A Reason to Believe (19 page)

The story itself was false. To our amazement, the
Globe
wouldn’t tell us why it thought we had defaulted or what proof it had, but we found ourselves having to prove the story was false to prevent it from running. The campaign was concerned. How do you prove something didn’t happen? It fell to Diane to do just that. She flew back home in a panic and sat down in the long back hall outside the dark closet where we kept old file cabinets and systematically unpacked box after box of canceled checks and dusty old statements. (Thankfully, she’s a pack rat). She eventually found the canceled check for the final payment as well as the final statement. She handed them over to the campaign, which gave them to the
Globe
. The story was killed.

But the episode pushed Diane to her limit. She told me then that the stress was getting to her, that she couldn’t be on call twenty-four hours a day to put out fires, that she had a job and a career that she couldn’t and wouldn’t sacrifice for my political ambitions. She couldn’t sleep and was tired and despondent. I promised I would try to protect her from the media queries, but I couldn’t protect her from
the rumors. One alleged that I had used cocaine. How did that get started? Someone had heard that I was “involved with Coke,” referring to my time at Coca-Cola, and it took off from there. Even suggestions that were meant to be helpful were absurdly personal. At a public event in the Berkshires, Diane was approached by a woman who said she needed better “foundations”—not spiritual or moral, but undergarments. Diane was taken aback, and she later shared this story with a few others at a fundraiser in Boston. A woman she didn’t know soon approached her and said, “I hear you’re in the market for foundations. Well, I have a great guy.” The woman then unbuttoned her blouse. “Look how large I am,” she said. “You could use a good foundation too.”

Any politician will tell you that the hothouse of a close campaign can obliterate the fine line between your public and private lives. When you run for office, that’s what you sign up for. But in Diane’s case, I didn’t realize that that feeling—that sense of losing control of your own life, of the world closing in on you, of suffocating—was both familiar and haunting. It had happened in her first marriage, when Bill succeeded in redefining who she was. Now, it was the media and our political opponents who were redefining who I was and, indirectly, who she was. Diane has a clear image of herself as a mother, a lawyer, a volunteer, and a community activist, but now she was being cast solely as “Deval Patrick’s lovely wife, Diane,” or
misidentified as my “lovely wife, Donna.” (Another time, she was “Shirley.”)

Even though Diane remained ambivalent about the campaign, she continued to campaign brilliantly—sometimes with me, sometimes on her own. Perhaps the very openness that had made her vulnerable to Bill’s abuse also allowed her to connect so well to others. She listens well and is genuinely empathic. People would draw her aside and say that they could tell I was a good man because she was “so real.” The reaction in African-American audiences was also relief. More than a few people whispered to her, “Honey, I’m so glad to see you are black!” So many educated and accomplished African-American men marry across racial lines that it was presumed I had, too. Perhaps because I was a newcomer to the political scene, perhaps because I was the first black Democratic nominee, perhaps because we were running a kind of insurgent campaign, I think voters needed to feel comfortable with me as their prospective governor, and Diane came to play an outsized role in the campaign. Quite honestly, I don’t know that I would have won without her.

The morning after the election, Diane awoke in a state of disbelief. Was this really happening? She was exhausted, and I can’t deny that she deserved better from me. I had turned fifty that year, and Diane had thrown a wonderful
party for me in July. She also planned a family trip to South Africa over Christmas (a major undertaking that was shortened because of our victory). Diane’s birthday came in December, in the midst of the transition and shortly before we were to leave for South Africa. It was on a Sunday. I envisioned a quiet day with the family and did not make any other plans. On our way home from services at Memorial Church in Harvard Yard, I asked Diane what she wanted to do. It was the wrong question. Given all of her sacrifices over the previous two years, she was sure I had organized something to make this day extra special. She started to cry. My apologies fell on deaf ears and damp cheeks.

