American Wife

by Curtis Sittenfeld

  TODAY, AS ON all mornings when we’re in Washington, the phone on Charlie’s side of the bed rings at a quarter to six. After answering it, he rises and walks to his bathroom (I’m half aware of this through the fog of my own sleep), and then he opens the door between our bedroom and the corridor, where a valet is waiting to pass him the newspapers. It’s like at a hotel, except that instead of just the papers, you get a live person as well; heaven forbid the president of the United States should bend or reach.

  Charlie carries them to my side of the bed: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal. He whistles as he approaches—he’s whistling “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah”—and when I prop myself up, I see that he is holding the newspapers out of my reach. He says, “You’re only allowed to read them if you don’t give me shit about Mr. Sympathy.”

  Mr. Sympathy is Charlie’s nickname for Edgar Franklin, a retired colonel in the U.S. Army and the father of a soldier who was killed two years ago, at the age of twenty-one, by a roadside bomb. As of this morning, Colonel Franklin has spent one night sleeping in a tent on the Ellipse, the park directly south of the White House and north of the Washington Monument, and four more nights sleeping in the same tent on a two-hundred-square-foot lawn on Fourth Street SE, just beyond the Capitol and about three miles from the White House; he has been spending his days there, too, in the hope of talking to Charlie. It is the first week of June, and it was ninety-six degrees yesterday, the air thick with Washington’s swampy humidity. I’d bet that outside, even this early, the temperature has passed eighty.

  I extend both arms to take the newspapers, and Charlie shakes his head. “I didn’t hear a promise.”

  “Are there new developments?”

  He makes an expression of disgust. “Guy’s a pawn of the Democrats. I guarantee he’s on the payroll of some lefty kooks.”

  “I don’t think he’s being paid,” I say.

  “Give your word—no lobbying.”

  “I give my word,” I say, and Charlie tosses the newspapers onto the duvet; they land with a thud. As he returns to the bathroom, he says over his shoulder, “Look in the business section, because I heard a rumor that General Electric and Alitalia are merging.”

  “Very funny.” This is a joke I have heard so many times that the punch line—And they’re calling it Genitalia!—can go unspoken. Charlie’s second favorite joke on passing off the papers is stock-related: Did you hear that Northern tissue touched a new bottom yesterday? Thousands were wiped clean.

  My usual pattern is to first scan the front page and then the editorial and op-ed pages of each paper, starting with the Times, and if there are no particularly alarming news articles, I go to the Times’s arts section, which I read in full. On the cover of today’s Times, the headlines are about a helicopter crash yesterday afternoon that killed six marines; about the visits Charlie’s Supreme Court nominee, Ingrid Sanchez, will make this afternoon to various senators in advance of her confirmation hearings; about Congress’s vote on the new energy bill; about the damage caused by flash flooding in South Dakota; about Edgar Franklin; and finally, also on the front page, there’s a feature on the increasingly popular cosmetic surgery procedure known as vaginal rejuvenation. After reading the Edgar Franklin piece, I skip to the arts: a profile of a nineteeen-year-old hip-hop artist named Shaneece, no surname; a review of a biography about Mary Cassatt; reviews of an opera in San Francisco, two plays in New York, and a ceramics exhibit in Santa Fe. When I’m finished with that section, I return to the hard news, which I also read thoroughly, at least in the Times; in the Post, I fully read only the articles pertaining to Charlie’s administration and the style section, including, I admit it, “The Reliable Source.”

  Charlie and I sleep in what is technically the president’s bedroom—many first couples have used separate rooms, and the adjacent first lady’s bedroom is larger than the president’s, with its own sitting room and bathroom, which I do use. (In the sitting room, I keep both my papier-mâché Giving Tree and the Nefertiti bust I inherited from my grandmother; Charlie decreed the bust too creepy for the room we share.) While I read, Charlie showers, shaves, and brushes his teeth as Mozart plays on a Bose stereo in a recessed section of his bathroom wall. Though he hasn’t learned to distinguish baroque from romantic and isn’t interested in which composer wrote what, classical music is something Charlie acquired a taste for during his governorship, when we attended symphonies at Madison’s Oscar Mayer Theatre. I have mixed emotions about his late-in-life musical appreciation—I am glad that he enjoys it, but I can’t help suspecting his enjoyment is tied directly to the hectic pace of his life, all the demands placed on him. He likes classical music, I’m almost certain, for what it doesn’t contain, which is words or requests or criticism. It is only melody and mood, and so long as the mood doesn’t become too somber, it soothes him.

