Rodham

by Curtis Sittenfeld

  “I’m serious,” he said.

  With effort—I was almost immobilized, almost mute—I said, “I want you to, but is it safe?” I gestured toward the windshield.

  He looked over and smiled. “I’ll be very careful.”

  We were on the highway, not close to other cars or trucks, and I reached up to my hips, hooked my thumbs into the waistband of my underwear, and pulled them to my ankles, above my sandals, without taking them off.

  “Please don’t get pulled over,” I said, and after that I really couldn’t speak. I was writhing against his fingers. I lasted about two minutes, and then I was saying as quietly as I could, “Oh, baby. Bill. Bill. Baby, I love you so much.” He stopped moving his fingers and just cupped me, and I whimpered incoherently.

  He was alternating between watching the road and turning his head to watch me, smiling, and he said, “I love you so much. I really do. And also—” He lifted his hand off me and gestured toward his own lap, where he clearly had an erection.

  “I don’t think I should do anything while you’re driving,” I said. “But when we’re home, I really, really want to make you feel as good as you make me feel. Is that okay?”

  “That’s fantastic,” he said.

  Maybe the reason Gwen didn’t understand my move to Fayetteville, I thought, was that I couldn’t tell her about this.

  * * *

  —

  Before my arrival, Bill had found a one-bedroom apartment for me near campus. His rental house was eight miles out of town, a tiny place on a large plot of land on the White River, with beautiful views and lots of bugs and rodents. He had matter-of-factly told me that we couldn’t live together without being married while he ran for Congress, and I didn’t balk, wary of ending up in an argument about marriage. Besides, he said, we could still spend every night together and this way we’d get the best of both worlds—convenience in town when we felt like it, privacy and quiet when we preferred.

  I did not explain the situation to Gwen, and even though she could have spent the night in my apartment for free—Bill had already borrowed a bed from a supporter—I made a reservation for her at a hotel in downtown Fayetteville. I stayed at Bill’s house, and early the next morning, he and I both picked up Gwen and drove her to the tiny Drake Field airport. We sat with her at the gate while she waited, a thirty-five-minute interval during which four people stopped to greet Bill, including a baggage handler who said he hoped Bill beat Hammerschmidt.

  When Gwen’s flight started boarding, the three of us stood and I said, “I can’t thank you enough.”

  Gwen said, “I hope your life here is wonderful,” and then her chin trembled and she began to cry, which I had never seen her do, even when discussing children in the bleakest circumstances.

  “I promise to take care of Hillary,” Bill said, and he stepped in to hug Gwen. Like me, Gwen was much shorter than Bill, and our eyes were at the same level when she turned her head while it was still pressed to his chest. Her expression of sincere anguish made me deeply uncomfortable, and I could feel that I might catch her tears. “And we’re all just a plane flight apart,” Bill said, which wasn’t true—we were a minimum of two flights apart.

  I, too, hugged Gwen and when she walked outside to the tarmac, I was relieved. It felt like she was the embodiment of everyone who questioned or disapproved of my decision.

  After Bill and I left the airport, we were going to a pancake breakfast in Fort Smith, then he was speaking to a local NAACP chapter, then we were distributing yard signs. As we got in his car, I said, “I just think it’s hard for Gwen because she pictured me having a different professional path.”

  Bill looked puzzled, almost amused. He said, “Do you think I don’t realize that?”

  * * *

  —

  When Bill and I had eaten ribs at the law school dean’s house a year earlier, the other guests present that night had been Ned and Barbara Overholt, both of whom were also law professors; Barbara was the first and, until my arrival, the only woman on the law school faculty. She was in her early fifties, with two children and three stepchildren all in their twenties. She had grown up in Virginia, attended UVA for law school, and moved to Arkansas because her ex-husband was from there, as was Ned.

