In whose blood-covered name
do you look into a face you loved, and say,
Now you have been found wanting,
and now in your extremity you die!
ARTHUR MILLER,AFTER THE FALL
33
2005
SEASON 3, EPISODE 1:
“Ringers”
Barnes dropped to one knee a month after Mitch’s funeral and insisted we keep it secret, telling Jenny alone. Despite her initial reservations (it turns out “I’m only going to say this once” could actually be said a dozen times), I wouldn’t stifle my tiny sprouts of optimism when the stagnation of hospitals and pill bottles faded in the rearview. It was odd, feeling happy so soon after Mitch’s death, but I eased my guilt by remembering hehadgiven his permission. And the more I immersed Jenny in wedding plans, the more she resigned herself to the inevitable reality, half-heartedly playing along as maid of honor over the phone—“You know me, all I’ve ever wanted in life is a muted rose halter dress”—while I pretended I wasn’t dying to have Imogen on those calls alongside us.
As I began researching caterers and florists in Massachusetts (the only state where we could legally get married at the time), Barnes was simultaneously rallying his troops for the next year’s campaign. He’d already sacrificed months in Charlotte, and I knew he needed to focus on the election, which is why I was so surprised when he suggested we return forSeason 3 ofEndeavorthat spring. Mercifully, Mitch’s medical bills had been paid off with my Season 2 winnings, so I didn’t see any need to rush back into the fray, especially with so much on the horizon.
“Do you realize the exposure we’d get?” Barnes countered. “I’ll never have as large a platform for a congressional race otherwise, and if fundraising dries up in a year, we might need a safety net.”
I’d shaken my head, but Barnes had accompanied me through hell for almost a year; this was my opportunity to repay him for all he’d done for me.
Masked by thick spruce and hemlock, Helena Malloy held us at the tree line before we entered the yard of Season 3’s kitschy cabin, a Lincoln Log experiment blown to cartoonish size. I’d soon learn that woefully cheesy Western decor smothered the inside, complete with taxidermized wildlife that would suffer countless indignities at the incessant theme parties. We had deliberately arrived late to Sitka as a “shocking twist,” and I was leaking sweat under the parka they’d squeezed me in. Alaskan summer was still summer, making the season’s subheader (a new ploy by Helena) all the more idiotic:Endeavor: Deep Freeze. Apparently Caribbean villas had become passé.
We were “replacing” two hooligans Helena had recruited from the MMA showBoxer Briefs. Unbeknownst to the rest of the cast, these bruisers were decoys, hired solely to stage a scrap on Day 1 before a single competition had occurred, thus requiring the show to import alternates. Barnes and Helena had orchestrated the whole charade as part of our deal, including the condition that Barnes and I be on opposite teams. “Better chance at prize money for us, better television for you,” he’d argued, though Helena’s only condition was we had no say in who else was on which team.
I hadn’t spoken to Imogen since her call when Mitch died. In keeping with our tentative exchanges since wrapping Season 2, we’d been overly polite, straining to ignore the unhealed bruises. I squinted to glimpse her through the trees, reminding myself she couldn’t get in the way of whatI needed to do for Barnes. After all, my feelings had never affected her game.
Arjun and I hadn’t interacted since the past season’s Reunion, but he’d sent me a MySpace friend request which I’d yet to accept. I’d only created my account so Barnes could list himself as “In a relationship” with me. Earlier that day, he’d changed his status to “Engaged” before takeoff at the Seattle airport, the ultimate proclamation in 2005. He’d already armed his new publicist with a statement to release once we went under the show’s media ban.
I could hear Ecklund’s exhortations through the foliage as the cast awaited their first Tribulation, a team of Red and a team of Purple shifting beyond the brambles. At Barnes’ request, I’d only worn my engagement ring at home, though that would change today. As he gripped my hand, my eyes narrowed on the burgeoning callus that had risen above my knuckle since the proposal. A dumbfounded Mary Peach watched me slip on the ring at Barnes’ instruction, and Helena tapped Barnes’ shoulder. He kissed my cheek, and in we marched.
