American Wife

  “I’m assuming you’ve told Charlie?” I say.

  “He said to tell you congratulations.”

  When I’ve hung up, Jessica says jokingly, “What, he took out a hit on her?”

  “I know. Maybe she sensed the end was near and that’s what made her act, but it’s awfully unsettling. Hank is dancing a jig because he thinks this gets me off the hook.”

  Jessica is quiet, musing, and then she says, “It probably does.”

  WHEN I CONSIDER the trajectory of Charlie’s presidency, when I try to pinpoint the moment its tone and direction were established irrevocably, I keep revisiting his choice of vice president. In the summer of 2000, the decision had to be made in time for the Republican National Convention, and it came down to two candidates: Arnold Prouhet and Frank Logan. Frank was two years younger than Charlie, a Colorado senator who was serving his third term, came from a wealthy Baptist family, was a father of eight, and was a vocal critic of homosexuality and abortion. (I have always found it peculiar, to say the least, when conservatives, especially conservative men, make these particular issues their ideological focus; there is something suspect to me about individuals who devote enormous amounts of time and attention to subjects they profess to find repugnant.) I was opposed to Charlie selecting Frank as his running mate, and I also didn’t relish the idea of spending time with Frank’s wife, Donna Sue, who had self-published several books proffering tips on raising a traditional Christian family.

  Meanwhile, Arnold Prouhet had been a congressman from Nevada in the seventies and early eighties who subsequently served under two presidents as a security adviser. As far as I knew, Arnold was more a fiscal conservative than a social one, he was eleven years Charlie’s senior, and on the few occasions I’d met him, he’d seemed serious and taciturn; I imagined these would be qualities that might help balance Charlie’s playfulness. (While Charlie had, under Hank’s tutelage, become a disciplined student of policy and government, I knew, and I think everyone knew, that he was in it for the power and adventure and human connection and not because of any wonkish devotion to or interest in the issues. The problem that has ensued is that wonkish devotion cannot be faked. The fever isn’t in Charlie’s blood, as it is in Hank’s—Charlie would never read a book about the First Amendment for pleasure—and this is why so often in the years since, when there has been a deviation from the public script or when, as at a debate or a press conference, there isn’t a script, Charlie falters. Being president is for him like taking a ninth-grade English test on The Odyssey, and he’s the kid who did most of the reading, he studied for an hour the night before, but he’s not one of the people who loved the book. Besides, he’d always rather crack a funny joke in class than offer a genuine insight.)

  Hank objected to the selection of Arnold Prouhet, saying that where Frank Logan shared Charlie’s youthful energy, Arnold seemed old and dour. Arnold also could make Charlie appear insecure, as if he were seeking a father figure. But Arnold’s foreign policy expertise was significant, I countered when I was asked to weigh in (which was never by Hank and occasionally by Charlie, though usually he wanted to vent more than he wanted input). I also worried that Frank Logan’s own ambitions might hinder his work with Charlie; if he became vice president, he’d probably run for president afterward, whereas if Charlie served two terms, Arnold Prouhet would be seventy-three when they left office, and unlikely to embark on a presidential campaign. Charlie’s advisers besides Hank—among them Debbie Bell, a consultant named Bruce Kettman, and a frighteningly smart twenty-six-year-old protégé of Hank named Scott Taico whom Charlie called “Taco”—had mixed opinions, and I felt fairly sure Charlie would pick Frank Logan, but he didn’t. He picked Arnold. The night before he made the announcement in July 2000, he said to me, “I think you might be right about Logan, that he’s too focused on peering into people’s bedrooms and not enough of a visionary.”

  Again, then, I find myself wondering if I am partly to blame for what has happened since. Would Frank Logan in fact have been a better vice president, would there have been less bloodshed under his watch? More homophobia, a sharper curtailing of reproductive rights, but not the unilateral use of military force, the defiant enthusiasm for preemptive war? It is indisputable that Charlie has been greatly influenced by Arnold Prouhet, and indeed it seems to be because Arnold has been so influential that Charlie insists as relentlessly as he does that he believes in the war, that he won’t back down. How embarrassing it would be not only to rely on the guidance of one’s hierarchical inferior but to rely on the wrong guidance—how unsophisticated Charlie would seem to himself and everyone else. And so rather than consider this possibility, he forces it to be untrue, he continues down the path he chose.

