Elin Hilderbrand - 28 Summers

Jake might think it was his last-minute insertion of Bess into the conversation, and Bess might think it was because of her own final teary plea to her mother—she’d called Ursula during her car ride to the Capitol Building and said, Mom, please stand up for womankind!

No one will know that in the hour before Ursula cast her vote, she was visited by a memory that she’d relegated to the delete-from-deleted file of her brain.

She’s a first-semester sophomore at Notre Dame and she and Jake have just broken up. Ursula is upset about this. Jake was the one who wanted to split; he thought they should date other people. This doesn’t mean we won’t get married, he said. But I think it’s a good idea to see what other people have to offer. Ursula doesn’t philosophically disagree but hearing the words come from Jake, who has been so ardent since the age of thirteen, is hurtful. Ursula feels she has lost her magic.

She turns to religion, which is a comfort. She joins the campus ministry and attends every meeting, and in a few short months she is spearheading outreach for the undergraduates as well as service projects in the community. She organizes trips to shelters and soup kitchens in Gary, Indiana. At the start of the spring semester, she’s a shoo-in for president of the group. But when she approaches Father Gillis, he suggests she run for vice president instead. Father Gillis supports a junior named Nathan Bowers for president. Nathan, after all, is a year ahead of Ursula and has been in the group a year longer.

Right, Ursula thinks, but Nathan Bowers doesn’t do anything. He’s a heavy-lidded dope smoker, good-looking, and with a certain lazy charm; he’s too cool for the campus ministry. He lies around, and makes wisecracks. He’s not exactly a model Christian. In November, when the group goes downtown to fill Thanksgiving boxes—frozen turkey, Stove Top stuffing, cranberry sauce—Nathan keeps calling them handouts .

It takes a while for Ursula to realize that Father Gillis wants Nathan to be president because he’s male.

Nathan becomes president of the Notre Dame campus ministry and Ursula, VP.

Fast-forward to the end of the spring semester, mid-May. Nathan Bowers and his three roommates are throwing a party at the house they’ve rented for the summer on Chapin Street and Nathan is eager for Ursula to attend. Ursula doesn’t go to parties very often; she’s too busy studying. But it’s a mild spring evening, it’s a Friday, and Ursula thinks it sounds like fun.

She drinks way too much—two cups of the grain alcohol–and–Ocean Spray punch they’re pouring out of plastic pitchers. After that, there’s a game of Mexican, a bunch of warm beers, maybe a shot of Jägermeister. At some point, Nathan asks Ursula if she wants to go upstairs. Ursula isn’t sure if she says yes or no. The next thing she remembers is waking up to find Nathan grinding on top of her. They aren’t having sex, but she wants him to stop whatever it is he’s doing. However, she’s too tired and too drunk to push him away. She closes her eyes.

She wakes up in the middle of the night to find Nathan sitting in a papasan chair in the corner, smoking a joint and staring at her so intensely it feels like a violation.

Ursula looks down. She’s lying on Nathan’s comforter, fully clothed, thank God. He was on top of her before, yes? Or did she dream that? “What did you do to me?” she asks.

He exhales a plume of smoke. “Don’t you remember? You seemed pretty into it.”

“I wasn’t conscious,” Ursula says, and the nascent lawyer in her surfaces. “Did you rape me?”

Nathan laughs. “No, Ursula.”

“You did something. I remember”—she’s not sure how to describe it—“you were on top of me.”

“That was what you wanted.”

Ursula swings her feet to the floor. She feels like she’s operating a piece of heavy machinery trying to get herself upright. Her head is splitting. “You’re disgusting.”

“You asked me for it.”

“I was too drunk to know what I was doing, Nathan,” Ursula says. “What did you guys put in that punch?”

“Oh, sure,” Nathan says. “Blame the punch.” He sets the roach in an ashtray. “If you report me, no one will believe you. They’ll think it’s because Gillis made me president when you thought it should have been you.”

“It should have been me,” Ursula says. “But that has nothing to do with what happened tonight. I’m going to call a taxi to take me home, and in the morning, I’m calling the police.”

“You’re bluffing,” Nathan says. But he looks worried.

It turns out, Ursula was bluffing. She doesn’t go to the dean or her parents, nor does she tell a single one of her friends what happened, mostly because she doesn’t know what happened. She knows only that she drank too much and that Nathan took advantage of her drunken state to satisfy his own desires. He shouldn’t have touched her. And yet she knows that she’s the one who will be blamed.

The bravery of the two women who came out against Stone Cavendish is remarkable.

Ursula imagined how she would have felt if Nathan Bowers were about to be confirmed to the Supreme Court and he flat-out denied having Ursula in his room and grinding himself on top of her when she was too drunk to give consent.

Not on my watch, Ursula thought. And she voted no.

The morning after Cavendish is confirmed, Bayer Burkhart calls. Ursula nearly lets it go to voicemail. She doesn’t need to hear what she already knows: Because she voted no instead of yes, he’s putting his support behind a different candidate in 2020.

Ignoring his call, however, is cowardly. What was the point of voting her heart, her conscience, if she’s too timid to defend it? “Hello, Bayer.”

“Ursula.” Bayer is eating something—a bagel, probably, slathered with cream cheese, piled with lox. He has quite the impressive appetite. “I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but you did good.”

“What?”

“Listen, I got the outcome I wanted. Cavendish is on the bench. And you, my friend, are a national hero.”

“I am?”

“You’ve got a seventy-two percent approval rate among women from both parties,” Bayer says. “You were the only senator on the committee willing to stand by your principles and not vote for a guy who was lying.” Bayer swallows. “You were impressive. Calm but commanding. I would have been mad as hell at you if he’d lost the vote, but he didn’t. If I were you, I’d wait no more than a week before you announce.”

“Announce?”

“That you’re running for president,” Bayer says. “My money is on you. You’re going to win.”

Summer #27: 2019

What are we talking about in 2019? The death of Bernard Slade, playwright; Nancy Pelosi; college admission cheating scandal; Miley and Liam; tamago sando; Lizzo; check your Uber; Jeffrey Epstein; Logan, Kendall, Roman, Shiv, Tom, Gerri, and Greg; Old Town Road; Rob Gronkowski; al-Baghdadi; Notre-Dame; John Legend and Chrissy Teigen; Where the Crawdads Sing; El Paso; Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper .

On the fifteenth of April, Link gets acceptance letters from the University of Alabama, the University of Georgia, Auburn, Ole Miss, and the University of South Carolina, and Mallory can’t help herself: she bursts into tears.

She’s so proud of him.

She’s gutted by the thought of him leaving. And yet she knows it’s natural. If he weren’t leaving, he’d be staying, and neither of them wants that.

Link decides on the University of South Carolina. Frazier is excited because U of SC is home to the Darla Moore School of Business, but Link tells Mallory that he has no interest in business. He wants to follow in his uncle’s footsteps—major in political science and shape domestic policy that will make life better, easier, more prosperous for American citizens. This all sounds very lofty to Mallory, but then Link admits that he also wants a school with big football, big school spirit, fraternities, pretty girls, and warm weather. Any school in the Southeastern Conference fits the bill. The University of South Carolina is his favorite, and it also happens to be the closest to home. From Boston, Mallory can fly to Charlotte, then it’s straight down Route 77 to Columbia.