American Wife

“Is that what you’d say?”

I swallow. “I’m not a military analyst, but—Yes. I’d say the same thing.”

“They don’t want us in their country any more than we want to be there.” He speaks calmly. “They don’t think we make them more secure, they don’t say we’ve improved their lives. They see us as occupiers. I’ve been in battle, Mrs. Blackwell, and I know it’s messy, but that’s not the problem here. Our troops are caught in the middle of tribal factions, in a place they have no business fighting. The president says the way to honor the memory of the fallen is to complete the mission, but if the war was wrong to begin with, it won’t become right by going forward in the same direction.”

What can I say in reply, what is there for me to tell him? I can maintain eye contact; I can show him that I’m listening.

He says, “President Blackwell won’t be out of office for nineteen months”—I know, I want to tell him. Believe me, I know exactly—“and how many soldiers will die in that time? Two thousand, three thousand? I think we honor the memory of the fallen by preventing more senseless deaths.”

I say, “Our country is so indebted to you and families like yours, and I know there’s no way to repay Nate’s sacrifice. But the situation is extremely complicated, and if the United States were to—”

“Mrs. Blackwell!” His interruption surprises both of us, it seems. He gives the impression of a very polite person straining against the confines, the straitjacket, of his own politeness; he is saying more than he thinks he should, in a sharper tone (I am, after all, the first lady, and he is, after all, sitting in my armored limousine), but less than what he actually feels (I am, after all, the first lady, and he is, after all, sitting in my armored limousine). He says, “I beg your pardon, but you can repay my sacrifice. You can’t bring back Nate, no, but there are a hundred and forty-five thousand American troops still over there, and all of them have people who love them, who worry and pray every day for their safety. You can tell your husband, ‘These people have families.’ ”

What was it I said to Gladys Wycomb earlier today? My husband’s administration is different from me. Also: He is the one the American people elected.

“I saw you interviewed a few months back,” Edgar Franklin says. “The lady who talked to you, she said, ‘How do you and your husband spend your quiet time?’ And you said, ‘We read, we play Scrabble, the president watches sports.’ Mrs. Blackwell, that’s all anyone wants.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m very sorry.”

“Nate’s mother passed on in 1996,” Edgar Franklin says. “She was a wonderful cook, and she never had to follow a recipe. Meat loaf, black-eyed peas, macaroni and cheese, everything she made was delicious. Well, after she was gone, it was just Nate and me, and he was still a youngster. I hired a lady to help take care of him and make our meals during the week, and come the weekend, Nate and I had spaghetti with sauce and called it a bachelor dinner. We’d say if we turned on the stove, it counted as cooking.” We exchange a wry smile; Edgar Franklin does not hate me, at least not the way Gladys Wycomb did.

“Now, after I retired,” he continues, “a few years passed, and I thought, It’s about time I learn to cook. I bought cookbooks, and I read through them, and at first there were only a few recipes I could try—there were words I didn’t even know the meaning of, parboil and braise and what have you. But I improved. I had some humble moments that no one but me ever needs to hear about, but I improved. I had a plan that when Nate got back, I would make him a full dinner, and wouldn’t he be surprised: pork tenderloin with mushrooms and olives, a fresh salad, some homemade bread. I’d ordered a breadmaker from the Internet—people are very impressed by homemade bread if they don’t know all you do is put in the ingredients and press a button. I tried the different kinds to find the best one, because Nate didn’t care for raisins, but you could do herb bread or sourdough or any number of them.” I know what Edgar Franklin will say next, and I’m not wrong, though the way he says it is more restrained, less maudlin, than it could be. He says, “I never did make that dinner for my son.”

The limousine is quiet—outside, agents stand on all four sides—and after a minute, I say, “I’ve been close to people who died young, and I know it’s terrible in a way that’s different from other deaths. It feels like it’s unendurable, but you endure it because you don’t have a choice.” I pause. “If there were anything I could do to bring back your son, to change what happened, I would.”

“It’d be rough no matter how he was taken, that much I know,” Edgar Franklin says. “But it wasn’t a cause worth dying for. Weapons of mass destruction that were never found? Access to oil fields? Politicians playing cowboys and Indians? I guess those sound like good reasons when it’s not your son.”

Edgar Franklin is wearing khaki pants and a white short-sleeved button-down shirt beneath which I see the shadow of a sleeveless undershirt. He also wears a watch with a black leather strap, a plain gold wedding band on his left hand, and brown leather loafers with tassels. The tassels are what do it; they break my heart. I look directly at him and say, “I think you’re right. It’s time for us to end the war and bring home the troops.”

ON NOVEMBER 7, 2000, which was Election Day, we voted when the polls opened in Madison; Charlie and I voted at the same time, and outside the curtained booths at the elementary school near the governor’s mansion, we joined hands and, with our free outer arms, waved to the assembled journalists, photographers, cameramen, and well-wishers. We then boarded a plane and traveled to our final campaign stops, a rally in Portland, Oregon—Oregon was known to be a close race—and another in Minneapolis before we flew back to Wisconsin and rode to the hotel, where we were planning to watch the election returns in a suite with various staff members and relatives, including Arnold Prouhet and his wife and family, and all the Blackwells. Our nephews Harry and Drew had been campaigning full-time on Charlie’s behalf since the beginning, and Harold and Ed had also done extensive fund-raising. That night, in addition to Ella, Harold, and Priscilla, every single one of Charlie’s brothers, their wives, and their children, most of them married with children of their own, had come into town, and this all-hands-on-deck representation was quite touching to both Charlie and me. Someone had ordered dozens of pizzas, and the suite was a chaos of nerves and excitement; the only calm moment, which I appreciated, was when Reverend Randy led us in prayer before we ate. That the election would be tight was no secret, but Hank was confident Charlie would win, and Charlie was confident, too. Not because of anything we ever said to each other but due more to our exchanged glances, due to what we didn’t say, I was pretty sure that my father-in-law and I were the only ones who had serious doubts about Charlie’s victory. Harold was retired, or “actively retired,” as he liked to say, but he still had many close ties inside the Republican National Committee, and his seeming skepticism struck me as informed, whereas mine was based more on intuition. Whether I wanted Charlie to win felt beside the point by then. Sure I did, and of course I didn’t. I wanted him to win the way you want your hometown baseball team to win, or your daughter’s high school soccer team. I wanted that in-the-moment triumph, wanted our emotions to build to celebration rather than sink into disappointment, which was not the same as wanting the triumph’s long-term consequences. I wanted Charlie to win the election, but I didn’t want him to be president. For eighteen months, we’d been caught up, both of us, in a great tumult of chanting crowds holding red and blue signs, of strategizing advisers and pollsters and reporters, of waving flags, brass bands, planes and airports and hotels, schools and county fairs and nursing homes. It had been fun sometimes and exhausting more often, and now it was almost finished. The hotel ballroom was reserved for the victory party, and one of the reasons I still knew that I wasn’t cut out for politics was the built-in mortification of a victory party when there was a perfectly good chance there wouldn’t be a victory.