  Years ago, shortly after Charlie and I moved to Milwaukee and joined the country club in the late seventies, we went there for dinner one night, to the main dining room on the first floor, and I excused myself from the table to use the ladies’ room. There was a lounge-like anteroom, a pretty area with couches and a dressing table and walk-in closets for hanging coats, a place where, sometimes at large parties, you’d find women chatting or applying their makeup. This was the first time I’d ever been in it, and once you entered the anteroom, you saw two more gold-handled doors: one directly across from the one you’d just come through and one to your left. I was trying to find the toilet stalls, and rather than asking one of the three older women then sitting on the couches—I say older, though they were no doubt younger than I am now, and stylishly dressed—I took a guess and walked forward to the door that was farther away. When I opened it and stepped through, I found myself back in the dining room where Charlie and I had been eating. I immediately realized there were two separate ladies’-room entrances; obviously, the toilets were behind the door I hadn’t tried. The logical thing at that point would have been to turn around, but I felt self-conscious. I was unaccustomed to country clubs, I imagined the women in the anteroom would notice and think me silly, and so, with a full bladder, I rejoined Charlie and didn’t urinate until we arrived home over an hour later. What I mean to say is that a part of me understands Charlie’s behavior. I understand it because I love him, because I am predisposed to sympathize, but I also think that, unlike many in government or the media, I don’t ascribe to people’s loftier motives just because they’re in a loftier place.

  It seems to me that after the terrorist attacks in 2001, Charlie panicked. And Arnold, who had a professional history with these countries, who had already sparred a decade before with the dictator of one, swiftly stepped in with recommendations. He was hawkish, he believed in America protecting its superpower status, and he was confident of victory. He convinced Charlie, or Charlie convinced himself—establishing democracy in the Middle East, what a legacy that would be—and the rest has followed. The part that caught me by surprise was how the American people and the American media egged him on, how complicit they were in Charlie’s cultivation of a war-president persona. The terrorist attacks have given President Blackwell a heretofore undemonstrated seriousness of purpose, averred Time. Or, as The Washington Post put it, If there is a silver lining to these tragic events, it’s that President Blackwell has risen to the occasion as a leader . . . In the Times, an unsigned editorial was titled simply “Blackwell’s Finest Hour.” Had none of these people ever taken Psychology 101? Did they honestly believe Charlie, or anybody, changed in a matter of days? Did they think because, amid the rubble in lower Manhattan, he climbed atop a fire truck and spoke into a megaphone with resolve and sympathy, he was a new man? Charlie had always had the capacity for resolve and sympathy, which had nothing to do with whether invading other countries was a good idea.

  I don’t mean to minimize how frightening the terrorist attacks were, how confused everything seemed in their aftermath. We all thought, of course, that the fourth plane was headed for the White House that day, and so they hurried me and Arnold Prouhet to Camp David on helicopters (Charlie was giving a speech in Ohio to a real
estate association, a speech he famously declined to interrupt, and I didn’t see him until that night; when we hugged, when I had him in my arms, it was the first time since learning of the attacks that I wept). Even after we returned to the White House, we were evacuated several more times during the next few days, and once, in the middle of the night, we were rushed by agents from our bedroom to the Emergency Operations Center, an underground bunker beneath the White House. Then there were anthrax spores being sent through the mail, the threat of smallpox bombs. Charlie and I visited Pentagon burn victims, and later we met family members of men and women killed in New York, among them young children, and every morning I read the Times’s “Portraits of Grief ”—I read them all, and they were devastating. So it was a strange, difficult time, and we were in the thick of it. I don’t doubt that both Arnold and Charlie had to harden in certain ways during this period, that their toughness wasn’t just masculine bluster; it was interior as well, and for the benefit of others.

