American Wife

by Curtis Sittenfeld

  We are quiet, and I say, “I’ve thought of you a lot over the years, Dena. I wish—” I wish our friendship hadn’t imploded, I wish it hadn’t been three decades since we last spoke.

  But she says, “I know. I wish it, too.” She laughs a little. “I’d say I’ve thought of you, but it’s more like I’ve seen you. That cashmere coat you wore at Charlie’s inauguration, at the second one, that was gorgeous. I thought, When I knew Alice, she was such a penny-pincher about clothes, but that must have cost a fortune. I was glad to see you’d loosened up.” Charlie’s inauguration—this is how the public refers to him, as Charlie, or more sarcastically, as Chuck or Chuckie B. In Washington, I am the only person who directly interacts with him who could get away with such informality. “That’s a nice suit, too. What designer is it?” Dena nods toward my increasingly wrinkled red linen jacket and skirt, which I donned for the breast cancer summit this morning—a lifetime ago. When I’m in the residence, I dress casually, much the way Dena’s dressed, albeit in more modest shirts.

  “It’s de la Renta,” I say.

  She nods approvingly. “I was gonna guess him or Carolina Herrera.” She gestures out the window at the agent on the porch. “Do those guys listen when you pee?”

  I laugh. “They don’t go into the bathroom with me, no. They wait outside. A few of them are female—no one who’s traveling with us today but some of the others—so if there’s a situation where it might be awkward to have a man present, a woman can step in.”

  Dena shakes her head. “Better you than me.”

  “It’s a strange life.” I pause. “Dena, Pete’s here, isn’t he?”

  “And I thought I was the main attraction.”

  “No, you are, but if it’s possible, I’d like to talk to both of you at the same time.”

  She turns her head toward the hall and calls out, “Babe, she wants to see you, too!” Looking back at me, she says, “He thinks you don’t like him. I told him you wouldn’t make a personal trip here just to scold us, the first lady has bigger fish to fry, but you know Pete.”

  Not really, of course—I don’t know Pete Imhof anymore, if I ever did.

  Again, more impatiently, she yells, “Babe!”

  After another minute, he materializes: He, too, wears jeans, and a gray Badgers T-shirt and brown leather flip-flops. (The dark hair on his toes! With a jolt, I remember it from when I was seventeen. How strange that I once, briefly, was well acquainted with Pete Imhof’s body.) When I last saw him, after that infuriating pyramid scheme, he had gained a good deal of weight, and he has gained a good deal since then. He’s not enormous, but he’s more than big, and both his hair and beard are silver. He’s actually a handsome man in an earthily sexual sort of way. I stand, and we exchange a clumsy handshake; I don’t mean to be cruel when I say that the clumsiness is his, that his discomfort is clear. God knows I have many shortcomings, but at this point, managing a handshake isn’t one of them. “You sure surprised Dena today,” he says as he steps backward so he’s next to her chair. He perches in a not particularly comfortable-looking way on an arm of it while I sit back down on the couch.

  “Babe, get a chair from the kitchen,” Dena says, and he does, setting it close to hers.

  “I hope I didn’t pull the two of you away from other obligations,” I say when Pete has sat. I know, through Belinda telling Jessica, what their jobs are—Pete is a night security guard at White River Dairy, and Dena is a part-time massage therapist at a chiropractor’s office.

  Wryly, Dena says, “We managed to make time for you.”

  “I bet you both are wondering why I dropped in out of the blue.”

  Neither of them replies, and then Dena says, “Yeah, you could say that.”

  “Well, first, I wanted to see you—I wanted to know what had become of you, Dena. But also, a news story is about to break that’s indirectly related to you, Pete. I’m not sure whether it will be a television program or a newspaper that will report it first, but in the next day or so, it’ll become public that I—that in 1963, I had an abortion. And I’m telling you because, although the media won’t have any idea of this part, Pete, it was you I’d gotten pregnant by. I don’t know if Dena ever mentioned—”

  “He knows.” Dena says this matter-of-factly, and when I glance at Pete, he does not contradict her; he watches me with little emotion. (Would Andrew have become so heavyset as he aged? I doubt it, because they had different builds.)

  “If I had it to do over again, obviously, it would have been more respectful to have told you at the time,” I say.

  “Who’s spilling the beans?” Dena says. “Someone you know?”

