crossed the line—like the time he cal ed her friend Lauren ignorant, after she admitted that she’d voted for the Green Party candidate in 2000 because she’d felt bad for him—but most of the time, the dinners were free of fighting and ful of wine, and Shannon was happy.
Dan worked in advertising, but his heart wasn’t in it. He sat around al day, writing catchy copy to accompany ads. “I want to do something that matters,” he always said. Shannon would nod in agreement. “I want a job I care about,” he would say, and Shannon would groan in sympathy. She thought it was just talk, just something people say to get through their day. But the more the young senator from Il inois showed up on TV, the more Dan talked about his discontent. He complained about his hours, his pay, his mindless duties. He slammed dresser drawers in the morning as he got ready for work, and drank a beer each night as he sulked in front of the news. And then one day he came home and announced that he was going to volunteer for the campaign.
“Do you have time to volunteer?” Shannon asked.
“The question is,” Dan answered, “how do I not make the time?”
Dan organized ral ies and trained volunteers. He went door-to-door making sure people were registered to vote. He skipped three days of work to attend a volunteer training camp in Chicago.
“I asked you last week if we could go on vacation, and you said you couldn’t take any days off,” Shannon said.
“This isn’t vacation,” Dan said. “This is our country.”
He came home from the volunteer camp with a graduation certificate and newfound energy. “This is it,” he kept saying. “This is the time.”
“The time for what?” Shannon muttered.
“What?” Dan said.
“Nothing,” she said.
At night, al they talked about was the election. Dan analyzed every word that came out of every candidate’s mouth. He sat no more than two feet from the TV, so that he wouldn’t miss a thing. “Did you hear that?” he asked, pointing at a face on TV. “Did you hear the tone she used when she said his name? Unbelievable.”
Shannon learned how to knit and sat on the couch twisting yarn into rows as Dan muttered to himself. “How can you knit at a time like this?” he asked her once. He looked at her like her yarn was the reason his Candidate was down in the pol s.
Dan pored over newspapers, websites, and right-wing blogs to see what the opposition was saying. When Shannon asked him if he wanted to go out to dinner, he just shook his head no. They ate takeout in front of the TV almost every night. More and more often, she found him asleep on the couch in the morning, his computer propped up next to him and CNN chattering in the background. He’d wake up and rub his eyes, then immediately focus on the latest news. “I can’t believe I missed this,” he’d say. He’d turn up the volume. “Shannon, can you move?” he’d ask. “I can’t see the TV.”
Dan applied for every job the campaign had. “How much does this one pay?” Shannon asked once.
“Does it matter?” Dan asked. “You don’t get this. I would do it for free.”
“It would be kind of hard to pay rent then, wouldn’t it?” Shannon asked.
Dan walked away from her and turned on the TV, to CNBC. Shannon fol owed him into the room, but he didn’t look at her. “I was kidding,” she said. “God, don’t be so sensitive.”
“This matters to me,” Dan said.
“I know,” she said. “It matters to me too.” Dan raised his eyebrows but didn’t say anything more. Shannon sat down on the couch next to him and watched the wild-eyed political commentator scream. It was the blond man, the one who interrupted his guests and got on her nerves. “He spits when he gets excited,” she said. And then they watched the rest of the show in silence.
When Dan quit his job, Shannon was supportive. “It wil be hard,” she said. “But if it’s important to you, it’s important to me.” She was pretty sure she meant what she said.
“I’l be traveling a lot,” Dan said. “But it’s what I always wanted to do.”
“Of course,” Shannon said. She didn’t real y know what she was agreeing to, but her answer made Dan happy.
Later, Shannon explained it to her friends. “It’s too good to pass up,” she said. “It’s the opportunity of a lifetime.”
“Wel , you knew this about him when you met him,” Mary said. “I guess this doesn’t come as a huge surprise.”
“It just sucks for you,” Lauren said.
“Yep,” Shannon said. “Yep, it real y does.”
At first, Shannon stil 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 cal her and tel 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 ral y. 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
