Bill snorted. “What a pretentious fool.”
As I pulled out my keys, Daniel seemed so distant, and also so inferior to Bill, that I was inclined toward generosity. “He was fine,” I said. “His best quality was that he was very intelligent, and his worst quality was that he didn’t have a sense of humor.”
“Not having a sense of humor isn’t a ‘bad quality,’ ” Bill said. We were standing outside the door of my apartment, and I inserted the key. “It’s a crime.”
“True,” I said, “although— Oh, hello.” My roommate, Katherine, and a friend of hers named Sandra were both in the living room. They sat on opposite ends of the couch, each of them holding a glass of red wine. Before I could make introductions, Sandra said, “Hi, Bill.” In her voice, there was a degree of amusement, or even mockery, that made me understand immediately there had been some kind of flirtation between them.
“Hi, Sandra,” Bill responded warmly, and his tone gave away nothing. But it didn’t need to. “Hi, Katherine. How have both of you been?”
“It’s such a small world, isn’t it?” Sandra looked between us. She was pretty and red-haired.
“Hillary, I should warn you that I roasted a chicken,” Katherine said. “I promise to clean everything up before I go to bed. Would either of you like a glass of wine?”
“I won’t be using the kitchen tonight.” I made eye contact with Bill, then said, “And no thanks on the wine. Nice to see you both.”
“Sandra, I have to thank you for recommending that book by E. H. Carr,” Bill said. “Very thought-provoking.”
“I thought you’d find it interesting,” Sandra said.
“I’m not convinced he’s as secular as he claims,” Bill said, and I tugged his hand. As I pulled him away, he added, “I’d love to talk more sometime.”
In my bedroom, I dropped my satchel by the door and kicked off my shoes, and Bill did the same. He flopped backward on my bed. I was still standing as I said, “Did you date her?”
“It was nothing serious.”
“Did you sleep with her?”
His brow furrowed. “This was months before you and I ever spoke.”
The implication that I was being too sensitive—he wasn’t wrong. If I found Bill attractive, was it any surprise that other women did? And he’d never pretended he hadn’t had girlfriends before me.
I said, “Maybe I just feel pathetic that I was describing someone from my past who rejected me at the exact moment we ran into someone from your past that you successfully dated.”
He shook his head. “It wasn’t successful. I’m sorry to tell you that you hardly have a monopoly on failed relationships.”
“But the men I’ve dated besides you—it was like I was dating them so I could check off a box and prove I’d had a boyfriend. No one like you has ever been interested in me. You’re so much handsomer and more appealing. And I realize I’m not beautiful, and I realize you could easily find someone who is. It doesn’t make sense that someone like you wants to be the boyfriend of someone like me.” I was on the verge of tears as I said, “See how fearless I am?”
“Hillary,” he said in a crooning voice. “My sweet baby. First of all, I’m the lucky one. I can’t believe you think I’m worth your time. You’re amazing. Whether you know it or not, you are beautiful. And not beautiful like your insides are so impressive they make your outsides attractive. Your outsides are attractive all by themselves. I don’t know if I’m supposed to say this during the women’s movement, but you have great tits. And your little waist, and your nice soft bum, and your delicious honey pot—” I laughed, and he said, “I mean it. Your whole body is perfect, and you have such a pretty face, your eyes and lips and your skin. I love playing with your hair, and I love how you smell and how you move when we’re in bed. Isn’t it obvious I can’t keep my hands off you? I love your whole body. I love all of you. You’re brave and funny and hardworking and you’re so goddamn smart, but you know what? You’re beautiful, too. And there’s nothing about you that’s pathetic. Nothing.”
A lesson I learned from Bill, a lesson that perhaps should be obvious, though there’s evidence that most other people don’t know it, either, is that direct and sincere compliments are shockingly effective—that they feel wonderful. What in theory should sound saccharine or manipulative rarely does in practice, so long as you believe the other person really means it. And we crave praise not, I think, because most of us are egomaniacal. It’s because we’re human.
I joined Bill in bed, and when I was lying on my back naked and he was lying on top of me naked, he looked at me and smiled. He said, “Hillary, I really enjoy discussing theology with you. I also enjoy doing lots of other things with you,” and then he plunged inside me.
* * *
—
The exterior of the courthouse was a classical Greek structure that resembled a smaller version of the Supreme Court, including similarly tall white marble columns and a pediment. The courthouse’s interior was also architecturally impressive but so crowded that Robert Suarez and I needed to wait for an hour in the hall before we could enter the courtroom itself. We then waited another hour and a half in the gallery, listening to the adjudication of other housing cases. The judge, a man who looked at least seventy, had a brisk and focused air. Intermittently, a baby on the other side of the gallery bawled and someone very close to Robert Suarez and me broke wind. The first time, I pretended not to notice the smell while fearing Robert Suarez would think it was me. The second time, I wondered uncomfortably if it was him. The third time, we glanced at each other, simultaneously made expressions of dismay, then simultaneously started laughing.