  When Edgar Franklin first staked his tent on the Ellipse, the Times buried the articles about him—they put them on A16 or A19—and the early pieces were less than a sixth of a page. Today’s article, following two separate op-ed columns yesterday, is the most prominent yet: He has no plans to move, and he has been joined by supporters numbering in the hundreds, who stay overnight with friends or strangers in row houses or apartments all over the city, in hotels and motels, in tents of their own on campgrounds as far away as Millersville, Maryland, or Lake Fairfax Park in Virginia, then return each morning to Capitol Hill. Colonel Franklin has also received dozens of bouquets of flowers, hundreds of pounds of food, thousands of dollars in donations, and he has been joined by a Manhattan publicist who took leave of his job to work for free. In response, the Times quotes a White House spokes-woman, Margaret Carpeni (Maggie is thirty-one, an athletic young woman who has run two marathons and who just broke up with her boyfriend, a medical resident, though none of us is sure why) who said on Sunday, “The president continues to pray for our fallen soldiers and the loved ones they’ve left behind, recognizing the ultimate sacrifice these individuals have made to protect freedom and liberty in the United States and around the world.”

  He is a trim African-American man, Edgar Franklin, fifty-six years old, and for the last five days, he has worn not his army uniform—if he did, it would make me side more with Charlie, distrusting the staginess of it—but rather, khaki trousers and blue or white short-sleeved shirts, his sleeveless undershirts visible beneath them. He looks remarkably pulled together for having spent nights in a tent, although I assume he is showering each morning at the house belonging to the couple on whose lawn he sleeps. After originally setting up camp on the Ellipse, he was forced to move. Despite grounds for arrest, he was let off with a fine (he has told reporters he will pay it), and this was when a sympathetic couple in their late thirties who live on Capitol Hill offered to let him stay in their front yard. Whether Colonel Franklin is still in violation of an ordinance against camping is a question the advisory neighborhood commission, which is overwhelmingly liberal, appears uninterested in pursuing.

  What Edgar Franklin wants is this: to meet with my husband in order to share his thoughts about why the war is futile and the United States ought to bring home the troops. It was in the spring of 2005 that Edgar Franklin’s only child, Nathaniel “Nate” Franklin, was killed by a roadside bomb in a northern province. Already, Edgar was a widower, his wife, Wanda, having died of colon cancer in 1996. Edgar himself served in Vietnam—he was drafted at the age of nineteen—and he remained in the army for thirty years, ultimately being deployed to six combat zones and becoming an officer. In print and television interviews, of which there have been more with each passing day, he doesn’t casually trash my husband. He isn’t loquacious, or sloppy with words. He says, “I did not in good conscience feel that I could remain silent.” Naturally, he has been censured by several former military colleagues.

  His plaintiveness, his trim build and fastidious dress and terse commentary—they are haunting me. I asked one of my aides to find out if Colonel Franklin is, as hi
s son was, an only child, and I was greatly relieved to learn he isn’t. Raised in Valdosta, Georgia, Colonel Franklin is the second of five siblings, all the others sisters: Deborah, now fifty-eight, still in Valdosta and running a day care from her home; Pamela, who would be fifty-three but is deceased (she suffered from diabetes); Cynthia, fifty, a homemaker in Dallas; and Cheryl, forty-seven, a paralegal in Atlanta. Cynthia is also a military parent—her son is a Special Forces soldier serving overseas—and disavowed her brother’s actions on Thursday in The Dallas Morning News, then refused to make further public comment; according to the article in today’s Times, Cheryl joined Colonel Franklin yesterday in Washington.

  When the story broke last Wednesday, Charlie told me, “You can’t let the opposition dictate the terms of the conversation,” and later that day, when Hank Ucker and I passed in the hallway outside the Map Room—Hank is now Charlie’s chief of staff—he said, “The president tells me the Franklin fellow has gotten under your skin, but trust me, Alice, capitulating to his demands would set a dangerous precedent. You can’t let the opposition dictate the terms of the conversation.” There is no doubt in my mind which of them borrowed the phrasing from the other; we all have known one another far too long.

