MARY
I DO NOT BELIEVE IN RELATIVITY; there is real truth and real beauty, and they are not altered by the whim of time or trends.
What has always been true and beautiful to me from my very first childhood memories is a love for animals. All animals. I remember being pained as a little girl when I watched the brightly lit tails of lightning bugs being pulled off by the all-male preschool gang in my neighborhood. Not that insect mutilation is a gender-exclusive activity, but the boys did seem to relish squishing every winged, crawling, hopping or buzzing thing they could get their sweaty hands on.
Because my father was allergic to cats, we always had dogs when I was little. So naturally I presumed that I was a dog person until my best college friend, Katie O’Hara, introduced me to the wonders of the feline world. Katie and I also shared a passion for reading and gardening and cooking. We had multiple dogs, cats and quite a few other creatures that regularly procreated under our watchful care to our utter delight. It’s a wonder we graduated.
You can never have just one cat. And it isn’t true that the presence of multiple cats is proof of crazy cat lady syndrome, an affliction my entire family accuses me of having. But there are dog people and cat people. You all know who you are.
I can accept that, but I never, ever expected there were no-animal-no-way (NANW) beings walking the Earth.
Until I met James Carville. In south Louisiana, there is a certainty that God created all creatures great and small but that none of them were meant to live indoors. This went beyond the beasts of burden, which the Carvilles grew up with. James never had a bicycle, but he always had a horse as a kid. To this day, he can ride like the wind and talks about horses like he’s the son of the Horse Whisperer. So imagine my surprise to learn he was a fervent NANW acolyte.
There have been only three events in our twenty-two years together that have threatened permanent separation, and about which no reconciliation was possible: (1) my going back into the White House in 2000; (2) the Iraq War; and, honestly, the most troublesome one, (3) our disparate views of the animal kingdom.
James could put up with a hound or two, and he did develop, to his own surprise, a sincere affection for our first Blenheim King Charles spaniel that he named Reyes after his then-favorite red wine. And he even tolerated the second spaniel, a tricolor that he named Buckminster and called Buck-Buck, which remains his password for many apps despite Buck-Buck’s passing long ago.
But our long-haired miniature dachshunds, the completely irresistible Gorgeous and Cherrie; our chocolate Lab, Paws; the corgies, Jack and Lilly; the Yorkiepoo, Bieber (yes, named after Justin during that phase of Emerson’s tween life); and especially the amazing Skeeter, the rescue poodle-mutt, give him fits. Those fits, which manifested themselves in hollering, shouting, prolonged pouts and moans of misery, finally gave way to glaring hatred. This evolved, due to James’s strong survival instinct, into begrudging tolerance.
“Come on,” I’d coo. “How cute is Skeeter!?”
James would snarl back, “Get them out of my room.”
After he falls asleep (usually four or five hours before me), my whole animal kingdom tiptoes into the bedroom with me and slithers under the blanket on my side of the bed. But as quiet and cuddly as we are, his NANW alarm goes off—and the menagerie is banished. If he somehow sleeps through our nocturnal raids until his customary 5:00 in the morning (which is often about an hour after I’ve finally gotten to sleep), he makes a big show of his doggie-disgust.
But the Carville NANW gene is too dominant to consider the possibility of house cats, although we have many. And, as is the wont of cats, who are the most ironic of creatures, they gravitate to those who detest them most—or whose allergies produce swollen eyes and closed throats (like my BFF, Maria Cino, whose allergies to all animals are so severe that her very presence in my home always produces an instant veritable Noah’s ark, as all of the Matalin creatures race to cling to, hang off of or sit on her, even as she begins wheezing and her eyes swell up like Rocky after a bad fight).
Once, accidentally, during one of Maria’s attacks, I sprayed what I thought was liquid antihistamine up her nose only to discover—after her eyes rolled back in her head and she fell to her knees—that it was topical Benadryl, with these words prominently printed across the bottle: UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES TO BE INGESTED OR INSERTED IN NASAL CAVITIES.