I tried to convince myself that things would improve once we moved into our jobs as governor and first lady, when we could focus on getting things done rather than the hype of the campaign. But we were at the center of high political drama: a black man had just come from nowhere to win a decisive victory with a promise to change Beacon Hill, and the pundits and pollsters appreciated even better than I how formidable a task lay ahead of me. The fish bowl would only get smaller, the pressures greater. The same “wise guys” who had said I couldn’t win were now saying I couldn’t govern.

Several weeks after the election, Diane and I went to a seminar at the Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia for new governors from across the country. We were to learn how to make the transition from running a campaign to running a
state. The “first spouses” were also there for guidance. For Diane, it was all very strange. She attended seminars on how to dress for television (avoid stripes and polka dots) and how to conduct yourself in interviews (stick to the script). Mock interviews were filmed and analyzed. There were sessions on how the first spouse should raise money for the state mansion and how to manage a household staff. Well, Massachusetts has no governor’s residence, and Diane had no plans to assemble a staff of any kind.

Other spouses told Diane that her new responsibilities would force her to leave her job, but she explained that she thoroughly enjoyed her job. “Believe me, honey,” someone said, “within a year you won’t be working anymore.” At the very least, Diane was informed, she would need to hire a chief of staff to help with everything from scheduling to fielding the daily barrage of requests and inquiries that would now be part of her life to sending out Christmas cards.

Already shaky from the campaign, Diane had even more reason to feel overwhelmed. Several weeks later, she took the advice she had received from experienced spouses and hired a chief of staff. Amy Gorin, an old and trusted friend who had been the cochair of my campaign, had already traveled extensively with Diane and knew her well. Diane trusted her. The move seemed unexceptional—if the first lady of Guam had a chief of staff, why wouldn’t the first lady of Massachusetts?

If only it had been that simple. The next thing we
knew, Diane was getting pummeled by the press. She was cast as a spoiled brat, a high-paid lawyer who felt so entitled that she could use state money to get someone to write her letters. She felt she had no way to defend herself. That controversy came on the heels of the media’s scolding me for trying to furnish the office properly (when I arrived, the furniture consisted of a desk whose handles came off when you pulled them and a table with a broken leg; hardly suitable for projecting a positive image of the state, I thought) and for leasing a Cadillac (the same car nearly every governor east of the Mississippi drove; the Herald’s description of the car as “tricked-out” struck some people, including Diane, as racist).

I paid for the office furnishings and the car out of my own pocket. Diane let her chief of staff go and assumed all the responsibilities of first lady on her own. Grudgingly, the items left the news, but not before the media had a field day—“Coupe Deval” and “Together We Con.” It made me feel silly and even a little bitter at first. The worst was the condescension of the political hacks, who were reluctant to take me seriously on a good day and who treated my early gaffes as a reason not to deal with our substantive agenda.

Learning eventually to keep my guard up in political life, I rarely answered directly when asked if there were things about those early weeks I regretted. Of course I felt disappointed, angry, and even bitter, mainly at myself. But I had learned to channel those emotions into something
positive. That’s how I had put setbacks behind me in the past—by climbing the next mountain. So I set about trying to pursue the very goals that had motivated me to become governor in the first place. Even after I delivered on many of the big initiatives we had promised in the campaign and successfully steered state government through the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, the media could not resist recalling those early missteps. But I kept going, kept producing, remembering that at the end of the day, history will judge me not by the symbols of office but by the substance of our accomplishments and their impact on the lives of people.

Unfortunately, it was not so straightforward for Diane. For as long as I’ve known her, she has read the newspaper each morning before doing anything else. She craved the information to feel connected to the community and to the culture at large. The newspaper itself seemed to bring clarity and order to her world. It was once a healthy addiction, but now it was torture.

“Reading the paper,” she told me one day, “makes me nervous and weak. It feels like kryptonite.”

“Then stop reading the newspaper,” I said. “Do you think Superman seeks out kryptonite?” I thought it was that simple.

