July 14th, 2020
Dear Malcolm,
I don’t know why I keep writing to you. Chase is all grown up now and you were never there. I guess it just makes me feel better. I don’t have an update for him, but I am won the primaries. I could be the next president of the United States. It feels different, obviously than when I was elected mayor or even governor. Now, the doubt is setting in. What if I can’t do this? What if lead America into darkness because I lack the skills needed to lead? I worry about my effectiveness. Will people listen to what I have to say? What if I have to declare war? Can I even do something so drastic? I even briefly wondered if there is a reason a woman has never been elected like God knows we can’t do this but I dismissed that with my very next breath. Women can do anything. I only think these things late at night before my thoughts turn to you. They always do. Only you, after all this time. I’m sick. I need help, but I can’t seem to make myself get it. I know what they will say, what I need to do and I don’t want to do it. I won’t do it. My sister says that I should date, at least have sex with someone else, but I won’t do that either. I’m insane. I know it. My body was made for one man and if he doesn’t want me, no one gets me. Forgetting about you isn’t something I can do. I don’t even know if you are alive. That’s the first time I’ve allowed myself to admit something like that. Like that could be a possibility. Did you never write me or call me because you died when you shipped out to wherever you went? That’s all I have this week. If you are alive, don’t die.
XOXO,
Larissa
P.S. Please don’t sell my rambling to the news. No one needs to see this, least of all you, but definitely not the news. They are vultures.
It pains me to know that either my mother or father, probably both, opened that letter and never said a word to me about my child. Not once. Both are gone now, taking this secret with them to the grave. There is nothing to be done about it now, except move forward. Her latest letter lets me know that have a chance in hell to get her back. I’m getting her back and making right what went wrong so long ago. She gave herself to me that night and I gave myself to her. Body and soul. No amount of time, distance, or circumstances could ever change that.
Ever.
three
Larissa
four weeks later
Malcolm has been announced as my running mate, so far no one has made anything out of the fact that he’s listed on Chase’s birth certificate, but we know they will. I resigned from my job and have begun campaigning in earnest. During that press conference, we announced that MacLaine/Reynolds A Future for America Worth Caring About 2020 has officially gotten underway. We are making campaign stops all over the country starting next week. The conference room at our campaign headquarters in Baltimore is full of people and ringing telephones. The old grocery store might even be too small, but we will make do. I traveled for the primaries, but I was alone for that. I didn’t really think I’d get the nomination so soon. If elected, I’d not only be the first female president but the youngest president as well. At the inauguration, I’d be thirty-eight. I’m also unmarried with a grown son. The odds were stacked against me, but I prevailed. I think my story really resonates with single mothers.
“Do you think this strategy will work, Lachlan?” I ask, looking around the conference table. I am at one end and Malcolm as at the other. He keeps giving me these sweltering looks.
“While traditionally, the presidential and vice-presidential candidates campaign separately, trying to cover more ground, we are going to try a together strategy for a month utilizing social media and traditional media to cover more ground that way to see if that works. Our polling indicates that this year hundreds of thousands of new and first-time voters will be voting for you simply because you are not a seventy-five-year-old man. They have no idea what you stand for and we want to change that. Getting to them through social media is a surefire way to do it.” My opponent is former California governor, and current president, Marshall Hemmings. He’s seventy-six and pats the ass of every woman he meets. I swear he thinks it’s the fifties. I don’t know how he got elected in the first place.
“Okay. So where are we going first? Iowa?” I ask. It’s always Iowa.