Rodham

by Curtis Sittenfeld

  “There are lots of special people in my life,” I said. “But I don’t have a boyfriend.” I stood. “Thanks for sharing your TV.”

  “I suppose the next thing we’ll be watching is the announcement of his successor.”

  “I know Bush can’t be trusted, but—” I held up a hand and crossed my fingers. “Hope springs eternal. I’m going to D.C. next week to see my friend Gwen, who’s very well connected. If he’s considering anyone in the black legal community, she’ll know.”

  “Keep me posted,” James said, and even though the selection of the next Supreme Court nominee was a highly rarefied form of gossip, I thought then how endearing a gossipy man was.

  I didn’t realize at the time that we’d already learned the name of Bush’s pick. Midway through the press conference, as Marshall kept emphasizing that the decision was up to the president, one of the reporters had asked, “What do you think about the discussions of having Clarence Thomas as the person to succeed you?”

  Impatiently, Marshall had said, “I think the president knows what he’s doing and he’s going to do it.”

  As another reporter had asked another question, I’d said, “Who’s Clarence Thomas?”

  * * *

  —

  That weekend, at my parents’ condominium, my father drew a G from the bag of Scrabble tiles, and I drew a Y. This meant he got to go first; he set down the word BARK. Playing off his B, I made the word GLOBE.

  “How does it feel to be consistently mediocre?” he asked, and I said, “You tell me.”

  We each played several more words in companionable silence, and he said, “You should tell your mother not to run the church’s coat drive this year. It’s a drain on her.”

  It was actually my father, who’d turned eighty the previous spring, who seemed worn out and saw several doctors at appointments my mother took him to; at seventy-two, my mother remained energetic.

  As I pulled three tiles from the bag and set them on the wooden rack, I said, “Mom likes the coat drive.”

  “She lets people take advantage of her,” my father said.

  In 1987, my parents had moved from their house in Park Ridge to a condo just a mile away, where my brothers and I, along with Hughie’s wife, Bonnie, joined them on Sunday evenings for dinner. Hughie had attended law school at the University of Illinois and worked as an assistant public defender in the Chicago drug court, as did Bonnie; they didn’t have children. Tony, meanwhile, had attended Iowa Wesleyan and the University of Illinois without graduating from either, currently lived in Wrigleyville, was a private investigator, and was still single.

  The typical Sunday routine was that my brothers would toss a football in the yard or, in the winter, watch the Bears on television, while Bonnie helped my mother cook and I played Scrabble with my father; after the meal, I and one of my brothers would do the dishes.

  A few minutes later, as I played the word QUITE, my father said, “I wish Sandra Day O’Connor was my daughter.”

  I said, “I do, too.” Both of us had said exactly these words before. It wasn’t that my father was hoping to engage in a real conversation about the Supreme Court. He regularly invoked not only O’Connor but also Oprah Winfrey, whose Chicago-based talk show had become a nationally syndicated ratings juggernaut. Another of my father’s tics, ever since my fortieth birthday almost four years before, was bringing up Newsweek’s famous article warning that women over forty were likelier to be killed by a terrorist than to find a husband.

  Tony appeared then, sweaty from throwing the football outside, and paused by my chair. He touched a fingertip to the edge of my letter rack. “I see something you can do,” he said.

  Simultaneously and emphatically, my father and I both said, “No help!”

  * * *

  —

  I decided to work from home on Monday before flying to Washington in the evening, and it was as I was packing my suitcase and listening to public radio that I learned President Bush’s Supreme Court nominee was Clarence Thomas. Apparently, both men were at Bush’s vacation compound in Kennebunkport, Maine, as Bush declared to the country that Thomas was “the best qualified person.” Formerly the head of the EEOC, Thomas was at present a federal judge, though I was surprised to learn he’d held the position for less than eighteen months. He was black, had graduated from Yale Law School just a year after I had, and was, it seemed, quite conservative.

