Always

by Timmothy B. Mccann

  And then a young man who looked just like an extra from the movie Mississippi Burning, with his slick, greasy, black hair and pocket protector, stood up to the microphone. He did not give his name, nor did he show any emotion as he spoke in a monotone, without taking a breath. “Mr. Davis, do you consider yourself to be an African-American and if so why or why not?”

  I’d expected this question to come up in the campaign due to a speech Leslie had made at the Million Woman March. I just did not expect it in that gathering. I leaned into the bright lights and said, “Yes, yes, I am an African-American. Because I am proud to be of African descent and proud to be an American. See, I feel—”

  “But why not just call yourself an American?” he shouted as a couple of boos mixed in with the cheers I got for the answer. “Is calling yourself simply an American not good enough, sir? Not good enough for the man wishing to run this country?”

  “You know, I have followed politics in this country, and throughout the world, I might add, for the past thirty-plus years,” I said, walking away from the podium and up the stairs with the hand-held microphone toward the student. As I did so, there was a collective gasp in the room. “I have probably watched more tapes of debates, with all due respect, than anyone in this room. So I am surprised,” I said, standing about ten feet away from the student, “that people are somehow offended when I express my pride in my ethnic heritage. When Ronald Rea—”

  “Sir! This has nothing to do with Mr. Reagan. Black folks in this country have bent over backward to separate themselves! You want to be given the same rights, yet you subscribe to the tenets of separatism. You got black colleges, a black Miss America contest, black television networks. How can you say all you want is to be a part of the mainstream when you keep building walls between us!”

  By the time he finished his diatribe, I’d returned to the podium. He was making arguments I’d debated in college thirty years earlier at Georgetown, so I decided to allow the crowd, which was booing and throwing paper balls at him, to handle the situation. I was very proud of the way I’d handled the question because I’d resisted the bait to indignify myself. I wondered how it would be played out in the national media.

  The next day I expected to see a videotape of the event on the news, anxious about what spin they would put on it. However, as I clicked from one station to another, it was nowhere to be found, which was curious since by this time in the campaign at least three cameras were usually around to photograph everything I did, short of taking a leak. The next day I got up early for my flight to Baton Rouge and a charity basketball game, and read the paper in the limo on the way to the airport. There was just a small corner article about the debate, which said I made an appearance and spoke to the students, accompanied by a snapshot of myself at the podium. I called Ed immediately to find out what happened, and he said it got buried by a couple of larger stories.

  For the next several months Marcus had me booked on any and every talk show we could get on. We noticed that the crowds were starting to grow larger and younger, and the press were there in droves, but the downside to this was that any slipup was seen around the world.

  One Monday afternoon we had over four thousand people show up at a rally at the University of Minnesota, and it was the first time I saw one of the dirty tricks we suspected the Republican party was responsible for.

  Our rallies were always carefully orchestrated events. There were three roped-off sections. Up front about one thousand people who had either worked in the campaign or had given donations were allowed to stand. In the next section there were a thousand individuals who were affiliated with the Democratic party. And behind that section stood everyone else. This was done because when hecklers or other disrupters were in attendance, they were so far out of view they never made the news. But on this particular Thursday out of the corner of my eye I saw a young man who must have brought his costume in a brown bag. How he had infiltrated us, I never found out, but as I spoke, he changed into King Henry garb and held up a sign that read:

  Support King Henry the XXXIV

  And the back of the sign read:

  Because thirty-four times last year he voted to raise your taxes!

  Needless to say, he was booed and even punched by a few of my supporters, but then I noticed the King Henrys would show up at almost every rally. Then I noticed signs with my face painted with the body of a chicken attached. There was always a caricature of Leslie with the words henpecked on the bottom. This culminated into an incident that occurred when I was doing a press conference on the tarmac of LAX. A guy put on a King Henry hat, and when everyone looked his way, someone threw a pie in my direction that missed badly but caught Marcus flush in the face. I had tried to overlook the stunts in the past, but Herbert ended up pressing charges this time, and that was the last of the King Henrys and the henpecked signs.

  When I returned home from the swing through California, the tension between Leslie and me was at an all-time high. My poll numbers after Clayburn finally bowed out went through the roof, yet I could not get a decent night’s sleep when I lay in my own bed. I couldn’t remember the last time my wife and I had shared a real kiss or a hug or even danced. On a plane to Columbus, Ohio, I asked myself, was it really worth it to win the presidency and lose my wife? As we flew, I thought about the man who had answered her phone that morning in Europe, and I knew the answer was obvious. Frightening, yet obvious.

  Los Angeles, California

  Los Angeles Convention Center

  Democratic National Convention, August 2000

  LESLIE

  I was asked by Jane Pauley what the most memorable moment of the campaign was for me. It was an easy question to answer. It was in Los Angeles at the Democratic Convention. We’d clinched the nomination about a month earlier and had decided to take a few weeks off to both prepare for the general election and relax, and if we could somehow fit falling back in love in the equation, that would be an added benefit.