There is no one more beloved in our family than Maria, the devoted godmother to both the girls, so the girls and I aren’t proud of the fact that we were laughing so hard at Maria’s wheezing and eye rolling after the Benadryl mishap—and her crawling around on the kitchen floor—that we weren’t able to breathe either. The fallout: Maria never leaves home without her own Benadryl tablets now.
James has zero allergies. Cats are simply Satan incarnate to him. This is partly because he is Mr. Fastidious—compulsively washing his hands with Purell—and becomes really, really upset when he finds cat hair on the butter (which he bitches about anyway because he likes his butter always in the icebox, while I must have access to soft butter at all times in case I have an urgent need to make Marcella Hazan’s pesto pasta, which calls for six softened sticks of it).
James can’t comprehend why cats should have the run of the kitchen countertops to begin with. But our cats’ habit of licking butter—which makes complete sense to me, since it is the best part of cream, or life, for that matter—reduces him to tears. Or worse.
One morning, I came downstairs and discovered the whiskers of one of my favorite kitties, Black Cat (it’s hard to creatively name dozens of kitties), were singed and mangled. James was unable to deny that he had turned on the burner while Black Cat was standing on the stove. Initially, he claimed this had been an accident but later fessed up. He wasn’t even appropriately remorseful or defensive about this act of feline pyromania, even after I dug into him and pointed out that Black Cat had long hair and could have spontaneously combusted. This possibility—he claimed—hadn’t occurred to him at the time. Although James did seem to experience a visible shudder of pleasure as he thought about it.
If it weren’t the butter licking, something else would set him off on random antikitty tirades. James hates that Bagpipes, our other aptly named cat, screeches every time she wants attention, which is always. Even the melodic purring of our Siamese, aptly named Simon, makes him leave the room.
But his greatest antipathy is reserved for the forty-pound black-and-white tabby, whom we call Fat Cat or sometimes Killer Cat, depending on his mood. (He was originally named Robbie, but he never lived up to that.)
In James’s defense, nobody really enjoys the company of Fat/Killer Cat. Our beloved friend and priest, Monsignor Christopher Nalty, tolerates Fat/Killer Cat because (I suspect) his profession actually obliges him to love all God’s creatures.
Of course, Fat/Killer—being a member in good standing of the ironic feline species—adores the good monsignor. Fat/Killer could be MIA for days, but the minute Monsignor Nalty takes a seat to relax after a long week of marrying, burying, baptizing, forgiving and inspiring, Fat/Killer magically appears and with the accuracy and destructive capacity of a heat-seeking missile, he dive-bombs Monsignor. Fat/Killer leaves fuzzy swatches of white fur up and down the monsignor’s black clerical garb (not to mention the hair sticking to whatever appetizer or beverage he may have in his hand). I always offer to dry-clean his clothes, but he maintains his own regular dry-cleaner schedule, which takes into account that dinner at our home means he will return to the rectory “Rogained,” as he puts it.
The monsignor is a brilliant theologian, civil and canon lawyer, and a 100-percent believer, not just in the obvious things, but in all of the Roman Catholic Church’s teachings. James is more of a cafeteria Catholic, picking and choosing what he’ll go along with. The two of them can really go at it, which was fun the first one hundred or so dinners. Neither of them seems to care if their fellow diners get up
and leave while they keep dancing on the heads of boxfuls of theological pins. But they are in lockstep agreement when it comes to their lack of fondness—okay, disgust and horror would be a more accurate description of their feelings—for another two of God’s creatures that inhabit our home: Matty’s pet rats, Hattie and Stella (named after classic characters from New Orleans literature).
As I said, “lack of fondness” doesn’t adequately capture James’s and the monsignor’s full-on revulsion to Hattie and Stella, who like to sit on my shoulders while I’m mixing up another batch of yummy pesto pasta with my always available soft butter minus cat hairs.