When finally our turn arrived, we took seats at the defendant’s table and were sworn in, as was the landlord, whom I still knew by name only. He was balding and kept his raincoat on.
“Your Honor, this isn’t a nonpayment case,” I said to the judge. “My client is a family man, a churchgoer, and a responsible tenant. He’s also a Section 236 tenant, and while this might not be desirable from the standpoint of some housing owners, I sincerely believe that the claims of noise violations are pretextual. I have a statement from a neighbor of the defendant who says she’s never been disturbed by noise. I also have documentation of mold in the basement of the building, but when I raised this issue in a response, the plaintiff never filed a reply.”
The judge asked the landlord what the disruptive noise was (the landlord said “very loud conversations, often in Spanish”) and who had complained. (“Lots of people,” the landlord said, and when the judge asked for specific individuals, the landlord said he didn’t know their names because it included tenants in the next building, which he didn’t own.) The judge asked what floor the unit was on and how much of its interior was covered in carpet. After answering, the landlord added, “There’s six Mexicans in a two-bedroom. Six of them, and three are adults.”
“There are no grounds to evict these tenants,” the judge said. “This eviction proceeding is dismissed with prejudice. So ordered.” The entire proceeding had lasted a few minutes.
I turned to Robert Suarez, who looked confused. “We won,” I said. “The case has been dismissed permanently. He can’t try to evict you again for any reason having to do with noise.”
An expression of relief overtook Robert Suarez’s features, and he crossed himself.
The bailiff had already called the next case, and I didn’t take the time to insert my manila folder in my satchel before leaving the courtroom; I did this in the hall, which remained crowded. Outside the courthouse, I shook Robert Suarez’s hand and said, “I wish you and your family the best of luck.”
“Thank you for the help,” he replied.
The following week, I received a package at the clinic addressed to Hilarie Rodman. Inside was a piece of paper with small handwritten print that read in its entirety, Thank you, Suarez Family,
along with a white crocheted tablecloth that looked to be handmade—I assumed by Robert Suarez’s mother-in-law, though I never knew. I own this tablecloth still.
* * *
—
In April and May, Bill and I rarely spent a night apart. As the end of the semester approached, we had papers to write, exams to study for, year-end meetings to attend, and a few farewell gatherings for our friends who were graduating. Plus, of course, for me there was the clinic and the National Children’s Initiative, and for Bill, there were already obligations with the McGovern campaign. Though Bill would be based in Florida for the summer, he’d started organizing in Connecticut and was looking for a spot near campus to open a headquarters in the fall. I accompanied him one afternoon to see a storefront on a particularly questionable street; outside, on the sidewalk, were not one but two smashed glass syringes with intact needles. Even before we stepped inside, I said, “No. I’m sorry, but no, and I have a feeling you’re showing it to me so I’ll tell you no.”
I felt the busiest I ever had, and happily so; with Bill underpinning my days, there was such a fullness to them. I’d have imagined spending so much time together to be depleting, but it was the opposite. The nights alone in my nest had ceased to exist, or maybe it was that Bill himself had become my nest. We often lay side by side and read, and there was a series of conversations we were having, or possibly one long conversation, that gave me precisely what my nest once had. This fact was miraculous.
I knew plenty of smart people, but I’d never before encountered a person whose intelligence sharpened mine the way his did. His perspective both overlapped with and differed from mine so as to be challenging, reassuring, and never boring. I also, though I knew it would have sounded arrogant to express this to anyone other than Bill, enjoyed the rare experience of being the less impressive person—I was less articulate than he was, less charismatic, less knowledgeable about obscure congressional districts and Southern authors. How marvelous! It wasn’t that I was without an ego, immune to the gratification of seeming impressive, but impressing others wasn’t for me a goal unto itself, a kind of sport; for Bill, it was definitely a sport, which perhaps, I thought, was one of the reasons a person eventually ran for office.
And certainly he was practicing running for office, practicing winning people over. Yet his was such a nimble and omnivorous mind that he could exert himself publicly and still have an abundance of private energy, of complex opinions and ideas to exchange with me; he didn’t need to ration his energy or thoughts. What was unfolding between us felt continuously replenishable, regenerative. Sometimes in the past when I’d worked on various projects—fighting at Wellesley to be allowed to have interdisciplinary majors, for example, or to wear pants to class—I grew close to others who were involved, then the project concluded, and though I could still feel affection for the people I’d been working with, there simply wasn’t as much to say to one another. We’d been linked by something larger than ourselves, but we’d been linked temporarily.
In contrast, the conversations I had with Bill never felt provisional; as long as we went about our daily lives, we had more to talk about than time to talk. We discussed the Supreme Court’s ruling on Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education and if the Gulf of Tonkin resolution was constitutional; we discussed whether food tasted the same to everyone and people liked or disliked the taste, or whether it actually tasted different to different people; and we discussed our childhoods and our plans for the future and all the people either of us had ever known, including Bud Gurski and Bruce Stappenbeck and Bill’s grandparents Mammaw and Papaw and the nun who was his teacher in both second and third grades and the so-called scout—I teased him that it sounded like a butler—who had made his bed at Oxford. At Wellesley, I’d once babysat for a professor’s nine-year-old daughter, and she’d said as I was putting her to bed, “Tell me a story that’s long, interesting, and hilarious.” Having Bill as my boyfriend, loving Bill, felt like living inside such a story.