As the hours passed, it became clear that the entire election came down to the state of Florida—it reminded me of baseball games, how all nine innings could somehow shrink to one final pitch—and just before seven our time, eight on the East Coast, the networks announced that Florida’s twenty-five electoral votes would go to Charlie’s opponent. The suite became quiet except for our niece Liza’s three-month-old son, Parker, who was wailing inconsolably. Everyone looked at Charlie, or they tried not to look at him—he was sitting on a sofa near the large television, Ella on one side and Hank on the other—and I wasn’t surprised when, within a few minutes, Ella whispered in my ear, “Dad wants to leave.”

Harold, Priscilla, Hank, and Debbie Bell accompanied us back to the governor’s mansion, but everyone else stayed behind. As we walked through the lobby and climbed in the SUVs that would take us home, none of us spoke to the hordes of media who called out, though I smiled at a few of them; there were many we knew well by this point. It wasn’t as if they’d need encouragement—they were following us back to the mansion no matter what, and the reality was that we’d have to let them inside, Charlie would have to talk to them, before the end of the night.

At the mansion, we congregated in the second-floor living room, and I was tempted to suggest a game of Scrabble or euchre, but I don’t think anything could have distracted us. Everyone’s personalities seemed in this moment both reduced and magnified, distilled to some essential quality: Debbie Bell was angry, Hank was insisting that Florida couldn’t have gone to Charlie’s opponent and there must have been an error, Harold was stoic, Priscilla was disdainful of Charlie’s opponent and the fools who would elect him, Ella was sweetly protective of her father, I was quiet, and Charlie was wounded—boyishly so, it seemed. He was speaking less than anyone else, and Priscilla was speaking the most. “That smug, sanctimonious tree-hugger,” she’d say when images of Charlie’s opponent flashed on-screen. “If that’s the man the American people want for president, then they deserve him.” I think election nights were particularly evocative and fraught for Priscilla and Harold—we were, of course, sitting in the governor’s mansion they had occupied for eight years, where Charlie himself had spent most of his adolescence.

I had a maid bring out some peanuts and popcorn, and two televisions were playing—the one in the wooden cabinet, and another that had been brought in so we could watch more than one channel simultaneously, though we turned off the sound on both—and Charlie was preparing to call his opponent and concede the race when his and Hank’s and Debbie’s and Harold’s cell phones all started ringing at once, and less than three minutes later, the networks reported that they were placing Florida back in the undecided category. By one-thirty A.M., Charlie was leading in Florida with a hundred thousand votes, and by three-thirty A.M., he was leading with fewer than two thousand, with most of the votes in the uncounted precincts expected to go to his opponent. When we went to bed just after four, it was impossible to know what to think; the only consensus by then was that the results would be so close there’d have to be a recount, and it might be several days before anyone knew the outcome. I wouldn’t have believed my fatigue could be so overwhelming on such a nerve-racking night, but the last few days of campaigning had been especially wearying, and I felt that my body was begging me to lie down. Equally surprising was that Charlie seemed to feel the same. As the night had worn on, we’d been rejoined by several family members, we’d been paid a visit by a group of television and newspaper reporters and their attendant cameramen and photographers, and I’d noticed that increasingly, Charlie stuck close to me. Once, when I stood up to use the powder room, he asked where I was going. “And you’re coming right back?” he said. I nodded. At close to four, when I said, “Will you forgive me if I turn in?” he said, “As a matter of fact, I’ll join you.” The thirty or so people in the living room applauded as Charlie walked out, and he looked sheepish when he paused and grinned.

In bed, after we’d brushed our teeth and turned out the light, he set his head sideways on my chest, and I ran my fingers through his hair. He said, “So what’s gonna happen?”

“Oh, honey, I don’t know any more than anyone else.”

“But what’s your hunch?”

“Honestly, sweetheart, I don’t—”

He interrupted me. He said, “I’ve been thinking what I should do is be baseball commissioner. I’d be perfect, right?”

It was the first I’d heard of this idea, but it sounded plausible enough. I said, “Okay.”

“It’d be fun—challenging but not a total pain in the ass, and a good way to utilize all the skills I’ve acquired. But this state-government shit, the three-hour meetings about groundwater or labor relations or some dairy law from 1850, I’ve had my fill.”

“Is the baseball-commissioner position going to open soon? It’s Wynne Smith now, isn’t it?”

“I’ll put out a few feelers. Smith’s pushing seventy, so I’ll bet they’re ready for new blood.”

“Just don’t forget you have two years left of being governor.”

Charlie was quiet, and then he said, “If I resigned, would you think that was terrible? Monty is up to the challenge, no question.” Monty was Ralph Montanetti, the lieutenant governor.

“You wouldn’t want to see this term through to the end?” I said.

“This campaign has been brutal—I don’t have to tell you that, but between the two of us, I’m starting to feel like the thrill is gone. I already know Hank’s gonna be gunning for ’04, but I’m not sure it’s worth it. The idea of winning a presidential election, lately, it’s been reminding me of—What’s that line about making partner at a law firm? You’ve won a pie-eating contest, and your prize is more pie.”

“Will you do me a favor?” I said. “Will you try to remember that whatever happens, we’ll be okay? If you want to stay in politics, if you want to get out and go back to baseball, if you just want to relax—” Charlie was fifty-four by then, and it wouldn’t be embarrassing if he no longer worked; he could take early retirement, we could travel, we could even buy our own second home somewhere other than Halcyon, in Minnesota or Michigan, and he could fish and I could read. “You’re lucky that you have so many options, and so many supporters and admirers,” I said. “That’s what’s important.”