Despite his polite but consistent and well-articulated revulsion to the rats, the tremendously loving and faithful monsignor didn’t hesitate for a nanosecond when I called, weeping, to tell him the terrible news that Hattie had not survived her mammary gland surgery (rats bleed out easily in major surgeries because, well, they don’t have much blood) and beseeched him to perform a funeral for her.
I prepared a Mass card of sorts for Hattie, and while Matty and I stood holding hands and praying in our backyard animal cemetery, the monsignor delivered one of the most heartfelt and appropriate eulogies of all time. We should all be sent off so well.
It was a memorable evening, even though the rodent-intolerant James missed it. (He claimed he was otherwise indisposed on a Saturday night at a “business commitment.”)
There are many more tales of the beloved creatures under our roof—we have swimming ones, feathered ones, not just furry and scaly-tailed ones—and while none have enjoyed James’s affection since Reyes and Buck-Buck, more than a few have been favored by his heroism. I have lost count of the times he has raced me to the emergency vet after one roadside calamity or another. As I wept, holding the body of a furry victim, only once did I hear him say to the vet under his breath, “You think these dumb bastards would learn how to cross the street.”
It doesn’t surprise me one bit and it is just oh-so-typical that a liberal could dispense with his bleeding heart the second it doesn’t serve his purposes.
JAMES
I DEAL WITH MARY’S animals like I deal with her politics: I generally dislike them, so I tend to ignore them.
I understand why people are curious how our polar-opposite politics affect life at home. It’s what we still get asked about most after all these years. But the answer has seldom changed: it really doesn’t matter. As with any marriage, part of the trick is realizing you can’t change your spouse even if you wanted to, and it’s better simply to let her be who she is.
I learned a long time ago to stay away from politics at home. She’ll watch Fox News or listen to Rush Limbaugh. I’ll head to another room and flip on SportsCenter. I don’t pay much attention to it. I rarely watch her when she’s on television, and I’m pretty certain she rarely wastes a minute watching me.
That doesn’t mean I’ll ever quite understand Republicans. Conservatives—and I know this because I live with one—literally view it as a kind of weakness to talk to people other than themselves. Nothing would bore me more than to sit around talking and listening to a bunch of liberals all day. Just shoot me. But conservatives never seem to tire of one another. The conservative media landscape is the biggest echo chamber going. They love to reinforce their beliefs, day after day.
I just don’t get it. Then again, I don’t really care. Honestly, I don’t. Mary can listen to what she wants. She can watch what she wants. She can talk with whomever she likes. If you want to believe that the government’s coming for our guns or that Obamacare signals the end of civilization or that cutting taxes for rich people is the path to a better America, that’s your choice. It doesn’t affect me. I’m never going to believe in any of that shit. But I also know I’m not going to change it. So if it pleases her, then fine. I’d rather stay happily married than pick a fight with my wife over politics.
4.
How Do We Raise the Kids?
MARY
THE COMMON ASSUMPTION IS that two people with wildly divergent views on politics would have wildly divergent views on parenting. But James and I have always had the same approach to child rearing, even though we had different reactions to their arrival.
My anxieties and concerns about childbirth were trifling compared with James’s off-the-charts anticipation. For one thing—and it was a major one—he is of the generation when fathers waited for the arrival of their new miracle with a box of cigars in the hospital hallway; they were not partners in the birthing room, let alone anywhere near the “action end” of the bed, as James kept calling it. When someone asked him if he wanted to videotape the crowning, all color drained from his face. When he realized it wasn’t a joke question, his knees started buckling. (He is an aficionado of the “Louisiana Buckle,” which is brought on by boozing, not birthing.)
When Matty was born, he began screaming—“It’s a baby! It’s a baby! It’s a baby!”—more loudly and insanely with each repetition. Even in my daze, I could hear nurses all down the hall laughing. “As opposed to what? A puppy?”
I considered keeping him out of the “action” for Emerson, but he appeared to be manning up for the event. Emerson was a one push, easy-peasy birth, but James’s previous experience didn’t seem to have much assuaging effect. When he started buckling, I stopped pushing and ordered him an epidural.