And then there was the sex. I recognized only in retrospect that it wouldn’t have been difficult, with my two former boyfriends, for me to transgress and not in a manner they found arousing. That I could have made a sound that alarmed them, that I could have shown my body from an unflattering angle, that I could have seemed assertive or greedy when they’d planned to be the assertive, greedy ones. Once, with Roy, when the way he was using his fingers on me wasn’t working, I had finished with my own fingers, while also kissing him, and it was afterward, due to a certain sulkiness on his part, that I realized he’d been put off. I had never again touched myself in his presence.
In contrast, Bill was not only unfazed but actively delighted by any sound I made, any way I moved. Sex with him was fun and tender and barely embarrassing or awkward, or amusing in its embarrassment and awkwardness. (At one point, he said, “I want you on top of me,” and I started to shift and had to say, “Okay, but my arm is stuck under you.”) The general impression Bill gave was that he found me irresistible, at least as irresistible as french fries and an ice-cream sundae; that nothing I did could repel him; that there was nothing in the world he’d rather be doing than stroking my body or kissing me all over. As impatient as he naturally was, he never rushed when we were in bed. He was leisurely, and I was the one who became increasingly, gloriously frantic.
And the truth was that when he was thrusting into me, I had such a strong sense of wanting him to come inside me, wanting no barriers between us, wanting the things we did with each other to be different from the things we did in the rest of our lives, with other people. None of this was remotely like what I’d felt with Roy or Eddie. I’d regarded their semen as, if not disgusting, then as messy and mildly regrettable, like a spilled glass of water.
When Bill was inside me, sometimes I was mindless with how good it felt, and sometimes I was aware, with a kind of granular precision, of the unlikely sequence of events that had made our lives intersect: his Arkansas upbringing, his stepfathers, his ambition and intelligence and hard work, and the more ordinary circumstances of my childhood that had nevertheless set me on a path, primarily because of the fierceness of my mother’s belief in me, to travel east and enter law school and meet this very particular person, this distinct and exceptional man. I’d think of my earlier belief that the things that made me most myself were a romantic turnoff, that no one would simultaneously value my intellect and find me attractive; I had wanted so badly to be wrong, and I’d struggled to find evidence that I was.
Yet here we were, with all of his skin touching all of my skin; he was kissing my neck, next to my ear, or we were kissing with our mouths open and our tongues mashing together. His body in my arms, pressed against me, was shocking. Looking into his eyes was shocking. That we were literally fused, that his erection was inside me and my legs were wrapped around him, hooked through the backs of his knees—all of this was shocking. It was shocking that we’d found each other and it was shocking how natural yet thrilling having conversations with him was and it was shocking that we were naked, even though we’d never spoken until a few weeks earlier. Falling in love was shocking, shocking, utterly shocking.
* * *
—
Richard Greenberger invited some of his Constitutional Law students, including Bill, over for an end-of-semester dinner. I was reading when Bill rang the doorbell of my apartment afterward, and when I let him in, I said, “How was it? Isn’t Gwen great?” The fact that my boyfriend and my mentor had just met without my being present made me intensely curious what they’d thought of each other. As it happened, the next morning, Gwen and I were attending a conference for elementary school teachers and principals in Hartford, and I couldn’t wait to learn her impression of Bill.
“She’s terrific,” Bill said as we settled onto the living room couch. “I understand why you’re crazy about both of them.”
“Doesn’t their life seem like the ideal?” We’d
sat close together, my legs angled over his, and he was rubbing my thighs. “It’s such a brave, optimistic experiment. I assume not everyone in his family was thrilled that she’s black and maybe not everyone in her family was thrilled that he’s white or Jewish, but they got married anyway. They didn’t make a choice out of fear. They also didn’t do that thing of getting married and forgetting about the greater good, the collective good. They still care. And their kids are adorable.”
In a not-exactly-casual tone, Bill said, “You definitely want to get married and have children?”
“Yes,” I said. “Definitely.” When our eyes met, I said, “Did you think I didn’t?”
“I hoped you did,” he said. “Because I want to.” There was a kind of atmospheric thickening, the lack of necessity of acknowledging the conversation’s significance. After a few seconds, he said, “I can’t see getting my political career started anywhere other than Arkansas. That’s always been the plan, and I always thought, Maybe I’ll meet someone from home or maybe I’ll meet someone from somewhere else and I’ll bring her back. But it’s different to ask you to move to Arkansas. Truthfully, I think you could be happy there, whether it’s Little Rock or a different city. There’s much more going on all over the state than people realize, and it’s such a beautiful place to live. I’d love for you to visit so I can show it to you. But I know you have other choices.”
“I’d love to visit,” I said. “I can’t promise that I’ll move there, but I’m not necessarily opposed to it.”
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