American Wife

by Curtis Sittenfeld

  What can I say in reply, what is there for me to tell him? I can maintain eye contact; I can show him that I’m listening.

  He says, “President Blackwell won’t be out of office for nineteen months”—I know, I want to tell him. Believe me, I know exactly—“and how many soldiers will die in that time? Two thousand, three thousand? I think we honor the memory of the fallen by preventing more senseless deaths.”

  I say, “Our country is so indebted to you and families like yours, and I know there’s no way to repay Nate’s sacrifice. But the situation is extremely complicated, and if the United States were to—”

  “Mrs. Blackwell!” His interruption surprises both of us, it seems. He gives the impression of a very polite person straining against the confines, the straitjacket, of his own politeness; he is saying more than he thinks he should, in a sharper tone (I am, after all, the first lady, and he is, after all, sitting in my armored limousine), but less than what he actually feels (I am, after all, the first lady, and he is, after all, sitting in my armored limousine). He says, “I beg your pardon, but you can repay my sacrifice. You can’t bring back Nate, no, but there are a hundred and forty-five thousand American troops still over there, and all of them have people who love them, who worry and pray every day for their safety. You can tell your husband, ‘These people have families.’ ”

  What was it I said to Gladys Wycomb earlier today? My husband’s administration is different from me. Also: He is the one the American people elected.

  “I saw you interviewed a few months back,” Edgar Franklin says. “The lady who talked to you, she said, ‘How do you and your husband spend your quiet time?’ And you said, ‘We read, we play Scrabble, the president watches sports.’ Mrs. Blackwell, that’s all anyone wants.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m very sorry.”

  “Nate’s mother passed on in 1996,” Edgar Franklin says. “She was a wonderful cook, and she never had to follow a recipe. Meat loaf, black-eyed peas, macaroni and cheese, everything she made was delicious. Well, after she was gone, it was just Nate and me, and he was still a youngster. I hired a lady to help take care of him and make our meals during the week, and come the weekend, Nate and I had spaghetti with sauce and called it a bachelor dinner. We’d say if we turned on the stove, it counted as cooking.” We exchange a wry smile; Edgar Franklin does not hate me, at least not the way Gladys Wycomb did.

  “Now, after I retired,” he continues, “a few years passed, and I thought, It’s about time I learn to cook. I bought cookbooks, and I read through them, and at first there were only a few recipes I could try—there were words I didn’t even know the meaning of, parboil and braise and what have you. But I improved. I had some humble moments that no one but me ever needs to hear about, but I improved. I had a plan that when Nate got back, I would make him a full dinner, and wouldn’t he be surprised: pork tenderloin with mushrooms and olives, a fresh salad, some homemade bread. I’d ordered a breadmaker from the Internet—people are very impressed by homemade bread if they don’t know all you do is put in the ingredients and press a button. I tried the different kinds to find the best one, because Nate didn’t care for raisins, but you could do herb bread or sourdough or any number of them.” I know what Edgar Franklin will say next, and I’m not wrong, though the way he says it is more restrained, less maudlin, than it could be. He says, “I never did make that dinner for my son.”

  The limousine is quiet—outside, agents stand on all four sides—and after a minute, I say, “I’ve been close to people who died young, and I know it’s terrible in a way that’s different from other deaths. It feels like it’s unendurable, but you endure it because you don’t have a choice.” I pause. “If there were anything I could do to bring back your son, to change what happened, I would.”

  “It’d be rough no matter how he was taken, that much I know,” Edgar Franklin says. “But it wasn’t a cause worth dying for. Weapons of mass destruction that were never found? Access to oil fields? Politicians playing cowboys and Indians? I guess those sound like good reasons when it’s not your son.”

  Edgar Franklin is wearing khaki pants and a white short-sleeved button-down shirt beneath which I see the shadow of a sleeveless undershirt. He also wears a watch with a black leather strap, a plain gold wedding band on his left hand, and brown leather loafers with tassels. The tassels are what do it; they break my heart. I look directly at him and say, “I think you’re right. It’s time for us to end the war and bring home the troops.”

