Rodham

by Curtis Sittenfeld

  “I was in lust. She was sixteen and I thought she looked like Anita Ekberg. You know who that is?”

  I shook my head.

  “A very voluptuous actress.”

  “Half of me is tempted to ask how many women you’ve slept with, and half of me doesn’t want to know.”

  “Maybe we ought to defer to the second half of you.”

  With our faces close together, I scrutinized him, and he added, “For as long as I can remember, even when I was just a kid, I’ve had a weakness for a nice figure. A girl in a skirt walks by, and I’m like a dog drooling over a bone. But it’s—” He paused. “It’s infatuation. Not love.” His face remained a few inches above mine as he watched me absorb his words. “You and me,” he said. “This isn’t infatuation.”

  “At the risk of making an argument I don’t want to win, you wouldn’t really know, would you? Presumably, infatuation never feels like infatuation until it’s over.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “I haven’t told you this yet, but soon after that day in the lounge when you heard me talking about watermelons, I saw you at a lecture. It was when Judge Motley came to campus. Do you remember that? I was sitting in the row behind you, and when it was over, I thought, I’ll introduce myself to her. I reached out my hand to touch your shoulder, and I felt—I realize this will sound strange, but it was like an electric shock. I knew I’d be starting something I couldn’t stop.”

  It was difficult to know what to make of this story. I was flattered, yes, but also confused.

  Then he said, “Can’t you feel it, too, how this is different from everything else? I want this—us—to last forever.”

  Prior to two days earlier, we had hardly spent time in each other’s company. But with Bill’s face so close to mine, waiting for my response, with our bodies pressed together, it seemed that either of us might blurt out “I love you”—that I was just as likely to do it as he was. And, almost impossibly, that it would be true. However, I love you wasn’t what I said. Soberly, I said, “Yes. I feel it, too.”

  Soon after that, we weren’t talking much. We were kissing a lot, and removing the rest of each other’s clothes, and his fingers were stroking me in different places and I was overwhelmed with wanting to be as close as I could to him—him, Bill, a specific person. With Roy, and with another law classmate named Eddie whom I’d dated my first year at Yale, the sex had been enjoyable enough but not personal. It had felt like we were doing pleasurable things that human beings did, in a fairly consistent sequence, but it hadn’t felt relevant that I was specifically me and the other person was specifically the other person.

  And then I could feel the nudging of Bill’s erection, it was probably going to happen, then it was definitely going to happen, he was entering me, and I gasped—I gasped both because it felt so incredibly good and because I couldn’t believe I was naked with this man. And then he really was inside me, it was happening, and we would eternally from this moment on be two people who’d had sex with each other. Even as he thrust into me, as I arched up against him and gripped his buttocks, there were a few seconds in which our eyes met and we looked at each other, both of us unblinking. Neither of us was smiling; smiling would have been trivial, or beside the point. To be with him in this way was an almost intolerable ecstasy. It was the most precious thing I had ever experienced.

  * * *

  —

  The girl was named Kimberly, and she was seven years old, though as I watched her through the mirrored window of the room at Yale New Haven Hospital where her clinical session was occurring, she looked so small I’d have guessed her to be four; she also had dark hair and pronounced circles under her eyes.

  The room was furnished with a regular-sized couch, a child-sized table and chairs, and an assortment of wooden blocks, toy trains, dolls, and books. Kimberly sat on the floor, her back against the couch, holding but not interacting with a doll, a blank expression on her face. A psychologist was crouched in front of her, saying things to Kimberly that didn’t elicit a response. On the other side of the window, I stood beside Dr. Hormley, who was one of the physicians, a gentle, white-haired grandfather of eleven.

  “Has she spoken at all since she was admitted?” I asked, and Dr. Hormley shook his head.

  He said, “We’re trying to determine if there was a previous mutism diagnosis.”

