Author: CGB (luberluber@yahoo.com.au)
Website:
http://Appelsini.tripod.com/Christine/
Rating: PG - 13
Disclaimer: Consider it
parody because when asked that's what I'll say it is. You say potato, I say
potahto...
Category: CJ/ Toby Toby/
Andrea
Summary: Toby muses on his
marriage late one night in the White House.
The title and some key comments
were blatantly stolen from Penelopody's haunting fic "Ebenezer". Fortunately
she has been gracious enough to let me run off with them.
Thanks to JennyMcD for
encouraging comments and an extensive education in American politics
<g>.
Once upon a time, because it
began like most fairy tales, he was married.
He was in love with a beautiful woman who he married in a gorgeous
ceremony. They bought a house and started life the right way, working hard,
saving, planning for the future.
He loved her, achingly. He was disturbed and disquieted by the
passion aroused in him, that strength of feeling. He went through a phase in
his early twenties of categorically denying the existence of love, and yet
there it was, baffling and mysterious. A fairy tale.
Their life together was a
learning experience and he took to it like a science experiment. He would
theorise, posit an hypotheses, test it, and log its outcomes. The results were always surprising. He
didn't know women could be like that. Sloppy, temperamental, negligent at
times, just like him. Only it seemed when it came to orderliness he was way
ahead of Andrea.
She'd forget to pick up paint
samples and would dismiss his irritation as unreasonable.
"I had a tough day!" she
insisted.
His mother ran the house like
a drill Sargeant. He thought all women had that ability. That nous.
A ridiculous expectation, of course, but these were changing times and
everyone was confused.
He was adaptable, though. He
was malleable, moldable. He learnt to cook. They both learned to cook as Andrea
professed a desire to improve in that area and they went to classes together.
They were proud of their distinction as the only married couple in the class
but they went back to take away less than a week afterward.
He never appreciated those
things when they happened. He never looked at his marriage and thought of it as
an achievement, a success in his life that he should be grateful to call such.
He measured his success in promotions and praise, in successful campaigns, but
never this one thing, this one thing he had done well.
At least for a time. But a
time is enough.
During Bartlet's campaign he
had watched the Republican Presidential Candidates debate from the campaign
office and had felt strangely nostalgic for something he could not
remember. When it came to him he
realized he had watched the 1992 debate with Andrea. It seemed like a fond memory, but he knew that on the same day he'd
argued with her father and she was mad.
In memory it was somehow
perfect. She pouted on the sofa and he
rolled his eyes when he caught her glaring at him. It was irritating and he wanted her to just go to bed and forget
about it, but now he would give anything to be sitting there like that again,
the both of them angry yet secure in that unshakeable relationship.
Marriage is something he
remembers when he doesn't want to. His
marriage. Even when he knows that he must, should feel this way, it takes him
by surprise. He hates ruminating on his marriage and everything that went wrong
with it but it's like a punishment, something to be carried out until his
absolution.
*
He had been sitting in his
office for forty minutes just banging his wedding ring against his desk,
staring at the bookshelf. It was late.
Probably past midnight. It had been a while since he'd checked the clock.
He thought he was alone in
the West Wing but he hadn't checked that either. Outside his door it was
quiet.
He liked it that way. He liked being there at night. He wasn't
sure why but he suspected it was because the near empty White House was still
more welcome than his lonely apartment, devoid of love and anything that might recall
that love had once been a substantial part of his existence. It was missing
such artifacts of a relationship as photographs and casserole dishes received
at the wedding but never used. And most of the time it was missing him.
There was a knock on his door
and he looked up to see CJ Cregg letting herself in.
"You're still here?" she
said.
"Apparently so."
"Why are you still here?"
"I don't have a home CJ, I
live here."
"We all live here Toby.
Although not all of us are turning the same colour as the wallpaper."
He frowned and considered
telling her to go. There was always something appealing about CJ hanging about
his office, sitting on his desk or leaning against his doorway. Something about her presence elevated the
environment out of its austerity. Even
if she was just there to trade barbs.
But not tonight.