  ON NOVEMBER 7, 2000, which was Election Day, we voted when the polls opened in Madison; Charlie and I voted at the same time, and outside the curtained booths at the elementary school near the governor’s mansion, we joined hands and, with our free outer arms, waved to the assembled journalists, photographers, cameramen, and well-wishers. We then boarded a plane and traveled to our final campaign stops, a rally in Portland, Oregon—Oregon was known to be a close race—and another in Minneapolis before we flew back to Wisconsin and rode to the hotel, where we were planning to watch the election returns in a suite with various staff members and relatives, including Arnold Prouhet and his wife and family, and all the Blackwells. Our nephews Harry and Drew had been campaigning full-time on Charlie’s behalf since the beginning, and Harold and Ed had also done extensive fund-raising. That night, in addition to Ella, Harold, and Priscilla, every single one of Charlie’s brothers, their wives, and their children, most of them married with children of their own, had come into town, and this all-hands-on-deck representation was quite touching to both Charlie and me. Someone had ordered dozens of pizzas, and the suite was a chaos of nerves and excitement; the only calm moment, which I appreciated, was when Reverend Randy led us in prayer before we ate. That the election would be tight was no secret, but Hank was confident Charlie would win, and Charlie was confident, too. Not because of anything we ever said to each other but due more to our exchanged glances, due to what we didn’t say, I was pretty sure that my father-in-law and I were the only ones who had serious doubts about Charlie’s victory. Harold was retired, or “actively retired,” as he liked to say, but he still had many close ties inside the Republican National Committee, and his seeming skepticism struck me as informed, whereas mine was based more on intuition. Whether I wanted Charlie to win felt beside the point by then. Sure I did, and of course I didn’t. I wanted him to win the way you want your hometown baseball team to win, or your daughter’s high school soccer team. I wanted that in-the-moment triumph, wanted our emotions to build to celebration rather than sink into disappointment, which was not the same as wanting the triumph’s long-term consequences. I wanted Charlie to win the election, but I didn’t want him to be president. For eighteen months, we’d been caught up, both of us, in a great tumult of chanting crowds holding red and blue signs, of strategizing advisers and pollsters and reporters, of waving flags, brass bands, planes and airports and hotels, schools and county fairs and nursing homes. It had been fun sometimes and exhausting more often, and now it was almost finished. The hotel ballroom was reserved for the victory party, and one of the reasons I still knew that I wasn’t cut out for politics was the built-in mortification of a victory party when there was a perfectly good chance there wouldn’t be a victory.

  As the hours passed, it became clear that the entire election came down to the state of Florida—it reminded me of baseball games, how all nine innings could somehow shrink to one final pitch—and just before seven our time, eight on the East Coast, the networks announced that Florida’s twenty-five electoral votes would go to Charlie’s opponent. The suite became quiet except for our niece Liza’s three-month-old son, Parker, who was wailing inconsolably. Everyone looked at Charlie, or they tried not to look at him—he was sitting on a sofa near the large television, Ella on one side and Hank on the other—and I wasn’t surprised when, within a few minutes, Ella whispered in my ear, “Dad wants to leave.”

  Harold, Priscilla, Hank, and Debbie Bell accompanied us back to the governor’s m
ansion, but everyone else stayed behind. As we walked through the lobby and climbed in the SUVs that would take us home, none of us spoke to the hordes of media who called out, though I smiled at a few of them; there were many we knew well by this point. It wasn’t as if they’d need encouragement—they were following us back to the mansion no matter what, and the reality was that we’d have to let them inside, Charlie would have to talk to them, before the end of the night.