  Early Sunday morning, a neighbor had called the police, apparently not for the first time, after hearing a dispute between Kimberly’s parents. Police officers had found Kimberly tied to the radiator, sitting in her own urine and feces. Thirty-six hours later, the father remained in jail, while the mother had been released. The question, and the reason I’d been summoned, was whether Kimberly ought to be returned to the custody of her mother or placed temporarily in foster care—whether the mother was also a victim of the father’s abuse, an accomplice, or somewhere in between. As in similar cases, Gwen had tasked me with gathering information in order to make a custodial recommendation.

  I said to Dr. Hormley, “How underweight is she?”

  “She’s height/weight proportional, but her height is in the fifth percentile for her age.”

  Though Dr. Hormley had a kind presence, I had learned to keep my questions to him factual rather than subjective—he was not the person to ask about, say, the nature of a patient’s family relationships. Also, no matter how horrifying the situation that had brought a child under his care, he and I did not editorialize about the horrors. I wondered if he discussed such matters with his wife or colleagues or if not discussing them was part of what allowed him to maintain equanimity.

  Dr. Hormley passed me Kimberly’s chart and said, “I need to check on an appendectomy. Leave this at the nurse’s station when you’re done.”

  In retrospect, the only thing more staggering than the seriousness of the outcomes I shaped as a twenty-three-year-old graduate student was the carte blanche with which I conducted my research, but patient privacy laws were lax to nonexistent then. I followed Dr. Hormley and other physicians as they met patients, I evaluated children by observing them in clinical settings like the one Kimberly was presently in, and I led case meetings. I spoke directly to police officers, social workers, and family members.

  I took a few more notes on Kimberly’s interactions with the psychologist, dropped off her chart, and rode the elevator to the fourth floor. The National Children’s Initiative—Gwen’s fledgling organization—was a tiny office inside the hospital devoted to reforming federal policies around children’s health and education. Gwen truly was a pioneer, responsible for introducing the concept of child abuse to the general public.

  When I stepped off the elevator, I was next to a large picture window facing southeast, providing a view of the medical school campus and the modest neighborhood known as the Hill. I stood by the window for a minute—it was a gray, overcast day—organizing my thoughts before walking down the hall to speak with Gwen. I’d never had an inordinately rosy view of human nature, but the circumstances that caused children to end up in the hospital still shocked me. What could cause an adult to unleash such savagery? Drug addiction, insanity, sometimes in combination with crippling poverty—these were all factors, but at some point, it seemed that cruelty or even sadism were the only explanations for a three-year-old who had been drowned in the bathtub by his uncle or a nine-year-old whose back was covered with burn marks from a mother’s iron. Sometimes when I returned to the law school after observing or even just discussing such children, it was like emerging from a grim trance I’d been unaware of having slipped into. The privileged bustle of Yale, all of us with our sparkly eyes and theoretical notions about justice, our clever conversations, our impending diplomas—they seemed a kind of illusion or pretense. Soon after starting law school, I’d decided to eschew makeup and opt for pants instead of skirts or dresses, which made me consider myself down-to-earth, but I recognized in such moment
s that this was a negligible distinction. I was as obscenely lucky and fancy as everyone else.

  Early on, I’d occasionally wept in private after seeing an abused child. But quickly my tears had come to seem not just unprofessional but self-indulgent. And the truth was that, looking out the window that day, I didn’t need to suppress tears. An image came into my mind of Kimberly—her big dark eyes, her unresponsiveness, her tight grip on the doll—and then, unexpectedly, another image followed, of what Bill looked like when he smiled. The contrast between Kimberly’s tragic neglect and my new connection with Bill, how sustaining and generous his presence was, made me feel something that may have been elation or terror or certainty or lust. I often secretly experienced my own good fortune as slightly shameful and my impulses toward activism as a form of contrition, but what if I could lead a life that made me worthy of luck? What if getting what I wanted most could be a fuel for my own morality, and additive rather than unfairly advantageous?