Charlie lifted his head and turned it so that, in the dark, we were face-to-face. From the far side of the second floor, we could hear the televisions and the people still awake in the living room. He said, “When they announced I hadn’t gotten Florida, that pissed me off. We’ve been down there, what, fifteen times in the last year? And I’ll bet you right now everyone in the liberal media is shitting their pants with excitement—they get to say I lost, then they say, ‘No, wait, you didn’t,’ and then they’ll say, ‘Oh yeah, you did.’ Twice the fun, right? Over at the hotel, that wasn’t my idea of a good time, to have to smile like a gracious loser while everyone I’ve ever known sits around staring at me. But then I thought, If everything happens for a reason, God must know what He’s doing. What kind of believer would I be if I only trusted in Him when life goes my way?”

“There’s still the possibility that you won,” I said. “The election’s not over yet.”

He shook his head. “You know I lost, and I do, too. I feel it in my bones. But Lindy, I’m at peace.” He kissed my lips and said, “This might sound crazy, but I’m already starting to think I dodged a bullet.”

____

I THOUGHT WE’D ride back to the White House in the cars we were in—I was looking forward to a moment alone, or alone with three agents, to absorb what just took place—but the minute Edgar Franklin leaves my car, Jessica reappears, climbing in as she holds out a phone. “It’s the president.”

If it were anyone other than Charlie, even Ella, even my mother, I’d refuse. But I raise the phone to my ear, and when I say hello, Charlie says, “When did aliens kidnap my wife and replace her with you?”

He sounds boisterous, and he also sounds like he’s walking somewhere—possibly toward the residence elevator to change for the gala, which is in a rather alarming twenty minutes.

“Charlie, I didn’t intend to catch you off guard, but I couldn’t let another—”

“No, it was brilliant. Hank is only pissed he didn’t think of it himself. One parent to another, that was definitely the way to go.”

“You’re not upset?”

“I just hope Mr. Sympathy appreciated how generous it was of you to make time for him, especially since the word on the street is that now you won’t have a chance to freshen up. But don’t worry, I promise not to tell the students and teachers saluting you that you’re wearing stinky underpants.”

Uneasily, I realize he thinks I spoke to Edgar Franklin in his stead, less as myself than as a presidential surrogate, the way I sometimes attend funerals of foreign leaders. I say, “Charlie, I told Edgar Franklin I support ending the war and bringing home the troops.”

For ten seconds, Charlie is silent, and then, in a bewildered voice, he says, “You support ending the war and bringing home the troops?”

“I made it clear I don’t speak for the administration, I don’t speak for you, and it’s not as if he and I had an elaborate discussion about foreign policy. It was mostly him expressing his views and me listening.”

“I’m sorry, but I think our connection must be messed up. It sounded like you just said that you told an antiwar activist surrounded by TV cameras that you side with him over me.” I am quiet, and Charlie says, “Good God, Lindy.”

“Sweetheart, you and I can have differing opinions. The abortion issue—”

“Is that what this is about? You were determined to cause a huge controversy today, so after the witch doctor croaked, you cooked up another one?”

I feel a great urge to be in the same physical place he is, to set my hand on his cheek, to embrace him—to show him that though I’ve done something uncharacteristic, I’m still his loyal wife.

“I’m walking toward a TV right now,” he says, and then, to someone else, he says, “Yeah, while she was just talking to him.” To me, he says, “Yep, it’s on every station. Way to go, baby. You want to torpedo my immigration bill while you’re at it? Sabotage Social Security reform?”

It’s already on every station? Edgar Franklin climbed from my car minutes ago. But the newscasters must have figured it out while he was still in the limousine, they must be reporting live in their urgently speculative way.

“I’ll be home in five minutes,” I say. “Will you wait for me to get there before you become wound up?”

“See, I always forget this about you,” he says, and even now, long after we first lost our privacy, I can’t help wondering who’s overhearing him. “Every decade, you like to pin me to the ground, pull open my mouth, and take a shit right into it.”

I ONCE THOUGHT, when I was thirty-one and Charlie was running for Congress, that with practice I might learn to hold a novel in my purse and read it during his speeches, but I was wrong; reporters and audience members often glance at a candidate’s wife while he speaks, gauging her reaction. Also around this time, which was when Charlie and I were falling in love, I thought that I could support him not as a politician but as a person, and I told him this, and he thought it, too. “I can assure you I’ll never tell anyone if I disagree with you,” I said to him. “That’s no one’s business but ours.”

____

THE GALA IN my honor, attended by more than three hundred guests, is pleasant and crowded and a bit over-the-top. Charlie and I sit side by side in the front row, and after the third-graders sing “God Bless America” and a tiny twelve-year-old boy in a wheelchair is pushed onstage by his mother to lead us all in the Pledge of Allegiance, there are speeches by a principal at a public high school in Anacostia, a fifth-grader at a school in Bethesda, Maryland, and a Democratic senator known for his sponsorship of education-related bills (though he and I have gotten along well over the years, it’s no secret he despises Charlie; however, he’s hoping for support for his housing-voucher program). There is then a baton-twirling routine performed to R. Kelly’s “I Believe I Can Fly” by a trio of nine-year-olds in leotards, a scene from the play The Miracle Worker in which two respected Broadway actresses play the parts of Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan, and a reading of the Langston Hughes poem “Theme for English B” by a high school senior, an African-American girl who is probably fifty pounds overweight, quite pretty, and in possession of undeniable stage presence.

At this point, three teachers receive awards: chrome apples affixed to wooden tablets, each presented by the student who nominated the teacher. The evening culminates with the reappearance onstage of all the earlier performers, two of whom unfurl a banner that has to be forty feet long and says THANK YOU FOR BEING OUR ADVOCATE MRS. BLACKWELL. During the teacher awards, I slipped backstage, and as planned, I walk out from the wings, smiling and waving. At the podium, two ninth-graders present me with my own chrome apple that’s a foot in diameter (if my apple were life-size, as the teachers’ apples are, it wouldn’t provide the requisite photo op, and the flashbulbs are indeed blinding in this moment). I don’t give a real speech but simply say, “Thank you very much, and thank you all for coming tonight. This has been an extraordinary evening, and I’m honored to be in the presence of so much talent. I hope each one of you will remember that wherever you want to go in life, education is the ticket. And now, in light of the fact that it’s a school night, I recommend that you all go home, make sure your homework is finished, and get a good night’s sleep.” (Not a speech, but still—even these aren’t words I wrote.) While normally, I’d be embarrassed at having such a fuss made over me, after all the drama of today, these proceedings are a giddy distraction. Onstage, I pose for photos with the students and teachers; several students not waiting in line have formed a circle around one of the “God Bless America” third-graders, who is vigorously break-dancing. Charlie is gone, I note. We have acted our parts tonight, sitting next to each other with pleasant expressions, Charlie smiling gamely whenever someone onstage said something kind about me, but he gave me no nonmandatory attention, no whisper or hand squeeze or knee pat.

