids make it out of the car first—there’s nothing as stubborn as a seatbelt that refuses to be rushed—and Alison and Jason gambol up the white stone path that winds towards the porch, Stevie herding them from behind.
Elizabeth rises to her feet, a slight wobble, as if her legs are stiff—as if he needed confirmation that she hasn’t moved from that spot all day. She gives the kids a warm smile and coos over them, ‘Hi, baby, hi, baby, hi, baby,’ stooping to clutch their heads, one after the other, and press each of them with a kiss; she’s holding back—he can see it in the way her every muscle tenses—trying her hardest to pretend it’s just a normal day, she’s just a normal amount pleased to see them, it was just a normal, totally planned trip and she knew where they were going and when they’d be back, aware that if they pick up on her relief she’ll scare them.
He strides up the path, and as the kids disappear into the house and immediately start screaming about something to do with the TV, she faces him. Her smile turns watery and her whole body sags.
“Baby.” He throws his arms around her and hugs her so tight an atom would have a hard time squeezing itself between them. “I’m so sorry, I—”
She shakes her head, her face nestled in the hollow in front of his shoulder, her hair silky against his neck, and with her hands on his chest she pushes him back just enough that she can look up at him. Her expression is pleading, like she’s the one who needs forgiving. “I quit. I told Conrad I’m not going. I’ll hand in my notice on Monday.”
The words are rushed, desperate, like she’s afraid if she doesn’t get them out fast enough he and the kids will disappear again.
And this—her decision to stay—is what he wanted, isn’t it?
He might have snapped, might have backed her into a corner, might have forced this decision from her when he saw she was less concerned about leaving him and the kids than she was about letting down Conrad, but still, this outcome, it’s what he wanted, isn’t it?
So, he wins. They win. Their family wins.
And, he should be happy, yes?
Yet, as he cups her cheek and brushes his thumb back and forth, back and forth over the sweep of her cheekbone, and stares into her eyes and finds terror gazing back, this is not happiness.
This is gratitude. This is guilt. This is him not taking back what he did—how could he when it means her staying with him? This is him knowing he’ll spend the rest of his life not forgiving himself for it—how could he when his jealousy has hurt her like this?
(Victory has never tasted so bitter.)
///
iii. in which the circus comes to town
Elizabeth leaving the CIA doesn’t remove Conrad from their life—he’s still a friend, still a parent of a kid who goes to the same school as theirs, still a fellow attendee of spy reunions and dinner parties—but it does cause a shift: most tangibly, no longer working with Conrad means Elizabeth spends far less time with him, while her acceptance of a position at UVA, where Henry teaches, means she spends far more time with Henry; but on another level, one less measurable than hours spent in each other’s company, letting Conrad down in the way that she did introduces a disappointment, a distance to their relationship—a distance which only widens when he retires as director of the CIA and embarks on political campaigns. After a successful 2012 presidential bid, he invites Elizabeth and Henry to his inauguration, so they’re not not close, but the seats they’re allocated place them in the platform’s outermost ring.
It’s almost a year and a half after the day of the inauguration—nine since the afternoon Elizabeth chose Henry and the kids—when Conrad steps back into their life in a major way.
///
Henry waits until the parade of police cars and black SUVs is no more than a flash of blue lights in a cloud of dust barrelling along the track away from the horse farm before he approaches the kitchen, eases the door open and peers inside.
Elizabeth is sitting at the table, an untouched glass of water in front of her, her chair angled towards the now empty seat at the end; she’s staring through the window that looks out onto the track, but what with the way her hands lie limp in her lap and her mouth hangs open, she seems too dazed to be watching the motorcade.
In the pause while he studies her, his thumb rubs the doorknob he’s clutching; ever since Jason announced—in the blasé way only a thirteen-year-old self-proclaimed anarchist can manage—that they’re having a state visit, a nervous feeling has been stirring inside him, like a pot of water never quite reaching simmering, and it’s as if, on some level, he’s hoping this action might cause it to dissipate.
(It doesn’t.)
“Everything okay?” he says.
The silence that hangs over the room is so thick that it turns the air solid. It feels like his voice bounces off of it.
(OKAY? Okay? okay?)
Elizabeth blinks several times and slowly turns to face him; the dazed expression doesn’t fade.
“He wants me to be his secretary of state.”
His thumb freezes. For a moment, his mind does, too.
