American Wife

by Curtis Sittenfeld

  By this point, it was after four in the afternoon, and I drove to County Stadium. Finding an unlocked entrance, a non-game entrance, took some time, but eventually I saw a maintenance man leaving through nondescript metal double doors. He led me back in, and inside, I ran into another man, an older fellow who may have been the third-base coach, and that gentleman directed me to a third man, this one in a short-sleeved shirt and gray slacks, and after I’d explained separately to all of them who I was and asked where I might find my husband, at last I reached Charlie’s office. It was smaller than I’d imagined, with windows onto the hallway but not to the outside; it was about the same size as the principal’s anteroom, where the secretary sat, in the lower school of Biddle. Charlie had hung nothing on the walls, and the surface of his desk was mostly empty, with a few stacks of paper. He was sitting with his legs up on the desk and his ankles crossed—he wore black wing tips—and he held open a manila file folder and was reading.

  The door was open, but I knocked on the aluminum frame. I said, “Am I interrupting?”

  When he looked up, his expression was one of surprised pleasure, and also of wariness. He didn’t stand, but he pulled his legs from the desk and set them on the floor. “This is unexpected.”

  Given how breezy he’d been when we’d spoken on the phone, the thought had crossed my mind that maybe he’d changed his mind about wanting us—wanting me—to return. I said, “How are you doing?” Before he could answer, I added, “I think it’s time for Ella and me to come home. Do you agree?”

  He bowed his head. Was he considering the question? A nervousness came over me. When almost a minute had passed in silence, I said, “Charlie?”

  He lifted his head at last, and he seemed choked up. “You’ve caught me off guard, is all,” he said. “Of course you should come home, absolutely. Lindy, I owe you a tremendous apology. I’ve behaved dishonorably as a husband.”

  “What? I—No, Charlie, that’s not what I’m saying. Obviously, we both know that things can improve, but . . .” I trailed off; he was shaking his head.

  “The Holy Spirit was working through you, Lindy. The Lord caused you to leave so that I’d see my sins and repent, and there’s no doubt about it, I have sinned. But I’m a new man. I’ve been reborn, and if God can forgive me, I hope you can, too. I want you to know I haven’t had a drop to drink in eight days.”

  I half expected him to smirk, to lapse into laughter, saying, Just kidding—you fucking believed me! Admit it, you believed me! Except that he didn’t say it, and he wasn’t kidding.

  “Is this—” I paused. “Jadey told me you’ve been spending time with someone named Reverend Randy?”

  “He’s an extraordinary man, Lindy. You’ll be very impressed when you meet him. He’s thought long and hard about these issues, and he knows the struggle, he understands how hard it is not to sin, but boy, it’s inspiring to hear him talk about the rewards of accepting Jesus as your Savior.”

  “How do you know him?”

  “Funny thing, but it’s Miss Ruby who introduced us.”

  “Oh, is he—is he black?”

  Charlie grinned. “You ought to see the look on your face. No, Miss Racially Enlightened, he’s not black.”

  “I didn’t say it’s bad if he is, I was just wondering. I assume, from the way you’re talking, that he’s a born-again Christian?”

  Charlie looked amused. “Nothing wrong with glorifying God, sweetheart. When you’re around Reverend Randy, you really feel the presence of Christ.”

  There were several possible ways Charlie might have reacted to my appearance at the ballpark, several moods I might have found him in—conciliatory or sulky, warm or blasé—but nothing, nothing in all the years I had known him, had prepared me for this. Charlie, my Charlie, had found religion? I knew it could happen to people, but he was the last one I’d have imagined. And yet if it was keeping him from drinking, if it was encouraging him to take responsibility for his own behavior . . . I do not deny that I felt a strong skepticism that afternoon, but I suppressed it, chalking it up to nothing more than my own snobbishness. Most people I knew attended church; no one I knew then was born-again. But hadn’t I learned, over and over, that the world was larger and more complex than I’d once imagined, and wasn’t this lesson an essentially positive one?