After I returned to the White House from my conversation with Edgar Franklin, there wasn’t time for me to find Charlie—as he had predicted, there wasn’t even time for me to change clothes, but I did hurry to the residence to use my own bathroom and saw Ella. We hugged, and I said, “We should head down there now,” and she said, “Aren’t you going to refresh your makeup?”

“Honey, we’re running late.”

She smirked. “You think they’ll start without you?” Although Mirel, a lovely young woman who acts as my makeup artist, and Kim, who does my hair, were waiting in the beauty salon (a room installed by Pat Nixon), it was Ella who, using Mirel’s supplies, dabbed gloss onto my lips, rubbed the brush over my cheeks, said, “Look up,” and ran the mascara wand through my eyelashes. “Now look down.” I obeyed, and she said, “Now blink.” Then she said, “Mom, I’m glad you talked to the Franklin dude, but if the troops were withdrawn right away, there’d be a domino effect of lawlessness across the Middle East.”

Her tone was reminiscent of when she was a teenager, explaining to me something she thought I ought to already know—diplomatic enough not to offend me but confident that logic was on her side. (Obviously she should be able to stay out until two in the morning because she was extremely responsible, because none of her classmates had a midnight curfew, and because it wasn’t like she drank.) In a strange way, I was caught off guard and touched by Ella’s directness, her willingness to talk about the war itself rather than about how to fix my supposed slip of the tongue. This, I knew already, would be the approach of everyone else. Just in the time it had taken Jessica and me to get back to the White House, Jessica’s two phones had rung six times (and those were only the rings I heard—there were probably many more beeps for calls interrupting the calls she was in the middle of), and apparently, Hank had spoken to several reporters. I’m not sure if he’d have skipped the gala anyway, but this was what he did, no doubt to continue setting the record straight. When Jessica, Ella, and I met Charlie in the Family Dining Room, Debbie Bell and Hank were both with him, perhaps to serve as a buffer between Charlie and me, perhaps at Charlie’s request, and so were Charlie’s personal aide, Michael, and my personal aide, Ashley, and Charlie didn’t kiss me hello but instead embraced Ella and more or less ignored me; I also could tell that Debbie was fuming. The eight of us walked together through Cross Hall, and just before we entered the East Room, Hank peeled off, and Charlie took my hand and forced a grin onto his face. Subtext: Nothing is wrong, and no one at the White House is concerned about the first lady going off-message.

When I’ve shaken hands and been photographed with everyone onstage who’s lined up, Ella, Jessica, and I are ushered out by Cal—Ashley squirts Purell for me—and we head toward the residence without speaking to the few dozen journalists in attendance at the gala; they are kept at bay by the press secretaries. “Here’s Hank’s plan,” Jessica says in a low voice as we walk to the elevator. “No interviews for several weeks, and you don’t take questions from the media at public events. Then we see where things stand and ease back in.”

I nod. This doesn’t seem so bad; silence on my part is far preferable to the sort of verbal acrobatics I’d need to engage in if I were trying not to either reinforce or undermine what I’d told Edgar Franklin. Not that I’ll be off the hook altogether, obviously—whenever I am interviewed again, I’ll be asked about my comments (which Edgar repeated immediately to the assembled reporters, which I knew he would), but I plan to be terse.

Though she rides the elevator upstairs with us, Jessica doesn’t step out; instead, the elevator attendant, a spry senior citizen named Nicholas, holds open the door as Jessica bids Ella and me farewell, acting as if she’s going home herself, though I’m fairly sure she’s planning to return to the East Wing to keep working. “Thank you for everything,” I say to Jessica. “You deserve a medal for today.”

“You deserve a gigantic apple plaque,” Ella says. Ella is merely making a joke; she thinks I went to see my mother this afternoon and doesn’t know about Gladys Wycomb’s threat, doesn’t know what a long day it’s been. In any case, I’ve already lost track of the chrome apple. I believe Jessica’s assistant Belinda carried it away.

Jessica says to me, “Take it easy tonight, okay?” She looks at Ella. “Make her relax.”

“The same to you,” I say.

“I’m not the one in the eye of the storm,” Jessica says. Abruptly, she jumps out of the elevator and hugs me, and as she does, she whispers in my ear so Ella can’t hear, “You did the right thing.”

Ella and I sit in the Family Kitchen, and Ella pulls cheese, hummus, and baby carrots out of the refrigerator. She isn’t a fan of the food here—even though downstairs the chefs will fix anything we want exactly to our specifications—so I always make sure we’re stocked in the residence when she visits. I call down to ask for a Cobb salad for myself, and Ella and I analyze the evening for a while, discussing the impressive delivery of the girl who recited “Theme for English B,” the vaguely and uncomfortably sexual overtones of the baton-twirling fourth-graders, and Ella says, “Did you talk to Senator Zimon tonight? I think he’s had hair implants.” She adds, “Does Jessica ever annoy you because she’s so perfect?”

I smile. “Does that mean Jessica annoys you because she’s perfect?”

“Not at all!” Ella grins her father’s grin. “No, I’m totally not threatened by this woman who’s close to my own age, who you spend all your time with and like better than me. Not one little bit!”

“I think the world of Jessica, but I only have one daughter, and there’s no one I love more. Would you like to sit on my lap?” I am mostly teasing, as Ella is, too, but she rises, turns, and lowers her rear end onto my thighs for a second. I run my palm down her back, over her still-long caramel-colored hair. Then she stands, reaching forward for a carrot that she dips in the hummus. She bites into it and says over one shoulder, with her mouth full, “What I’m really hungry for right now is a poop sandwich.”

