The Candidate Read Online Free Page A

heads filling the airspace with meaningless analysis until they had something actually concrete to discuss.
    “It’s a big night,” said Mike. “Been a crazy few days.” It was good to hear his mother’s voice. Calming.
    “So, is he all he’s cracked up to be? Your Senator Hodges. Should he get your mom’s vote for any reason other than out of loyalty to her son?”
    He could feel his mother’s warmth down the phone line, her tone gently mocking. She was always like that. Walking the line of tough love, with a joke and a twinkle in her eye. But he was surprised she was genuinely asking after Hodges. Moira Sweeney did not take politics lightly. She lived and breathed it. Always had. It was a way to rationalize their hardscrabble life in Corinth Falls, struggling to make ends meet in a factory town in the middle of New York, abandoned by a country that did not make anything anymore. She always distrusted mainstream politicians, damning them as all the same.
    But now she was asking of Hodges: “Is this guy for real or does he just come in better packaging than the rest of his kind?”
    He paused for a moment, before answering. He couldn’t lie to her. He could not spin her the same lines that he did the student volunteers, the bloggers and the journalists. “He’s the best I’ve seen, Mom,” he said. “I’m pretty close to him. They’ve made me the opposition research director and I see him every day. You should vote for him and not just because of me.”
    “That’s wonderful, Mike,” she said.
    But Mike could tell there was something else behind her phone call. Her whirring mind was almost audible down the phone line; the cogs and wheels of disparate thoughts coming together. “What is it, Mom?”
    She sighed. “It’s Jaynie.”
    Those old, familiar words. His high school sweetheart. The love of his life who was now his ex-wife. It was a name he dreaded and feared hearing and yet still somehow, he longed for. It seemed there were few big moments in Mike’s life that did not begin with someone saying: “It’s Jaynie.” Some were the happiest times of his childhood, others the worst nightmares of his adult years. His heart quickened.
    “What’s she done now, Mom?”
    “Nothing specific. She just came around the other day, knocking on the door. She seemed kind of confused. I gave her some coffee and tried to get some sense out of her. But she didn’t stay too long.”
    Mike knew what it was his mother would not bring herself to say. But the signs were clear enough. He would make the point for her.
    “Do you think she was on something? Was she high again?” he asked.
    “She didn’t look good, Michael,” she said. “I know you’re divorced now but you two have always been close and…well, I just thought you should know.”
    There was no hint of reproach, but there didn’t need to be. Mike met Jaynie in high school, when they were both 15. Her family lived only a few blocks away and they formed a bond so close it seemed it would never break. She was the most beautiful creature he ever saw, and the most wild. She was like a crazy, free spirit, a shining light in the grim surroundings of their dying, little town. They were married by age twenty, but it was a disaster. Jaynie’s crazy streak grew progressively more out of control and Mike struggled to contain it. Her drug problem began with pot which Mike dabbled in, but never found a taste for. But Jaynie didn’t stop there. She quickly became lost in a maze of hard drugs and alcohol, trying to make meaning out of her life by driving it to the extremes. Mike tried to keep her grounded, struggling against her addictions like a boy clinging to a kite in a storm. But the tempest was too strong. He had to let go. To cope, Mike headed to Florida and flung himself into community organizing. Work became his own drug, but Jaynie was unable to follow him out of her chaos. The divorce came through five years ago, although they were separated long before