  At the mansion, we congregated in the second-floor living room, and I was tempted to suggest a game of Scrabble or euchre, but I don’t think anything could have distracted us. Everyone’s personalities seemed in this moment both reduced and magnified, distilled to some essential quality: Debbie Bell was angry, Hank was insisting that Florida couldn’t have gone to Charlie’s opponent and there must have been an error, Harold was stoic, Priscilla was disdainful of Charlie’s opponent and the fools who would elect him, Ella was sweetly protective of her father, I was quiet, and Charlie was wounded—boyishly so, it seemed. He was speaking less than anyone else, and Priscilla was speaking the most. “That smug, sanctimonious tree-hugger,” she’d say when images of Charlie’s opponent flashed on-screen. “If that’s the man the American people want for president, then they deserve him.” I think election nights were particularly evocative and fraught for Priscilla and Harold—we were, of course, sitting in the governor’s mansion they had occupied for eight years, where Charlie himself had spent most of his adolescence.

  I had a maid bring out some peanuts and popcorn, and two televisions were playing—the one in the wooden cabinet, and another that had been brought in so we could watch more than one channel simultaneously, though we turned off the sound on both—and Charlie was preparing to call his opponent and concede the race when his and Hank’s and Debbie’s and Harold’s cell phones all started ringing at once, and less than three minutes later, the networks reported that they were placing Florida back in the undecided category. By one-thirty A.M., Charlie was leading in Florida with a hundred thousand votes, and by three-thirty A.M., he was leading with fewer than two thousand, with most of the votes in the uncounted precincts expected to go to his opponent. When we went to bed just after four, it was impossible to know what to think; the only consensus by then was that the results would be so close there’d have to be a recount, and it might be several days before anyone knew the outcome. I wouldn’t have believed my fatigue could be so overwhelming on such a nerve-racking night, but the last few days of campaigning had been especially wearying, and I felt that my body was begging me to lie down. Equally surprising was that Charlie seemed to feel the same. As the night had worn on, we’d been rejoined by several family members, we’d been paid a visit by a group of television and newspaper reporters and their attendant cameramen and photographers, and I’d noticed that increasingly, Charlie stuck close to me. Once, when I stood up to use the powder room, he asked where I was going. “And you’re coming right back?” he said. I nodded. At close to four, when I said, “Will you forgive me if I turn in?” he said, “As a matter of fact, I’ll join you.” The thirty or so people in the living room applauded as Charlie walked out, and he looked sheepish when he paused and grinned.

  In bed, after we’d brushed our teeth and turned out the light, he set his head sideways on my chest, and I ran my fingers through his hair. He said, “So what’s gonna happen?”

  “Oh, honey, I don’t know any more than anyone else.”

  “But what’s your hunch?”

  “Honestly, sweetheart, I don’t—”

  He interrupted me. He said, “I’ve been thinking what I should do is be baseball commissioner. I’d be perfect, right?”

  It was the first I’d heard of this idea, but it sounded plausible enough. I said, “Okay.”

  “It’d be fun—challenging but not a total pain in the ass, and a good way to utilize all the skills I’ve acquired. But this state-government shit, the three-hour meetings about groundwater or labor relations or some dairy law from 1850, I’ve had my fill.”

  “Is the baseball-commissioner position going to open soon? It’s Wynne Smith now, isn’t it?”

  “I’ll put out a few feelers. Smith’s pushing seventy, so I’ll bet they’re ready for new blood.”

  “Just don’t forget you have two years left of being governor.”

  Charlie was quiet, and then he said, “If I resigned, would you think that was terrible? Monty is up to the challenge, no question.” Monty was Ralph Montanetti, the lieutenant governor.

  “You wouldn’t want to see this term through to the end?” I said.

  “This campaign has been brutal—I don’t have to tell you that, but between the two of us, I’m starting to feel like the thrill is gone. I already know Hank’s gonna be gunning for ’04, but I’m not sure it’s worth it. The idea of winning a presidential election, lately, it’s been reminding me of—What’s that line about making partner at a law firm? You’ve won a pie-eating contest, and your prize is more pie.”