“You’re a class act,” I say. This is an old joke between us, a requirement whenever eating a meal together after time apart. (Needless to say, I never make the joke, but Ella can be counted on.)

“Are you and Dad in a huge fight?” Ella asks.

“Why would you think that?”

“There has to be some fallout from your heart-to-heart with that Franklin guy.”

“Don’t worry about Dad and me. We’ll be just fine.”

“So what’s the thing you wanted to tell me?”

“Oh—” Should I do it? I no longer need to, now that I’ve been spared by Gladys Wycomb’s death, but I still could. What is the difference between giving voice to an overdue truth and being a parent who indulgently unburdens herself? Telling Ella wouldn’t be fair to her, I realize, it would be unsettling—not just because of her religious convictions but also because (I know Ella, and I, too, was an only child) it will make her think she could have had a brother or sister. I say, “It was nothing.”

Ella leans over and kisses my cheek. “Then I’m going to go call Wyatt. Tell Dad when he gets up here that I have something hilarious to show him on YouTube.”

I lightly swat her rear end. “Put your plate in the sink.”

When Ella is gone, I move to the West Sitting Hall, which has a beautiful lunette window overlooking the Old Executive Office Building, the Rose Garden, and the West Wing. I take a seat on a sofa and remain there for an hour and a half, reading. The book I left here yesterday, Stop-Time by Frank Conroy, has been waiting for me for twenty-four hours—all night last night and all day today, while I hopped from Arlington to Chicago to Riley. I enter it, and it welcomes me back.

Just before eleven, I set down the book and stand, and when I do, I remember Pete Imhof’s envelope, folded into the pocket of my linen jacket. I lift it out, and before I reach inside—the envelope is not sealed but already torn open—I see that on the back, in my own seventeen-year-old handwriting, it says, Mr. and Mrs. Imhof. Right away, I know exactly what it is, and with the tip of my thumb, I press against the envelope’s uneven bump, confirming its outline. (It’s so small! Not over half an inch at its widest point.) I pull out the note.

I will never be able to express to you how sorry I am, my seventeen-year-old self explains in blue ink. I know that I have caused you great pain. If there was anything in the world I could do to change what happened, I would. This pendant is something of mine Andrew once told me he liked, so I thought it might comfort you to have it. My pulse is racing as I withdraw the pendant, and it is very tarnished—I will never polish it—and I look at it in my palm: my silver heart. This is what Andrew leaned in to touch that afternoon before he went to football practice, the gift my grandmother gave me for my sixteenth birthday. (Oh, the past, the past—how the memories of the people I loved sear me.)

I’m not sure what I’ll do with the pendant; it’s obviously an inexpensive piece of jewelry, not particularly suitable for a sixty-one-year-old woman and even less so for the first lady, but maybe I can wear it on such a long cord that it won’t be visible beneath my shirts. No object in the world could be dearer to me, and I marvel at the strangeness of its source. Perhaps, though I didn’t yet know I had it, this is what nudged me to go talk to Edgar Franklin—that Pete Imhof had given me back my heart.

I MEET CHARLIE in the hall outside our bedroom. He is walking from the opposite direction, and I can tell that he’s trying to decide how friendly or unfriendly to be—after we make eye contact, he immediately looks away, then seems to realize how absurd it would be to pretend not to see me when it’s only the two of us, or only the two of us and Snowflake, who scampers off as soon as he notices me. A valet hovers outside our bedroom and opens the door as we approach, nodding once at Charlie. “Good night, Mr. President,” and then to me, “Good night, ma’am.”

“’Night, Roger,” Charlie says as we walk by, and I smile without speaking.

When the door closes behind us, I say, “Please don’t give me the silent treatment. If you’re angry, let’s talk about it.”

“If I’m angry? Lindy, how the fuck could you blindside me like this? You know how it looks if there’s not even unified support for the war in my own marriage? I’m the laughingstock of the world tonight, and I have to sit there clapping for baton twirlers.”

“Sweetheart, I think you’re overreacting. What I said to Edgar Franklin wasn’t a political statement.”

“What planet are you living on? When the first lady of the United States talks, it’s always political!” Between our bed and the flat-screen television above the fireplace is a sitting area: two wingback chairs, a sofa, and a wooden table off which Charlie grabs the remote control. “Hmm, I wonder what they’re saying on TV. I’m sure this isn’t all over the networks, because obviously, it was just you speaking as a private citizen, it wasn’t a political statement, and the media fully understands those subtle distinctions.” When the screen comes to life—it’s Fox News—there’s a clip of Charlie’s press secretary, Maggie Carpeni, saying this evening, “Listen, we all want to bring the troops home, every person in America does. The question isn’t if, it’s when, but the first lady knows as well as anyone else that a precipitous withdrawal would have disastrous consequences. She and the president stand united in their certainty that victory will come when stability and freedom have been achieved.”

“I don’t think that makes you look like a laughingstock at all,” I say. That Maggie is misrepresenting my own remarks doesn’t particularly bother me—first because of my belief that the fact of someone saying something about me, even when the someone is in my husband’s inner circle, cannot make it true or untrue, but also because I didn’t realistically imagine that the White House would leave my statements to Edgar Franklin untouched. That I said them once, in earshot of only Colonel Franklin and my agent Cal, has to be enough, at least for now—if I ever expect to reaffirm or expand on them, or to reassert my pro-choice stance, I will have to do so with great care. And Maggie or Hank can minimize what I said, but they can’t erase it. It exists. While I often have been surprised by the trusting nature of the American public, people clearly have become more wary during Charlie’s presidency, and so I can hope that at least some of them will assume the truth: that Edgar Franklin quoted me accurately, and that I meant exactly what it sounded like. Whether my words will have any positive effect, including on my husband, remains to be seen.

Charlie clicks to CNN, where the caption at the bottom of the screen says ANTIWAR FATHER RETURNS TO GEORGIA. Edgar Franklin stands before an electronic bouquet of no fewer than a dozen microphones; beside him is a plump woman identified as his sister Cheryl. It is still light out, which means the press conference must have been filmed several hours ago. “I believe that I’ve gotten as close as I will to the president,” he says. “Today I spoke from the heart to Mrs. Blackwell, and I choose to think she heard me and will act as a conduit to her husband. Whether he will listen is up to him. Although I’m going home tonight, I know that for as long as the war continues, it’s my responsibility to protest it.”