  “It’s—” There are several ways to describe Gladys Wycomb, but I decide to leave my grandmother out of it. “It’s the doctor who performed the procedure,” I say. “She’s very old now, and she’s doing it to protest—I don’t know if you two have been following the Supreme Court nomination of Ingrid Sanchez, but that’s what the doctor is protesting.” I look at Pete. “I hope this isn’t a news story that will have legs, but it’s possible some reporters will get it into their mind to try to figure out who I was involved with at the time, and I don’t think they’ll be able to except through one of us. But I wanted to warn you. I’d prefer that you don’t talk to reporters if you hear from them, but it’s your decision, and if you’d like, someone in my office can connect you with a media coach.” Lest this sound condescending, I add, “Although I’ve had loads of coaching, and I still haven’t learned all the tricks.”

  Dena and Pete exchange a look, and Dena says, “Yep, we hear from your friends at the tabloids on a regular basis. Well, not just the tabloids—babe, where was that guy calling from a few weeks ago, was it Croatia? It was a country I wouldn’t be able to find on the map, I’ll tell you that much.”

  This should not surprise me—exposés and tell-alls about Charlie’s administration or his family or his early years are published on a weekly basis, both articles and books, in tabloids and reputable magazines alike, and during the 2000 campaign, when the first reporter discovered the accident that killed Andrew Imhof, that was big news that I addressed by giving an interview to a USA Today reporter. I said, “It was incredibly sad. I know it was very hard for his family and our classmates and really the whole community, including me.” In all the times I’ve been asked about it since, I have repeated these comments without expanding on them. To pad out the various books and articles, therefore, the writers must find more loquacious subjects, so they talk to anyone we ever so much as passed on the sidewalk. I know of at least one biography of me that identifies Dena as my childhood best friend, which must be how other journalists know to track her down. The biographer’s source for this information was our old classmate Mary Petschel née Hafliger, she of the hairy forearms, she who kicked me off Spirit Club after Andrew’s death, and she whom Ella and I ran into when I fled to Riley in 1988; since that encounter, I haven’t seen Mary.

  And I realize in this moment that neither Dena nor Pete has ever spoken about me to the media. For so long, I was so sure Dena would that it felt like she already had. Even earlier today, she was the first person I thought of when Hank came to tell me the abortion story was going to break, but she’d had nothing to do with it. That Dena and Pete have stayed quiet even though they’ve been together all these years, even though they’ve each had separate reasons for wishing me ill, and even though surely they could have reinforced each other’s antipathy, justifying their right to get back at me—I haven’t been sufficiently grateful, it occurs to me, I have never properly appreciated a thing that hasn’t happened. I haven’t thought of them as having opportunities they declined when clearly that’s been the case, clearly the opportunities have been plentiful.

  I say, “So when the journalists call and you say no—why do you?”

  “Are you kidding? You think we’d talk about you to some sleazy reporter?” Dena scoffs. “We were raised better than that, and hell, we didn’t even vote for you
r husband!” She leans forward, extracting a cigarette from the pack, and after she’s lit it and taken a puff, she says, “At least I sure didn’t. Pete here just doesn’t vote.”

  Pete smiles the way Charlie does when he’s broken wind particularly loudly, as if he’s half sheepish and half pleased with himself. Fleetingly—I don’t want to think this—I wonder if Pete is brain-damaged. Not that any single terrible event necessarily happened, but it could be that alcohol and perhaps drugs have had a cumulative effect.

  “Hey, why won’t Charlie talk to that black guy?” Dena says. “You tell him old Dena thinks he should.” She means Edgar Franklin, I’m pretty sure, though unlike Gladys Wycomb, Dena does not use an accusatory tone; instead, she sounds self-effacing, as if she doesn’t really believe her opinion could matter. Or maybe it’s that, having once been married herself, she knows regulating one’s husband’s behavior is no small feat, so she doesn’t hold me accountable for Charlie’s decisions. She lifts a clear glass ashtray from a shelf beneath the coffee table and taps her cigarette into it. “Now, am I allowed to get a picture, Alice, or will your goons freak out?”

  “Of course,” I say.

  “Otherwise my sisters will never believe me you were here.” She stands.

  “How are your sisters doing?”