  “Will you do me a favor?” I said. “Will you try to remember that whatever happens, we’ll be okay? If you want to stay in politics, if you want to get out and go back to baseball, if you just want to relax—” Charlie was fifty-four by then, and it wouldn’t be embarrassing if he no longer worked; he could take early retirement, we could travel, we could even buy our own second home somewhere other than Halcyon, in Minnesota or Michigan, and he could fish and I could read. “You’re lucky that you have so many options, and so many supporters and admirers,” I said. “That’s what’s important.”

  Charlie lifted his head and turned it so that, in the dark, we were face-to-face. From the far side of the second floor, we could hear the televisions and the people still awake in the living room. He said, “When they announced I hadn’t gotten Florida, that pissed me off. We’ve been down there, what, fifteen times in the last year? And I’ll bet you right now everyone in the liberal media is shitting their pants with excitement—they get to say I lost, then they say, ‘No, wait, you didn’t,’ and then they’ll say, ‘Oh yeah, you did.’ Twice the fun, right? Over at the hotel, that wasn’t my idea of a good time, to have to smile like a gracious loser while everyone I’ve ever known sits around staring at me. But then I thought, If everything happens for a reason, God must know what He’s doing. What kind of believer would I be if I only trusted in Him when life goes my way?”

  “There’s still the possibility that you won,” I said. “The election’s not over yet.”

  He shook his head. “You know I lost, and I do, too. I feel it in my bones. But Lindy, I’m at peace.” He kissed my lips and said, “This might sound crazy, but I’m already starting to think I dodged a bullet.”

  ____

  I THOUGHT WE’D ride back to the White House in the cars we were in—I was looking forward to a moment alone, or alone with three agents, to absorb what just took place—but the minute Edgar Franklin leaves my car, Jessica reappears, climbing in as she holds out a phone. “It’s the president.”

  If it were anyone other than Charlie, even Ella, even my mother, I’d refuse. But I raise the phone to my ear, and when I say hello, Charlie says, “When did aliens kidnap my wife and replace her with you?”

  He sounds boisterous, and he also sounds like he’s walking somewhere—possibly toward the residence elevator to change for the gala, which is in a rather alarming twenty minutes.

  “Charlie, I didn’t intend to catch you off guard, but I couldn’t let another—”

  “No, it was brilliant. Hank is only pissed he didn’t think of it himself. One parent to another, that was definitely the way to go.”

  “You’re not upset?”

  “I just hope Mr. Sympathy appreciated how generous it was of you to make time for him, especially since the word on the street is that now you won’t have a chance to freshen up. But don’t worry, I promise not to tell the students and teachers saluting you that you’re wearing stinky underpants.”

  Uneasily, I realize he thinks I s
poke to Edgar Franklin in his stead, less as myself than as a presidential surrogate, the way I sometimes attend funerals of foreign leaders. I say, “Charlie, I told Edgar Franklin I support ending the war and bringing home the troops.”

  For ten seconds, Charlie is silent, and then, in a bewildered voice, he says, “You support ending the war and bringing home the troops?”

  “I made it clear I don’t speak for the administration, I don’t speak for you, and it’s not as if he and I had an elaborate discussion about foreign policy. It was mostly him expressing his views and me listening.”

  “I’m sorry, but I think our connection must be messed up. It sounded like you just said that you told an antiwar activist surrounded by TV cameras that you side with him over me.” I am quiet, and Charlie says, “Good God, Lindy.”

  “Sweetheart, you and I can have differing opinions. The abortion issue—”

  “Is that what this is about? You were determined to cause a huge controversy today, so after the witch doctor croaked, you cooked up another one?”

  I feel a great urge to be in the same physical place he is, to set my hand on his cheek, to embrace him—to show him that though I’ve done something uncharacteristic, I’m still his loyal wife.

  “I’m walking toward a TV right now,” he says, and then, to someone else, he says, “Yeah, while she was just talking to him.” To me, he says, “Yep, it’s on every station. Way to go, baby. You want to torpedo my immigration bill while you’re at it? Sabotage Social Security reform?”

  It’s already on every station? Edgar Franklin climbed from my car minutes ago. But the newscasters must have figured it out while he was still in the limousine, they must be reporting live in their urgently speculative way.