When Ella was in college, she was in an eating club—not the one Charlie belonged to but a different one, Ivy—and this was the bulk of what the public knew about her: that she attended Princeton, that she belonged to an exclusive club whose members drank often and zealously. As it happened, she also was a volunteer in an on-campus Christian organization that on the weekends organized soccer and basketball tournaments for children from low-income neighborhoods in Trenton, and the White House press secretary, at that time a fellow named Travis Sykes, tried hard to persuade me to allow an article about Ella’s participation in the organization. I declined. I know that some people feel that if it isn’t documented, it didn’t happen, but I disagree. It is not a camera, or a reporter, that makes something real and genuine; more often, a camera or a reporter does the opposite.
It’s no secret that in many individuals, attention tends to create an appetite for more of the same. Because of this phenomenon, I consider myself lucky never to have felt the hunger. If you don’t want attention but must put up with it nevertheless, it’s a nuisance. But if you do want it, no amount will sate you; I’ve observed this truth over and over in both Wisconsin and Washington. I sometimes wish I could talk openly about this subject to Oprah, the one woman in the country more visible than I am, and even more a canvas onto which Americans project their dreams, wishes, and fears; really, what a burden being Oprah must be, though she handles it graciously. While I’ve appeared on her program twice, I’m sure that a tête-à-tête won’t happen because I suspect she’s a Democrat who doesn’t approve of my husband.
In any case: Dispatches and warnings from this side of the fame fence tend to go ignored, dismissed as either whining or false modesty; if they weren’t ignored, if people listened, no one would ever again seek attention. But they always do, they strive and strive, hoping one day they, too, will have the luxury of lamenting their high profile. It will make me content at last, they think, and only if they successfully achieve the celebrity they were pursuing will they realize they were mistaken.
Or perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps most people would be like Charlie—they’d enjoy fame’s perks without feeling unduly burdened by its costs and responsibilities.
GLADYS WYCOMB LIVES in a different apartment, a different building; this one is a few blocks from the one where I stayed during the last days of 1962 and the first days of 1963, equally fancy but smaller. Upon being led into Dr. Wycomb’s living room by Norene Davis (it seems increasingly clear that Ms. Davis is more an employee than a co-conspirator), I remember some of Dr. Wycomb’s paintings from all those years ago, though now I recognize their provenance: They are by New York School artists, and I’m almost sure one is a de Kooning. By this point, I have been inside countless lavish houses and hotels, I live in a museum, for heaven’s sake, but it strikes me that Dr. Wycomb’s was the first elegant home I ever visited, and that it had something money alone couldn’t buy—it had style. No wonder my grandmother was so taken with her.
Dr. Wycomb herself sits in a parlor chair upholstered in olive-colored velvet and though it is warm in her apartment, a blanket covers her lower half. She wears unfashionably large plastic glasses (not cat’s-eye) and a silk muumuu, though she is no longer a large woman; she probably weighs half of what she did when I last saw her. Her face is extremely wrinkled, her hair short and gray, and her eyes behind their glasses are alert. A walker is positioned next to her, between her chair and a revolving walnut bookcase, and there’s a small black-and-white television of perhaps thirteen inches (I haven’t seen a black-and-white television in years), which rests on a marble-top round table a few feet in front of her. Though she reached forward to turn down the volume knob as I walked in, the TV is, as Hank predicted, turned to C-SPAN.
She didn’t stand when Norene Davis announced my arrival—I had the impression it would be a good deal of trouble for her, but she also may have been making a point—and I approach her now, bending. “Dr. Wycomb, it’s been a long time,” I say in an overly loud and cheery way. I extend my hand, and when she doesn’t extend hers, I pat her forearm. “Your apartment is lovely.”
The hint of a smile crosses her lips. In a slow and quiet but perfectly audible voice, she says, “Alice, not all of us who are old are also deaf.”
Immediately, I feel a relieved recognition. With people who knew you before you were famous, you can tell within the first few seconds who you are to them now—whether they understand that you’re still you and that they can treat you as such, or whether you have been transformed in their eyes, requiring toadying and deference. I suppose it’s not surprising, given how much all humans are primed and influenced by one another, that these two types of behavior tend to be self-fulfilling. When old friends or acquaintances act as if I’m worthy of great respect, I tend to pull back (I’m uncomfortable, but no doubt it comes across as aloofness), which seems to reinforce their sense that they dare not relax around me the way they once did; but if they are relaxed from the start, I am, too. It’s obvious that to Gladys Wycomb, I am less the first lady of the United States than the granddaughter of Emilie Lindgren.
I gesture to a gold-leaf armchair. “May I sit?”
“I’m glad we finally got through to you,” Dr. Wycomb says. “Norene attempted to reach someone in your office repeatedly, but she kept being rebuffed. That’s when I thought for her to try Mr. Ucker.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Just how many people did Norene talk to? I wonder. And what did she say?
Again, that faint smile. “Mr. Ucker was quite interested once his people realized we weren’t batty.” She pauses. “Norene and I think Mr. Ucker resembles a troll.”
