American Wife

by Curtis Sittenfeld

  Confused, I repeat, “Unless I—” But even before I finish the question, I understand. The brevity of the two answers I gave about my stance on abortion on the morning news show in 2000 and 2004 did not pacify pro-choice activists; in fact, it seems they might have preferred a pro-life first lady—a clear adversary—to one who quietly believes in reproductive freedom. As I said, the interview question was essentially staged both times, Charlie had given his blessings, which meant Hank had, which meant it served the administration, which it did because many Republicans are, after all, pro-choice themselves. The anchor had agreed in advance to ask no follow-up questions, and that first time, the next thing he said was “Now, on a less heavy topic, there’s one member of the Blackwell family known to be even more press-shy than you. Can you tell viewers a bit about the elusive Snowflake?” After that television program aired, Jeanette Werden in Madison, who had so annoyed me all those years ago at the cookout where I’d met Charlie by prattling on about her marriage and children, and who had been pregnant at the time with her third child, wrote me a letter saying she’d terminated an earlier pregnancy at the age of twenty-eight—she had given birth to Katie, their daughter, just six months before, and was struggling with what today would be called postpartum depression. When Jeanette wrote about how glad she was I’d spoken out, I longed to call and tell her the rest. I didn’t, though; I couldn’t.

  During Charlie’s first gubernatorial campaign, one of Hank’s minions interviewed me extensively; he had me walk him through every stage of my life, trawling for secrets or controversy. We spoke extensively about Andrew Imhof—it was a tabloid that first broke that story a few years later, in 2000, and I had the campaign press secretary confirm its accuracy as quickly as possible—and I answered every question the minion asked. But I did not volunteer extra information. Charlie and I had discussed it the night before, and he had said it was fine with him if I didn’t mention my abortion. If it never came out, then there would have been no need, and if it did come out, it could be dealt with then. But to preemptively divulge it—the minion’s questions were designed to elicit just such bombshells—seemed to me the surest way, through one person in the campaign confiding in another and another and eventually in a journalist, of making it public.

  In this moment in the SUV, however, the then of it could be dealt with then has arrived—the then is now, it is today. I say to Hank, “Isn’t this kind of threat illegal?”

  Hank actually smiles. “We’ll take down Norene Davis easy, don’t worry, but what I’m curious about is why you think she’d level this particular charge.”

  What Hank isn’t saying—he can’t because I’m first lady—is that he either suspects or knows the charge is true. (Sometimes the etiquette with which he must comply cruelly amuses me, the fact that he has to call Charlie Mr. President, or stand when I enter the room. You made us, I think, and now you must worship at our feet.) If Hank didn’t find the charge credible, he wouldn’t be here; after all, the White House receives dozens of letters, e-mails, and calls a day from delusional individuals: “Tell Alice Blackwell to quit sending my dog messages through the TV!” Or “I’m the president’s secret half brother from his father’s affair in 1950, but for two million dollars, I promise to keep quiet.” These accusations, like the threats to our lives, are constant, yet we learn the specifics of very few.

  “Charlie knows what’s going on?” I ask.

  Hank nods. “He said I should come to you directly.” Did Charlie tell Hank the charge is true? I doubt he said it outright, but he may have hinted.

  I look out the window; we’re heading east on Arlington Boulevard, the other cars on their way to Washington pulled over as we whiz past.

  “Listen,” Hank says. “This is a solvable problem. If Norene Davis is operating on her own, she’s in way over her head. The likelihood that she’ll back down with a little intimidation is high. Now let’s say for the sake of argument that she’s worked herself up and decides she’ll go to jail before she’ll be silenced, so she goes ahead and talks to a reporter, or let’s say she does shut her trap, but oops, wait a second, she’s already told her sister, she’s told her boyfriend, whoever it is—either way, the allegation is out there. In that case, I’m thinking Larry King. Not an immediate booking, we don’t want to go on the defensive right away. We wait ten days or two weeks, we fold it into another appearance—literacy, breast cancer, you pick the topic—and we let him ask you point-blank. You categorically deny it.” There is a question mark implied in this scenario, and I allow the question to hang there in the air.