"I have work to do CJ," he
said.
She raised her eyebrows
skeptically.
"OK," she said, and was gone.
*
When he was married they
argued about movies. She liked Woody
Allen, he didn't. He liked Kubrick, she didn't. He told her that Woody Allen was a whining, posturing,
pseudo-intellectual suffering from 'little man' syndrome. She argued that
Kubrick was pretentious crap that the intelligentsia pretended to like to cover
the fact that they didn't understand any of it. He loved the way she tossed aside Kubrick with a quick retort,
completely unfazed by his protestation of Kubrick's genius. She had that kind of bravado, unapologetic
for her ignorance. He'd never met anyone like that and it was so appealing.
Then they stopped seeing
movies. They stopped arguing too. They had their best conversations when he
stepped of a plane at five am as she was just getting up to leave.
At least that was when they
talked and they rarely talked otherwise.
One day he came home and she
wasn't there. The first thing he did was call her cell phone which she didn't
answer. He left a message and went looking about the house for clues to where
she might have gone. He checked the
refrigerator and found no fresh food. There were no used dishes waiting to be
cleaned, the bed was neatly made and there was no laundry waiting to be done.
He couldn't remember why, but
his next action was to open her drawers. He'd been ignoring the rising panic
creeping up through his limbs and into his chest but it crashed down in waves
when he found them empty.
His wife had left him.
He'd stopped paying
attention. It was like looking away for a moment and then coming back to find
you'd missed something important.
Andrea phoned that night.
"I've moved out," she said.
"I've noticed."
There was a long silence
where he could almost feel her frustration through the telephone.
"Well?"
"Well?"
"Do you have anything to
say?"
"The petunias have died."
"What?"
"You didn't water the
petunias. They're dead." His voice sounded far away as though the words were
not his. As though this wasn't him.
More silence and then a heavy
sigh.
"Toby, why are you doing
this?"
He didn't know. He ran the
question over and over in his head and he still didn't know.
"I have to meet Leo," he
said.
"Fine. Fine. Go," she said,
exasperated.
"Andrea?"
"Yes?" she sounded a little
too eager. He took that as an encouraging sign.
"If you have anything to say
to me, I 'd like you to do so in person."
A pause.
"Fine. When?"
"Tomorrow. Here."
"Fine."
*
It occurred to him that he
communicated effectively in times that should have been considered impossible
to make real progress in getting a point across. He'd read somewhere that if you had to phone and ask someone to
do something for you, it was best to phone before eleven in the morning because
people are most receptive to information before that time.
He figured the generalization
applied to workers in nine-to-five occupations and this was not a nine-to-five
job.
It was a choosing, rather
than a calling. He wasn't sure why he
made the choice or if the choice had been properly informed (a choice, by law
can not be made when the subject is ill advised of his or her options) but he
didn't believe God's plan for him involved pandering to ignorant Congress
members whose votes he needed or pacifying lobbyists whose causes he considered
naïve and ridiculous. As it was, he did
neither of these jobs well. Proof then.
He worked like someone who
had nothing else to do and he had done so even when he did.
*
He waited for Andrea.
He waited for Andrea like he
had waited for her on their wedding day.
Half suspended between complete concentration on his composure and a state
of distraught apprehension that she might not show.
The scariest thing about that
feeling was this tiny part of him that hoped she wouldn't. He imagined it was normal but he never
forgot it.
She appeared in the doorway
only minutes later having let herself in.
*
He checked the clock again at
two am and decided to go home, even if it was just to change his clothes. On
the way out he noticed the light in CJ's office. He looked inside. Her head was
on her desk, resting against her arm.
"CJ?"
She didn't respond.
"CJ wake up." Her head jerked
up and she stared at him with an uncomprehending look.
"Toby?"
"It's two in the morning CJ.
Time to go home."
She nodded reaching for her
jacket.
"I must have fallen asleep..."
She rose and put her jacket on. Barely awake, she lacked coordination and
missed as she aimed her arm into one of the sleeves. The corners of his mouth rose briefly upwards in a twisted smile.