  On my third day in town, Barbara had invited me for lunch at her house, a big tan Victorian with scalloped shingles and Ionic columns, in the historic Washington-Willow district. Before I could ring the bell, she pushed open the screen door—she wore jeans, sandals, and a sleeveless shirt—and said, “Hillary, welcome to Fayetteville! Can I hug you?” As we embraced, she said, “Bill has been beside himself with excitement about your arrival, and I think it’s contagious.”

  “I’m delighted to be here,” I said.

  “I have something to show you that I hope won’t make you regret your move. This happened a few minutes ago, and I haven’t decided if it’s awful or funny, so maybe you can help me figure it out. I got an anonymous letter in my mailbox, but first I have to show you what inspired it. Follow me.” She walked into the yard, which featured a border of ferns set in mulch. Among the ferns, near the sidewalk, stood a plump female figurine that was about eight by three inches. Barbara pointed to it. “Is this woman recognizable to you?”

  “It’s the Venus of Willendorf? Well, a replica.”

  “Very good.” Barbara reached into the back right pocket of her jeans and pulled out an envelope that was folded in half. She removed a piece of onionskin paper and passed the paper to me, and she was shaking with laughter. The paper had two typewritten lines on it: For the love of God and all things holy and good, Please remove the fat lady statue from your yard. Each and everyone of your neighbors thinks it is digsusting.

  I began laughing, too.

  “My sister just went to Austria and bought this for me,” she said. “Do I try to explain to my neighbors that it’s a major work of art celebrating female strength or do I cave and hide it? She’s only been out here a couple days. I didn’t even think anyone would notice!”

  “Do you have any idea who wrote the note?”

  “I have my suspicions. The first question is, is the person borderline illiterate or trying to disguise his identity by pretending to be borderline illiterate? Did you read Nancy Drew?”

  “Of course,” I said. “I longed to have titian hair and a roadster.”

  “Should we say to hell with the university and open a girl detective agency?”

  “I think that’s a wonderful idea.”

  “In the meantime, I’ve made some gazpacho. Do you eat gazpacho?”

  “I love gazpacho,” I said.

  As we ate, I said, “How have you found that the students react to having a woman law professor? Do you have advice?”

  “The students are usually all right. It’s the other professors you’ve got to watch out for.”

  “Really?”

  “I’d put them into three categories. Category one is they can’t stomach the idea of a female colleague, they’re dyed-in-the-wool chauvinist pigs, and nothing you do will change their mind. Category three, and Bill goes here, obviously, is they’re supportive. Category two is the odd one. They tolerate you, but it’s because they’ve decided you’re an honorary man.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You’ll know it when you see it. A lot of these men are very well mannered, so some of it is the absence of their manners. They do everything short of scratching their nuts in front of you. Oh my Lord, I forgot the bread!” She stood and retrieved a rectangular steel pan from the stovetop; when she cut pieces for both of us from the whole-wheat loaf, they were still warm.

  I said, “I think maybe I’ve been an honorary man since I was in grade school, but I just didn’t know what to call it. The first boy I ever had a crush on told me I was more like a boy than a girl.”

  Barbara laughed. “
Well, thank goodness, because if he’d nabbed you, you’d never have ended up with Bill.”

  I had taken a bite of the bread, and when I swallowed it, I said, “This is delicious.”

  Barbara reached across the table, set her hand on top of mine, and said, “From the minute I met you at Dick and Ginny’s house last year, I decided we’d be great friends. I’m so glad you’re here.”

  * * *

  —

  Then, unexpectedly, in the middle of the night and at the age of forty-eight, Bill’s stepfather, Jeff, died. The phone rang at six-thirty in the morning, and when Bill answered, I heard him say, “Oh, Lord. Oh, Mother, I’m sorry.” He began to cry. Jeff’s cause of death turned out to be heart failure, related to his diabetes. His death made Virginia a widow for the third time.

