American Wife (62 page)

I have often felt a pang at not being able to share the more colorful of my experiences with my grandmother; what a hoot she would find my life, how she’d relish the gossipy details. But Charlie and I have included many of our relatives and longtime friends in the pleasures of our unexpected circumstances: For the eightieth birthday of my Madison friend Rita Alwin, I flew her to Washington and had her stay in the Lincoln Bedroom (on the plane out, she wore my mother’s garnet brooch, which touched me). One Christmas Day, Charlie, Ella, my mother, Jadey, Arthur, their two grown children, and I spent a delightfully raucous afternoon in the White House bowling alley (we don’t travel for the actual holiday to Wisconsin because we don’t want our Secret Service agents to be away from their families). And, among other political appointees, Charlie made our friend Cliff Hicken—a steadfast campaign fund-raiser—ambassador of France, so I’ve ended up having several wonderful visits in Paris with Kathleen, the two of us jaunting around to restaurants and museums and fashionable shops.

If the life Charlie and I share is prescribed and demanding, it is also privileged and fascinating. We are now and will always be members of a tiny club. And really, my own pleasure in or aversion to our status is irrelevant; it exists and cannot be unmade. We are famous, and when Charlie leaves office, we’ll be famous emeritus.

Today will, no doubt, be a day of drama and obligations, but it will be a day like any other; all our days now are days of drama and obligations. Three miles away, Edgar Franklin waits—futilely, I fear—to talk to Charlie; also nearby, Ingrid Sanchez prepares to visit senators; aboard
Air Force One,
en route to Columbus, Charlie might be vetoing a bill, deciding to increase or decrease spending or taxes by billions of dollars, conferring on the phone with the prime minister of the U.K. Later this morning, at the breast-cancer panel in a hotel ballroom in Arlington, Virginia, I’ll wear a red linen suit and encourage women to quit smoking, exercise regularly, and schedule yearly mammograms after the age of forty. This afternoon, I will visit with my daughter and give a tour of the White House to a group of forty third-graders who in turn will perform “God Bless America” at tonight’s gala in my honor. I wasn’t born to stand before crowds, to dispense advice or exhort, and after much coaching, I’d say I am only slightly better than adequate as a public speaker. Nevertheless, I attempt to rise to the occasion—I am the wife of the president of the United States, and I try to be a good one.

Charlie will be in office for nineteen more months.

IT IS AT
the end of the breast-cancer panel, during the part when the panelists and audience members have their picture taken with me—I greet the individual, we pose in front of a flag, the photographer’s flash goes off, and we’re on to the next person, all within a matter of seconds—that I see Hank Ucker leaning against the wall near the stage. I feel a flare-up of the fear that accompanies me everywhere, a fear whose omnipresence I recognize by the ease with which it sparks. Just once, in September 2001, was the fear truly justified, and even now I quickly realize that whatever is wrong, whatever has made Hank Ucker show up at a ballroom in Arlington, can’t be life-threatening to Charlie. If it were, I’d be whisked away immediately, shuttled to a bunker, outfitted in a bulletproof vest. (I’ve worn them more than once; above all, they are heavy.)

I glance at the line of people waiting to have their picture taken and try to count how many remain—more than forty—and I gesture to Ashley Obernauer, who is my personal aide. (Ashley is twenty-five and dazzlingly competent.) When she leans in, I say, “Ask Hank why he’s here.”

She soon returns. “He says he wants to chat—his word—with you on the ride back. He didn’t say about what.”

“Your husband is doing such a wonderful job,” a short woman in white polyester slacks, with wavy gray hair, says as we shake hands. “We pray for both of you every night.”

“Thank you.” I turn toward the camera, nudging her a bit as I do, so she’s facing forward, too.

“I’m so honored to—” she starts to say but is cut off by an advance person moving her along.

“Thank you for coming,” I call after her.

Another older woman is next (perhaps a nursing home was bused in?), and she says, “You tell President Blackwell that Mrs. Mabel Fulford says don’t back down one inch from the terrorists.”

“Will do,” I say, and the flash goes off, and I am on to the next person, a woman closer to my own age who says, “I skipped work to hear you today.”

“Your secret is safe with me,” I say. There can be a Potemkin feel to these events, the contrast between the enthusiasm and warmth of the people we meet and the overwhelmingly negative coverage from the media of anything having to do with Charlie’s administration. Many constituents also hold a negative view, of course, but they tend not to come to such events unless it’s to protest, and the precautions taken to keep them out are ever more elaborate. For safety reasons, I entered this hotel through the service entrance in the back, but as we drove in, I still glimpsed today’s protestors standing across the street, holding signs and chanting. Usually, they’re chanting antiwar slogans, but I believe that today there were also some placards opposing Ingrid Sanchez’s Supreme Court nomination.

The next woman says, “When is Ella going to marry that boyfriend of hers?”