  “They’re plugging along. Marjorie’s oldest son’s over in the first of the 158th Infantry, so that’s hard.” Again, there is a notable lack of blame in Dena’s voice. How is it that she’s forgiven me for both the past and the present? “Peggy’s living in Mom and Dad’s old house, which you couldn’t pay me enough to do. The place is falling down around her, not to mention she’s due to have hip surgery, so I don’t know how she plans to get to the second floor.”

  “Maybe she can have one of those chairs put in like my grandmother had,” I say, and Dena chortles, though I wasn’t kidding. It is sobering to think of Peggy Janaszewski needing hip surgery when, as little girls, she and Marjorie were our students the times that Dena and I played school and pretended to be teachers named Miss Clougherty.

  Dena disappears down the hall, to find her camera, presumably, and Pete and I are left alone. The room is silent except for the whir of the air conditioner, and then Pete says, “A lot of water under the bridge, isn’t there?”

  “There sure is.” We both start to speak at the same time, and I say, “Go ahead.”

  “When I look back, I don’t feel real good about everything,” he says. “That was a tough time.”

  Is he referring to after Andrew’s death or to the pyramid scheme?

  “And the papers, they can’t leave it be. Every time it goes away, someone brings it up again, but they don’t care what he was like—they act like he didn’t do anything his whole life but get in the car and drive to that intersection.”

  “I hope you know that I still think of him,” I say. “I still wish I could change what happened.”

  But Pete does not seem angry. He says, “I always knew you were a nice person. I probably didn’t show it, but I knew.”

  Unexpectedly, my eyes fill with tears; they are close to the surface, I suppose, given that I sobbed immediately upon my arrival. I swallow, keeping the tears at bay, and say, “I had no idea how to act back then, and I bet you didn’t, either.”

  “He had a real big crush on you,” Pete says. “You could probably tell. I remember the time we saw you downtown, and you two were flirting like crazy.” (That afternoon just before my senior year of high school, when I’d been buying ground beef for my mother—the sunlight and Andrew’s eyelashes and Pete in the driver’s seat of the mint-green Thunderbird.) “If I’d found out you were pregnant,” Pete is saying, “I like to think I’d have done the right thing and married you, but it was probably for the best I didn’t know. I was too immature.”

  Married me? I can truly say the thought never crossed my mind; it is far likelier I’d have had the baby and given it up for adoption—I couldn’t have kept it, the disgrace would have been too great for my family—but the circumstances under which I’d have married Pete Imhof are unimaginable.

  He says, “What if we let Andrew be the father instead of me? That seems more like what it was supposed to be—revisionist history, isn’t that what they call it?”

  Except that if Andrew had been the father, I wouldn’t have had an abortion, at least not if I’d learned I was pregnant after his death. And Andrew wouldn’t have been the father anyway, because we wouldn’t have had that rash, impulsive sex. But Pete Imhof is trying to offer me a kindness, so all I do is smile sadly at him.

  From the pocket of his jeans, Pete withdraws his own pack of cigarettes; they are Camels. He pulls one from the pack but doesn’t light it. He says, “I would never have gotten my shit together without Dena. I kept showing up at the steak house where she was working until she finally took me home with her and saved me from myself, you know?” He leans in and adds, “Don’t tell her I told you, but I did vote for your husband. I like how he’s tough on terror.” Pete winks. “Dena has no idea.” As he lights his cigarette (it no longer seems like he’s brain-damaged), he says, “You want something to eat? Did she offer you anything?”

  “I’m fine,” I say, and I hear Dena approaching from the hall. She says, “It won’t go on,” and when she’s in the living room, she hands a digital camera to Pete. “What am I doing wrong?” He fiddles with it, and the camera makes a zooming sound, the lens emerging.

  Pete says, “You two stand together,” and I join Dena in front of the shelf of decorative plates. The lighting would be better outside, obviously, but I say nothing. Dena sets her arm around me, a gesture I am moved by, and I do the same for her.

  After Pete has taken several shots, Dena says, “Now you guys.” Pete and I stand side by side, smiling and not touching; this isn’t a photo I ever imagined posing for. After the pictures are taken, they look at the tiny versions on the screen. “Isn’t technology today amazing?” Dena says.

  “I’m sorry to rush out, but I have an obligation back in Washington,” I say. “It was very good to see both of you, and let’s stay in touch as things unfold. Did you keep Belinda’s number?”

  “It’s in the kitchen,” Dena says.