“Secretary of state…?” he says, when the cogs resume turning. “As in…” He searches, and searches, and searches, but there really is no other way to phrase it. “…secretary of state?”
“Yeah,” she says, though it’s more a huff than a word. “That was pretty much my reaction, too.”
Maybe he shouldn’t be surprised, not when there’s the Vincent Marsh of it all—what with the ongoing Iran peace talks and President Shiraz’s upcoming visit, the former secretary of state’s death couldn’t have come at a worse time. Such a pivotal moment requires strong diplomatic representation, so it makes sense that Conrad will want to make a swift replacement. Which, of course, then raises the question of whom to ask to step in. Elizabeth is well-versed in global politics, her time at the CIA’s given her an unparalleled understanding of the Middle East situation, and during her tenure at UVA she’s written a number of influential papers—plus, she has a mind made for out-of-the-box thinking, perfect for a president who’s keen to break from the constraints of convention. But perhaps more than anything, despite how she let Conrad down when she refused his offer of station chief, he trusts her—and, when you’re the president, surrounding yourself with people you can trust might just be the most important thing.
So, yes, maybe Conrad showing up like this and offering her one of the most powerful jobs in the country—in the world—makes sense. Maybe they should have seen it coming.
He lets go of the doorknob, as tentatively as one might let go of a float when it feels like a toss-up as to whether one will sink or swim, then he ventures into the room and lowers himself onto the vacated seat; Conrad’s glass of water, also untouched, stands on the table in front of him. For a while, he studies her. One hand rests in his lap, the other on the table; the thumb of the latter rubs the side of his index finger. Still, that nervous stirring doesn’t fade.
“What are you thinking?” he says.
Her turn to study him. A shadow of apprehension lurks beneath an otherwise neutral expression. It feels like she doesn’t want to give away which way she’s leaning, that she first needs to figure out which way he’s leaning, that she doesn’t want to admit she’s considering accepting the position, only to find herself being shot down again.
(He hates himself for this.
As he should.
Had he kept his jealousy in check, she’d feel able to say whether or not she wants the job without first having to game out his reaction.)
“What are you thinking?” she says.
Apprehension lurks in her tone, too.
It doesn’t suit her, no more than a lion suits a cage.
His thumb stills. He leans forward in his chair and brings both hands to rest, loosely clasped, on the tabletop, his forearms pressing against the hard wooden edge. “I’m thinking…” A pause, while he lets his gaze drift up from his hands, up, up, up, to meet her eye. “…that I can’t think of anyone better suited to the position.” He smiles, small but bright. “You’re going to be incredible.”
She stares at him, eyes wide. She couldn’t look more shocked if he’d told her he thought they should both quit academia and join the circus. “You think I should accept?”
He shrugs. “Why not?”
“Because we’ll need to move house, because the kids’ll need to move schools, because there’ll be non-stop travelling. We’ll have no privacy, we’ll be followed everywhere by security, not to mention…” She rattles off reasons, no longer looking at him, her hands a cloud of gesticulations, as if she’s trying to distract him—or maybe herself—from the fact she wouldn’t be able to list so many downsides to the job so readily had she not seriously been considering the position.
He cuts her off just as she starts talking about bug sweeps and agents riffling through her underwear. “Do you want the job?”
She studies him. Once again, that searching expression, looking for the tripwire, the pitfall, the unmarked landmine.
Then she offers him a smile, one which is weak more than genuine, one which looks like it’s meant to reassure him, though he doesn’t know what she’s hoping to reassure him of.
“I’m happy with our life now,” she says.
Which might be a truth, but it’s not the truth. Transparency isn’t the goal here, but the offering up of a Get Out of Jail Free card. This is how they draw a line under the whole idea, without him being the jerk who holds her back from a role that she wants and without her having anything to resent him for, then they can go on as they are, he no different (assuming he doesn’t recognise the pass he’s been given, doesn’t have to reckon with what it means that she felt the need to give him such a pass), she telling herself over and over that she didn’t really want the position and it probably wouldn’t have worked out anyway and she’s truly—truly—happy with her life as it is.
But he wants more for her than just a mantra.
She deserves more than just a mantra.
So, he says again, “Do you want the job?”
Her gaze dips as she gives the barest huff of a laugh; it’s a small thing, blink and you’d miss it, but it acknowledges he’s seen her—he’s seen her—and she appreciates it, maybe even feels a little bad that she thought he wouldn’t or that he might actually avail himself of the offer. Though, of course, she shouldn’t. The blame isn’t hers to own.
