Girls in White Dresses - JENNIFER CLOSE [63]
“It just sucks for you,” Lauren said.
“Yep,” Shannon said. “Yep, it really does.”
At first, Shannon still saw Dan about once a week. Then his trips started to overlap with each other and he didn’t seem to have time to come home in between. Soon, he was flying from stop to stop with barely enough time to call her and tell her where he was going. Shannon realized that if she wanted to see him, she’d have to go to him. And that’s what she did.
Shannon shivered in New Hampshire while Dan arranged an outdoor rally. She attended a fund-raiser in Chicago and then took a bus to Iowa and painted campaign signs in a high school, while a snowstorm raged outside and Dan worried that the old people wouldn’t be able to drive to the school. Shannon painted poster boards red, white, and blue. She painted the Candidate’s name in fancy block letters, and made signs that said “Davenport for Change.” She painted “Hope” over and over again, so many times that the letters started to look funny and the word lost its meaning.
Shannon went to Boston and followed Dan around to three different events in one day. She shook hands with the Candidate and nearly blacked out from excitement. She listened to him give the same speech over and over and she cried every time. He talked about the hardships people have to face, and he talked about wanting a better world for his children, and Shannon clapped and cried.
Shannon shouted that she was “fired up and ready to go” in seven different states. She passed out buttons and helped set up chairs. And sometimes, when she went to bed at night, she heard rally cries in her head, soft and far away. They sounded so real that she was sure there were people gathered outside her apartment, huddled together, chanting the Candidate’s name as she tried to fall asleep.
Dan returned to New York for an event and Shannon recruited all of her friends to come. They waited in line at Washington Square Park for three hours, getting crushed by the crowd. “Dan will be so happy that you came,” Shannon told them.
“Where is he?” Lauren asked.
“Up there.” Shannon pointed to the stage. Dan darted by.
“That’s fun that you got to see him last night,” Isabella said.
“Oh, well, I actually didn’t,” Shannon said. “He ended up working all night. He slept here.”
“In the park?” Mary asked. “Gross.”
“Tonight, maybe?” Isabella asked.
Shannon shook her head. “He’s off to Pennsylvania,” she said. The girls were quiet for a minute.
“Well,” Lauren said. “It will be over soon, right?” Shannon started to agree, but the music came on and they all turned to the stage, and clapped and cheered.
As the primaries got closer, Dan traveled so much that Shannon didn’t even have time to go see him. He’d be in a city for twenty hours and then on his way to the next one. Even phone calls became rare. Sometimes, though, she caught a glimpse of his head on the border of the TV, running from side to side in a gymnasium after the Candidate finished a speech. She watched for him closely, waiting for his blond head to flash on the screen. “There he is,” she’d cry, although no one was there to hear her. And then as soon as she spotted him, he’d run off the other side, gone from her sight.
When the Candidate won Iowa, Dan called from the campaign center. He sounded muffled and far away. Shannon could hear screaming in the background and Dan had to yell to be heard. His voice was thick, as though he’d been crying or was just about to start.
When Dan did come home, he was exhausted and wrinkled. Sometimes, he’d been up for days. His hair stood up in clumps and his eyes were bloodshot. He’d come into the apartment, shower, and head straight for bed.
Shannon talked to him while he slept. She told him about her job while his eyes stayed closed. “Mmm-hmm,” he’d murmur sometimes.
Dan wore two BlackBerrys, strapped to either side of his belt. “You look like a nerd,” Shannon always told him. He didn’t care. Once when Dan was home and lying in bed, Shanon saw a red mark on his hip. “What’s that?” she asked. She touched it