  I said, “It wouldn’t be a sin for a wife to kiss her husband right now, would it?” The question had hardly left my mouth when Charlie stood to embrace me. To have him back in my arms, that body I knew, the height, the scent, the skin and hair and clothes—what a great relief, how aligned my life felt for the first time not just in weeks but in years. Against my ear, Charlie whispered, “You have no idea how much I missed you.”

  I tilted my head back so we were looking at each other. I said, “Ella’s swimming at the club with Winnie and Jadey. I don’t suppose you could duck out early.”

  Charlie grinned. “Let me ask the managing partner.” He cocked one ear, pretending to listen—there was no sound except, in the distance, the whirring of a very large fan—and then he nodded. “He says for a woman as good-looking as you, it’d be a crime to stay.” Charlie gathered some of the papers from his desk, set them in his briefcase, and fastened the lock. Before we walked out, he took my hand.

  Forty minutes later, we lay naked in our bed, I on my back and he on top, and just before he entered me, he paused—at this point, I was ready to take him in, more than ready—and he said seriously, “From now on, I’m going to be the man you deserve.”

  I nodded; I was breathless and flushed. I said, “Hurry.”

  ALL THESE YEARS later, they say I told him, “It’s Jack Daniel’s or me.” Or in some versions, “It’s Jim Beam or me.” These ultimatums sound catchy, I suppose, but I didn’t say them. I didn’t even say, in a less pithy manner, that I’d leave him if he wouldn’t stop drinking. I did leave him briefly, and he did stop drinking, and the events are connected, but not as cleanly or directly as anyone might imagine from the outside.

  His critics are more fond of this false anecdote than his supporters, and what they think it illustrates, I gather, is that it’s my fault—his election is my fault, his presidency is my fault, his war is my fault. Why couldn’t I just have let him be an alcoholic? Plenty of wives put up with it every day!

  But these accusations presuppose a consensus on the kind of president Charlie has been; a dreadful one, is what his critics believe. Do I think he has been a dreadful president? I think the story is always more complicated than people realize.

  The accusations also presuppose that I knew, that any of us did. But I could not have imagined in 1988 how rapidly our lives would change, and if someone had told me, I’d have thought the prediction was as plausible as that of a man standing on a street corner, holding a sign that warns of the apocalypse. Your husband will be president; the end is near. I’d have smiled coolly and kept walking.

  THE WEEKEND AFTER my return to Maronee, our friends the Laufs had an anniversary party that Joe Thayer also attended, and he approached me as I was walking toward the buffet dinner. I could tell from his posture, even before he spoke, that he was worked up—impassioned, I suppose. He said, “It’s not my intent to pressure you, Alice, but have you given thought to what I said at Princeton?”

  Surely he couldn’t mean his suggestion that he and I embark on some type of long-term relationship, surely that had just been the alcohol speaking. But yes, clearly, that was what he meant. He gazed at me with such a fierce ardor that I might have laughed, if not for the very slightly threatening undercurrent that such ardor is always accompanied by.

  In what I hoped was a firm but not unkind way, I said, “Joe, I’m not leaving my marriage.”

  “But in Princeton—”

  I shook my head. “I ought to have been more discreet.”

  “Alice, you kissed me. I don’t imagine you just kiss odd men all over the place! Or maybe I’m wrong, maybe you do!” He was as agitated as I’d ever seen him—perhaps he had
the idea that he’d persuade me if not by flattery then by insistence and if not by insistence then by defamatory insinuation. I had the fleeting thought then that we are each of us pathetic in one way or another, and the trick is to marry a person whose patheticness you can tolerate; I never could have tolerated his. It occurred to me that Carolyn Thayer’s behavior may not have been so egregious after all.

  “It can’t be,” I said, and for the benefit of his ego, I tried to strike a note of regret. It may have been an ironic twist that it was Charlie who unwittingly saved me; he appeared at my elbow, setting a hand on my back and saying, “Joey T., when are you gonna come to a ball game with us? You pick the night, and we’ve got a ticket with your name on it.”

  Joe seemed to be gasping for air. He sounded accusatory as he said, “Aren’t you generous.”