  I wondered if my colleague James had heard the news, thought of calling his office, decided that doing so might seem strange, and instead called my friend Greg Rheinfrank. Greg was a Democratic strategist I’d known for years, ever since I’d started volunteering as a state party legal responder, which meant I monitored voting irregularities on election days. I met Greg for a standing monthly dinner at Szechuan Wok in Old Town; that he was gay allowed a certain uncomplicated closeness between us.

  “Bush is such a fucking weasel,” Greg said when I reached him at his office. “Nominating not just a black guy, but a black guy who grew up dirt poor in the South. Do you know what an Oreo is?”

  “The cookie?”

  “The person—it’s when someone is brown on the outside but white on the inside. No exaggeration, Clarence Thomas is more conservative than Strom Thurmond.”

  “Has he spoken on the record about Roe?”

  “I’m sure a million reporters are trying to find out at this very moment.”

  “What a slap in the face to Marshall,” I said.

  “Plus revenge for Bork.”

  “The Oreo thing,” I said. “Did you make it up?”

  “No, but thank you for thinking I’m that clever,” Greg said, and both of us laughed. That we ought not to have laughed, that this conversation between two white people was inherently cringe-worthy, were facts not apparent to me until later. They were far from the only such facts.

  * * *

  —

  Even though I’d told Gwen I could take a cab from National to their house in Takoma Park, she’d insisted on meeting my flight, and we were already discussing Clarence Thomas before we left the parking garage of the airport. She said, “Oh, he’s terrible. He’s a complete opportunist. Everyone I know at the NAACP and the Urban League is very concerned.”

  “I don’t remember him at all from Yale,” I said.

  “He used to wear blue jean overalls. That doesn’t ring a bell?”

  I shook my head.

  “When he came to our house for dinner, he was so awkward that I felt sorry for him. But I’ve seen him over the years at events here, and he’s become very abrasive and dogmatic.” In 1978, Gwen and Richard had moved from New Haven to Washington for Richard to work for the Carter administration. The National Children’s Initiative had broken off then from Yale, and Gwen now had sixty employees and an office a block from Dupont Circle. Richard, meanwhile, led a liberal think tank.

  I said, “So Thomas was on your radar long before the nomination?”

  “Well, there just aren’t that many conservative African Americans. Thank goodness.” As we pulled onto the George Washington Memorial Parkway, Gwen said, “Is there anything private and wonderful going on in your life that we need to talk about before we get home?”

  “I wish. How are you and how’s Richard?”

  “We’re doing well. And you’ll get to see Otto, who’s here for the weekend licking his wounds after his girlfriend dumped him.”

  “Oh, dear,” I said, and Gwen shrugged, seeming almost amused. “It’s character building.”

  * * *

  —

  Richard and Gwen’s sons had graduated from college the previous summer, Otto from Dartmouth and Marcus from Harvard. Marcus worked on Capitol Hill for a Democratic congressman from Massachusetts, and Otto worked in New York for a sports magazine, and, to my delight, both boys joined us on the Fourth for hamburgers and potato salad and
coleslaw, for which I chopped the purple cabbage while Gwen shaped the ground beef into patties. As we ate in the backyard, the topic of Clarence Thomas came up once again, and Richard, who was sitting across from me at the picnic table, said, “Gwennie, did you tell Hillary about Clarence and his law school overalls?”

  “It sounds like he dressed almost as badly as I did,” I said.

  Richard raised his eyebrows. “Although I suspect you carried less incendiary material on your person.”

  Gwen was shaking her head. “I spared Hillary that part, but since you brought it up—” The expression on her face was one of great distaste. “Supposedly, he’d carry pornographic magazines in his back pocket and pull them out to show people.”

  “Mom,” Otto said at the same time that Marcus covered his ears.

  Gwen and Richard laughed, and Gwen said, “My apologies for offending your delicate sensibilities, boys.” Looking at me, she said, “Clearly, Clarence is just bad news all around. Politically, personally—”

  “Sartorially,” Richard interjected.

