American Wife (70 page)

That evening in Mobile, in the van headed to the airport, Hank, who’d been sitting at the table adjacent to ours, said, “The retard took a real shine to you, huh, Alice?”

“What retard?” Charlie asked.

A few weeks later, Leon Tasket made a donation of eight hundred thousand dollars to the RNC, but rather than feeling triumphant about this development, I was a little sad—it was as if my delight in Mr. Tasket’s son had, like so much else in politics, merely been for show. That I had played tic-tac-toe with a fellow audience member during my husband’s stump speech was written up in
Time
magazine and has been repeated in many articles since, a little nugget about me that, in the absence of more substantive disclosures, is assumed to reveal something meaningful about my personality.

“
SO EXPLAIN TO
me why it is you’re going to see your wacko former friend who you haven’t laid eyes on in thirty years when it turns out she had nothing to do with this shit,” Charlie says over the phone. In the Gulfstream, we are flying above the Illinois-Wisconsin border, and Charlie is en route to a remote park along the Potomac for an afternoon bike ride; in other words, three vehicles containing him, his mountain bike, assorted agents and their bikes, and even a physician are making their way south.

I say, “It turns out Dena’s still dating Pete Imhof, so this is really about seeing both of them. I guess I just feel the need.” Belinda in my office confirmed to Jessica that Dena and Pete do live together, though Belinda said Dena was uncertain whether Pete would be present when I arrived.

“I thought you and Ella were planning on a girls’ afternoon,” Charlie says.

“Well, I’m excited to see her tonight, and I hope she’s not offended by my change of plans. I’ll be back an hour before the gala. Did you ask Ella if she wanted to bike with you?”

“She said it’s too hot.”

I hesitate, and then I say, “I’m worried about how she’ll react to this abortion story. Hank has gotten Dr. Wycomb to promise not to come forward before tomorrow—I think he must be pretending there’s still a chance I’ll speak out against Ingrid Sanchez—so I’m planning to tell Ella tonight in person. After I do, will you make sure you’re around? I have a feeling she’ll need someone to talk to, but she’ll be angry with me.”

“Is that why you’re avoiding coming home?”

“Honey, I’m not avoiding anything. Seeing Dena is a chance to tie up loose ends.”

“Well, Ella’s a tough cookie,” Charlie says. “She’ll be fine.”

“But from a religious standpoint—”

“You think any Christian worth their salt can’t get their head around the idea of sinning? So you messed up forty years ago—that doesn’t mean you never walked with God again.”

I knew he’d say this, even though surely he’s aware I don’t consider abortion a sin (unfortunate, yes, but immoral, no), just as he’s aware that I do not share his Christian convictions. Our unspoken deal regarding religion is similar to our deal about politics: I don’t object when he talks about God, and he doesn’t insist that I proclaim myself a believer. I have spoken of my agnosticism to as few people as I’ve spoken of my abortion, so I understand the widespread assumption, among both friends and strangers, of my faith.

As for the Christian right, the traditional-values advocates—whatever name you call them by, they are the ones who believe Charlie is a Messianic figure. So untenable a hypothesis is this to me that I can only squelch in my mind any consideration of it. That Charlie, encouraged by his advisers, Hank foremost among them, has promoted this preposterous notion is an act of either such cynicism or such bottomless hubris that it would be impossible to say which is worse. My suspicion is that for Charlie, the vision of himself as messiah-like is sincere (how else to explain his rise from floundering alcoholic to president?), and for Hank, it is insincere, though I do not doubt the sincerity of Hank’s belief in Charlie. I might say that I don’t understand that belief, since Hank is clearly the more intellectual and ambitious of the two men, except that I do understand: Hank recognized early on that Charlie could be his charismatic proxy. And didn’t I, too, hitch my life to Charlie’s, allowing myself to be guided and defined by him? So why wouldn’t I understand the impulse in someone else?

Charlie sounds upbeat when he says, “Once the mudslinging starts, remember that I’m never running for anything again, so you don’t need to feel guilty on my account.”

I look out the window; the captain’s chair I am seated in faces sideways, perpendicular to the walled-off cockpit, so I can see the blue sky outside. This jet, which I prefer to the Boeing 757s I must use when accompanied by larger groups, seats sixteen, and the fabric covering all the chairs is white leather, the carpet cream; the decor has always reminded me a bit of a tacky person’s idea of heaven. I say, “Sweetheart, I appreciate your support, but before we start calling my abortion a sin—doesn’t that imply you wish I hadn’t had it? And we’d never have married, would we, if I were the mother of a thirteen-year-old when we met?” He’s quiet, and I say, “It’s not uncomplicated. That’s all I’m trying to point out. And I hope this is a story that blows over, but my fear is that Ingrid Sanchez’s nomination will keep it in the news.”