  “Heck, we ought to make it a men’s night.” Charlie nodded toward me. “This one is gonna be sitting through more games than she ever imagined in her wildest dreams, so we’ll let her off the hook for once. But give your brother a jingle, see how everyone’s schedule best coordinates, and we’ll nail down a plan.” Charlie leaned in, speaking more quietly. “Now, I don’t know if you’ve taken the plunge back into the dating pool yet, but Zeke Langenbacher has a very attractive young lady working as his assistant, a super girl who comes from a real nice family in Louisville, and I’d love to set the two of you up. Alice, cover your ears.” I didn’t—he’d known that I wouldn’t—and he said, “Not a bad rack on this gal, either.”

  “Charlie!” I swatted him, though I loved my husband very much in this moment. I was reminded of how, Joe’s sarcasm aside, Charlie could be truly generous and kind. Joe glowered—I’m sure he currently despised Charlie as much as I adored him—and from then on, for the rest of our time in Maronee, Joe avoided me. He did it in such a way that I would notice, catching my eye when we found ourselves in the same place, then violently looking away and not talking to me. As far as I know, he and Charlie never attended a game together.

  ____

  JADEY HADN’T TOLD me until my return to Milwaukee that my departure to Riley had greatly rattled Arthur; that the afternoon following Charlie’s one ill-fated night at their house, Arthur had come home from work in the middle of the day, weeping, telling Jadey that if she ever left him, he would be completely lost and would rather be dead; that they had then proceeded to have stupendous sex; and that ever since, he had doted on her and had even, on two occasions, brought her flowers for no reason. (“One bouquet had carnations in it,” she said, “but he’s trying.”) She revealed to him neither how hurt she had been by his comment about her weight nor with what enthusiasm she had considered an affair; she told me she’d decided to let sleeping dogs lie. She said, “Maybe you should skip town a little more often, because Arthur finds it to be a powerful aphrodisiac.”

  “I’m glad I could help,” I said.

  FOR CHARLIE AND Ella and me, the next five or six years were, I think, our happiest ones as a family. As everyone had anticipated, Charlie was perfectly suited to his new role with the Brewers. He attended just about all the home games and some of the away ones, and Ella and I attended quite a lot of them with him, though as she made her way through adolescence, the idea of spending an evening watching baseball with the two of us struck her as less and less appealing. But I remember all those weeknights and Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons with real nostalgia—the times it was windy and sunny, the times it was unbearably hot and we’d come home burned, the times we crouched together in raincoats, waiting for the umpires to call the game. We ate hot dogs and french fries, we chatted with the people in the seats around us, sometimes we even sat in mediocre seats for the purpose of Charlie mingling and signing autographs, which he loved being asked to do, taking particular delight in being asked to sign baseballs (I assumed at the time that sitting in the upper deck was something Zeke Langenbacher had suggested, but I later discovered Hank Ucker had), and I became genuinely invested in the team’s wins and losses. Construction on the new stadium was completed in 1992, built on the same grounds as the old one, which was demolished; the new one has, among other features, luxury boxes and a retractable roof. I cannot say the fact that both stadiums turned out to be in Ed Blackwell’s congressional district surprised me. Because the new stadium was publicly financed, a degree of controversy accompanied it, and I honestly believe that Charlie confronted the challenges with restraint and reason. He’d never worked harder in his life than he did during those years, and at the opening game in the new stadium, I was very proud of him.

  It was in 1993 that Charlie made the decision to run for governor—at Hank Ucker’s urging, needless to say—and he was elected in 1994. That, too, was a great turning point in our lives, though eventually dwarfed by the turning point that occurred in 2000.

  We couldn’t have guessed then what an asset Charlie’s religiosity would turn out to be. Best of all was his sincerity. This, I suspect, has been a large part of Charlie’s appeal to voters—if he can be petulant or sophomoric, he is never less than sincere. Even when called upon to act stately, he demonstrates, sincerely, that he’s acting: He winks, he makes faces or at least conveys that he wishes he could. Often during his first presidential campaign, he’d say on the trail, when trying to contrast himself with the outgoing president, who was widely viewed as a slick panderer, “What you see is what you get.” He’d grin impishly. I sometimes long to remind voters of this now; neither to them nor to me did Charlie ever conceal who he is.