I laugh. “I’ll let you know when I do.” Camera flash, camera flash, camera flash, and finally, we’re at the end of the line. The event organizers are thanking me profusely, bestowing on me a gift bag that Ashley accepts, and we all are headed out the back doors to the motorcade—Ashley; a deputy press secretary named Sandy; Bill Rawson, who is one of the official White House photographers; a woman named Zinia who is a health policy expert; and six Secret Service agents (more agents wait outside). As we walk, Ashley says, “Alice?” and I holdout my palms; she squirts Purell on them, and I rub my hands together.

Hank has materialized beside me. He says, “America does love its first lady.” My dislike of the term
first lady
is well established (though I use it sometimes myself for lack of an alternative, I find it fussy and antiquated), and everyone within the White House calls me simply Alice or Mrs. Blackwell. I give Hank a tight smile. Outside, the June heat assaults us even on the ten-foot walk from the service entrance to the motorcade; a Secret Service agent named Cal holds open the rear door in the third SUV for me. (I avoid motorcades when possible, preferring a few Town Cars, but the breast-cancer summit was a highly publicized event. Before September 2001, I used three cars and six agents for public events; now, in addition to the police escorts, I use five cars and nine agents, an extravagance that no longer seems bizarre. Also after September 2001, my motorcade was granted “intersection control” in Washington, meaning we need not stop at lights.) Hank climbs in after me, and Ashley is about to follow him when Hank says to her, “Ride behind us, will you, Ash? We’ll all powwow back in the East Wing.”

Ashley glances at me, and I think of objecting, but something in Hank’s tone stops me. Fastening my seat belt, I say, “Hank, I thought you’d gone to Ohio.”

“Change of plans.”

“I assume Charlie’s all right?”

“The president’s fine.” Visibly, Hank roots with the tip of his tongue in a molar; above all, he likes to appear unruffled, so his studied casualness in this moment means that
something
must be wrong. Sure enough, he says, “I got a call this morning. Does the name Norene Davis ring a bell?”

I shuffle through my memory, though the problem is that I no longer know everyone I know. I often feel that I do nothing except meet people; it is fully possible I spoke to someone for fifteen minutes at an event, that I even sat next to him or her for the duration of a meal and we had a pleasant conversation, and that I have no recollection of it. At functions, a person might say, “I treasure the picture I had taken with you at our annual banquet last spring” or “My wife and I often talk about meeting you at the Republican Convention in ’96,” and I nod in a friendly fashion. Sometimes these hints prod my brain—I
have
seen this person before—but I never would have made the realization on my own, and I could sooner levitate right there on the spot than tell you his or her name. I say, “I don’t remember a Norene Davis, but it’s possible.”

Hank clears his throat. “She’s alleging you had an abortion in October of ’63.”

I gasp; I hear the intake of breath before I realize it was mine.
Expect the unexpected
is an apt if clichéd guideline for life in the White House, but I did not expect this. I half expected it once, back when Charlie first ran for governor, and then again when he ran for president, and I worried about the damage it would do to Charlie’s candidacy more than the violation of my own privacy, though I would not have relished either. But what could have happened didn’t, and it seemed that the revelation’s potency could only dwindle. If I was going to be exposed—if Dena Janaszewski, or whatever name she went by now, was going to sell me out—it would have happened already. Thus I shelved this particular worry; there are always more than enough to choose from.

“Can you think of any reason Ms. Davis would make that claim?” Hank asks, and his tone is deliberately empty. No one else in the car reacts, not Cal, who sits in the front passenger seat, nor the other Secret Service agent, Walter, who’s driving. (Cal, who is currently my lead agent, played football at ASU; Walter is the father of twins—because they know far too much about us, both Charlie and I have made an effort to get to know our agents, and Charlie has personally shown the Oval Office to many of their family members.) I can see only the back of Walter’s head and some of Cal’s profile, but I’m confident both that they’re listening and that they’ll say nothing during this car ride, nothing when we’re back at the White House; they almost never speak first unless it’s an issue of safety. In crowds, I sometimes hear one beside me, having floated up without my noticing, murmuring, “Veer left,” or “Hold up, ma’am.” For men generally weighing over two hundred and fifty pounds, they are remarkably graceful.

To Hank, I say, “Are you sure this woman’s name is Norene Davis?”

Hank removes a BlackBerry from the inner pocket of his blazer and reads from the screen. “Age thirty-six, current address 5147 Manchester Street in Cicero, Illinois, although we have reason to believe she’s no longer living there. Divorced, no kids, employed as a home health aide by a rinky-dink-sounding organization called Glenview Health Service.”

“Is it possible she used to go by a different name?”

“Anything’s possible. My impression is she’s fronting for someone, but the question is who. While our tireless investigators figure that out, I wanted to check with you. Now, here’s where the plot thickens: This gal isn’t interested in blackmail, at least not in the conventional sense. Instead, she’s threatening to go public unless you speak out against Ingrid Sanchez as a Supreme Court nominee.”

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.