  I say, “And when the press corps asks Maggie or Doug about it?”

  “ ‘While we’d normally consider it beneath us to acknowledge such outrageous and false accusations, Mrs. Blackwell’s respect for this sensitive and controversial issue blah blah blah . . . ’ Then, you know, lather, rinse, repeat.”

  “Just don’t say ‘sanctity of life.’ ”

  “This isn’t the time to fly your pro-choice flag, Alice.”

  “You’ve told me yourself the public accepts—”

  Unusually, Hank interrupts me; he has turned in his seat so we’re face-to-face. “The public accepts a first lady who supports the right to choose. Don’t kid yourself that that’s the same as accepting a first lady who had an abortion.”

  So he believes the allegation; he should, and I already knew he did, but there’s a bitter satisfaction in forcing him to say it aloud. In the front seat, Walter and Cal are as alert and impassive as sphinxes.

  I look Hank in the eye. “I’m not sure who Norene Davis is, but the person behind this is a former friend of mine named Dena Janaszewski. I haven’t spoken to her in thirty years, and I haven’t heard anything about her in probably fifteen, but she—she and maybe her boyfriend—are the only ones besides Charlie who’ve ever known about my abortion.”

  “Can you spell her last name?” Hank has his BlackBerry out again; if he’s shocked by my admission, he has the restraint not to show it, and no one else says anything, either.

  I say, “I’m not sure what name she goes by now, but she’s much older than thirty-six—she’s my age. She was married, and her name was Cimino, and then she was divorced, and she might be remarried, possibly to—” I pause. “Back in the late eighties, she was dating a man named Pete Imhof, so they might have broken up, or they might still be together. He’s the brother of Andrew, the boy who—”

  “Right.” Hank nods.

  “And also he—Pete—he’s the one I got pregnant by, but he never knew.”

  “Dena would have told him.” Hank isn’t asking; he’s making a statement.

  The SUV is quiet except for the sirens of the police motorcycles escorting us, though even those sound distant because of the Doppler effect.

  “Please have the investigators who talk to Dena be careful,” I say to Hank. “I wish she weren’t doing this, but I don’t want her life to be ruined, and I don’t want her going to prison.”

  “The pregnancy was before or after Andrew’s death?” Hank is, I can see, imagining how to spin this, wondering if somehow the death can cancel out the abortion. I could spare him the trouble and tell him it can’t.

  “After,” I say.

  For a moment, Hank is silent, absorbing the information, and then he says, “Well, we’ve got our work cut out for us.” (On second thought, perhaps he doesn’t worship at our feet at all. That he is eating this up, luxuriating in the sordidness, is undeniable—it is not so much that Hank loves nothing more than a crisis but that he loves nothing more than his own indispensability to my husband in the face of one; there is a reason Charlie’s nickname for Hank is Shit Storm.)

  “Don’t let the investigators physically threaten Dena,” I say. “Do you hear me, Hank? I want them to be respectful.”

  “Alice, she’s trying to thwart a Supreme Court nomination and lead a smear campaign against the president and the first lady of the United States.”

  I frown at him. “Don’t be
melodramatic.” Before turning again to look out the window, I say, “She was once a close friend.”