When she looks up at him again, the mask has come down. “I don’t know if want is the right word.”
“How would you feel if you said no?”
Her instant resistance to the suggestion shows in tension around her mouth, a furrow in her brow. But her answer isn’t immediate. Instead, she allows silence to seep into the kitchen, carrying with it the nickers of the horses, the rumble of the tumble dryer, and Alison’s voice from the far end of the house, ‘God, Jason, not everything is a conspiracy.’ (An eye-roll can be a sound.)
She stares at her lap, and fiddles with her wedding ring, like she’s trying to wiggle it further onto her finger. With a shake of the head, she says, “I don’t want to let Conrad down. Not again.”
Nine years ago, this allegiance she has to Conrad, this need to please him and to not let him down got under Henry’s skin, but now it doesn’t bother him. He wishes he could say it’s because he’s matured, he’s learned from his mistake, he’s become a more evolved and enlightened man, but the truth of it is Conrad no longer registers as a threat: the time when something might happen—wouldn’t, but might—has passed; the dynamics have shifted; the bonds in their chemistry, broken the last time she let him down, have reconfigured.
And it’s a relief. A weight lifted.
Free from that burden, he can give her what he’s always wanted to give her: the best side of him.
“Then I think we need to call a family meeting,” he says. “Let the kids know what’s happening.”
She looks up at him. Questioning turns to realisation, realisation to rumination, rumination to a worried wince.
“What if they say no?” she says.
One of them will, but it won’t matter.
He’ll hold the deciding vote.
(“It’s your call, babe, but I’m all in.”)
///
iv. in which two drops of blood are spilled
For the most part, jealousy when it comes to Conrad is a thing of the past, but Henry’s only human (despite the popular opinion) and he’ll admit to a couple of backward steps.
Firstly, the revelation that Stevie is sleeping with Harrison Dalton isn’t not triggering, as the kids would say. There’s something about it that niggles at him, that causes that irrational fear to rouse again, as if some lizard brain part of him thinks the romantic predilections of one generation might reflect those of another. That and the way Elizabeth and Conrad fight, like lovers whose affair has gone sour, at the dinner arranged to strategise their public response to their kids’ leaked post-coital photographs, makes him worry—just for moment—that maybe something did happen.
But he knows it didn’t. Knows it.
And fortunately (unfortunately?) he has plenty of other very real, very much more important worries to distract him, what with Elizabeth being made acting president, Stevie confessing she’s toting a bag of heroin, Air Force One being hacked, his sudden role in recruiting and handling a Russian asset…, so his mind doesn’t have the chance to linger on it.
On the occasion when it does get the better of him, usually late at night when he ought to be sleeping, he resorts to jigsaw puzzles to quieten that worry, rather than fucking Elizabeth senseless.
So, you know… Progress.
Then, there’s the moment at Walter Reed, before Conrad gives his address to the nation about having a brain tumour and needing surgery, when he mentions how on the night of the Japanese state dinner, in his disinhibited condition (a mass pressing on the frontal lobe will do that to a person), he told Elizabeth she looked, ‘Fetching.’
Henry brushes it off, all light-hearted like. “Well…she did.”
But inside, his mind is spinning.
Does it mean something that Conrad said that? Does it indicate his true feelings? Is he attracted to Elizabeth? Is that why he called her ‘fetching’? And what about Elizabeth? How come she didn’t tell him? Is it because she knew it didn’t mean anything and so thought it too insignificant to be worth mentioning? Is it because she knew it did mean something and so thought it too significant to risk mentioning?
And as he wraps an arm around her, rubs her hip and pulls her against his side, his touch lingers a little too long, grips her a little too tight, and it takes a moment for him to regain control of his mind—it means nothing, nothing happened, acknowledging someone looks attractive isn’t the same as being attracted to them—then, when he finally feels steady enough, he lets go of her again.
So yes, although for the most part his jealousy when it comes to Conrad is a thing of the past, he does have the odd backward step, but they are few and far between, and to focus on them would be to hone in on a few drops of blood in the ocean and from them conclude there is no water, the whole ocean is blood, through and through.
(He’s no saint, he knows—and he doesn’t claim to be. But if he’s going to be judged, all he asks is that he be judged fairly.)
///
v. in which everything is fucked (probably)
Then, it happens.