  Out the window, four floors below me, a man rode a bicycle on a street lined with shabby houses. I didn’t want to go talk to Gwen about Kimberly’s awful parents; I wanted to find Bill and wrap my arms around him, to hold him and be held, even if we were clothed, even if we weren’t talking. I just wanted to lie there with him.

  None of this was what I did. Instead, I took a deep breath, tucked my hair behind both ears, turned away from the window, and walked to Gwen’s office.

  * * *

  —

  The second and third times with Bill had been the same night as the first time, and the fourth and fifth times had been the following night, also at my apartment, and the sixth, seventh, and eighth times were at my apartment between 3:00 and 5:00 P.M. on a Wednesday, instead of my Corporate Tax class, and that was when I stopped counting.

  There were other milestones, too, including the public presentation of ourselves as a couple, which happened that Friday at the twenty-fifth birthday party of Nick Chess, who was the editor of the Yale Law Journal and the friend I’d been with when I’d first heard Bill talking about watermelons. Bill and I entered the party holding hands and I felt a few people notice, but no one said anything until a bunch of us were standing in the kitchen, and he and I were leaning against the counter, both of us drinking beer, his arm around my shoulders. His classmate Charlie Kulik’s wife, Prudence, nudged me from the other side and whispered, “You and Bill?”

  I smiled and said, “I guess so.”

  “Nice job,” she said.

  As we left the party around one in the morning, Nick himself, who was clearly drunk, yelled after us, “Try not to actually fall in love, because I don’t think it’s legal for the president of the United States to be married to the Supreme Court chief justice.”

  Over his shoulder, Bill called back, “Then how about if I don’t aim any higher than the U.S. Court of Appeals?”

  It was also that weekend that I first visited Bill’s house, riding in the passenger seat of his rather improbable orange Opel station wagon. When we arrived, around nine o’clock at night, Kirby and Keith were playing cards in the living room, and Jimmy was in the kitchen washing dishes and listening to a Jackson 5 record at a high volume. When Jimmy saw us, he said to me, “I’d say that you’re the reason Bill’s never around, but Bill’s never around anyway.”

  Because it was dark, I could sense and hear the Atlantic Ocean behind the house more than I could really see it. Bill and I took off our shoes and walked over the cold sand and, for a few seconds, into the even colder water. Then we went back inside and washed our feet off in a grimy tub, and after we were in his room, he shut the door behind us and I was gripped by that particular happiness that I truly had only ever felt with him. What could be better than being alone in a room with Bill Clinton? He had a double bed without a headboard, a red armchair, an overstuffed shelf, a desk, and a desk chair. Almost right away, we’d taken off our clothes and were in bed and under the covers, and again there was the closeness of our bodies, the warmth of his skin, the way he touched me, the way he smelled and felt, how alert he seemed to me and how alert I was to him. Afterward, he lay on his back, his head on a pillow, and I lay on my side, my head on his chest, and he enfolded me with one arm. He said, “Is there anything you need so you’re comfortable spending the night? A glass of water or another blanket? Do you want to borrow my toothbrush?”

  In addition to the map and bus route in my satchel, I always kept a yellow grosgrain cosmetics bag that contained a toothbrush, toothpaste, a hair brush, a small tube of hand lotion, and no makeup. I kissed Bill’s bare shoulder. “There’s nothing I need besides you. But what’s that?” Next to the armchair, a black rectangular case about two feet in length had caught my eye. Like a suitcase, it had a handle and two metal clasps.

  “It’s my saxophone.”

  “You play the saxophone?”

  “No, I just left the case there to impress you. It’s empty.” Lightly, he flicked my clavicle with his thumb and middle finger. “Of course I play.”

  “You’ll have to show me sometime,” I said, and the next thing I knew, he’d bounded out of bed, and I was offered an unobscured view of his pale buttocks as he bent, opened the case, and pulled out the golden instrument. Still naked, he turned around, inserted the mouthpiece between his lips, and began playing “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Our eyes met, and I started to laugh, even as I worried what his roommates might think or whether any of them would open the door to tell us to quiet down. But he continued playing, and I continued laughing. He was laughing, too, while he blew on the mouthpiece and held his fingers over the buttons. Finally, he had no choice but to stop and give in to his laughter. I was by then on my back, propped up on both elbows, and he put the instrument away and returned to bed.