  “Call if anything comes up, or if you have questions.”

  Dena lightly punches my upper arm. She says, “Don’t look so grim, First Lady. We’ll be fine, and so will you.”

  “Hold on, Alice,” Pete says. “I have something for you.” He lumbers into the hall, and when he’s gone, I say to Dena, “I’m here visiting my mother every couple months, so maybe we could have lunch next time.”

  “That’d be a kick,” she says. “You just say the word.” Then she adds, “You know it was me that gave Ella the tiara that time, don’t you? I thought you’d come over and say hi.”

  “I wish I had.” Charlie and I are currently having a house built in Maronee, the place we’ll live when we leave Washington. Is it possible, back in relative proximity to Dena, that she and I might become friends again, real friends? Are our situations too different? It is such a comfort to see her, to be linked to a life all but lost to me now.

  When Pete returns, he passes me an envelope.

  “What is it?” Dena asks, but he shakes his head. In a not entirely joking tone, she says, “It better not be a love letter.” She turns back to me, her expression mischievous. “If anyone was ever watching you and me, they’d have thought there were only three men to date in the whole world, and we just kept trading them back and forth.” I laugh, and Dena links her arm through Pete’s. She says, “But it looks like we both ended up with the ones who were right for us all along.”

  AMONG THE PEOPLE whom I’m aware have been quoted on television or in print on the subject of Charlie and me are about a third of my classmates from elementary school, junior high, and high school, including Mary Hafliger Petschel and my junior-year prom date, Larry Nagel; the daughter of the former owner of Tatty’s (Tatty’s itself no longer exists); Marvin Be
nheimer, my New Year’s Eve date in 1962, when I had to dash from the restaurant as soon as the food came in order to vomit, a fact that has not stopped Marvin from appearing on a recurring basis on CNN, always identified as “Childhood Friend of Alice Blackwell”; several of my sorority sisters in Kappa Alpha Theta, a few of my aged professors, and many university classmates whom I never met; my thesis adviser from library school; Lydia Bianchi, the principal at Liess Elementary, and my colleague Maggie Stenta, a first-grade teacher; Nadine Patora, the Madison realtor from whom I didn’t buy a house in 1977; Ja-hoon Choi, the Ph.D. candidate who lived downstairs from me in my apartment on Sproule Street; and two men with whom I went on blind dates in, respectively, 1969 and 1974, whom I truly have no recollection of, though I believe that the dates occurred. “She was pretty but seemed like a prude” was one fellow’s assessment, and the other’s was “She wasn’t interested in current events—she mostly just wanted to talk about her students.” These remarks at least had brevity on their side and were nothing compared to the entire memoir published by Simon Törnkvist, I Knew Her When: My Love Affair with Alice Blackwell Before She Became First Lady. With the help of a ghostwriter, Simon chronicled our long-ago relationship: my alleged desperation to get married and have children, and his extensive reservations about me that apparently stemmed from what he recognized even then as my conservative leanings. Here she was, living in a vibrant and liberal college town, but she led an incredibly staid, sheltered life, he wrote. It was obvious she was afraid of talking to me about my experiences in ’Nam, and she avoided any confrontation. I knew from the get-go she was aiming for the white-picket-fence, 2.5 kids lifestyle, and if it wasn’t happening with me, she’d make it happen with someone else. When I heard that she’d married one of Governor Blackwell’s draft-dodging sons, I knew her wildest dreams must have come true. Also, humiliatingly, there was this: She was very vanilla when it came to sex. The thing I never understood was that it was easier for her to climax when she was on top, but she preferred missionary-style. I had been skimming the book for about half an hour when I got to those lines; I snapped it shut, gave it to my personal aide, Ashley, and told her to get rid of it as she saw fit. I felt particularly offended, as I actually had had indirect contact with Simon since we’d run into each other at the Brewers’ game in 1988; in 1995, he’d requested six VIP tickets for himself, his wife, his two children, and his parents to take a Christmas-lights tour of the governor’s mansion. The request had come through my office, and while I hadn’t spoken to Simon, I had been the one who signed off on the dispensation of the tickets. He never thanked me or anybody else—I had only two aides then, and I asked them—and the next I heard of him was when my White House press secretary alerted me to the existence of his book a few months in advance of publication. “I always had a hunch that Parsley, Sage was a low-rent hippie” was Charlie’s take on the matter.