There is then a jump away from Edgar Franklin and back to the commentators in the studio—now the caption across the bottom reads ET TU, ALICE?—and one of the pundits, a man in a bow tie, says, “I’m sure all our viewers remember President Blackwell’s claim that he wouldn’t withdraw the troops even if Alice and Snowflake are the only ones left who support him—well, Mr. President, you may want to keep a very close watch on the first cat!” (This is yet another strangeness of being a famous person—that sometimes, on television or a website or in an article, a person addresses you directly but rhetorically directly, seemingly never imagining that you might see or read what they’re saying.)

The four commentators sit at a long, narrow triangle of a table, and they all chuckle at the bow-tied fellow’s quip. The show’s host says, “The big question now is whether the Dems will see this as an opportunity to kick Blackwell while he’s down vis-à-vis his Supreme Court nominee, Ingrid Sanchez.”

“Do you really want to watch this?” I ask. Charlie usually stays away from television news, believing the vast majority of producers and reporters have a liberal bias. Fox, obviously, gives him the most favorable coverage, but even with them, he gets fidgety after a couple minutes.

“Just don’t act like your betrayal isn’t the topic on everyone’s lips tonight.” Charlie raises the remote control and clicks off the TV. “If you think that, you’re kidding yourself.”

“Aren’t you at least happy that Edgar Franklin has gone home?”

“You mean because you sold me out and gave him what he’d come for?”

I sit on the brocade-covered bench at the end of our bed (the bed frame is French walnut, acquired by Theodore and Edith Roosevelt; the mattress is a custom-fitted Simmons Beautyrest World Class with memory foam and pillow top). Charlie is still standing behind one of the wingback chairs eight or nine feet away from me.

“I love you,” I say.

“Maybe you should sleep in the other room.”

“Did you hear what I just said?”

“You want us to kiss and make up, and then what will you do tomorrow, join Greenpeace? I still don’t know what the hell got into you.”

“Charlie, talking to Colonel Franklin wasn’t out of character for me. He’s a father, and his son died, and the fact that the White House was ignoring him made me very uncomfortable.”

“Then you should have said something to me, or to Hank, or to—”

“I did say something to you! Or I tried to, but you might recall that as recently as this morning, when you brought over the newspapers, you’d only give them to me if I didn’t mention him.”

“So I left you with no choice but to slam my foreign policy?” His expression is skeptical. He is wearing the charcoal suit, white shirt, and red tie from earlier—neither of us, it turns out, changed for the gala, though by now he has unbuttoned the top button of the shirt and loosened the tie. Perhaps I’m a pushover, but I’ve always found this to be an endearing style in any man and especially in my husband. He says, “You ever think the time has come for you to forgive me for being elected president?”

We watch each other, and I say nothing. Then—a lump has formed in my throat—I say, “The reason I didn’t want you to be president is that I was afraid it would turn out like this.”

“Like what? You mean you and me?”

I shake my head. “Not us. Just the—the responsibility. How much is at stake when you decide something.” This is a way we never talk, Charlie and I. We speak of when he is giving a speech where, when he is traveling where, or when I am. We discuss in small, momentary ways how the State of the Union went, whether an airplane flight was bumpy, if his cold is any better. It would be crushing, I think, for us to analyze the enormity of our lives now, their meaning and repercussions, yet surely it is this very reticence, our workaday manner of communicating, one foot in front of the other, that has landed us in a place we wouldn’t thinkingly have gone. This has been Charlie’s presidency: episodes of experience, choices he’s made based on the input of advisers reluctant to tell him anything he doesn’t want to hear; he has prayed, but I’ve often worried that the voice of guidance he’s heard has been not God’s but Hank’s, or possibly Charlie’s own, echoing back at him.

But he doesn’t see it this way. He looks incredulous as he says, “Do you think I’m not aware of the responsibility of being leader of the free world every minute of every day? Lindy, if at this point it’s news to you that the president is under tremendous pressure, then I don’t know where you’ve been for the last six and a half years.”

“But aren’t you—” I pause, start again. “Don’t you feel guilty?”

He stares at me. “For what?”

“A lot of the soldiers who are dying are younger than Ella. They’re younger, but some are married, they have kids of their own. Or they come back, and what if you’re twenty-six years old and both your legs were blown off and you never had a college education? We met a fellow like that at Walter Reed, remember? What’s he supposed to do now?”

Charlie’s nostrils flare even more than usual. He is—it’s unmistakable—disgusted. “Did you attend some peacenik workshop in Chicago today? Lindy, grow up. Freedom has a price, and you know what? A lot of people consider it an honor to pay it.”

“Sweetheart, I’m not trying to bait you—I’m not a journalist at a press conference. Can’t we talk sincerely?”

“About what?” His face is scrunched up in a sneer, his eyes squinty. “I don’t know where this is coming from, but frankly, I don’t need it from you, of all people.”

Isn’t he right in a way, that it’s far too late to change the rules? Our predecessors—Democrats—were known for being a team of sorts. “Two for the price of one” was a campaign slogan, and the first lady had an accomplished law career behind her. But he was adulterous, and she was ultimately a divisive figure among both men and women (Jadey professed to hate her, though I secretly always admired her), and when Charlie ran largely in contrast to that administration, the differences between me and her were not a political creation; they were real. I moved the first lady’s office back from the West Wing to the East Wing, I have until today avoided controversy, I have not tried to convince my husband of much of anything. Isn’t it indeed unfair, then, to start confronting Charlie with my opinions and criticisms? And isn’t it cowardly, aren’t the consequences too serious, not to?

I say, “One time, this was probably twenty years ago, I was with Jadey at the country club, and I was reading an article in the paper about a man who was sick with hepatitis C and cirrhosis and couldn’t afford his medication. The article was just incredibly sad. I looked up from reading it, and people were, you know, splashing in the pool, Jadey and I were lying on those recliners, and I asked her if she ever felt like she should be leading an entirely different life.”

Almost imperceptibly, Charlie’s face softens; his nostrils shrink, they are no longer at full flare.

“I guess I wonder if I should have been an entirely different first lady,” I say. “Yes, I realize it’s been six years, but I finally feel like, Oh, this is how it works. When I was a librarian, every time I read a new book to the children, it was only after the class was finished that I knew how I should have led the discussion, what the activities should have been. It was as if I knew how to do it right in the future from having done it wrong.”

