We all clinked glasses. “What are we toasting to?” I asked, and Jimmy gave me a look like I’d just asked the dumbest question in the world.
“Oh, Beth,” he said. “To Texas, of course.”
—
When I told Colleen that we were moving to Texas so Matt could run Jimmy’s campaign, she’d rolled her eyes and said, “Seriously, Beth?” like we were doing it just to piss her off. I’d explained all the reasons why I’d agreed to go, and her face had softened just a little, and then she’d said, “Well, at least the happy couples can be together again. You’ll be like one big dysfunctional polygamist family, all living under the same roof.”
“Ha-ha,” I said.
“Just don’t stay there, okay?”
“Oh my God, never.”
Colleen gave me a look. “Never say never. Weird things happen in Texas.”
—
The next morning, I woke up all alone in our room, and even though it wasn’t even 8:00 a.m., I had a panicky feeling like I’d overslept. I got dressed quickly and went upstairs to find Ash, Matt, and Jimmy all sitting around the kitchen table drinking coffee. It was clear that they’d already eaten — the remnants of their breakfast were in front of them — and they all turned to look at me as I walked in, making me feel self-conscious.
Viv was in her high chair with a handful of sliced strawberries in front of her, and when she saw me, she held one up in the air proudly, and then shoved it in her mouth. Ash got up to pour me a cup of coffee, and I accepted it and then turned to Matt. “Why didn’t you wake me up?” I asked.
“You were really out,” he said. “I figured I’d let you sleep since you didn’t have anything to get up for.”
This was true, but strangely embarrassing — Ash had to get up with Viv and Matt and Jimmy had work to do, but I had no real reason to get out of bed. No one was relying on me and I didn’t have anywhere to be. I could sleep all day if I wanted to. But from that day on, I set the alarm on my phone to make sure I was awake at the same time everyone else was, sometimes racing to the kitchen to be the one to start the coffee, like I had something to prove.
“I made some oatmeal,” Ash said, getting up again to get me a bowl even though she’d just sat down.
“I’ll get it,” I said, following her to the stove, but she swatted me away, spooning some oatmeal into the dish and topping it with cut strawberries.
As I ate, Matt and Jimmy went over their schedule for the week. That afternoon, Jimmy was meeting with a group of small business owners in the area, and Matt was briefing him on things he should cover. “We want to get on their radar,” Matt said. “We want them to care about this race.” Jimmy nodded and Matt continued to coach him. “Here’s the thing we really need to shove down their throats — you’re young and you’re coming to this position with a whole new perspective.”
“Got it,” Jimmy said.
“This race isn’t something they’re paying too much attention to, so we want to give them a reason to get excited, to remember your name.”
“That I can do,” Jimmy said. He turned to me. “Beth, did you get to see the world-famous Jimmy Dillon campaign office yet?”
I couldn’t help but laugh when Jimmy talked about himself in the third person, no matter how often he did it. “I peeked in there yesterday,” I said.
“Well, that won’t do. Come on, I’ll show you where the magic happens.”
I wasn’t quite finished with my breakfast, but I stood up to follow them anyway. I carried my bowl over to the sink, but Ash intercepted and took it from me. “Don’t worry about this,” she said. “Go check out the office.”
—
Campaign headquarters was set up in the den on the first floor. “We never used this room anyway,” Ash had said when she showed it to me. She’d opened the door briefly and then closed it again so that I’d just caught a glimpse. I had a feeling she hated the clutter in the room — there were two desks in there, facing away from each other and pushed against opposite walls, and all around were signs and stacks of papers, boxes of posters and push cards, the tiny little pieces of cardboard with Jimmy’s picture, bio, and platform on them.
“See?” Jimmy said, handing one of the push cards to me. “They’re small enough so people can put them in their pockets. And you can only imagine how many people are dying to carry a picture of me around with them.”
Matt shook his head behind Jimmy, but he looked amused. There wasn’t all that much to see in the office, so after a few minutes I told them I’d let them get to work.
“Wait,” Jimmy said. He gave me a large pile of the push cards and winked. “So you can campaign for me.”
I took the cards from him. “Of course,” I said. “I’ll start knocking on doors now.” But the thing was, from then on I always had a bunch of his push cards with me. During the campaign we all carried them to hand out at events and lunches and sometimes to random people we met. Once, I gave one to a lady in the grocery store as we chatted in the checkout line. It became such a habit over those ten months that after the election was over, I sometimes found myself reaching for them when I met someone new.
Jimmy’s father had footed the bill for a photographer and a messaging and design consultant, which resulted in a two-day photo shoot where Jimmy was captured in ten different outfits and five different locations. Matt was there for the whole thing, and afterward he said to me, “I’m starting to think Jimmy secretly wants to be a model.”
The picture that they chose to use on all the promotional materials was a shot of Jimmy standing outside, somewhere in Texas, nothing but open land behind him. He was wearing dress pants and a button-down shirt that was rolled up to his elbows, and his hands were on his hips as he looked straight at the camera, smiling but looking confident. Underneath him was his campaign motto, “Let’s Get to Work,” which I thought sounded cheesy at first, but grew to like. During those months, I saw this image of Jimmy about four hundred times a day — there were posters and push cards littered all over the house — and after a while when I looked at him in real life, I could almost see the slogan underneath him, beckoning me to get to work.
It also became something Jimmy said often, mostly when Matt was trying to get him to focus. That day, when it became clear that Matt was getting impatient and wanted Jimmy to stop talking to me and start being productive, he stood up straight and said loudly, “Okay, let’s get to work!” saluting me as I walked out of the office.
—
As soon as Matt agreed to run Jimmy’s campaign, he thought of little else. He did research on past commissioners, read as much as he could about the oil and gas industry in Texas, like he was cramming for a final. Matt had told me once how much he loved school, how he missed it all the time. “How very Harvard of you,” I’d said, rolling my eyes just a little. Because he wasn’t talking about the parties or hanging out in the dining hall — no, he missed studying for tests, the satisfaction that came from gathering information and making it his own. And as I watched him run the campaign, this was clear.
Each night, he took stacks of paper to bed with him, highlighting and making notes in the margins. “I feel like there’s so much I need to catch up on,” he said. Often, I woke up in the morning to find Matt sleeping with papers on top of him, a highlighter still clenched in his hand. Our sheets were soon streaked with neon yellow marks, but he didn’t seem to notice.
Matt’s approach was to have Jimmy focus on fracking and the environment. (A few months earlier, I’d never even heard Matt say the word fracking, and now he probably used it a hundred times a day, like it had always been a part of his vocabulary, like he was an expert on the whole situation.)