  “How a man known for talking wild is going to fit in on the Supreme Court is anyone’s guess,” Gwen said. “Let alone what the right-wing ideologues would think if they really knew.”

  “Talking wild?” I repeated. I wasn’t sure I’d heard her correctly.

  “It means talking about sex in a graphic way,” she said. “Do white people not say that?”

  This time, it was Marcus who said, “Mom, seriously. Is this necessary?”

  “Sweetheart, if just the word sex makes you uncomfortable, you’re going to have a very embarrassing adulthood.”

  I said, “I feel like I should remember an African American law student in overalls at Yale, even without the magazine in his pocket.”

  Gwen shrugged. “He was an odd bird.”

  After dinner, Otto and Marcus went to meet up with friends, and Richard, Gwen, and I drove to see fireworks over a field at a middle school, which we all preferred to braving the Mall. Though our location was still crowded, we were able to spread a blanket on the grass, and the three of us passed around a thermos of white wine. Richard lay with his hands behind his head, elbows out, then Gwen was in the middle, propped up on her arms, and I was in the same posture as Gwen. “The thing that would turn this up a notch is some good weed,” Richard said, and Gwen looked at me and smiled indulgently. Richard added, “Though it’s nice as is.”

  As darkness fell and I was an individual in the thrumming crowd, I felt what I’d felt since my girlhood, that yearning for someone with whom to share the loveliness and also the sadness of the world. On the middle school field, I simultaneously wished I had found someone else, someone permanent, and I felt grateful for Gwen and Richard’s friendship.

  The crowd oohed and aahed when the fireworks started—exploding dots and bolts of white and green and purple—and the finale was dozens and dozens of them, rapidly following and overlapping with one another, and I felt the yearning the most intensely then, which I suppose was the point of fireworks or any visually dramatic moment experienced collectively. I was forty-three years old, turning forty-four in a few months, and I wondered if I knew the contours of my own life. Would it continue to unfold more or less as it had in the sixteen years I’d lived in Chicago or would it change in ways I couldn’t foresee? Did I want it to continue as it was or did I want it to change?

  After we’d all applauded, Gwen and Richard and I stood as the families and couples around us did, too, gathering our belongings. Richard and I made eye contact. He grinned and said, “In spite of our shit-for-brains president, it’s almost enough to make you feel patriotic, huh?”

  * * *

  —

  I got back to my apartment in Chicago after ten o’clock on Sunday night, left my suitcase just inside the front door, and walked to the kitchen to wash my hands and drink a glass of water. The red light on the answering machine in the corner of the kitchen counter was blinking, and after I pressed the Play button, the automated voice said, “You have—nine—new messages. First message.” A loud voice filled the room. “Hillary, it’s Bill.” After a split second, the voice added, “Clinton. There’s something I’d like to discuss with you, sooner rather than later, if possible. At your earliest convenience call this number”—he recited nine digits—“and ask for Arlene Dunagan. Many, many thanks, Hillary, and I hope you’re well.”

  It was shockingly strange to hear Bill’s voice. I’d neither seen him in person nor spoken to him for sixteen years. In the days and weeks after I’d left Fayetteville in June 1975, we’d talked on the phone a few times, tortured conversations that ended with no more clarity than they’d started with, and we’d exchanged several letters that were similar in their pain and earnestness. But within a few months, the contact had stopped; I’d begun a reply to his most recent letter, realized I wasn’t conveying anything I hadn’t already conveyed, and never finished it. The only time I’d laid eyes on him was on television, when he’d delivered the keynote speech at the 1988 Democratic Convention in Atlanta, a role he’d been invited to fill because he was then in his fourth term as governor of Arkansas. I’d thought he’d spoken well, though for too long, and apparently I hadn’t been alone because near the end of the speech, when he’d said “In closing…” applause had broken out in the convention center. Three years later, Bill was still governor, meaning that in his phone message, he presumably was instructing me on how to reach him at the governor’s mansion in Little Rock.

