Most of it was about the money — Elroy had enough to hire a large staff. She had a scheduler, a campaign manager, a fund-raiser, a speechwriter. For Jimmy, Matt was all of those things put together, and his only help came from Katie and from other volunteers. He was outnumbered. Each time Elroy hired new people, Matt pored over their bios — they all had years of experience in their fields. After she hired the speechwriter, Matt looked defeated. He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I can’t compete with that,” he said. “I don’t know how to do any of this shit. I’m just making it up as I go. Fund-raising is the only thing I really had experience in, and that was for a presidential election. It’s not the same at all. The rest of this? Managing a whole campaign? Writing speeches and press releases? I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“That’s not true,” I said. “You’re a great writer. You’ve done an amazing job so far. Just because you’ve never done these things before doesn’t mean you’re not good at them.”
“That’s exactly what it means,” he said. That was the only time he ever admitted exactly how this campaign made him feel. He was failing just by waking up each day, running a race with his legs tied together, no chance of catching up.
Candace Elroy also had a private plane at her disposal, borrowed from her father’s company, a fact that was always mentioned at least once during one of our long car rides. One day, when we’d spent over ten hours driving, I said, “I bet she has one of those really small planes. The kind that are super scary to fly in because it seems like they could fall right out of the sky. We wouldn’t want to be in a plane like that anyway.”
Everyone in the car, even Jimmy, who was driving, just turned to look at me, and then turned back without saying a word.
I felt horrible for Matt. I really did. He was struggling and there was nothing I could do to make it better. I tried to be supportive, to talk to him about how hard this must be, to reassure him that he was doing all he could, but often it felt like I was making things worse. Once, I said, “It must be so frustrating to put everything into a race and still be losing.” He turned to me, like I was stupid for thinking such a thing, and said, “It’s not like this is a surprise. We always knew this would happen.”
He was so angry that he couldn’t even remember what he was angry about. He shut down in a way I’d never seen before, acting like a sullen teenager, not looking at me when I’d talk to him, grunting in response. Often, I’d say something to him and he’d pretend not to hear me, hoping that I’d go away if he ignored me long enough. I didn’t know how to deal with this, so mostly I’d just stand there and say, “Matt,” over and over, until he’d looked up from whatever he was doing, already annoyed by my presence, and finally answer me. “What?”
—
Ten years earlier, Matt and I had gone to South Africa for our honeymoon. He’d been dying to go to Cape Town and thought a safari would be amazing. I agreed, because I didn’t really care where we went — our honeymoon, I assumed, would be amazing no matter where we were.
The flight to Cape Town was over twenty hours and I barely slept. Still wired from our wedding weekend, I sat awake on the dark plane while Matt snored beside me. We’d both taken Ambien, but it didn’t work for me — I’d woken up after only about thirty minutes, feeling nauseous and disoriented. When we landed, I was so exhausted that I had trouble walking through the airport. Everything was so loud and bright and I kept tripping over my feet.
“I’m so tired I can’t see straight,” I said to Matt.
“I told you to sleep on the plane,” he said, like staying awake was a poor choice that I’d made. I walked behind him trying not to fall, stepping where he stepped, keeping my eyes on his feet.
That night, I crawled into bed, took another Ambien, and closed my eyes, hungry for rest. But three hours later, I sat up in the dark room, my heart racing, my mouth dry. I looked over at Matt and for a few minutes didn’t recognize him, had no idea who was lying next to me. Finally, my mind cleared and I remembered: That is my husband, I’m on my honeymoon. And then I tried (unsuccessfully) to go back to sleep.
We were in South Africa for fifteen nights, and I spent most of them staring into the darkness and wanting to cry, because more than anything, jet lag is lonely. During the days, I’d nod off at lunch, beg Matt to go back to the room in the afternoons for a nap. Once, I laid my head down on the table in a restaurant like a child, not caring what anyone around me thought.
“Maybe I have a resistance to Ambien,” I told Matt.
“I don’t think that’s the problem,” he said.
It was the worst during the safari. At night, the noises around us made me shiver, and the days made me feel like I was losing my mind. I’d look at the animals — so large, so beautiful, so frightening — and I’d tell myself to pay attention, to appreciate that I was seeing a lion, an elephant, a goddamn hippopotamus. But I was so tired that my eyes pulsed, light danced in my peripheral vision, and all of it felt unreal, like watching a nature documentary on PBS.
Matt wasn’t very sympathetic toward me. If anything, he was irritated that my insomnia was interfering with our trip. “You need to get on schedule,” he’d say, not bothering to hide his impatience. And soon, it wasn’t just at night that I didn’t recognize him. I’d look at him through my foggy eyes as we walked around in a foreign country and think, I don’t know you at all. I married a stranger.
After we were back in New York and sleeping again, I didn’t tell anyone about my jet lag or the thoughts I’d had about Matt. It didn’t seem normal, so when people asked about the trip, I just said, “It was amazing. A once in a lifetime experience.” And after enough time had passed, I almost believed it.
But that year in Texas, it started happening again, and there were times that Matt seemed unfamiliar to me, when even his voice wasn’t his own. I remember once staring at him across the room, an expression on his face that I’d never seen before, his eyes blank and unreadable, and my chest got so tight I could barely breathe, because I didn’t recognize him at all.
—
One morning, we drove four hours to Arlington, Texas, to visit a woman named Angela Kinsey, who’d just been diagnosed with cancer, most likely the result of exposure to the chemicals from the nearby drilling. Angela arranged for a few other women from the neighborhood to join her, so they could share their experiences with Jimmy, tell him about all the health problems they were facing.
We dropped Ash and Viv off at the hotel — it didn’t seem right to bring a healthy, squealing sixteen-month-old along while these women talked about the nosebleeds and headaches that their own children were having — and I went along, supposedly to get pictures, but I knew as soon as we stepped into the house that I wouldn’t even bother taking my phone out. (How crass would it be to snap a photo of Angela crying as she told Jimmy she didn’t know who would care for her children while she started chemo? I didn’t care if Katie got mad at me. Some things weren’t meant to be photographed.)
The house was small and dark, even though it was sunny outside. For a brief moment, the darkness was a relief from the heat, but then almost immediately, the air began to feel stuffy. There was an overpowering mothball smell inside and I figured I’d get used to it, but it seemed to get stronger the longer we were there.
Angela took us into the living room, where a few women were already sitting on a flimsy-looking floral couch. Jimmy sat at one end and I found a seat on a rocking chair in the corner, while Matt sat on an orange recliner.
By this point, Jimmy’s spiel was so polished — he was fluid when he spoke, sure of his words. He was great in front of crowds, could get up in front of fifty people and capture their attention. “These failed policies are hurting us,” he’d say. “I want to be an advocate for all Texans, an advocate for you. We’ve had enough with the insiders, who are only concerned with protecting the oil and gas industries. You deserve someone to protect you. They accuse me of being an outsider, and you know what I say to that?” Here Jimmy would smile and pause and wait for a couple of laughs. “I say, You’re right! I say, Being an outsider is what makes me so qualified for this job. I’m not in bed with oil and gas — I’m just a Texan interested in looking out for other Texans.”