  Charlie emerges from the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist, his torso bare. Although the presidency has aged him, as it has aged all the men who’ve held it—his hair is grayer now, his face more lined—he is still extraordinarily fit and handsome. He comes over and kisses me on the nose. “How’d I mess up the world today?”

  “There’s a Broadway production of The Glass Menagerie that got a great review,” I say.

  “What are they saying about Ingrid?”

  In what I intend to be a neutral tone, I say, “They’re mostly trying to gauge her stance on abortion.” Ingrid Sanchez, Charlie’s Supreme Court nominee, was a U.S. attorney in Michigan and then a judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. She is a practicing Catholic and a lay ecclesial minister of her local church, and though she has made no official statement on the subject, she is widely assumed to be pro-life. She also appears to have an impeccable record, and the fact that she’s female makes protesting her nomination trickier for women’s groups, which isn’t to say they’re staying quiet. Charlie’s last appointee, the new chief justice whose confirmation occurred in September 2006, is conservative as well, though his views on abortion, even after his first term, remain ambiguous. If Ingrid Sanchez is confirmed, it is possible that the Court will vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. While this makes me uncomfortable, the matter is not in my hands, and it’s scarcely as if Charlie doesn’t know my views; the whole country knows my views. Shortly before Charlie’s first inauguration, the anchor of a national morning news show asked if I thought abortion should be legal, and I said, “Yes.” Asked by the same anchor in 2004 whether I had changed my mind, I said, “No.” Though I didn’t expand on the topic in either instance, both times the question was one I had agreed in advance to answer.

  “Typical of the Times,” Charlie says, and his nostrils flare in irritation. “Here Ingrid’s got nearly three decades of legal and judicial experience, and they’ve got to reduce it to one issue.”

  “Sweetheart, I think that’s to be expected. The Republicans are as curious as the Democrats.” While Charlie reads no newspaper on a regular basis, relying instead on briefings from his staff, his contempt for The New York Times is particularly intense. This is ironic, given that in the eighties, when we were in Halcyon in the summers, he and Arthur would drive an hour and twenty-five minutes to Green Bay to buy the Times Sunday edition; they would call ahead to a grocery store to reserve their copy.

  I push off the sheet and duvet and stand, wrapping my arms around Charlie and inhaling the scent of his neck and shoulders. “You smell very clean,” I say. I reach for the slim leather folder on his nightstand and open it. These folders—an identical one is on my nightstand—contain our schedules for the day. Before we go to bed, we each receive both our own and each other’s.

  On his plate today: intelligence and FBI briefings, a late-morning speech at a conference for small-business leaders in Columbus, Ohio, a fund-raising luncheon in Buffalo, and a meeting with his economic advisers back in the Oval Office this afternoon, before and after which he’ll make calls on Ingrid Sanchez’s behalf. Tonight at eight o’clock there is a White House gala titled “Students and Teachers Salute Alice Blackwell,” which I find quite embarrassing. As Hank reminded me when he got me to agree to it in April, Charlie’s approval ratings have dipped to 32 percent, while mine rest at 83 percent; I am allegedly the second most admired woman in the United States, just behind Oprah Winfrey. (Ridiculous as it is, this ranking is hardly the most ridiculous aspect of my life.) “Reminding Americans how much they love you reminds them they love the president,” Hank told me. “You’ll be taking one for the team, and all you have to do is show up and pretend you have an ego like the rest of us.”

  Charlie glances at his schedule, then pulls mine from beneath it. “You’re not traveling today, are you?”

  I shake my head. “The breast-cancer panel is in Arlington.”

  “A titty summit, huh?” Charlie grins. “Need any help performing a self-exam?”

  “Get dressed.” I push him away and turn to make our bed, a habit I’ve been told the maids find hilarious, but one I can’t suppress. Prior to our arrival over six years ago, the sheets in the residence were changed daily, but I requested, so as not to waste water, that they be changed no more than once a week, even for Charlie and me.

  He reappears a few minutes later in a white oxford shirt, a charcoal suit, and a red tie marked with tiny yellow dots. “You look nice,” I say.