“Lindy—” He folds his arms across his chest. “You’re a great first lady. Your approval ratings are sky-high.”

“Those numbers don’t mean anything.”

He shrugs. “You’re preaching to the choir on that front, but come on—America loves you. The applause you got tonight—”

“You don’t have to tell me how great I am,” I say.

“Really? Because I’d be thrilled if you’d do that for me.” For the first time since we entered our bedroom, he grins—not a thousand-watt grin, but still a real one.

I glance at the fireplace, where porcelain vases that once belonged to Dolly Madison flank the TV, then I look again at my husband. “On the plane today, I was thinking about how, after Andrew Imhof died, from then on, anything in my life that wasn’t bad felt like a pardon. Especially meeting you, marrying you—I wasn’t sure if I deserved to be so lucky. And when you wanted to run for governor and president, even though I had such doubts, I didn’t put my foot down because I thought it wasn’t my right. Who am I to tell other people, including you, how to live? I’m not such a paragon of perfection.” I pause; I have gotten to the part that’s harder to say, where I incriminate not just myself but him as well. Slowly, I say, “But if you’ve made certain choices and I’ve stood by, aren’t I responsible, too, indirectly? If you look at it like that, then the car accident pales in comparison to the deaths since the war started. I almost couldn’t survive the guilt of killing one person and now how many thousands—and not just Americans but—”

“This is crazy talk!” Charlie strides toward me, he pulls me up from the bench, and he places his palms on either side of my head, gazing at me intently. He seems fierce, fiercely determined, but not hostile. “You’re being nuts, do you hear me? There are casualties under every president, every single one without exception. You’re so good-hearted that you feel personally responsible, but Lindy, it has nothing to do with you. When it comes to spreading democracy, yeah, there’s some collateral damage, and that might sound callous, but the casualties so far, no matter how you tally them, it’s nowhere close to Vietnam or World War II—this doesn’t hold a candle. And believe me, those wars had their critics, too, but no one looks back and thinks, Yeah, we really should have let Hitler go ahead and rule Europe. You’re in the thick of things, and that’s why it’s hard to maintain perspective—I struggle, too—but future generations will thank us. They will, Lindy. There’s no doubt in my mind.”

Did I bare my soul to him of all people—not to Jessica or Jadey or even to my father-in-law—precisely so that he could comfort me with passionate disagreement? Who would be more assured of, more invested in, my blamelessness than Charlie? In a similar fashion, I once allowed him to convince me that dating him against Dena’s wishes was no big deal.

He says, “They got to you today, didn’t they? The witch doctor and Mr. Sympathy, they gave you hell because you’re too nice to put them in their place. But just because they talk a good game doesn’t mean they’re right.”

Oh, Charlie. Oh, my dear and cherished husband in your white shirt and your loosened red tie, standing before me warm and fervent and familiar, my husband whose every expression and gesture and inch of skin are known to me, my partner in the strange circumstances of our lives, the man whom I have endlessly wished to make happy, endlessly been amused by, endlessly loved—do you not imagine I know all too well that just because people talk a good game doesn’t mean they’re right?

I have often felt, observing the world, like a solitary person in a small cottage looking out a window at a vast dark forest. Since I was a little girl, I have lived inside this cottage, sheltered by its roof and walls. I have known of people suffering—I have not been blind to them in the way that privilege allows, the way my own husband and now my daughter are blind. It is a statement of fact and not a judgment to say Charlie and Ella’s minds aren’t oriented in that direction; in a way, it absolves them, whereas the unlucky have knocked on the door of my consciousness, they have emerged from the forest and knocked many times over the course of my life, and I have only occasionally allowed them entry. I’ve done more than nothing and much less than I could have. I have laid inside, beneath a quilt on a comfortable couch, in a kind of reverie, and when I heard the unlucky outside my cottage, sometimes I passed them coins or scraps of food, and sometimes I ignored them altogether; if I ignored them, they had no choice but to walk back into the woods, and when they grew weak or got lost or were circled by wolves, I pretended I couldn’t hear them calling my name. In my twenties, when I was a teacher and a librarian working with children from poor families, I thought it was the beginning, that my contributions to society would increase and continue, but in fact that was my deepest involvement; in the years since, I have only extended myself from higher and higher perches, in increasingly perfunctory ways, with more cameras to chronicle my virtue.

I could have lived a different life, but I lived this one. And perhaps it is not a coincidence that I married a man who would neither fault me nor even be aware of my failings. I married a man to whom I would compare favorably because if I have done little, he has done less, or perhaps more; if I have caused harm accidentally and indirectly, he has done so with qualmless intent and total confidence.

The tears that have been welling in my eyes over the course of the conversation spill out at last, and Charlie wipes them with the pads of his thumbs. He leans in and kisses my right eyebrow. He murmurs, “Come on, baby.” If he hasn’t yet forgiven me completely, then it’s only a matter of time; he will forgive me so long as my behavior today remains an anomaly. He says, “Lindy, both of us—we’re instruments of God’s will.”

HAVE I MADE terrible mistakes?

In bed beside me, my husband sleeps, his breathing deep and steady. Before I awakened, I was dreaming of Andrew Imhof, the old dream: the two of us standing in different places, with different groups of people, in a large and badly lit room, my constant awareness of him. But in tonight’s dream, there was a startling change: After decades of elusion, we find each other. What happiness! We both are shy, we both are young, we make our way toward each other awkwardly but with a shared understanding, a certainty. He is strong and sweet and golden, and I am wearing a red dress that I never in reality owned. We don’t say much because it’s not necessary. And then—a miracle—we kiss, we are kissing. This is all I ever wanted, to come back to you, to be held by you, for what existed between us not to be cut short, and especially not at my hand. Your lips are soft and tentative, without the pushy sureness of a husband’s tongue. It is enough, just this—your hand at the small of my back, the heat of your chest beneath your shirt, our faces close together, and a cloak of privacy surrounding us. Could I have been your wife after all, might we have made a life together on your parents’ farm or one of our own? Once, on that extended visit back to Riley, I decided not, but now that we’re together, our compatibility makes me think of course we could have. We can talk to each other, we make each other laugh, there is between us a common sensibility, a wordless affection whose subtext is a single question: What took us so long?