“You’re not suggesting I give her the boot?”

“No, but I wouldn’t underestimate how much the press will relish the irony.”

“What really chaps my ass,” Charlie says, “is the idea of this bitter witch doctor deciding she’s going to expose you, and everyone rolls over and plays dead. Could there be a clearer case of blackmail?”

“She’s a hundred and four, Charlie.”

“Yeah, so everyone keeps saying. Kept alive by good old-fashioned liberal rage, huh?” He chuckles. “Hey, if that’s all it takes, you might outlast me yet.”

We both are silent; outside the cabin of the plane, the engines hum. Jessica sits a few feet away in her own white leather seat, eating a sandwich prepared for her by one of the two flight attendants; Cal and José are chatting in the plane’s rear while Walter reads a thriller. I try to keep my voice low as I say, “I don’t agree with Dr. Wycomb’s methods, but you do remember that I’m pro-choice, don’t you?”

“See, that’s what makes America great—room for all kinds of opposing viewpoints.” I can tell Charlie’s grinning, then I hear an unmistakable noise, a bubbly blurt of sound, and I know he’s just broken wind. Though I’ve told him it’s inconsiderate, I think he does it as much as possible in front of his agents. He’ll say, “They think it’s hilarious when the leader of the free world toots his own horn!”

“I heard that,” I say.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Before ending the call, he adds, “Give my regards to the divorcée.”

IF A REPORTER
or stranger asks what in my life I never imagined I’d find myself doing, I say, “Giving speeches!” Invariably, it’s an answer that elicits laughter. If friends ask, I say, “Having a cat.” That was Hank’s doing—a poll he commissioned in the early nineties revealed that the voters of Wisconsin would have a more favorable idea of our family if we owned a pet, ideally a dog. I protested because of Ella’s allergies, and this is how we came to own Snowflake, our allegedly hypoallergenic Russian Blue.

That our cat is standoffish is, as far as I’m concerned, all the better; I have shed no tears over her apparent aversion to sitting on our laps or even anywhere near us. Charlie sometimes lifts her up and smashes his face against her ribs, rubbing his nose in her fur, saying, “You’re the only one who really loves me, aren’t you, Snowflake? Yes, you are, you good Republican cat.” Maids feed Snowflake and change her litter box, and a vet makes house calls for her annual checkup; if she has her way with birds or mice on the White House grounds, I’m not privy to it. My dislike of cats, cemented when I was scratched on the cheek by one as a five-year-old, isn’t public (with something like seventy million cat owners in this country, Charlie joked, I could have sabotaged the election with that admission alone), but the fact that it isn’t public is why, when I am called upon by friends to share some morsel of my private life, I can trot it out. It is, of course, a fake revelation, a pseudo-intimacy, which is a trick I’ve learned from White House press secretaries; on a regular basis, they dispense pieces of information about us that are true but absurdly trivial, that masquerade as sharing—these are humanizing, they tell us.
Charlie Blackwell loves the movie
Anchorman.
Alice Blackwell gave the president a digital camera and a biking jersey for Christmas. Ella Blackwell’s favorite food is fajitas.

The real answer to the question of what in my life I never imagined I’d find myself doing is this: having a face-lift. And though there has been plenty of media speculation on the topic, it will never be confirmed either by me or by any staff members, in part because few of them know for certain. Charlie had decided as early as 1997, before his gubernatorial reelection, that he’d run for president in 2000. In 1998, at a Super Bowl party we were hosting at the governor’s mansion for staff and close friends, I was standing with Debbie Bell; Hank’s wife, Brenda; and Kathleen Hicken. Debbie, who was at that point Charlie’s director of communications, said, “Between us girls, have any of you ever considered plastic surgery? I was in Ann Taylor the other day, and those dressing-room mirrors are
not
forgiving.”

“Debbie, you’re young still!” I said. She was about a decade behind Charlie and me—this would have meant she was then in her early forties—so I wanted to think this.

“See, but I keep hearing how easy the procedures are these days,” Debbie said. “I’m not talking about, you know, implants or a nose job, just—” She held her hands up on either side of her face and pulled back. “Eliminate a few wrinkles,” she said. She turned to me. “Would you do it?” (I should have known—oh, I was a terrible dupe, but I didn’t get it.)

“Doesn’t a face-lift take months to recover from?” Kathleen said.

Debbie shook her head. “Maybe it used to be like that, but doctors have made a ton of advances. If I schedule an appointment, Alice, will you come with me for moral support?” This struck me as an odd request, because I wasn’t close to Debbie. We knew each other well, she was part of Charlie’s inner circle, but she and I never spent time together one-on-one.

“I think I’ll pass, but I’ll be curious to hear what the doctor tells you,” I said. “I’ll bet you anything he turns you away for being far too youthful.”

