Pete didn’t live, but that didn’t mean Holly had killed him. The car that struck him was a completely different color—some intern from Elizabeth Warren’s office had seen the whole thing. They hadn’t caught the driver, but after the young man came forward, gave Capitol Police his smattering of details, Holly was even more certain she did not do this. In fact, she’d really been sure all along, had never thought hitting Pete was something she could have done. If it had been her, her behind the wheel—surely—she would remember.
“You’d think the intern would have gave a better description,” she told George, “at least gotten a plate number,” the guy coming out of Rayburn House when he saw George’s campaign manager hit on Independence, dialing 911 as he ran toward the body in the middle of the road, shouting, “Sir? Sir?” like he was flagging Pete down in chambers.
“Maybe he was a little busy,” George said, “trying to help Pete survive? Still, the less they look into this, the better.”
Holly had been fighting with George when it happened—well, not when it happened, but when they found out—attempting to talk through her distress, Holly having read in Psychology Today that communication was the route to a healthier self.
“You’ve got to perk up a little,” George had been saying. “People only ask questions when you act that way.”
They’d spent the afternoon at a luncheon where Holly had played the college-sweetheart wife, cropped blazer over navy shell dress, and nodded. This particular event had been quite de trop, a private fundraiser for Vanderbilt alums.
“Pete buttered them up, I’ll give you that,” George recapping the afternoon (salads had stretched into entrees, entrees became dessert). “Are you even paying attention to me?”
After leaving the Rayburn Reception Room, Holly had spent the rest of the day alone. She couldn’t remember exactly what she had done, but she did remember what she had not. She had not walked through the members’ parking lot, feet pounding on the pavement. She had not sat in the car, feeling the wheel, its leather smooth beneath her fingers. And she most certainly had not killed Pete.
This wasn’t the first time she’d blacked out like this; she’d actually lost count, initially marking the days in her August to August calendar with one or two question marks, depending on how much time she was missing.
Once, her husband had seen the marks and asked, “Is your period off?” thinking they were feminine calculations, which made her realize yes, it was.
There were also the headaches; the anger; the lack of deep sleep — something that had not been present when she was younger, that started right before graduation, that got worse after George decided to run, its pinnacle the night he won: Holly lying in bed with her eyes closed, connecting to the fact that while the campaign was through, that didn’t mean much. For the past two years, election day had been a promise, one that the scrutiny would be done (appearances, investigations) and all her fake smiling could be over. But the minute those cameras turned off, acceptance speech complete, Pete had walked right up to George and said, “Now it begins.” And that’s when Holly knew this would never stop.
They were the same, campaigns and marriage. Politicians got elected through courtship, they stayed in office through attrition, every day making its mark.
It was exhausting. Holly hadn’t even realized how tired it made her until she read a Tennessean article that said women were 92 percent more likely to store guilt in their bodies: headaches and backaches, inner fatigue, spanning across cartilage, bone, and spine; and she’d reached around her torso as she read, feeling.
“I thought you were doing better,” George said, “I really did, but if today’s event was any indication, maybe stay away from my work?”
“You asked me to come,” Holly told him—or maybe that had been Pete—“I’m doing the best that I can,” and sighing, George mumbled, “It gets old.”
Holly rested her hand on the granite kitchen counter, feeling the weight of her skin on the stone.
“Look,” George said, “it’s been a tough term. I’ve done a good job—we both know I have—but I can’t assume come November I’ll be reelected.” (Dessert had stretched into coffee, coffee became cocktails.) “I know your life isn’t easy. But you’re not the only one with needs. Do you know how much I needed you to just be polite? You can’t go around in this daze all the time. Maybe if you tried—I don’t know—engaging?”
The night George proposed, they had been in his car, West End Avenue right off of campus. They’d been out to dinner on Music Row and she was the one who was driving (cocktails had stretched into more drinks, after those drinks a ring). They were talking dates, sometime after graduation — when it happened. A young man ran out and Holly didn’t see him. She knew she had not seen him. She just heard the clump and they both felt the jolt, everything in this haze: the touch of the wheel, asphalt under her feet; then George said, “Give me the keys.”
Terena Elizabeth Bell is a fiction writer. Her debut short story collection, Tell Me What You See (Whiskey Tit), was published December 2022. Her work has appeared in more than 100 publications, including The Atlantic, Playboy, Salamander, and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. A Sinking Fork, Kentucky native, she lives in New York. Get one story delivered to your inbox every month by subscribing here: patreon.com/terenaelizabethbell.
Lost Balloon 