  Back before his gubernatorial bid, before our already not exactly average lives became as far-fetched as a fairy tale, his family thought it a hoot that he’d been born again. If Arthur said over dinner, about a recent Packers game, “It was a goddamm rout,” Charlie might say, with jovial sternness, “You know I don’t care for that kind of language,” and Arthur would reply, “Jesus fucking Christ, Chas, get off your high horse.” Or perhaps “Holy shit, you’ve lost your sense of humor!” (In fact, Charlie still enjoyed secular bawdiness and cursing—it was only people taking the Lord’s name in vain that bothered him.) He also stopped purchasing pornography, which pleased me, though because I had a hunch he’d miss it, I bought him an artsy coffee table book of black-and-white photos of female nudes. Presumably, it was a poor substitute.

  Charlie had joined a men’s prayer group that met once a week, sometimes in our living room. Reverend Randy—now that he is director of the Multifaith Council, the public knows him as Randall Kniss—became a fixture in our lives. We never missed a Sunday at Heavenly Rose, we said grace before all meals (Charlie even said it at restaurants or dinner parties, which I found a tad ostentatious, but I bit my tongue), and Charlie read the Bible every night before bed.

  That summer of 1988, we didn’t end up spending much time in Halcyon, driving up just for a few weekends, both because Charlie was busy with the Brewers and because he feared that being around his brothers, particularly Arthur, would make it harder not to drink. Once, about a month after I’d returned from Riley, I awakened past midnight and found that Charlie was not beside me, though we’d gone to bed together almost two hours before. Thinking I heard voices downstairs, I walked into the hall and stood at the top of the steps; there definitely were people talking—chanting, it sounded like—in the den. It wasn’t until I’d gone downstairs that I could hear clearly what they were saying, that I knew who it was, though I stopped short of entering the room. Through the doorway, I saw my husband and beefy, ruddy Reverend Randy on their knees, side by side, holding hands, their eyes shut, and Charlie weeping; over and over, they were reciting the sinner’s prayer. I backed away.

  He’d felt tempted to have a glass of whiskey, Charlie told me the next morning, so tempted he’d been unable to sleep. He had called Reverend Randy because Randy understood these desires, and they’d prayed together, and the urge had passed; Satan had gone elsewhere to do his bidding. This happened again, Reverend Randy’s late-night appearances, but I never got out of bed for
another one. I’m not proud to say that what I saw that night, looking into the den—it bothered me. It wasn’t Reverend Randy as a person so much as the prayer as an experience, the fervor I would never share. Charlie had traveled outside my reach to a place I couldn’t follow.

  But I should note, for all my resistance to organized religion, that I don’t believe Charlie could have quit drinking without it. It provided him with a way to structure his behavior, and a way to explain that behavior, both past and present, to himself. Perhaps fiction has, for me, served a similar purpose—what is a narrative arc if not the imposition of order on disparate events?—and perhaps it is my avid reading that has been my faith all along.

  It wasn’t until years later, until quite recently, in fact, that I learned exactly how Miss Ruby had managed to introduce Charlie and Reverend Randy: She had found the reverend by looking in the Yellow Pages under churches. Herself a faithful parishioner at Lord’s Baptist in Harambee, Miss Ruby sensed that Charlie would benefit from spiritual uplift, and when she’d reached Reverend Randy on the phone, she’d requested that he make a house call. Jessica Sutton was the one who told me this, and I said, “But why didn’t Miss Ruby ask her own minister to talk to Charlie?”

  Jessica is thirty-one now, a tall, poised, whip-smart woman, a graduate of Yale and the Kennedy School at Harvard, and my chief of staff; during Charlie’s first term in the White House, she was my deputy chief of staff, and at the start of his second term, when her predecessor left, I promoted her. I’m almost sure that Jessica is also a Democrat, though there are certain topics we do not broach. She laughed at my question, and though her words were damning, her tone was warm, as if she were teasing. She said, “Grandma thought he’d never listen to a black man.”

  PART IV

  1600 Pennsylvania Avenue