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“Congresswoman Frost, just the person I wanted to see,” says a disembodied voice behind the newspaper Diane is reading. She flicks down the top half of the paper with a sharp crinkle and breaks into a beaming smile at the sight of Toby Ziegler in the doorway of the Mural Room, in a black suit that’s actually ironed and made of nicer fabric than anything else in his closet.
“Imagine my surprise when President Bartlet phoned—welcome back to the land of the living, by the way—and told me in so many words to come over,” Diane responds, folding the newspaper into neat quarters and setting it down on the coffee table. Standing to her full height, she greets Toby, eye to eye, with a firm but polite hug lasting no longer than she’s comfortable with, anything to lessen the time it takes for the spice of his cologne to settle near her face. “As soon as he mentioned you two, I couldn’t say no. Not that I would say no to the President.”
“Sit, please.” Toby chooses a spot on the left side of a loveseat, crossing a leg over the other knee. Returning to the seat opposite of him, Diane tugs at a button on her hunter-green blazer and untangles the appointment tag hanging around her neck. He asks, “What do you call that dramatic threat to filibuster on ED funding for rural-area grants last September?”
“That was a unique case. That was me and my balls of steel.” Diane laughs, jovial. Toby’s facade cracks, also amused. “Anyway, Ms. Fiderer—Debbie, is that her name?—said I could wait in here. I like her.”
“She has her favorites.”
“You’re not looking so bad yourself.” With a tilt of her head and a curious look, she asks, “What’s with the outfit?”
“I had a thing earlier this morning…” he replies, with something akin to restrained emotion.
“Oh, yeah,” Diane draws out. “Huck’s bris. Mazel tov, by the way.”
“How do you—” Toby starts, then pauses, realizing the intervention. “Andy told you?”
“She might’ve.”
“She did.”
“She called me the day before last,” Diane explains. She holds her palms up in deference when Toby’s practically exuding annoyance at someone who really doesn’t deserve it. “Look, if your ex-wife is calling me at two in the morning, I’m gonna do my best to help her. She sounded…bad.”
The memory appears like a ghost passing from one room to another.
Diane’s phone ringing while she’d been half-awake reading the CDC budget copy a committee assistant had gotten hold of. A rough Hey, Andy, everything okay? led to the confession that Andy was holding two sticky pacifiers in her hand while watching two newborns struggling to stay asleep in their tiny cribs. The disappointment and trepidation in her voice wondering if this thing with Huck was the right thing to do; all the people coming over to her cramped condo when the last thing she’d been in the mood for is to even get properly dressed, especially when she was still in the fresh, ugly, stages of recovering from childbirth.
Especially when she was also planning a move in a few short weeks to the house on D Street. A really nice house, dark brick, with a cluster of hyacinths planted out front.
Without any kids of her own but instead a handful of younger cousins, all Diane could offer was her own opinion. Though, after she’d walked Andy through the bris ceremony for the second time and Andy gave her a faint Thanks, Di, which resembled more resignation than genuine gratitude as was their usual, they moved to a quieter, easier conversation for what felt like a cluster of heartbeats before Andy needed to get up again. Diane didn’t feel like getting in between Andy and her ex-husband for another round of whatever it was they still needed to work through. She’d done that once already. She’s happier on the outskirts of their home life, happier when she works with Andrea on the minutiae of legislation.
Diane’s happier with Andrea happy, whether that’s sharing spiced ciders, or whispering during movies, or complaining about the fax machine, or scribbling footnotes in the margins of a letter the same way a book club would swap notes. Diane justifies it as good for her philanthropic spirit that she’s counting down the days until Andy strolls into the Rayburn building in a suit, looking like her old self again but wiser by several years, bringing Molly and Huck on their first field trip of many to the Hill. Sooner than later, otherwise Andy is out of a job. The good people of Maryland are counting on her, however divisive her pregnancy may have been.
Maybe Diane’s next goal should be to lobby for Congressional maternity leave. Real leave, not whatever scraps leadership allows them to take. Diane regrets not having the idea several months earlier.
Toby’s voice breaks through Diane’s thoughts like the dial tone that remained on the line after Andy had hung up. “She…” A heavy sigh. “Andy wasn’t in the room. She didn’t want to see Huck go through it. And Huck was pretty adamant at making his opinion known.”