JAMES
GETTING MARRIED IS NO BIG DEAL, at least for a guy. The day before you get married ain’t a whole lot different than the day after. Maybe you’re that rare bird who has waited until you get married to have sex. Maybe you’re one of the few people who hasn’t already lived with your soon-to-be spouse. Fine. But for most guys, it’s not a sea change. It’s nice to be married. It’s comfortable. Life proceeds largely as it did before.
Fatherhood alters that balance entirely and permanently. When Mary got pregnant, I didn’t fret much about having a child. What’s the big deal? Well, the day after the baby arrives, you realize right away: it’s an entirely different deal. The relationship with your wife, the power in the relationship, everything changes. The woman has been through the turmoil of childbirth. Everyone is tired and irritable. It is a transformational experience.
MARY
OUR DIFFERENCES CONTINUED. When Matty was born, I was constantly overcome by emotion, holding her twenty-four hours a day, singing You Are My Sunshine to her, and crying. I couldn’t do a thing except that because I was a big fat lumbering blob and, for the most part, my brain had switched off. I was lost. I was weird. I couldn’t even take a shower. In my entire life in politics, I had only cried twice: when Poppy Bush lost and much later, in 2001, when I was so disappointed by how Cheney’s brilliant, seriously comprehensive energy policy was received by hydrocarbon-hating tree huggers, including some in our own camp. But now I was sobbing for no reason and I couldn’t stop, which was double crazy because I knew for a fact I’d never been happier. I had never loved anything more in all my long life the way I loved that baby. I couldn’t put her down.
Meanwhile, James was back to normal, zipping around, off on his regular life, but even more so. He was fueled by a manly need to provide. And I didn’t want to go anywhere—partly because I didn’t want to hand Matty over to anybody else, particularly James. I know this was selfish of me, and I’m sure I robbed him of one of the great joys in life, but he was just hopeless at baby stuff. Like diapering—even creatures without opposable thumbs could whip on today’s disposal diapers. As far as James was concerned, these modern wonders might well have been nuclear centrifuges. He was clueless. He put them on Matty upside down, backward, inside out, every which way but right side up. He couldn’t mess with powder or ointment. He said that he was afraid he had germs on his hands or something. In short order, my mother calculator registered James + diaper = diaper rash. And since I was nursing, he couldn’t do the feeding either. So I was tethered and he was not. He resumed his happy-go-lucky globe-trotting as if
the screaming baby and crazy woman in his bed were just another day at the office.
This might sound angry, but I wasn’t. Not one bit. I was ecstatic. Even if he’d begged to hold, feed or diaper Matty—which he didn’t, he was totally happy just to marvel at her—he never had a chance. And I am not ashamed to admit it: I was one completely neurotic mother (and may still be).
I did read the parenting and baby books, because my tendency is to overprepare, while James is totally instinctual. And it quickly became obvious the books were like looking at a Google map of where you want to go, but at 50,000 feet. The best source of information was other mothers. Only other mothers could really tell me something smart and wise and helpful without making me feel like a crackpot, and assure me I wasn’t doing anything that would scar my angel for life.
Soon, I was a total font of information and mother wisdom myself. And James had total and complete trust in me. He has the highest regard for maternal wisdom. He never questioned a thing I did. He was, and is, a crazy mother’s blessing, which in no way should be construed as a commentary on his own mother.
JAMES
DON’T GET ME WRONG. You love your baby. You don’t mind changing the diaper. But it’s just a different existence. If your wife’s been at home with the baby all day and she’s tired and it’s a Saturday night—it doesn’t matter what plans you might have had, you stay your ass home. Or some nights the baby is up crying and she turns to you and says, “I can’t deal with it. I had to deal with it all last night. You deal with this.” And maybe you have a busy day ahead or really need the sleep. Doesn’t matter.
I don’t know of anybody who’s had children who wishes they hadn’t done it. I’m certainly grateful for our girls. It’s just that before they arrived I could not fathom the deep and fundamental changes that were coming to our house. Changes that make life better, but not necessarily easier.
Love & War Page 8