  We took a vacation to Martha’s Vineyard, and the first day we were there, Teddy did nothing but work. He and Ed set up interviews and wrote position papers and talked to the chairwoman of the party about a plank or who would speak and in what order. These were things he could have assigned to others, but it seemed as we got closer to achieving our goal, the more difficult he found it to delegate.

  I wanted my husband back. I’d shared so much of him for so long, and I knew if we won the election, I wouldn’t see him for another eight years. In Rio a diplomat once quietly asked me through an interpreter if Henry could possibly be as good in bed as he looked like he could be when he walked. She even had the nerve to say, “I bet he can really drill you, no?” She meant that as a compliment, but the sister-girl almost came out in me for a split second.

  Women often told me just how fortunate I was to have Henry as a husband. I would nod my head in agreement while thinking, If only you knew how much I wished I had a husband like yours. A husband who could take you out from time to time to a blues club or who would work on the lawn and shoot hoops with your son. Just a simple everyday Fred-type husband who came home at the same time every evening and who fell asleep with you every night. I know I am fortunate to have Teddy for a husband, but there are nights I wish I were not so fortunate.

  The five of us had a meeting to officially select a vice presidential running mate at the convention. The names of twenty-five congressmen, mayors, and governors were written on the chalkboard, and Herbert asked us to choose the top three candidates we wanted on the ticket and the three we didn’t want considered.

  While no one name appeared on all of our lists in the “would like to have” group, one name appeared on all five “would not consider” lists. It was that name which eventually got the nod.

  Richard Albert “Dirk” Gallagher was southern just like us, which did not bring much to the ticket. But he was from the Lone Star State, and no matter how we looked at the numbers, with its diverse racial population, it was the keystone to any vi
ctory scenario. We knew if we could lock up Florida and Texas it would be hard to defeat us. He was seen as a moderate, which would help in the heartland, and he was a Purple Heart recipient twenty years older than Henry, so he would give the ticket a few needed gray hairs. The reason we did not like him was that it was thought that he was racist and sexist, but for the sake of the campaign, we decided to put our personal feelings aside.

  A few party leaders wanted to block Henry’s nomination on the convention floor because he was not the traditional Democrat. He was pro-ecology, yet he was for increases in military spending. He was pro-choice, yet he was against the capital gains tax. When asked if they would vote for him in the fall his polling numbers with white male votes were a little less than 40 percent, yet he polled well over 60 percent of white female and more than 90 percent of African-American and Hispanic voters.

  When Henry met with Dirk Gallagher, the air crackled with tension. Governor Tom Baldwin was being viewed as a possible third-party contender, so we wanted to split the all-important white male vote. We figured Gallagher could deliver much of the southwest and possibly help us in California. Dirk had made it clear that he was running in 2004 if we lost and did not want to be a part of the campaign if we did not make an all-out push for victory. He didn’t want to be branded as being on a losing campaign. So Henry didn’t get into a pissing contest with him. Instead he left and allowed Herbert and Marcus to discuss how we felt we could win in the general election against either Steiner or Governor Tom.

  After speaking with him for an hour, Marcus walked out bewildered. He told us the more he spoke to Dirk, the more dead set the governor was against accepting our invitation. Henry folded his arms across his chest, deep in thought for several minutes, as he would do when he problem-solved, and then I overheard him whisper to his key adviser, “Listen closely. This is how you sell a big Texas oil man like him. Keep repeating win-win to him. It’s like music to his ears, believe me. Tell him if he runs, and we win, he will be a shoe-in for ’08. If he runs and we lose, then he will have lost that racist tag. He’ll pick up a number of female and minority voters and he’ll win the nomination hands down in 2004.”

  Marcus returned to the room armed with the new strategy, and after another hour, Henry and I walked into the gray cigar-smoked-filled room. Dirk Gallagher looked at me as he was about to light a Cuban as if to ask why I was there, and the more he stared, the more I smiled at him. He looked down his nose like we needed him more then he needed us. Unfortunately, sometimes in politics that is the case, and on a warm night in August, Henry and I joined hands with him and his wife in the L.A. Convention Center in a sign of solidarity. After we left the stage, we didn’t speak to them, nor did they speak to us. We attended a star-studded reception given by Rob Reiner and Steven Spielberg after we left the building, and it was the last time the four of us would ever be in the same room again.

  Teddy and I were never the partying types, so although we were invited to several other galas around town, we returned to our room in the presidential suite of the Beverly Wilshire a little after midnight. One reason Teddy did not want to go out was that he did not want to be seen as a part of the Hollywood crowd, which might turn off too many people in the more rural parts of the country.

  Henry sat in bed reading a book that had been sent to him about this black man running for president. Very rarely did he have time to read for sheer enjoyment, and as he sat there, I put on one of his T-shirts and no panties, which I knew always turned him on, and sat beside him reading a book entitled Invisible Man. On the television his face appeared and he looked up from his book. They showed a sound bite where he was looking into the sea of delegates and then the camera zoomed in on his face.

  “Tonight I would like to say, as we stand on the brink of the next millennium, that we can make it right. In Dante’s Inferno, the great author wrote that man has the ability to make a hell out of heaven, or a heaven out of hell. We have an opportunity to create something of beauty. No, it will not be utopia. But it will be a place called America. A place where—” And that’s when I cut off the television. Henry’s eyes returned to his book. I think even he was tired of hearing him.