  THE WAY FAME works is that people start to see your name in the news, whether on television or in the paper or a magazine. Something has just occurred (your husband has, with seven other men, bought a baseball team) or something is about to occur (your husband is on the verge of announcing he’ll run for governor of Wisconsin, or he’s on the verge of being elected), and people you know, though not necessarily well, contact you. People from the country club, whose house you have never been inside, who have never been inside yours—they call and leave joking messages, saying, “Don’t forget us little people.” Or “I saw you on Channel Four, and I had to get in touch while you still remember that you know me.” Whatever the thing is that has just occurred or is about to occur, it’s time-consuming; your life has never been more hectic, nor have there ever been more people contacting you for essentially pointless reasons, yet you feel compelled to respond, lest they think the attention has gone to your head. You hear from your dentist, your daughter’s high school math teacher, people from your past: childhood friends, old classmates, former coworkers. They are surprisingly skilled at tracking you down. Sometimes they merely want acknowledgment, but increasingly, they want favors, and then strangers want favors, too. They ask you to speak at events, to be an honorary host, to be a member of their board of trustees, to auction off an evening with yourself; they want tickets to baseball games, tickets to the World Series, permission to get married on the baseball field, tickets to tour the governor’s mansion; then they want you to help them gain access or entry to places to which you have no connection whatsoever, a fancy restaurant in New York, a golf course in North Carolina; they want you to help their nephew obtain a summer internship at a talent agency in Los Angeles. Before your fame extends beyond the state, they are already sure that it does. It would be impossible to say yes to all of these requests, though again, saying no increases the likelihood that you’ll be viewed as rude; almost every person who asks a favor appears unaware of the existence of every other person doing the same. You realize that anyone can create an obligation for you just by wanting something; they write you a letter or an e-mail, they leave you a phone message, and while not granting their wish is bad enough, to ignore them would be unforgivable. In this way, they determine your schedule and duties; you have become public property.

  Gradually, your fame settles on you, it’s like a new coat or a new car that you become used to, but it continues to provoke odd and awkward behavior in others. At your public events, people you never knew, friends of friends of friends, your college boyfriend’s aunt, the neighbor of your plumber—they, too, claim you, reciting the few degrees of separation between you and them. At private events unrelated to you or the reason you’ve become famous, the weddings or cocktail parties or school fund-raisers you still attend to try to convince yourself you remain a regular person, other people eye you heavily. You try to be modest by not assuming anyone recognizes or is looking at you; if you’re meeting a person for the first time, you introduce yourself, you remark on the flowers or the food or the weather. But really, all they want to talk about is you: how they are connected to you (the more tenuous the connection, the more they insist on establishing it), or where they were when they saw an article or television segment featuring you, or what they overheard people on the street saying about you. They want to talk to you about how strange it must be, being famous; they don’t realize they are even now creating the strangeness.

  And then you become truly famous—not locally or regionally famous, but famous famous—and of all things, your burden lightens. Steadily, your entourage has been growing, and now it is large enough and professional enough that there is a buffer between you and the rest of the world. In public, you’re flanked by aides; either visibly or invisibly, you’re accompanied by a security detail. You can’t just be approached, and the situations in which you can be approached are controlled and systematic. This is why it’s harder to be moderately famous than very famous; when you’re moderately famous, you still go to the grocery store, you still do the things you did before, while at any moment, you might be noticed and accosted. When you’re very famous, you don’t go to the grocery store unless it’s for a photo op, and you know that wherever you do go, you’ll be recognized at once. Any environment you set foot in will be altered, your presence will mean that everyone must start talking about you, taking your picture with their cell phones. This is why, during Charlie’s presidency, we have hardly eaten at restaurants in Washington except during events organized around our attendance; we’ve been criticized for being aloof when the reality is that I feel it’s unfair to all the other diners. They’ve gone out, perhaps to celebrate a job promotion or a birthday; they are buttering their bread and we appear, unsettling the equilibrium of the room. If this was to be the dinner where you celebrated your promotion, it has become instead the dinner where the president and the first lady showed up. It is selfish, really; we take up more than our fair share of oxygen.