I had been consumed with the campaign and then with the immediate demands of my new job. I knew that expectations were high, that I would be held to a different standard, and I was eager to serve with class, thoughtfulness,
and professionalism, so I was busy poring over résumés to find outstanding appointees for the cabinet and trying to understand the intricacies of the state budget. I was conscientious about serving the people of Massachusetts, but I did not serve the most important person in my life. I didn’t realize how badly Diane was hurting. When our official photograph was taken as governor and first lady of Massachusetts, she wore a radiant red jacket but could barely muster a smile. She felt that she had lost control over her life and was spiraling into depression.

One night in early March of 2007, about nine weeks into my new job, I told Diane about an article that would appear the next day. The
Globe
would report about a call I had made to Citibank. I spoke as a character reference for the executives of a company on whose board I had once sat. It was innocent but dumb, and the insinuations were about to fly. Was I using my position as governor rather than my prior personal relationships to influence the bank? Did I stand to gain financially? Had I violated the state ethics rules? (I had not.) We turned off the lights, but Diane awoke after a fitful sleep. She nudged me awake and said she just couldn’t face another critical story. She began to cry and shake. When I asked her what was wrong, she said, “I just hate this. I hate this. This is what the next four years are going to be like.”

Her heart was racing, and her skin was cold and clammy. (Our daughters were away at school, so just the two of us were at home.) At first, I thought she was having
a heart attack. I couldn’t console her. She was in a panic and unraveling.

“I don’t want to get up,” she said. “I can’t do this anymore.”

Years earlier, she had seen a therapist in Boston, so I called her, and she suggested that I take Diane to the hospital. “Let’s admit her medically,” she said. She thought McLean Hospital, a psychiatric facility, was the right place for her, and she would meet us there. Diane wasn’t suicidal, but she needed to be away from this reality. I then spoke to Diane. “I want you to do this,” I said. “How do you feel about it?”

“Yes,” she said. “I just don’t feel right.”

A state trooper drove us to McLean, and on the 45-minute drive over, Diane held my hand and kept repeating, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“Please stop,” I told her. I was the one who was sorry.

McLean has a private entrance, but we still had to wait in a parking lot until the coast was clear. Once she was taken to an admissions room, I was asked to sit in the stairwell, out of sight, during the intake interview. She was finally admitted under a false name, “Jennifer Blake.” It was scary for her, surreal for me.

For the next several days, Diane rested and worked with her therapist, a truly caring and able woman who was our strongest advocate throughout Diane’s recovery. Her sister, Lynn, came up from Atlanta and spent time with her while I was at work. Diane took a battery of tests: IQ
tests, physical tests, stress tests. We then met to discuss the results. The doctors concluded that she was extremely smart but was obsessed with always doing the right thing perfectly, being perceived in the right light—and felt she would pay a huge price if she wasn’t. They helped her see that she had the strength and intelligence to overcome those insecurities, but she needed to understand her own limits. Medication was prescribed to help her rest, and with the help of her sister, her therapist, and others, she began to drill down to her own emotional core.

Her anger at the media had not dissipated, and she felt that she and I had been treated unfairly. While in the hospital, she read the National Governors Association website to learn what type of support other first ladies had. Some had drivers on their staffs; others had flower arrangers. The first lady of California had a $500,000 budget, two correspondence secretaries, a chief of staff, a driver, and a robust website. Diane had no staff, no budget, no state residence, nothing—but she had been humiliated for hiring one person to help her do the unpaid job of first lady. She wrote a sizzling letter to the
Globe
that conveyed her feelings of betrayal. She asked both me and her therapist to read it first, and we advised her not to send it. At this point, creating even more tension with the media was not going to improve her health. I told the McLean staff to stop delivering the
Globe
to Diane’s room. The kryptonite wasn’t helping.

Over dinner one night at the hospital, we got to talking
about the public life we were living. “You were proud that I won,” I said. “But you were hoping I’d lose.”