  I sat there wanting to touch him, to kiss him, wanting to hold him in my arms and rub his head and tell him that I loved him. That I was there for him. But there was this thick wall of ice that ran down the center of our bed, so I sat there and pretended to read.

  I had grown tired of the forced period of celibacy. Not of a physical nature, but of the heart. I wanted to open it to him again, to delve deeply into the passion of lovemaking with the only man I ever loved. But I turned the page and my thoughts elsewhere.

  Then I looked at Henry and gently put my hand on his forearm. Teddy stopped reading and our eyes met at my wedding band and then he looked over his reading glasses into my eyes. “I just wanted to touch you, honey. That’s all. Don’t get so scared.” He smiled and turned the page in his novel. I started to roll over and go to sleep as I had done nearly every night before, but I stopped. No, not tonight. Tonight, no matter what, I was going to regain my husband.

  So I laid my novel down on the nightstand and slowly reached for his book. As I pulled it away from his hands, he broke his grasp and looked at me with that “I’m not ready for this” look. I rolled up his shirt and kissed him on his chest and I could feel him lean his head back. I kissed his nipples and ran my tongue all over his abdomen, and when I looked at him, he was staring at me as if I’d jumped over a fence and were trespassing on private property. But I was not going to give up, on him or our marriage, so I kissed him again and then my kisses fell below. I had not kissed him below the belt for so long I’d almost forgotten what I was doing. As I continued to kiss him, I noticed there was no reaction; however, I was going to be persistent. So I kissed him and caressed him and saw there was still nothing. I kissed him harder and more lovingly. I knew it had been a while, but I thought I knew what to do to get what I wanted. Now I was all out of ideas.

  Finally I looked him in the eyes, pulled up his underwear and turned on the television with the remote. As he reached for his book, I picked up my novel as well and as I tried to find the page he clicked off the television and I looked at the screen and in it I saw his reflection looking at me. We seemed to just look at each other via the darkened TV, both obviously wondering what had happened to what we shared. And then he turned his back and said “goodnight.”

  The next day Henry took off on a campaign swing through Texas, Arizona, and Oklahoma with his running mate. I flew out to a meeting with Dorothy Height in D.C. and then to New York to address the National Council of Negro Women. Penelope had warned me not to do the speech for fear the organization was “too black,” but as with most issues of this nature, I made my own decision. Afterward I was sitting with a group of campaign volunteers in the Harlem restaurant Emily’s when a call came through on my cell phone. “Hello?”

  “Les, Penelope. I just got a call from Courtland Milloy at the Post. He put me on the phone with someone who told me there are photos being circulated. Do you know anything about this?”

  “What kinda photos?” I asked while eating my lunch.

  “I don’t know. They are shopping them, and the person I spoke to had not seen them. They’re supposed to be of you.”

  “What about me?” I asked, looking at two photographers changing their lenses in an attempt to capture every breathing moment of my life on film.

  “I don’t know, girl, that’s why I’m calling. Can you think of anything? Anything at all?”

  Quietly I said, “Well, Teddy and I used to make love outside at night or sometimes early in the morning. But that’s been several years. Now we—”

  “Les, this has nothing to do with Henry. That was the first question out of my mouth. Now, if you can think of anything, I’ll jump in there and try to buy the motherfuckers myself. We got a little play money socked away.”

  “Penelope, you know me. I don’t know of anything any
one could have photographed.”

  The next day Penelope called me from our Northern war office in Washington, needing me to sign a bank authorization for her.

  “What for?”

  “Les, it ain’t pretty.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Listen, I don’t like talking on cells, you know that. Both Herbert and Ed are flying in on the red-eye. We are keeping Henry completely in the dark. Please don’t say a word to him about any of this. If you give me authorization to sign checks from the play-money fund, everything will be cool.”

  “Penelope, I know you don’t like talking on the phone, but this is ridiculous. Now, you obviously have spoken to Herbert and Ed about these supposed photos of me. Why don’t you—”

  “The photos are of you and some white man going into a room.”

  I fell on the bed. How could there be photos of me and James?

  “He’s holding your shoes and a bottle of wine. The photo may have been touched up a little for clarity, because you can read the room number, and yes, I called, and yes, that was your room.”

  I was speechless. My first instinct was to lie and tell her it wasn’t me. Possibly my head was superimposed on some other woman’s body. But she obviously did not want me to be in that position, so she kept talking.

  “The photographer was already offered a hundred by a couple of the tabloids, sight unseen. If they see these, they will give him more, trust me. Maybe as much as a half. Marcus spoke to him and he’s just looking for quick cash. He does not have an agenda nor is he connected to the right or anything. He apparently worked for James Wolinski at Time and has been sitting on these photographs waiting for the most opportune time to sell them, and I be damned if this ain’t it. Now, I don’t know how you guys are looking financially, but if you don’t have it, I suggest we take the money out of the travel fund, depending on how much we need, and after the election, and before the accounting, we wire-transfer it back in. That will give you a little more time to sell stocks or whatever to locate the funds.”