To his knowledge it was the first for the day.
"Why are you here?" she
asked.
"Why are you here?"
"I asked you first."
He looked down at the floor.
He was unused to revealing himself to his colleagues and CJ, despite the well
of feelings he had begun to dig for her, was for practicality's sake, a
colleague. He contemplated doing so now and was momentarily unsteady. He
shifted his weight to the other foot and looked back up at CJ.
She had halted her actions
and was waiting for his answer.
"It's my wedding
anniversary."
She looked at the floor and
back up again. The sleeve of her jacked still dangled empty at her side.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"Don't be."
She was moving again. Piling her belongings into her purse.
"It's...um... three years now?"
"Four."
"Oh," She nodded.
They exited her office and began walking in silence.
"Do you miss her?"
He paused to think.
The thing about his wife,
about his marriage was that he thought about it often, and today he thought
about it more than usual.
He missed Andrea in ways he
didn't really understand and could not describe. His apartment reminded him of that marriage and all that he had
lost and he disliked it intensely. He
could say that he missed her in his life. He missed the knowledge of her, the
confidence of having that knowledge, like it was the answer to a great question
and he had found that answer.
He missed being in love
sometimes. He didn't miss the craziness
and uncertainty of their courtship. He
did not miss being Toby Zeigler out of control, but he missed how much she
loved that part of him.
He missed sex with his
wife. He missed the feel of her. It wasn't like his wife had been the last
person he'd had sex with but she was the one he remembered in great detail. He
missed having someone around him whose body was as comfortable to him as his
own. He didn't like dating and he
didn't like courting. He didn't have time for either.
But did he miss Andrea?
Really miss her, who she was, whoever she was, because it had been quite
apparent when she left that he did not know who she was. She had said so.
*
"You never told me," he'd
said that last day.
"I told you all the time."
"You never said anything."
"I shouted and screamed at
you. Not with my voice but my actions, my despair, my anxiety. You can't hear
them here," she pointed at her ear and then let her hand rest on her heart,
"but you can hear them here. Inside."
He didn't know. Hadn't heard.
The Andrea he'd known was happy, ambitious and fulfilled as a person, excelling
in her career and personal life, as always.
*
"I miss the idea of her," he
said eventually.
"Uh huh." CJ nodded. She
understood. He didn't know how, but she understood. He was struck by how much
people saw in him that he could not see himself.
"I think I'm a good judge of
character, wouldn't you say?"
"Yes."
"And fast. I'm a quick judge
of character."
"Yes," she said again.
"Because I need to be. I need
to make decisions about the people I meet. Congress, lobbyists, the Press, I
need to be able to know these people quickly and accurately, so CJ..."
"Yes?"
He faltered, unsure of
himself. Where was he going? Why was he telling her this?
Because it was inside. It was
so loud inside.
"How did I get it so wrong?"
She looked away. She had her car. He did not. He would need a
driver unless she took him home herself.
She thought she probably should. She couldn't leave him like this.
"Shall I give you a ride,
Toby?"
"Thank you," he said.
In the car she was quiet. She
yawned from time to time and rubbed her forehead. He caught her movements and
felt sorry for her. Sorry for them. Going home to empty rooms and getting
little sleep.
In their history he had not
known CJ to be so lucky in love that she could claim answers where he had
none. She had seemed so bewildered by
Danny Concannon's attentions he figured that romantic attachments were something
of a puzzle to her. She attracted that
attention wherever she went and she rarely knew what to with it.
When she dropped him off she
leaned over to his side and called out the window.
"Toby! It won't happen
again!"
He turned around to face her.
"Excuse me?"
"It won't happen again," she
repeated, "you won't get it wrong the next time."
"Thanks, CJ."
She drove off and he went
inside his empty apartment with its empty rooms and bare cupboards.
He would call CJ sometime.
Not now. Not tomorrow but he knew he would call her and she would come to him.
His wife's legacy to him had been the knowledge of his failure to listen when
people screamed silently and he knew CJ was right. He couldn't make that
mistake again.
He could hear her.