  “You excited to be the belle of the ball tonight?”

  Dryly, I say, “I’m beside myself.”

  “You’re not dreading it, are you? Lindy, you deserve to be recognized. People have no idea how much you’ve done not just for the administration but for the country.”

  This is a way of talking I don’t care for, talking as you’d hope others might talk about you, believing your press, or what you wish were your press. Though in public, I try to graciously accept both compliments and criticism, in the privacy of my head, I avoid giving myself credit for vague achievements tied to my position—for being a role model, for showing leadership—and at the same time, I don’t blame myself for the broad general failures for which I am held responsible by my detractors. To others, I am a symbol; to myself, I have only ever been me.

  I set my hands on Charlie’s shoulders, and we lean in and give each other a minty, toothpastey kiss. “Ella gets in around four, and I have to give a tour to a third-grade choir after that, but otherwise, I hope she and I will get to relax,” I say. (That our daughter is coming home for tonight’s gala is, in my opinion, its main benefit; though I try not to crowd her, I adore when she visits.) “If you want us to come and say hi, if you have a spare minute, have Michael call up.”

  “Wyatt’s not coming with her?” Wyatt is Ella’s boyfriend of a year and a half. They both work as investment analysts at Goldman Sachs in Manhattan, and Charlie likes to play tennis with Wyatt because Wyatt is good enough to be challenging but not so good that Charlie can’t have the pleasure of beating a man half his age.

  I say, “Well, Ella leaves again tomorrow, so it’s such a short visit. Will you have a good day today and be careful?” I say this to Charlie every morning. You would think—I would have thought—there would be an entirely different vocabulary that a president and a first lady would use, one that encompassed the constant possibility of national or international disaster, the weight of a country. And there’s White House jargon—FLOTUS and pool spray and “the football”—but it turns out that for the most part, we make do with the same words we’ve always used.

  “I love you, Lindy,” Charlie says. It is six-twenty, and from here, he will go for breakfast in the Family Dining Room, where Hank and Debbie Bell, a senior advi
ser, will be waiting for him; they meet daily and call themselves the Oatmealers. From the dining room, Charlie will move on to the Oval Office for his briefings and then go directly to the South Lawn for the short ride on Marine One to Andrews Air Force Base and the longer plane flight to Columbus. (Punctuality has been a major point of pride with Charlie during both his administrations.)

  He always reminds me in this early-morning moment of an actor going onstage, an insurance salesman, or perhaps the owner of the hardware store who landed the starring role in the community-theater production of The Music Man. Oh, how I want to protect him! Oh, the outlandishness of our lives, familiar now and routine, but still so deeply strange. “I love you, too,” I say.

  ____

  THIS IS THE part everyone already knows: that in the year 2000, Charlie won the presidential election by a narrower margin than any other candidate in U.S. history, that in fact his opponent received more popular votes while Charlie received more electoral ones; that the final decision was made by the Supreme Court, who voted 5–4 in Charlie’s favor; that at his inauguration in January 2001, he made a pledge to work in an inclusive, bipartisan fashion, a pledge I believe he intended to keep; that eight months later, terrorist attacks occurred in New York and Washington, D.C., killing close to three thousand Americans; that, first in October 2001 and again in March 2003, the U.S. Congress authorized the use of force against countries thought to be harboring terrorist leaders and weapons of mass destruction; that Charlie’s advisers and Charlie himself told the American people the war would be swift, that even as soon as six weeks after the March 2003 invasion, they assumed major combat operations were complete, as Charlie famously declared in a speech aboard a navy supercarrier, but that now, four years in, it is more bloody and chaotic than ever. Over three thousand American troops have died, the same number killed in the terrorist attacks, and close to twenty-five thousand have been wounded. As for foreign civilians, estimates range from seventy thousand deaths to ten times that. Every day, there are car bombs and suicide bombs, gun-men shooting police officers, mortar strikes on homes and schools, sniper fire outside mosques, decapitations at checkpoints. These days, Charlie and his defenders speak of freedom, of reshaping a region and shifting an ideology, of finishing what they started instead of cutting and running; his critics speak of quagmires and civil war. Some of those who were once his defenders have become his critics.