I should have been anxious for countless reasons, but all I remember feeling was proud to walk beside him. As cheers erupted from the starstruck rookies, the subtext was inarguable: the headliners had deigned to show up after all. Imogen smiled uneasily as she joined the applause, but Arjun’s new, neatly trimmed beard failed to hide him grinding his teeth.
“Everyone recognizesEndeavor’s resident power couple,” Ecklund declared, fresh veneers shining. He directed Barnes to Team Purple, while I joined Arjun and Imogen on Team Red. “Yes, folks! LuMoJun rides again!”
Though, of course, we wouldn’t. Over the subsequent weeks, Barnes executed a plan of such diabolical beauty that the season became required weekly viewing for politics classes at multiple universities, for Barnes had planted me as the ideal double agent. I was my team’s strongest guy, so if Barnes went home, then he was virtually guaranteed winnings through me. But he wasn’t going home. In fact, he had a perfect endgame.
Whenever his team won, he’d encourage them to vote me in the Trial, ostensibly proving his loyalty. Simultaneously, he persuaded his inexperienced flock of novices theyneededto face me, the show’s most decorated athlete, to boost their clout and invest in theirEndeavorcareers. If my team won, I volunteered, demonstrating to anyone skeptical of my ties to Barnes that I’d risk myself before them. While the female Trials required more case-by-case maneuvering on Barnes’ part, I competed in every male Trial—and won each time, thinning Barnes’ herd.
By the finale, Barnes and I had cannibalized Team Purple to him alone, a brigade of one. My bloated Team Red was confident as we raced across the tundra, completing checkpoints along a fake pipeline, always in the lead until we reached a final sudoku puzzle. Where I sat down. I didn’t budge, even after completing the task. I stayed planted when Barnes jogged in, tuning out my team’s screams as he rapidly solved the sudoku and ran ahead without a glance back. The men dragged me, but I resisted, ignoring Imogen’s protestations that sheknewI would do this, that I’d ruined Arjun’s life, that my father would be so disappointed, that she wished she’d never met me. She kicked me five times in the stomach, but that didn’t make the edit. I was still being thrashed and berated when Barnes crossed the finish line to become the first and only solo winner ofEndeavor, claiming the million-dollar prize.
“This is ours. We did it together,” he swore while they bandaged me in the medical tent, my legs cut to hell from the rough ground, my stomach marbleized, mud and blood alike crusting on my engagement ring. I barely registered Mary Peach insisting Helena transport me to an ER for confirmation I hadn’t sustained internal bleeding. All I could hear was Barnes whispering in my ear. “I’m nothing without you. Everything I do is for you, just you…”
As much as we enraged fans when the show aired, the apologists proved just as vocal, invoking “genius strategy,” “young love,” “tragic backstories,” and “grow up, it’s just a game” all in our defense. And after fifty-five million people watch you essentially mug a TV show, it turns out youonly need 3 percent of that viewership to double as your electorate when you’re a congressional rep from a fairly small state.
But somewhere between a hotel room in a hurricane and a courthouse ceremony in Boston with a nondescript officiant, I lost myself. Our wedding ended up more a rally than anything, snuck in before Massachusetts denied out-of-state petitioners same-sex marriage licenses in March 2006. It was nothing like I’d imagined, but I convinced myself I’d never needed a big performative ceremony. What would my invite list have even looked like? And hadn’t I already demonstrated my commitment to my husband on national television? My vows were broadcast to millions and sold in DVD box sets. Our union was printed on commemorative T-shirts, trading cards, and mugs. For one moment, in the frenzied whirlwind of that first election, we weren’t reality TV stars. We weren’t even politicians. We were royalty. We were, in every sense of the word,winners.
34
2015
SEASON 20, EPISODE 8:
“… To Keep Me from You! (Part Two)”