And then I awakened, a sixty-one-year-old woman in a big, grand, shadowy bedroom in Washington, D.C., the wife of the president of the United States. Can Charlie and I not also talk to each other, do we not make each other laugh, is there not between us a common sensibility? It isn’t necessary for me to insist to myself that I love Charlie; I know that I do. But that dewy certainty I felt for Andrew, the lightness of our lives then—it is long gone. I have never experienced it with anyone else.

I didn’t vote for Charlie for president. I did vote for him both times for governor, but when he ran for president, I didn’t want the upheaval or the burdens, and I also believed sincerely that his opponent would do a better job. He had more experience, a more nuanced view of the issues; he was a lifelong public servant rather than an intermittent dabbler. I wondered, exiting the voting booth in 2000 and again in 2004, if my expression might give away my actions, but my vote was apparently so inevitable that no one ever asked me about it, no reporter or campaign staffer. I suppose it would have been disrespectful. In the photo taken of us that morning in 2000, Charlie and I pause outside the curtained booths at the elementary school in Madison, simultaneously holding hands and waving. What does the photo show, I’ve wondered since—my treachery or his? During the periods when I’ve been the most frustrated by our lives, or by what is happening in this country, I’ve looked outside at the cars and pedestrians our motorcades pass, and I’ve thought, All I did is marry him. You are the ones who gave him power. At other times, I have felt both a sense of regret for deceiving him and an oppressive awareness of my complicity in his elections.

Did I betray Charlie, or did I act on principle? Has he betrayed the American people, or has he acted on principle? Perhaps the answer is all of the above. If the many novels I’ve read are an accurate indicator, I have to assume there are betrayals in most marriages. The goal, I suppose, is not to allow any that are larger than the strength of the partnership.

While I don’t imagine that I’ll ever be able to reveal to Charlie this particular betrayal, the future is difficult to predict, and perhaps there will come a time when even having voted for his opponent might seem an amusing anecdote. I doubt it, but it’s possible. For now I will say nothing; amid the glaring exposure, there must remain secrets that are mine alone.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In researching the life of a first lady, I relied on many books, articles, and websites. I drew particular inspiration from the facts and insights of The Perfect Wife: The Life and Choices of Laura Bush, by Ann Gerhart. I also must acknowledge my debt to four other books: Laura Bush: An Intimate Portrait of the First Lady, by Ronald Kessler; Ambling into History: The Unlikely Odyssey of George W. Bush, by Frank Bruni; Living History, by Hillary Rodham Clinton; and For Love of Politics: Inside the Clinton White House, by Sally Bedell Smith. I am grateful to all these authors and would encourage anyone interested in nonfiction accounts of life on the campaign trail or in the White House to seek out their work.

In addition, my gratitude and affection go to my editor, Laura Ford, my publicist, Jynne Martin, and my agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh. I’m lucky to have many other advocates and allies in publishing, including Gina Centrello, Jennifer Hershey, Tom Perry, Sanyu Dillon, Sally Marvin, Avideh Bashirrad, Janet Wygal, Victoria Wong, Robbin Schiff, Amanda Ice, Suzanne Gluck, Tracy Fisher, Raffaella DeAngelis, Michelle Feehan, Lisa Grubka, and Alicia Gordon. For her years of steadfast support, there will always be a place in my heart for Shana Kelly.

For being smart and supportive, I thank my early readers: Susanna Daniel, Cammie McGovern, Samuel Park, Brian Weinberg, Shauna Seliy, Emily Miller, Jennifer Weiner, Lewis Robinson, Katie Brandi, and Susan Marrs.

For helping me figure out particular details, I thank James R. Ketchum, Marisa Luzzatto, Katie Riley, Jo Sittenfeld, Ellen Battistelli, Darren Speece, Jennie Cole, Joe Litvin, Marc Miller, Chris Thomforde, Susan Brown, Marcie Roahen, Susan Schultz, Jeanne Stewart, John Stewart, Sr., John Stewart, Jr., Mikey Stewart, Nick Stanton, and once again, Susanna Daniel. Any errors in the book of either fact or judgment are my own.

As always, I thank my parents and siblings for being my parents and siblings, and I’m especially appreciative to my father for his feedback and input. Finally, I thank Matt Carlson, who read each section as I finished it and encouraged me to keep writing because he wanted to find out what would happen next.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

C

URTIS

S

ITTENFELD

is the author of

The Man of My Dreams

and

Prep,

which was chosen by

The New York Times

as one of the Ten Best Books of 2005. Her nonfiction has appeared in

The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Salon, Allure, Glamour,

and on public radio’s

This American Life.

Her books have been translated into twenty-five languages. Visit her website at

www.curtissittenfeld.com

.

ALSO BY CURTIS SITTENFELD

The Man of My Dreams

Prep

Copyright © 2008 by Curtis Sittenfeld

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint

of The Random House Publishing Group, a division

of Random House, Inc., New York.

Random House and colophon are registered trademarks

of Random House, Inc.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following

for permission to reprint previously published material:

SONY/ATV MUSIC PUBLISHING AND ALFRED PUBLISHING CO., INC.: Excerpt from “Lonesome Town” by Baker Knight, copyright © 1958 (renewed) by Sony/ATV Songs LLC, EMI Unart Catalog, Inc., and Matragun Music, Inc., EMI. All rights assigned to EMI Catalogue Partnership. All rights controlled and administered by EMI Unart Catalog, Inc., and Sony/ATV Music Publishing. Reprinted by permission of Sony/ATV Music Publishing, 8 Music Square West, Nashville, TN 37203 and Alfred Publishing Co., Inc.

VIKING PENGUIN, A DIVISION OF PENGUIN YOUNG READERS GROUP, A MEMBER OF PENGUIN GROUP (USA) INC.: Excerpt from Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans, copyright © 1939 by Ludwig Bemelmans and copyright renewed 1967 by Madeleine Bemelmans and Barbara Bemelmans Marciano. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a Division of Penguin Young Readers Group, a Member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sittenfeld, Curtis.

American wife: a novel / Curtis Sittenfeld.

p. cm.

1. Presidents’ spouses—United States—Fiction. 2. Women librarians—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3619.I94A8 2008

813’.6—dc22 2008008175

www.atrandom.com

eISBN: 978-1-58836-753-2

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