  Early on, at moments when I felt most overwhelmed by my new role as first lady, I’d tell myself that I was surely the most famous person in the country, and probably in the world, who had not sought her fame. This was a lie. Who did not want her fame would have been more accurate. I sought fame with a reluctant heart, with great reservations, yet I granted interviews and posed for photographs and rode with Charlie on buses and planes, I gave speeches of my own and cheered for his, I visited churches and hospitals and fish fries. Like every famous person, I was complicit in my fame. Yes, a few times a year, a handful of ordinary citizens become the focus of a media frenzy—a victim of a particularly grisly crime, or the kid who reaches over the stands to catch a home-run ball in a play-off game—but that fame passes. The true enduring kind must be constantly burnished and enhanced. It never happens by chance.

  Perhaps it started back in 1977, with Charlie’s first congressional campaign, or perhaps well before that, when Harold Blackwell ran for attorney general of Wisconsin in 1954. We threw ourselves at people—there are more savory ways to say it, but really, that’s what we did. We searched them out, we left leaflets at the front doors of their houses and under the windshields of their cars, we spoke to them through ads on television, we went to their schools and town halls and farmers’ markets. We begged them to listen, we bombarded them with promises and plans, but all along we were selling ourselves—selling him.

  We did everything we could to get as many people as possible to pay attention to us, and it worked, and now we complain. Leave us alone, we say. Just like you, we’re entitled to privacy.

  BEFORE DELIVERING HIS speech in Columbus, Charlie calls to say that he thinks Dena is a credibility-lacking piece of trailer trash. “Go easy,” I say. I am, as much as possible, trying to suspend panic. This scandal, if a scandal is what it will be, is in such an early stage; I need to better know the shape of it before allotting my anxious energy.

  My personal aide, Ashley, and I are walking from the South Lawn into the Diplomatic Reception Room when Nicole Hethcote, another aide, says, “Mrs. Blackwell, your daughter’s on the phone. Are you available?”

  “I’ll get it at my desk,” I say. In my office in the East Wing, as soon as the phone rings, I pick it up.

  “Can you please make Dad go talk to that Franklin guy?” Ella says. “Just for five minutes?”

  “Honey, you can’t let the opposition dictate the terms of the conversation.”

  “You sound like Uncle Hank.”

  Ah, my Ella. She is twenty-eight now, and her schedule at Goldman Sachs is worse than Charlie’s, ninety hours a week on a regular basis. Magazines sometimes run pictures of Ella and her boyfriend, Wyatt, entering or leaving fancy restaurants (their main form of recreation besides working out, which they both do avidly), and while the exposure doesn’t please me and I admit to being a bit thrown by the idea of my daughter spending more on a bottle of wine than I used to pay f
or a month’s rent in my twenties, I never worry that Ella will be caught behaving inappropriately. She is our miracle, smart and level-headed and joyful, inheritor of an improbable combination of my calmness and Charlie’s mischief. Perhaps most extraordinary to me is her apparent lack of resentment toward either of us. Mundane bickering and disagreements have always arisen with us, as with any family, but even those scuffles, which peaked when she was in high school (over atypical issues such as the ubiquity of her security detail, and more mundane ones such as the lengths of her skirts, the hour of her curfew, and the urgent necessity of there being two piercings rather than one in her left ear), have all faded. While I doubt she would have chosen this path for our family—she was in eighth grade when we told her Charlie was going to run for governor of Wisconsin, which prompted her to accuse her father of trying to ruin her life—it would appear she has forgiven us.

  In June 2001, she graduated from Princeton, an event where Charlie’s appearance created a bit of a ruckus on campus; knowing we’d force all the other families to walk through metal detectors, among other inconveniences, we’d considered skipping the ceremony, but neither Charlie nor I could bear to do it. (Sitting in the front row, facing Nassau Hall, I did think uncomfortably of Joe Thayer, who, over ten years earlier, had married a younger, gentle-seeming music teacher at Biddle Academy with whom he has had two more children. In a pleasant turn of events, his once-troubled daughter Megan is also married and living in Maronee with two young children.) Ella again followed in Charlie’s footsteps by attending Wharton, though, as Charlie quipped in the commencement address he delivered two years ago, the school has become so competitive that if he’d been applying when Ella did, he wouldn’t have gotten in.