Twenty-nine years after he first met Conrad Dalton at a dive bar not far from Langley, twenty-nine years after he first sensed a world of secrets held in the sinuous curves of each S in ‘Bess’, twenty-nine years after Elizabeth first told him, ‘You don’t have anything to worry about,’ and he knew, for the sake of their marriage, he had to bury his fear deep inside him and do his best never to show it, he finds the thing which, for the last twenty-nine years, he’s most dreaded is now splashed out in black and white for the whole world to see. A truth, it seems, everyone else now believes.
Elizabeth McCord and Conrad Dalton’s Shared History at the CIA: Rumours of an ‘intimate relationship’. By Terrence Robinson.
An anonymous source has shared with the Washington Chronicle specific allegations of McCord’s intimate relationship with Conrad Dalton, dating back almost 20 years. An anonymous source worked closely with Dalton and McCord during their time in Baghdad and offers a damning account…
Though the prose might leave much to be desired, it’s effective. The article whips Henry’s mind into a frenzy: his fear isn’t unfounded; he isn’t the only one to see that Elizabeth and Conrad had chemistry; wasn’t Baghdad a high pressure environment? weren’t they working together closely? and when two people with a spark—a spark of any sort, a spark no matter how they might initially define it—are in a high pressure environment, working together closely…
He knows nothing happened—he trusts her completely. Some ex-coworker just wanted to look important to a reporter; the article’s nothing but a hit piece; the world thinks she’s fair game now—throw at her whatever you like: arrows of lies, grenades of misogyny—given she’s about to announce her candidacy for the presidency.
Nothing—nothing—happened.
Ever.
Yet still, there’s this voice inside him; with a whisper it goads him, ‘But what if it did…?’
The only way to silence it is for him to hear her deny it.
Problem is, he can hardly come out and ask—it’ll sound like an accusation—so, that evening, as they take a seat at the kitchen table, she at the head with a plate loaded with a spread of leftovers foraged from refrigerator Tupperware, he in the place adjacent with an ice-cold bottle of some kind of water/vitamin/juice that Stevie’s got him into, he talks around it, hoping just mention of it will be enough for her to leap in and reassure him—nothing happened—then, with the voice silenced once again, they can carry on as they were before.
Unfortunately, she sees straight through him.
“Are you asking me if I had an affair with Conrad?”
From there, it spirals. He denies it, in a way that only confirms it. She gets defensive, as she has every right to. The landline starts to ring, though not soon enough.
It culminates in him spewing out, “You were halfway around the world, it was a rough time for us. I would have understood—”
Because, he would have understood. If it meant keeping her in his life, he would have understood.
(Betrayal isn’t what he’s afraid of. It’s losing her.)
After a volley of, Nothing happened! / I know. / Ever! / I know., she throws down her napkin, rises from her seat and strides over to the telephone. She snatches up the handset and answers it with an over-loud, “Yeah?”
Apparently, they have a guest.
Tonight’s interruption comes courtesy of the governor of Massachusetts.
///
It’s over two hours later when finally she joins him in their bedroom.
The clomp, clomp, clomp of high heels on the landing precedes her; the main light blazing warns her he’s still awake.
He’s sitting on the window ledge, waiting, has been all this time; the perfect spot to see her as she strides through the doorway.
“Everything okay?” he says.
He has no idea what the governor wanted or why it warranted a visit from Mike B and Jay, but he’s hoping if they can focus on that then maybe they can breeze past the whole thing about him reading the article they agreed they wouldn’t read and fishing for reassurance he really shouldn’t need. She said it didn’t happen. He knows it didn’t happen. He should have kept his mouth shut, rather than risk hurting her and their marriage, should have dealt with his fear another way.
“You mean have I slept with anyone else in the last two hours?” She stops in the doorway to their walk-through closet, facing away from him, and holding onto the jamb for balance, she lifts one foot, yanks off her shoe and lobs it so it hits the bathroom door with a thunk and then bounces over the floor like a dropped football, before she swaps sides and does the same with the other. “Are there any other indiscretions for you to so generously forgive?”
So no, she’s not going to let them breeze past it. And, really, why should she? He’s fucked up. Seriously fucked up. The question now is how’s he going to fix it? Or maybe just, can he fix it? He knew from the very beginning this fear could be their undoing. What if this is it? What if he’s finally done it? What if he’s broken them?
A feeling as heavy as a lead apron settles on his chest. He tries for a breath, but beneath that weight his lungs struggle to rise.