  Bill was scheduled to record three radio ads that day and to attend a chicken fry; he postponed the session at the studio and asked Lyle Metcalf to cancel his other meetings with the influential and not-so-influential men and women, but mostly men, of northwest Arkansas. By 8:00 A.M., Bill and I were on the road to Hot Springs, and by noon we were parking outside the house where Jeff had lived with Virginia and Roger, Bill’s eighteen-year-old half brother; Roger was supposed to leave in just a few days for nearby Hendrix College. Inside the house, I hugged Roger then Virginia, and it was the first time Virginia and I had ever hugged. The kitchen was filled with Bill’s extended family and friends, and the kitchen table was laden with food, plates of sliced ham and biscuits, and a pink Jell-O mold and an apple pie.

  Immediately, Bill took charge of the logistics of Jeff’s death, the cremation and funeral. Not for the first time, I was struck by how Bill’s protective and solicitous manner toward his mother was, some might say, husband-like. After meeting her a few years earlier, I’d said to Bill that it wasn’t that I didn’t like Virginia Dwire, or, more specifically, Virginia Cassidy Dell Blythe Clinton Dwire; it was that we had nothing in common except him. But the truth was that I also didn’t like her. I found her manipulative and petty, theatrical and needy. Conveniently, given that it behooved all of us to conceal the natural animosity between Virginia and me, it also was true we had nothing in common except Bill.

  When Virginia had visited New Haven in the spring of 1972, Bill and I had held a dinner in her honor at our apartment. We made stew, and I was setting out cheese and crackers before our friends arrived while Bill took a shower. Virginia looked me over from the sofa, where she was doing a crossword puzzle. “You’re not wearing that when the guests come, are you?” she asked in a cheerful tone. I had on jeans and a paisley smock.

  “I am,” I said.

  “Hillary, honey,” she said in the same upbeat tone, “you aren’t pretty enough not to make an effort.”

  As it happened, Virginia spent an inordinate amount of time beautifying herself, and her efforts led her in a direction I found actively unattractive. She dyed her hair black but kept a white skunk stripe going back from her forehead, and she wore heavy foundation, a great deal of mascara, false eyelashes, and bright lipstick. She loved jewelry and gaudy clothing, and she gave off an air of mischief. She knew how to enjoy herself, she wordlessly implied, while I was an uptight stiff. By contrast, the first time I’d met Jeff, which was when Bill and I traveled to Hot Springs together, he’d taken my cheeks in both his hands and said, as if directly rebutting Virginia’s observation a few months prior, “Why, I think you have a real pretty face.” I adored him immediately. I also felt a natural fondness for Roger, who was sweet and a little dopey.

  Now Jeff had passed away and I lived in the same state as Virginia, and I understood, as she wept—both theatrically and, it seemed, sincerely—that there was nothing to be gained from acrimony with her. And seeing Bill’s interactions with his mother, his solicitousness and patience, made me love him more. Plus, the way he was of Virginia but not like Virginia was proof of his specialness, his exceptionality. When he delivered Jeff’s eulogy a few days later, I was struck, even there, by Bill’s eloquence and handsomeness. Dozens of people had driven down from Fayetteville, though Bill had lived there only a year—law school students and professors, including Barbara and Ned Overholt; campaign staff and volunteers; the waitress at Bill’s favorite diner. Bill could take care of his mother, I thought as he stood in the pulpit of the church, and I could take care of him. The timing of Jeff’s death was a cosmic confirmation that I was where I should be.

  * * *

  —

  In order to campaign full-time, Bill had taken a leave from the university. I, meanwhile, would be teaching Criminal Law and Trial Advocacy, and running the legal aid clinic. Classes started the Tuesday after Labor Day, and Trial Advocacy, in which forty students were enrolled, met first. That morning, I was surprised by how nervous I was—though I usually ate cereal for breakfast, I put down my spoon after two bites, my stomach balking—and, ten minutes before class, I hurried from my law school office on the fourth floor to the women’s bathroom on the first floor and had diarrhea. As I washed my hands afterward, I looked at my reflection in the mirror; I had bought the same skirt suit in navy, gray, and black, and I wore the black one, with my hair pulled into a tight bun. I thought, but did not say aloud, You’re more than capable of teaching this class. Just be focused and respectful. It’s fine if they don’t like you right away. You have a full semester to earn their trust.