Hank is the most visible member of the administration besides Charlie and the vice president, and he therefore has both a cult following and legions of detractors. Seen by the public as a Svengali, Hank is credited with Charlie’s election and reelection, as well as with many of his most conservative policies. Knowing Hank as I do makes him less intriguing and mysterious than he must seem from a distance, but I don’t disagree with the view that Charlie probably wouldn’t be president if Hank hadn’t urged him to run for governor and engineered the subsequent campaigns. (Hank was delighted when Charlie became managing partner of the Brewers because at last Charlie had an identity apart from his family, a track record he could point to when voters in Wisconsin asked what he’d done for the state. The difference between Hank and Charlie was that Hank saw the job as an ideal stepping-stone, whereas Charlie saw it as an ideal job; without Hank’s prodding and ego pumping, I think Charlie would not have minded remaining in the role indefinitely.)
“Now, where did your henchmen go?” Dr. Wycomb asks. “Would they like a beverage?”
“They’re fine,” I say. Cal, my lead agent, insisted that three of them come to Chicago and that three more local agents meet us here; on our arrival at Dr. Wycomb’s building, Walter and the third fellow from Washington, José, did a walk-through before I entered. Now José and Cal are stationed in the hall, Walter is back by the Town Car at the curb ( Jessica sits inside the car), and the three local agents are patrolling the outside of the building.
I say, “Dr. Wycomb, when my grandmother and I came and stayed with you, it was the first time I’d been to a big city, and ever since then, I’ve had a place in my heart for Chicago.” As I say it, I have the unsettling realization that I must now be the age Dr. Wycomb was during that visit.
“I never thought of living anywhere else,” she says.
I hesitate, then I say, “Obviously, we both know why I’m here. I understand your concerns, I really do, and I want to make it clear that I respect your opinion. But for you to talk about my medical procedure with members of the media would be a serious mistake. I won’t pretend that it wouldn’t be damaging to me, but I strongly suspect it would be damaging to you, too.”
“If it’s damage you’re worried about, Alice, look around you.” Dr. Wycomb’s tone is abruptly different than it was when we were making small talk. “Your
husband and the vice president should be tried as war criminals.” I’m about to respond when she continues, “I suppose the president’s excuse is that he was born a fool, but I’ve wondered for the last six years what yours is. I don’t know how you sleep at night.”
It’s not that I’m unaware people think this, but the sentiments are rarely expressed at such close range. Also, they don’t emerge from the mouths of people I know, or people so old.
I say, “Aren’t we both lucky to live in a country that allows the expression of this kind of criticism? Dr. Wycomb, it’s your right to disagree with any or all of the president’s choices, but please remember that his administration is a different entity from me personally.”
“How convenient.” She is looking straight ahead. “But the personal is political, or did you miss the women’s movement?” She turns her head so our eyes meet. “Many times, I’ve had the notion to write you a letter, and I’ve told myself, Gladys, it won’t make it to her. She’ll never see it. But I still thought you’d intervene. I kept waiting for evidence that you were reining him in and speaking as a voice of reason.”
“Not every conversation I have is public, Dr. Wycomb.”
“Are you telling me that you have confronted your husband?”
“I answer to my own conscience. That’s as much as I want to say.”
“And I answer to mine,” she says. “Lest you think I have misgivings about sharing your secret, my only regret is that I didn’t speak out years ago.”
We both are quiet, and I can hear another television—a soap opera, it sounds like—somewhere else in the apartment. Norene Davis, I saw when she let me in, has black hair pulled back in a low ponytail and is wearing scrubs with teddy bears.
“Who do you think will be hurt by overturning Roe?” Dr. Wycomb says. “Not women we know—they’ll go to their doctors like you came to me, very hush-hush but perfectly clean and professional. But the poor women, where do they go? Every doctor knows outlawing abortion doesn’t make it less common, it just makes it less safe. Before ’73, I had patients who found me after botched procedures. They’d show up with cases of sepsis and bacteremia that would give you nightmares, and these were the lucky ones—the others died before they could get help. I should stand by and say nothing as our country returns to that?” She is shaking, a mild tremble throughout her body. “What I can no longer abide with this administration is the attitude that if it doesn’t affect them personally, it doesn’t matter. I was never going to need an abortion, was I? Now I’m so old that come what may, I won’t be around to see it. But that doesn’t mean I say, ‘To hell with the rest of you, and so long.’ ”
“Dr. Wycomb, it’s important to remember that the American people elected President Blackwell. Even if you don’t agree with him, a lot of citizens do. It’s impossible to satisfy everyone.”
“Those elections were fixed.” Her thin lips are drawn together; she is furious with me, truly furious.
I say, “I’m sympathetic to your frustrations, but—”
“You’re a puppet. Even the words you use, it sounds like a speech-writer told you to say them.”
This isn’t the way people talk to the first lady—no one does, except for a protestor at a speech, and if that happens, he is quickly quarantined. Dr. Wycomb’s comments are insulting and irritating, they are patronizing, but there also is something pure and true in her anger, like a winter wind. It’s almost refreshing, almost a relief, to be berated face-to-face.
Although I already know the answer, I say, “I trust that you’re aware I’ve said in two separate interviews that I’m pro-choice?”