“I didn’t mean to imply—”
“What? That I slept my way to the top?” Back still to him, she jerks open the second drawer of the dresser. “That I cheated on you with my boss, then lied about it, just went about my life like nothing happened?” She shakes her head, and with a pair of flannel pyjamas tucked under her arm, she slams the drawer shut again. “I invited him to our vow renewal, for Christ’s sake. So, what was that? Do you think I was rubbing it in your face? Parading my affair in front of you while we celebrated our marriage?”
“Of course not,” he says.
She spins around. There’s so much anger radiating from her that it’s at once terrifying and yet oddly reassuring—no whisper can stand up to this. “Then why ask?” she all but yells at him.
In the silence that shout carves out, his pulse pounds in his ears; from the way the vein in her neck throbs, he reckons hers does too.
Then comes the distant sound of a toilet flushing.
The kids.
They both look to the open doorway that leads to the hall. They wait. The silence feels thicker now, more tense. He holds his breath.
From the floor below, there’s the creak of a door opening, the pad of footsteps over the carpet, the soft clunk of another door closing.
Then, nothing.
He waits a couple seconds more, just to be safe, then eases down from his perch on the window ledge, walks over to the door, his footsteps as light and quiet as he can manage, and pushes it to.
They might be at odds over this, but there’s no doubt on their agreement that they can’t let it affect the kids.
He steps back from the door and turns to her. Studies her. She’s retreated to the armchair by his bedside table, put the pyjamas down on its seat, and with her back to him is unbuttoning her blouse; the silk casts soft shimmers with each movement, like moonlight catching on mist. He needs to get through to her, needs her to see it wasn’t a lack of belief or trust in her that caused him to ask. Or not to ask. To talk around it. (Maybe if he’d just come out and said what he was actually thinking, they wouldn’t now be in this situation.)
“Look…” he says. “You remember when Stevie saw me with my handler and you thought I might be having an affair—”
She turns her chin to her shoulder as she shucks off her shirt, and shoots him a glare that’s as harsh as her hiss. “I didn’t think you were having an affair!”
He holds his hands up, placating. “No. I know.” She’s right, she didn’t—she said she didn’t. Just like he doesn’t believe this now. And that’s his point, if only he could get it out. “But you still had to ask.”
She shakes her head. “That was totally different.” She reaches around and unclasps her bra, slips the straps down her arms and chucks it to the floor, then grabs the pyjama top and wrestles it on. “You were lying to me—about working on your book, about being in the archives. You were sneaking around behind my back. Our daughter saw you with another woman!”
Once again, all true. But she isn’t listening to what he’s saying.
“I’m not trying to compare them.”
“Good.” She snatches the pyjama bottoms from the chair and stalks towards the bathroom. “Because I’m done talking about this.”
His gaze follows her, but he doesn’t move from the spot.
“Elizabeth…” he says, but it’s half-hearted.
He knows she isn’t going to stop, knows she isn’t going to take in a word he says when she’s this incensed.
The bathroom door slams. It sounds like an underscore.
Done.
(He can’t let that word apply to them too.)
///
When she emerges from the bathroom, she’s swapped her slacks for the pyjama bottoms, she’s removed her make-up, leaving her looking drawn, and she smells of toothpaste. Minty cold. She walks by him as if he doesn’t exist, switches off the main light, so the room is lit only by the icy white glow of the bedside lamps, then climbs into bed. She stretches for her lamp and turns it off too, then nestles down on her side, facing away from him. Hidden beneath the covers like that, back curved, limbs curled into the foetal position, she no longer seems angry, just small, like the world is pressing in on her from all angles—think of car crushers, think of vehicles which can withstand thousands of Newtons of force being reduced to a 3ft cube.
She probably didn’t think he’d be adding to that pressure too.
He wanders over and lowers himself onto the chair on her side of the bed, then sits with his back hunched, his elbows resting on his thighs, his hands folded loosely in space between his knees. Her eyes are open and given where he’s sitting he must be in her line of vision, but her gaze’s so distant it feels like she’s staring straight through him. Still, he looks at her as if she were looking at him as he speaks.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have suggested there might be any truth to the article. I trust you completely.” He pauses, gives that a chance to sink in. Hopes that sinks in. “The thing is, there’s this voice in my head—and it has nothing to do with you or how much I trust you—but it says, ‘What if something did happen?’ It isn’t doubt. I don’t doubt you. And I know I should just ignore it, but…” His chest tightens. Why couldn’t he just ignore it? “…I don’t know…” He shakes his head. “…maybe it’s like when you’re a kid and you press on a bruise to see how much it’ll hurt.” His head stills. When he looks to her again, he finds her staring back at him, eyes more grey than blue, but definitely staring at him. “You’re everything to me. Everything.” His voice catches and he has to stop—swallow that feeling back down before he can continue. “And if something were to happen and I were to lose you…” He searches for a way to finish that thought, but there’s nothing, only the same abyss he feels each time he thinks about losing her. His lips flinch at one side, and he admits, “I just don’t want to lose you.”