  The second message on my answering machine was from my friend Maureen: “Are you leaving town Wednesday or are you already gone? Now I’m thinking you’re already gone.” Prior to hearing Bill’s voice, I’d been tired, relieved to be home and ready to get in bed. Now my mind whirred with speculation about the possible reasons he’d called, though, really, weren’t there only two? I erased Maureen’s message.

  The third message, which I also erased, was from a seamstress saying that a pair of pants were ready for pickup.

  The fourth message was, once more, from Bill: “Hillary, it’s Bill Clinton again. I realize you might be traveling for the Fourth. It’s nothing bad, but can you call as soon as you have a chance?” This time, I wondered if Barbara Overholt had given him my unlisted number; though I hadn’t returned to Arkansas, she and I saw each other once a year, in various cities, at a conference for female law professors. Then again, I imagined she’d have asked for my blessing before telling Bill how to contact me. And surely a governor had all kinds of extra access.

  After playing the remaining five messages, I went to bed and slept terribly. Like Chicago, Little Rock was in the central time zone, and, at exactly eight-thirty the next morning, I dialed the number he’d provided. I reached Arlene Dunagan’s answering machine and left a brief message. Under normal circumstances, I’d have departed for the office at eight, but I’d decided not to give my work number to Arlene Dunagan and to instead wait at home until nine-thirty. Whatever the reason for Bill’s call, I didn’t want to take it with me to another location; I preferred to keep it contained. Less than fifteen minutes later, I was starting a load of laundry when the phone rang. It wasn’t Arlene Dunagan; it was Bill.

  “How have you been?” he asked. “Do those law students at Northwestern know they’re damn lucky to have you as a professor?”

  I wonder what you want, I thought. I said, “I’ve been well.”

  “It’s great you get to be at a world-class university and at the same time be so close to your family.” The faintly patronizing way he said this made me suspect he knew that, unlike him, I wasn’t married.

  I said, “It’s funny because, living in downtown Chicago, I sometimes forget that I’m less than twenty miles from the house where I grew up. I see my parents once a week, but the only other person from my childhood that I socialize with is Maureen, and she lives in Skokie.”

  “Well, give m
y best to Dorothy and Hugh. And of course Tony and Hughie. I always had a soft spot for those guys.” There were methods Bill Clinton had had of charming me, ways that hadn’t even seemed to require much effort on his part, but this pleasantly perfunctory way of feigning interest in my life—it was actually a little repugnant, and mildly insulting.

  Mostly to change the subject, I said, “Is being governor of Arkansas everything you dreamed it would be? Congratulations, by the way.”

  “Funny you should ask,” he said. “Because that’s tied to the reason I’m calling. It’s been a fabulous run here. I’ve had an amazing team so God knows I can’t take credit for doing any of this single-handedly, but I’m damn proud of how we’ve improved schools in the state and bolstered the economy, to name just two of my major initiatives. Lately I’ve been thinking, wouldn’t it be extraordinary if, with a little luck and a whole lot of elbow grease, I could do for our country what I’ve done for Arkansas?”

  I wondered how many times so far he’d used that “elbow grease” phrasing, and how many more times he would in the future. A hundred? Ten thousand?

  “I know you’re a busy woman, and I’ll cut to the chase,” he continued. “I’m going to run for president.”

  “Wow,” I said, though the surprising part was not his ambition but the passage of time. The future he’d long planned for had arrived. Of the two reasons I’d imagined he could be calling, this had been the likelier one.

  “I won’t announce for a couple months, but I’m getting my ducks in a row. Quack, quack. Now, I’m not the youngster I was when you and I first discussed this possibility, but my motivations are the same. I want to turn this recession around and make life better for ordinary Americans.”

  I was tempted to say, Bill, it’s me. You can save the bromides.