  “I can tell you’re very impressed,” he said.

  “Your musical skills are dazzling.” I leaned in and kissed him on the lips. “I’ve never been serenaded by a naked man before.”

  As he settled back in beside me, we kissed again and kept kissing—now my mouth knew his mouth, this was becoming familiar and was also still wondrously new—then he pulled his head back an inch or two. He was regarding me with such warmth and affection, with such focus. “I love you, Hillary,” he said. “I’m in love with you, and I love you. I can’t believe that you exist.”

  “That I exist? You’re the Arkansas Renaissance man and future president.” I looked at him more seriously. “I’m in love with you, Bill, and I love you, too.”

  * * *

  —

  I had dropped off the film containing the photos of the mold in Robert Suarez’s basement at a camera store a few blocks from my apartment, and I wanted to pick up the prints before I tried to get statements from the Suarezes’ neighbors; if the photos had turned out horribly, I could take them again without making yet another trip.

  I opened the stiff envelope before I left the photo store, and the photos inside were fine. While I wouldn’t be mistaken for, say, Ansel Adams, they captured clear images of the moldy wall.

  By design, I stepped off the bus on Dixwell Avenue a little after six; I figured that the dinner hour was the likeliest time to catch people, none of whom had responded to the letters I’d slid under their doors on my earlier visit. There were just three units in the Suarezes’ building, and when the man on the first floor opened his door, I said, “My name is Hillary Rodham, and I work at the New Haven Legal Services office. There’s a noise dispute between your landlord and the Suarez family, who live above you, and I wonder if you have a few minutes to discuss it with me.”

  The man squinted at me as I spoke. When I finished, in an emphatic tone, he said, “Your name is bitch from the New Haven Legal Services office.” Then he slammed the door.

  The second floor was where the Suarezes lived. The television was in fact audible from the hall, but it also was just on the other side of the wall, close to w
here I passed without knocking.

  On the third floor, a very old, very small woman answered the door, and the scent of what seemed to be steaming vegetables billowed out. When I repeated what I’d said to the man on the first floor, she said, “Which family?”

  “The Suarez family. The people who live right beneath you. Can I ask you a few questions and write down your answers?”

  “Robert and Maria don’t do anything wrong,” she said.

  “I’m glad to hear that. The landlord said they’re loud, and he’s trying to evict them, but if you’re telling me they don’t make too much noise, that will help them stay in the apartment.”

  “There’s a dog around the corner who barks and barks.” She was pointing north. “That’s who’s loud. He barks day and night.”

  “Does the dog belong to someone in this building?”

  “It’s not right to leave an animal out in the yard till all hours.”

  I had pulled a notebook and pen from my satchel, and I said, “Just to confirm, the Suarezes don’t make excessive noise?”

  “No.”

  “How long have you lived here?”

  “I’ve been here for years, dear. Since the Johnsons were in that apartment and the family before the Johnsons, too. Do you know Gladys?”

  “I don’t know Gladys,” I said. “You’ve never experienced any noise disturbance with the Suarez family?”

  The woman looked at me intently. “The problem is the dog that barks all the time. It’s not a big dog, but the fur is matted something terrible.”

  “I’m sorry its owners don’t take care of it.” I closed my notebook. “Thank you for your help.”

  * * *

  —

  At nine, I joined Bill at the Elm Street Diner, where he’d been finishing dinner with two of his Constitutional Law classmates. As we walked back to my apartment, we held hands and I was, for some reason—not because it felt urgent or even cathartic but more because there was nothing it wasn’t fun to discuss with him—describing Daniel the Harvard Divinity student and our final conversation on the banks of the Charles River, the one in which I’d invited Daniel to the Wellesley mixer and he’d replied “Hillary, I really enjoy discussing theology with you.”