  Nevertheless, I feel a growing suspicion that Charlie continues to fight this war for much the same reason I couldn’t bring myself to reenter the ladies’ room at the Maronee Country Club, and he even has my compassion, except for this—that night at the club, when I needed to urinate and hadn’t, the only one who suffered for my foolishness was me.

  RIGHT BEFORE OUR plane landed at Andrews Air Force Base, I said to Jessica, “I have one more stop for us before going home. I’d like to go talk to Edgar Franklin.”

  Jessica’s eyes widened. “Now?”

  “I promise this’ll be it.”

  “It’s just that, I don’t know how long you’d envision talking to him, but the gala starts an hour and a half from now. As it is, you’ll have to get dressed at warp speed.”

  “Are you trying to tell me you think going to see him is a bad idea?”

  “No—no, I—” She broke off. The two of us were sitting with our seat belts fastened for landing. “Hank will kill me for saying this, but I think it’s a great idea. I just think tomorrow is better than today.”

  “He’s spent five nights out there. That’s long enough.”

  Jessica looked at me for several seconds, and then she said, “Okay.”

  “Only tell the agents. I don’t want to try getting Charlie’s blessing, or Hank’s, because we both know they’ll try to talk me out of it.”

  And this is how we’ve found ourselves racing up Suitland Parkway in our caravan of armored limousines. (Although I prefer the SUVs to the limos because they seem slightly less ostentatious, limos are what the White House sent; that I could have gone to Edgar Franklin in a Town Car was, I knew, out of the question, far too great a security risk.) The flickering lights and blasting sirens create the usual mortifying theatricality, but I don’t see another option. I would not be authorized on my own to invite Edgar Franklin to the White House, and if I suggested it, even if I could convince Charlie and his advisers that it was the right thing, it would have to be elaborately choreographed.

  I got off easy—that’s what it feels like. That Gladys Wycomb’s threat was a false alarm has left me relieved but also disappointed. I wouldn’t say that I’m compelled to go see Colonel Franklin because of a need to exchange one revelation for another—so the American public can learn today not about my abortion but instead about my sympathies for an antiwar activist—but being forced to consider Gladys Wycomb’s threat made the threat less ominous than it would have appeared in the abstract; it made it almost enticing. I have felt so strongly since Charlie entered public office that my foremost duty is to take care of him, to be the one person he sees on a daily basis who’s not paid to agree or disagree with him, who really is just a friend. Is it startling, then, that I wasn’t altogether displeased by an event that would draw attention to my disagreement with his stance on a particular issue without my being the one who’d revealed our conflicting views? Could that have been the best of both worlds, that I could publicly and even privately lament Dr. Wycomb’s indiscretion while feeling a silent gratitude?

  Such circuitous conjecture! If, for example, Ella came to me explaining herself in this way, wouldn’t I say to her, “For heaven’s sake, you’re allowed to hold opinions.” Wouldn’t I say, “A relationship for which you suppress and censor your beliefs is no relationship at all.” Wouldn’t I say, “There are perfectly ladylike and respectable ways of expressing yourself, no matter the subject, no matter the context, and though in some cases, biting your tongue is the most dignified course, if it’s a matter of conscience, then to speak out is not just optional but necessary”—wouldn’t this be what I thought if the person in question were someone other than me?

  The motorcade pauses when we’re still over two blocks from the yard on Fourth Street SE, and via earpieces, there is much conferring among the agents in our limousine, the agents in the others, and the police escorts; I can hear the word Banjo, which is their code name for me (Charlie’s is Brass, Ella’s Braid—the Secret Service gave us the letter, and we picked our own names, though I let Ella pick mine). In our car, it’s still Cal and Walter who are with us in the back, plus José and another agent in the front seat. Both Jessica’s phones ring at once—she has already called to tell her assistant Belinda to put out the word that we’re running late but on our way—and then I glimpse, even from this distance, the television news vans, their satellite uplinks reaching high above the roofs of the row houses. Cars are parked tightly on either side of the street, and up ahead, I see that the sidewalks are dense with people, some of them holding signs.

  Cal says, “Ma’am, we can’t recommend going farther. There’s too much congestion. With your approval, we’d like to return to the residence.”

  Jessica and I look at each other.