“The times you gave one-word answers?”
“I’d like for us to come to a mutually agreeable resolution,” I say. “Do you think we can?”
“Keep Judge Sanchez off the Supreme Court.”
“That isn’t an area where I have any control.”
“For crying out loud, you’re married to the president of the United States! Who does he listen to if not you?”
Could I convince Charlie to retract Ingrid Sanchez’s nomination—or, as protocol would have it, convince Charlie to convince Ingrid Sanchez to withdraw herself as a nominee? Even if it were possible, it seems so sleazy, a way of sparing myself public humiliation rather than a real political stand. It’s not that I wouldn’t strongly prefer for abortion to remain legal, not that I don’t understand that with Judge Sanchez’s confirmation, it might not. Nor is it that I don’t see how I come across as a hypocrite here, although I would disagree with the characterization; I actually haven’t said one thing and done another. It’s that I honestly don’t believe it’s my responsibility or even my right to try to legislate. No matter how many times I say it, people are unwilling to accept the fact that I was not elected. Have I tried to encourage Charlie in certain directions? Of course. A program on early education, increased funding for the arts, a literacy initiative—issues that inspire little controversy, issues on which he seeks my input.
I say, “Dr. Wycomb, I admit that I don’t know yet if what you’re proposing is blackmail, but it certainly comes close, and Norene Davis is implicated. Please know I’m not threatening you when I say that striking a deal could only end badly for all of us. I can’t try to bar a Supreme Court nominee to protect myself—that’s not something I’m willing to do, and I don’t think I’m capable of it anyway. That puts the decision back in your hands in terms of how you want to go forward, but for you to tell a reporter about a medical procedure you performed on me seems a clear violation of patient confidentiality.”
“The word is abortion.” Again, she is not looking at me. “And you didn’t mind breaking the law when it suited you. For you people, it’s only a crime if someone else commits it.”
She’s really going to do it, I realize—she’s fearless. She doesn’t care what the consequences are, even, apparently, for Norene. Her life of over a century has been distilled to this: She hates Charlie, she hates everything she thinks he represents, and possibly she hates me more. And she doesn’t just hate me by proxy—no, she thinks I am worse than he is. She subscribes to the belief, widespread among Democrats and shared by some Republicans, that he’s a moron, an evil moron, and to a certain extent, that lets him off the hook. But I—I should know better.
Unexpectedly, I think, Okay. Okay, announce that I had an abortion; let the world know, let them hear about it in Missouri and Utah and Louisiana, in Ireland and Egypt and El Salvador. It’s not inaccurate; I did have one. I will be judged, I will be criticized, I will be dissected on talk shows, joked about on late-night TV, excoriated or defended (though mostly excoriated) in op-eds. The Sunday after the news breaks, in The New York Times’s “Week in Review,” three separate articles about me will make variations on the same point. Even those who are pro-choice will denounce me as a dissembler; women’s groups will use me as proof of something, or as a cautionary tale about something else. In every interview from now until the end of my life, I’ll be asked to explain why I had an abortion and why I was silent for so long afterward, asked to reconcile the inconsistencies between my private experience and my husband’s policies and legislation. Anything I say in reply will boil down to this: I did not contradict myself; I live a life that contains contradictions. Don’t you?
Pete Imhof will know, if Dena hasn’t already told him. My mother will know, my poor mother, if, in her present state of senility, she is cognizant enough to absorb the news. The silver lining, such as it is, is that other women who have had abortions might feel—what?—less alone? Less guilty? But that’s to assume they feel alone and guilty now, which I generally doubt. Personally, I’ve never regretted having an abortion; I’ve regretted the circumstances that led to its necessity, but I maintain that it was a necessity, that it was, however cowardly Dr. Wycomb thinks I am to lean on the phrase, a medical procedure. Would I feel more uncomfortable if it had occurred in the twelfth week or the sixteenth instead of what was likely the fifth or sixth? Yes, I would
. But the debate about when life begins seems to me misguided; I made a private, personal decision related to my own health.
When it becomes public, it’s difficult to know how adversely the news will affect Charlie. His administration has proved resilient at weathering scandals, but he is a lame duck at this point, obstructed by Democrats in the majority in both the House and Senate—the ’06 elections were when Hank’s supposed political sorcery faltered at last—and Charlie’s focus has returned after all these years to his legacy, the topic that so used to rankle me. I suppose the preoccupation is more justified now, but I still silently resist it. Viewing a legacy as a few grand acts seems reductive. Isn’t your legacy not the one or two exceptional gestures of your life but the way you conducted yourself every day, year after year? Either way, Charlie personally will forgive me, I feel confident. To lobby him to withdraw Ingrid Sanchez’s nomination would be a betrayal in his eyes; to be outed as the first lady who had an abortion would merely make me a victim. In order to placate his conservative Christian base, it’s likely he’ll want me to grant an interview in which I condemn my behavior, to say, I am a sinner, but when I decline, he won’t push me. This is our implicit agreement, that we can suggest or recommend but that we never force, never make ultimatums; it’s why we don’t resent each other.