My Oxford Year

He’s shouting by the end. I don’t shout back. “Why, Gavin? Why can’t we have an unmarried, single mother for president?”

He sighs, not listening. “Hillerson will eviscerate her tonight if she doesn’t drop out, I won’t put her in that position—”

“You’ll excuse me but that’s not for you to decide. Or Hillerson. Or the party. Or anyone else other than the American people. Give them the chance to decide. We’ll never know what they want if we don’t give them the choice.”

There’s a beat. “Ella, forgive me, but you’re out of your—”

“Is she there?” I swallow. “Gavin, please, I know this is outside my wheelhouse, I know you didn’t ask for my opinion, but I have one.”

After an eternity, he exhales. “Hold on.”

There’s shuffling in the background and then I hear, on speakerphone, Janet’s resigned voice. “Ella?”

“Don’t drop out.”

“Honey,” she breathes, “I want this baby, with Peter. I thought it wasn’t possible at my age. This is a once-in-a-lifetime—”

“Have your baby. And don’t drop out.” Though unsure how to read her silence, I forge on. “Do the debate.”

“I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I don’t see us overcoming this.”

Anger bolts through me. “No, see, there’s nothing to overcome! There’s only something to become!” I pace. “Become the woman who stands up to this bullshit. Become the woman who challenges the patriarchal playbook.”

“Ella—”

“We have to stop pretending that there are rules, that anyone knows anything. No one knows shit!”

There’s a faint chuckle when she says, “I agree, trust me, but—”

“If nothing else,” I huff, “if this ends next Tuesday, if we find out this is just too much for people to accept, then at least we elevated the discourse when we had the chance. That you were the candidate who didn’t just have the answers, but dared to ask the questions. Do the debate. And. Ask. Why. Make Hillerson say it, make him say ‘you’re unfit,’ not only to your face, but to the face of every woman in the country. All his arguments are specious: ‘We can’t have a pregnant candidate, we can’t have a baby-mama POTUS.’ Why? Because we’ve never had one before? And then ask him if he’d have a problem with a new father taking office? And then, once his own misogyny has painted him into a corner, ask him if he’s suggesting that you’d only be fit to be president if you’d had an abortion? Socratic method his ass.”

After a long moment, I hear the smile in her voice when she says, “Socratic method. Oxford’s rubbing off on you.” She sighs. “I’ll think about it.”

This stops me in my tracks. Really?

Oh God, what did I just do? I’m pretty sure I just asked a wonderful woman to go up onstage and lash herself to the feminist mast on national television.

I swallow. “It’s a plan.”

We hang up.

I stand there, my legs suddenly shaky. When I step back into the bathroom, I’m surprised to find Jamie looking at me through hooded lids, smiling slightly. “Are we watching the debate tonight?” he asks.

“If there is one,” I hedge.

He nods at my phone. “I’m dying to know what that was about.”

I drop back down at his feet, resuming our previous position. “I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

He cocks an eyebrow at me. “Why do you think I asked?”

I snort. It’s sad, it’s funny, and I’m suddenly exhausted. I drop my head. Then I feel Jamie’s fingers in my hair, his palm cupping my cheek. I lean into it, let it strengthen me for a moment. “So,” Jamie purrs. “Your birthday.”

I look up at the abrupt change of topic. His eyes twinkle like they used to. He’s feeling a bit better.

I smile, trying to rally. “Now we’re talking.”

“It’s next week.”

“Yes, it is.”

“I want to take you somewhere. Shall we go somewhere?”

Is he kidding?

Despite the promise we both made to postpone our December trip to the Easter vac, it became clear about two weeks ago that Jamie could not travel. His oncologist flat-out prohibited it. Jamie is still having a hard time accepting it. Obviously.

After my birthday next week, I have a couple of weeks off before Trinity Term starts and Charlie, Maggie, and Tom have invited me to join them when they go to Morocco at the end of the break. I could, I guess, but I feel like I’m on countdown. I want to spend every last minute with Jamie. I want to watch him get better. We’ve earned it.

I shake my head at Jamie’s suggestion. “We’re having a staycation, remember? Recovery, get your strength back, have sex, write, have sex, follow-up blood work, have more sex.”

He grins. “We’ll be sensible, I promise. Just a few days. I’ll get checked out before we go. We’ll keep close. We could go to the Lakes or Cornwall. Or Bath! How about Bath? Or I could show you around Cambridge? Choose something, anything.” I’m silent. “Anywhere you want. Anywhere you want that doesn’t involve a boat or a plane. It’s your birthday.”

An idea forms. “Anywhere?”

He nods once, decisively, happily. Sure he’s won.

I hold out my hand to shake. This is how we do deals in this relationship and I want him bound by this. “Anywhere?” I confirm.

Jamie shakes my hand and smiles. “You can’t frighten me,” he boasts. “Anywhere.”

Before I can tell him, my phone dings. I look down at it. A two-word text from Gavin:

It’s on.

Chapter 25

Be the green grass above me

With showers and dewdrops wet;

And if thou wilt, remember,

And if thou wilt, forget.

Christina Rossetti, “Song,” 1848

Italy, Greece, Croatia, New Zealand . . . these are the places you hear are beautiful. Why didn’t anyone ever tell me that Scotland is gorgeous? I mean, mouth-droppingly, eye-buggingly, slap-yo-mama stunning.

We’ve been ascending the mountain for ten minutes when Jamie finally deigns to speak. A welcome change from the grunts and sighs he’s afforded me this whole week. “My mother’s going to give you a tour of the house. Everything she tells you will be wrong.”

An overeager laugh rips out of me, like ripping open a bag of Doritos so zealously that every last chip goes flying. Jamie, unaffected, continues. “She also invents clan names. The MacGrubberlochs had the finest herd of cattle in all the land, that sort of thing.”

I risk taking his hand. He doesn’t recoil. A major victory. “She’s so excited,” I wheedle.

“As well she should be. This is the first time I’ve brought a girl home. She’s likely arranged a parade.”

Look, I get it. I tricked him. I sucker-punched him. I done did him dirty. But sometimes you have to hide the medicine in the peanut butter to get it down the dog’s throat. (And if that doesn’t work, well, grab its muzzle, pry its jaw open, and shove the pill all the way to the back of its stubborn gullet). But to his credit, he kept his word. Not once did he try to back out of his promise to take me anywhere I wanted to go.

That night, after I had told him I wanted to go to Scotland, we watched the debate on my laptop in the bathroom. The vice president saved the issue of Janet’s pregnancy for the end, because—at his core—he’s a showman and a media whore. Which means that when he dug himself into the hole I’d predicted, there was no crawling out of it before the end of the debate. The debate finished with Janet looking unfazed and Hillerson refusing to shake her hand as he walked off. When someone got him on camera and asked him how he thought it went, Hillerson, flustered, exclaimed, “She just kept asking, ‘Why!’” Which became a viral meme within the hour. “She just kept asking why” is now Janet’s unofficial campaign slogan. When I got the text from Gavin that said, That was all you, kid, tip of the hat, I finally let myself have a moment of profound personal pride. Though still miffed with me about Scotland, Jamie opened one of his fancy bottles of wine (that he couldn’t drink) and toasted me with a water glass.