  “Isn’t there any way—” I begin, and Jessica says to Cal, “What about inviting Edgar Franklin into the car?”

  Speaking in a low voice into his lapel, Cal says, “We’re turning onto D Street.”

  “What about Jessica’s idea?” I ask.

  “The risk of a mob is too great,” Cal says, and we’re already on D Street, the police sirens still blaring.

  I say, “No, stop. Cal, I insist. We can park on another block, and you can barricade the whole street, but if he’d consider coming to the car, I want to try.”

  Somehow I hadn’t realized what a circus it would be—it doesn’t look as crowded on television, or maybe more supporters have arrived today. In my fantasy, it was the two of us, Edgar Franklin and me, strolling down the sidewalk, which was delusional in any case, because for years, I have rarely strolled down a sidewalk unless it has been cordoned off, sniffed for bombs by German shepherds.

  Jessica is the one who climbs from the limousine to issue the invitation; agents from the other cars flank her as she walks the two blocks to the yard where Edgar Franklin has pitched his tent. Brave Jessica Sutton, the little girl who played with Barbies on the kitchen floor at Harold and Priscilla’s house, who read Harlequin romances when she was in sixth grade, who went on to graduate second in her class at Biddle Academy and Phi Beta Kappa from Yale, who has traveled with me to Israel and South Africa, who is my most steadfast colleague, my truest friend. She retrieves Edgar Franklin, and she brings him back to me; then, as he is patted down by Walter before climbing through the limo door, Jessica says, “I’ll be right over there,” and gestures to the limousine behind mine.

  He sits perpendicular to me, our knees only inches apart, the soupy outside heat emanating from him. At the far end of the limousine, facing us with his back to the front seat, Cal watches. It would surely be too much to hope that this conversation could go entirely unobserved.

  I say, “Colonel Franklin, I’m Alice Blackwell.”

  “Edgar Franklin.”

  We extend our hands and shake.

  “I wanted to come out and talk to you, but unfortunately, that wasn’t going to work,” I say.

  With a vaguely amused look, he surveys the interior of the limousine and says, “Thi
s isn’t so bad.” (I again wish it were an SUV.)

  “Would you like some water?” I lift an unopened bottle from the holder beside me, and he accepts it. “Colonel Franklin, I’m not authorized to speak on behalf of President Blackwell’s administration, I need to make that clear. I’m here only as myself. But I want you to know that I’m terribly sorry for your loss. I’m aware that your son—that Nate was an only child. I’m also the parent of an only child, and I can’t begin to guess how difficult it must be for you.”

  Matter-of-factly, not snidely, he says, “No, ma’am, I don’t imagine that you can.”

  “He was twenty-one?”

  Edgar Franklin nods. “Planning to be a pharmacy technician after his tour.”

  “My grandfather worked in a pharmacy,” I say. “I never knew him, unfortunately, but this was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I understand that you’re from Georgia?”

  “We moved around when Nate was growing up, including a couple years each in Germany and Panama, but he went to high school in Columbus, Georgia. I’m retired now and live in Decatur.” Edgar Franklin clears his throat. “Mrs. Blackwell, I’m a quiet man. It was never my plan to draw attention to myself, but this war is the worst mistake I’ve seen the United States make in my lifetime.”

  “Obviously, it’s caused a great deal of controversy.”

  “Why are we fighting, Mrs. Blackwell? What is it we’re fighting for?”

  “Again, I don’t speak for the administration, but if you asked my husband, I think he’d say for democracy.”

  “Is that what you’d say?”

  I swallow. “I’m not a military analyst, but—Yes. I’d say the same thing.”

  “They don’t want us in their country any more than we want to be there.” He speaks calmly. “They don’t think we make them more secure, they don’t say we’ve improved their lives. They see us as occupiers. I’ve been in battle, Mrs. Blackwell, and I know it’s messy, but that’s not the problem here. Our troops are caught in the middle of tribal factions, in a place they have no business fighting. The president says the way to honor the memory of the fallen is to complete the mission, but if the war was wrong to begin with, it won’t become right by going forward in the same direction.”