That, it turned out, was Phase One. Phase Two was Jadey calling and saying, “I’m not supposed to tell you this, but Hank wants you to get a face-lift, so I’m supposed to suggest we go to Florida and get them together, like it’s my own idea, but then I thought about it, and I’m kind of intrigued.”

“
Hank
wants me to get a face-lift?”

“I know it’s real manipulative—”

“And he called you?”

“Debbie called me.”

“I’ll call you back in a second,” I said, and when I’d hung up, I dialed the direct line to Charlie’s office. His secretary Marsha answered, saying, “He’s meeting with the Board of Regents right now, but I’d be happy to—”

“Please tell him it’s urgent,” I said.

When Charlie picked up, he said in a breathless voice, “Ella—” and I said, “No, she’s fine, nothing bad happened, except apparently, Hank is going around telling people I need a face-lift.”

“I warned him you wouldn’t like this.”

“You knew?”

“It’s for TV, Lindy, that’s all. You know I think you’re beautiful, but he has the idea that when we’re on more of a national stage—”

“Are
you
planning to have a face-lift?”

“I don’t have to tell you there’s a double standard. Listen, they should have been more straightforward with you—”

“They?”

“We—we should have. Hank’s logic is that if you want to do it, do it now. You can’t have that kind of surgery in the middle of a campaign.”

“Where is this coming from? Did Hank run a poll on my appearance?”

Charlie hesitated, and I said, “Is he there with you now?”

“He’s in with the Regents, which is where I should be. It’s your decision, Lindy. I’m sorry if you’re offended. You’re still the prettiest of all my wives.”

“This is incredibly insulting.”

“When I get home tonight, I’ll show you how attractive I find you. Now I’ve gotta go before I get a woody just thinking about it.”

I suppose I was offended not only because the thought of Charlie’s staff discussing my appearance—and finding it lacking—was humiliating but also because the suggestion reinforced my own self-doubt. Although I’d never been insecure about my looks, it hadn’t escaped my attention that the lines at the corners of my mouth and across my forehead were deeper, that the skin on my neck was not as smooth as it had once been, and that when I appeared on television, these flaws were more obvious than in person. Still, I hadn’t thought the situation required more than some experimenting with makeup.

For three days I fumed, on the fourth day I had my assistant Cheryl go buy a book about plastic surgery, and on the fifth day I went to see a doctor. He was not the one who performed the procedure; a month later, Jadey and I did go to a clinic in Naples, Florida, to a surgeon reputed to be the best in the field, and afterward, we stayed for two weeks at a secluded house overlooking a canal. Unfortunately, the setting was wasted on us because we weren’t supposed to swim or expose ourselves to the sun; Cheryl, who was thirty, had accompanied us, and we encouraged her to drive to the beach and even snorkel one afternoon. Meanwhile, Jadey and I lay around reading, watching television, complaining, and making fun of ourselves. We’d been instructed to keep our heads elevated—Jadey was more bandaged than I was, though we were both simultaneously numb and tender, and my face became quite puffy—and six days after the procedure, we went to have the stitches removed from the incisions at our hairlines (before the operation, a nurse had complimented me on how beautifully my haircut would hide any mild scarring). Jadey and I made a pact to never tell anyone—our husbands knew, and Cheryl, but we’d say nothing to our other sisters-in-law or to Priscilla or our children. It was thinking of Ella, actually, that gave me pause: What a negative role model I would be if she knew, how vain and unaccepting of the aging process. Conveniently, however, she was away at Princeton, and the story we told everyone else in Madison and Milwaukee was that we were taking a painting class, an intensive study of watercolor. (“What do we do when they ask to see our work?” I said, and Jadey said, “We say it’s being shipped back.” As it turned out, no one ever asked.)

Especially in the first few days after our twin surgeries, Jadey and I looked so banged up that we questioned, out loud and at regular intervals, whether we’d made a mistake, and it crossed my mind (this part I did not express aloud) that we were like characters in a fairy tale, narcissistic hags grasping at our lost youth. But we weren’t, in the end, punished for overreaching; even a week after the surgery, the bruising had faded, the swelling had shrunk, and on the night before our return to Wisconsin, we joined Cheryl for dinner at a wonderful and very festive Mexican restaurant; we weren’t supposed to drink, but Jadey sneaked a few sips of Cheryl’s margarita. Upon our arrival home, we kept calling each other to compare notes on how many compliments we’d received, how rested people said we looked from the fresh sea air. Of all the unfortunate facts about plastic surgery, perhaps the hardest to accept is this: If it’s done well, it works. Once you’ve had it, you realize how many other people must have also, and while there are plenty of inept examples where the surgery is obvious, there are many more women and men, especially in the public eye, about whom we haven’t a clue, even as we admire their healthy and youthful glow.