She eases herself up from lying and brings her legs around, over the edge of the mattress, so she sits, facing him.
He holds her stare. Continues. “I shouldn’t have read the article—I should have ignored it like you said—but I did read it and it stirred up all this…” He motions in front of his chest, like he’s agitating the surface of a pool. “Fear.” His hand stills, then returns to rest with the other, in the space between his knees. “I know none of it’s true—I don’t doubt you—but that voice…it wouldn’t stop. And I thought if I could just hear you say it—hear you tell me nothing happened—maybe then it would stop. But it was wrong of me to put that on you, and I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
In the silence that follows, she studies him, gaze flitting back and forth across his expression like it’s a dot-to-dot she’s trying to solve. A frown gathers on her brow, slight and puzzled, and when she meets his eye, the look in her own eyes is pleading. “If you were struggling, why didn’t you tell me?” Her voice is soft, a quiet devastation; she sounds more hurt by his omission than she was by his accusation.
His instinct is to lean back in his chair, cross his arms, get on the defensive—Tell her? How was he supposed to tell her?—but he forces himself to remain still, to wait out that feeling, before he answers.
“I didn’t want to hurt you or for you to think I don’t trust you.”
Her eyebrows quirk, and the look she’s giving him turns full-on incredulous. “So rather than trusting me enough to tell me how you were feeling, you thought it’d be better to lie about it?”
He has to admit, she has a point. Not trusting her with the truth in order to avoid her thinking he doesn’t trust her hardly screams ‘logical’. But he’s never claimed this fear cares much for logic.
“I didn’t want it to come between us,” he says.
Which, once again, upon hearing it back: Logic? What logic?
“How’s that working out for you?”
Her incredulous look remains, but it’s joined by a glimmer in her eyes and a sharpness at the corners of her lips.
So, now she’s teasing him. Which he never thought he would welcome, yet here he is.
He shrugs, both mouth and shoulders. “Could be better.”
She huffs, and her gaze dips—a reluctant concession that he’s drawn a laugh from her.
(The laughs he has to win are always sweeter.)
When she looks up at him again, her eyes have warmed, all the grey thawed, and she pats the space beside her on the bed.
He eases up from the chair and joins her. The way the mattress moulds beneath them creates a basin, causing them to lean into each other, so his hip rests against her hip, her thigh rests against his thigh. He looks at her hand where it lies, once again, in her lap and slides his hand over to cover it, then he turns his head and meets her eye.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
She gives him a look that’s no doubt aiming for stern, but the smile beneath breaks through. “You’re lucky that I love you.”
“I know,” he says, with a soft smile of his own.
(He is lucky. Luckier than he deserves.)
A moment passes, then her expression sobers, concern creeping in from the fringes like an encroaching shadow.
“Would it help if I told you nothing happened?”
He shakes his head, his chin tucking to his chest, while his gaze falls away to his lap. “You don’t have to do that.”
She’s already told him, and he already knows.
Besides, he’s not going to put her in that position: she owes him nothing, especially not her denial. His fear isn’t—and shouldn’t be—her burden. What he needs is to find other ways, better ways, to deal with it. Ones that don’t demand her reassurance.
As he thinks this, as he starts plotting out a deeper hole in which to bury this fear the next time it inevitably stirs, she moves her hand beneath his, turns it over so that his fingers lie in her palm.
She grips them tight. “Nothing happened.”
And that plotting stalls.
Once, she told him, ‘You don’t have anything to worry about.’
Back then, his fear stood in the way of him believing her.
But now, as he turns and looks at her and finds no hurt, no judgment—no encumbrance—looking back, just a willingness to help him in whatever way she can, he sees the fear itself was never the problem, and if only he can trust her—as in every other way he trusts her—to share its weight with him, maybe then those words, ‘You don’t have anything to worry about,’ will be true.
He squeezes her hand. (It feels like faith.) “Thank you.”