“Fair, on all counts. Which name did you choose?” she asks, trying to lighten the mood they both shouldn’t be lingering in.
“Netanel. Molly’s Hebrew name is Chaya; she took pretty well to the crowd. I’d show you photographs, but the camera’s in my office.”
“After we’re done here, then.”
Toby glances at the clock on the mantel, which Diane copies, curious how long it’s been since she first sat down. He blows out his cheeks. “Josh shouldn’t be taking much longer.”
Diane tucks thin strands of dark bangs behind her ears. A polite ask comes to mind, with no more meaning than what she’d overheard in the hall. “Word on the street is he confronted Atwood in the men’s room the other day. You wouldn’t know what his state of mind is right now?”
“I didn’t peg you as somebody who fraternizes with the enemy, Diane.”
“These are desperate times we’re living in. And I wasn’t. So, Josh?”
“Fine. As well as we’re all capable of doing on zero hours of sleep.”
“So, normal?”
“As normal as it gets running a country after a large-scale crisis.”
Inching forward, she has half a mind to knock his ankle with her heel, a bygone from years back. Freshmen representatives, freshmen staffers. “Chin up, Ziegler. It gets better, or haven’t I taught you that already?”
He looks away, almost nostalgic for the same years gone by, then turns back toward her, brown eyes deep as mud. Like a shallow puddle in a yard. Doesn’t help Diane’s eyes are also brown, also just as shallow. “I think I taught you that.”
“Mm, no, I think it’s the Massachusetts way of life.”
“Also a New York way of life.”
“We’re built differently.”
“Can’t we meet in the middle?”
“Connecticut?”
“That’d be Josh.”
“Ah.” Diane clicks her tongue. “Massachusetts way, it is.”
“You know, the marriage offer still stands.”
“For Andrea or for me?” she asks, because yes, Diane knows about the house.
“Either of you.”
“Well, last time I checked, you’re still not a lesbian. Unless you’ve had some sort of epiphany about your gender?” She quirks a brow again, trying to swim through that thick puddle of mud in Toby’s eyes and weathered face to see clearer waters. But it’s mud, ankle-deep, earthy, tough.
“No, I’m not a… Believe me, if I ever did, I’d be first in line for your hand every time,” Toby admits, too self-aware, much to his chagrin. “You could always marry Andy. I know you and she…”
“Yeah.” Diane presses her fingers to her lips, feigning contemplation of his proposal, hiding a small grin when she tries to imagine the three of them entering some sort of group agreement. “That ship’s sailed for everybody included. And it isn’t yet legal where I live.”
“Isn’t it?” Toby asks, a small crease between his brows emphasizing the confusion, and when she shakes her head no, he makes a sound, a sort of good-humored pity towards her situation. “I’m—I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me.”
Diane shrugs the apology off, having heard it too many times before, and she wishes for it to not ache each time. “Andy did. I get it, she’s your one.”
If he could just figure out how to love her without a mandate attached.
Toby supplants, “You would’ve been, too.”
She’s about to hit back with yet another line about how she’s very happily single at the moment, very much in between fragile heartbreaks, when there are two quick knocks on the door in succession, and Josh Lyman enters the room, looking a bit worse for wear with an unshaven jaw and deep-set eyes, what little light is left in his face slowly departing as he greets Diane. He’d never gotten along well with her, thought of her as a joke to the party, dragging them further left in what Diane considers a necessary game of tug-of-war.
Diane is only doing her job. The ensuing grudge that she was holding back progress more than encouraging it is a fight she will not win with the Deputy Chief of Staff. Still, a favorite game. Still, it gets eyes on the issues nobody dares to touch—experience tells her so.
“Congresswoman, thank you for your patience,” Josh says.
“Not to worry, I’ve got plenty of it,” she says, silently swallowing down good-natured air and replacing it with practiced poise.
Josh crosses the room quickly, too light on his feet like a ghost, and he sits in the empty chair next to Toby, clasped hands in his lap. He gives him a cursory glance. “Ready?”
Toby nods.
Time to get down to business. Even if she’s already been counted out of this particular race based on her own certain reputation, Diane Frost is going to make a lasting impression.
“Congresswoman, we’d like to establish you can imagine what the press climate is around here and why we can’t afford to, well, make decisions before we’ve made them...”