  The classroom had three rows of horseshoe-shaped tables, and I stood at the top center of the U, at a desk on which sat a tabletop lectern; a chalkboard hung on the wall behind me. In addition to writing my syllabus, I had typed the words I’d say to introduce myself and greet the students, and I’d estimated how long this and other segments of the class would take:

  10:38–10:41 welcome & my background

  10:42–11:07 discuss Trial Advocacy & go over syllabus etc., etc.

  About half of the students were present when I entered the classroom, and as the rest filtered in, I saw that most looked about my age or a little older; three of the forty were black, and the rest were white. At least 80 percent of them were male, which I had inferred from the class list.

  “Hello,” I said. “I’m your professor, Hillary Rodham, and this is Trial Advocacy. I’m very much looking forward to this semester. Before joining the law faculty of the University of Arkansas, I worked as an attorney for the U.S. House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment inquiry of Richard Nixon. Prior to that, I was the assistant director of public policy for the National Children’s Initiative, which is a child advocacy nonprofit affiliated with Yale University. I’m a graduate of Yale Law School. My areas of specialization are civil rights, family law, and juvenile justice. As I’m sure you all realize, trials are at the heart of our judicial system, which is just one of the reasons this course will be relevant to any kind of law you ultimately pursue. I want to start today by distributing my syllabus and going over my expectations then I’ll have all of you introduce yourselves.”

  I walked from the lectern to the three aisle seats on the right side of the horseshoe-shaped tables and handed a stack of syllabi to the students sitting there. As I returned to the lectern, I heard a murmuring that stopped when I began speaking again.

  “Let’s start on the first page,” I said. “Attendance is mandatory.” This was egregiously hypocritical—if I hadn’t skipped law school classes as often as Bill, I’d still missed plenty—but I planned to compensate for my youth and gender by being strict.

  The syllabus was ten pages, and when we’d reached the end, I said, “I’d like you all to take out a sheet of paper and write the following, which you’ll read out loud before I collect them.”

  I picked up a piece of chalk and wrote on the board:

  - Name

  - Hometown

  - Undergraduate major

  - Work experience

  - Reason for attending law school

  Again, a murmuring
arose. When I turned around, I made eye contact with a young woman in the first row, who was looking at me intently and unsmilingly. She patted her left hip three times, which struck me as a peculiar gesture. I gave the students three minutes, then they went one by one reading their responses. All but one of them were from Arkansas, and that person was from Tulsa, Oklahoma.

  I proceeded to memorize all their names using a method Bill had recommended: I started on one side of the last row, said the person’s name aloud three times—“Charles Shaheen, Charles Shaheen, Charles Shaheen”—then I went on to the next person and did the same—“Howard Bisgard, Howard Bisgard, Howard Bisgard”—then I said, “Charles Shaheen. Howard Bisgard.” I repeated the pattern until I’d reached the young woman in the first row—Harriet Early—and had recited the first and last names of all forty of them. “Now just promise you’ll all wear exactly the same thing every day from now until December,” I said. No one laughed, and I said, “I’m joking. We’re finished for today.”

  As they passed the pieces of paper to me, a high proportion of the students hardly made eye contact, which was unsettling. I thought the class had gone well, and I wondered if, simply due to being a woman and a Northerner, I seemed to them as strange as a Martian. The final person to pass over her paper was Harriet Early, the woman in the front row. By this point, the classroom was nearly empty.

  “Professor Rodham,” she said, “I’m sorry, but I wanted to tell you your skirt—” Again, she patted her hip three times, and while the gesture was imprecise—she meant buttocks, not hip—I understood this time. Horrifyingly, I understood. I reached around and, though I couldn’t see it, I could feel it. After I’d used the bathroom before class, I had tucked the back of my skirt into my pantyhose. I had just taught my first class, in its entirety, with my underwear and upper thighs exposed. “Oh, God,” I said.

  Harriet winced, but sympathetically. She said, “I didn’t know how to say it before.”