Silent Partner: A Memoir of My Marriage (13 page)

I had some morning sickness, but not anything a few crackers couldn’t combat. Before long, I also stopped having the olfactory sensitivity of a basset hound and once again resumed diplomatic relations with raw eggs and broccoli. But while I felt fine, there was a complication early on, predicting what was to come. When I went to Dr. Ayers for my appointment at the end of the second month, my blood-test numbers were awry. She asked that I come back to the medical center in New Brunswick within forty-eight hours to have blood drawn again—Mother’s Day, as it turned out. Afterward Jim and I went to mass at a local Roman Catholic church, where the priest blessed all mothers. For the first time, I felt included in their ranks, ready to face the awesome responsibility of raising a child, desperately hoping I would have the opportunity. I also prayed for normal test results, an uneventful pregnancy, and, more than anything, a healthy baby. After the priest blessed the mothers present, Jim turned to me and said, “Happy Mother’s Day.” It was a special and powerful moment, not only because the father of our child was the first person ever to acknowledge me as a mother but because I realized that he really was delighted we’d be having a baby. The fact that he was now so happy made
me
happy—and suggested that he would be as devoted to our child as he always tried to be to Morag. I couldn’t throw my arms around him in church, but I smiled and squeezed his hand tightly. He squeezed back.

For the next day or two, my heart jumped every time the phone rang, but usually it was Jim calling to find out if I’d heard anything. Finally the test results did come in, and they were fine. But Jim remained worried at what we might not yet know and suggested that we should go for genetic testing, amniocentesis, and counseling. I agreed. I would be thirty-five by the time the baby was born, and I knew that after age thirty-five a woman runs a greater risk of pregnancy complications, as well as of having a child with birth defects. Jim accompanied me the day I was having amniocentesis.

Jim and I were both practicing Catholics, but, as I’ve said, we both also believed that it’s up to a woman to decide whether she wants to proceed with her pregnancy. We never talked about termination, because our overall feeling was that we weren’t going to end this pregnancy, but if there were a problem in our child, at least we would have time to prepare ourselves. If I’d been told that the child would suffer enormously or die very prematurely . . . well, who knows what we might have considered? But that was one of those what-if questions I prayed we would never have to face.

Once we were in the doctor’s office for my amniocentesis, everything went without incident. The same day as the amnio, I also had an ultrasound, and the doctor asked us if we wanted to know what the sex was. We each reacted in character: I hesitated, while Jim, without a moment’s pause, said, “Yes, we do want to know.”

“Wait,” I said, “let me think about it a bit.”

“What’s there to think about? This way we can plan.”

What could I say? I really couldn’t fight city hall. “OK,” I said, “tell us.”

“You’re having a girl!” said the doctor. “Congratulations!”

Jim’s face lit up. He was beaming with excitement. He kissed me. “Isn’t this exciting?” Jim said. “A little girl!” I said, “Yes, it is exciting.” But I was a step or two behind him. For whatever reason, I had been convinced that the child I was carrying was a boy. The doctor told me to go home and take it easy, and at least that day I followed those instructions. Later, when the results of the amniocentesis came in, we learned that the fetus was healthy and developing normally, so we relaxed a bit.

After that, despite the fact that I was on the brink of my third trimester, I became even more engaged in the campaign. I attended as many events as possible, both with Jim and on my own. In addition to campaigning for him, I was also asked to, and did, campaign on behalf of other Democratic candidates who were on the slate with Jim. Jim was at the top of the ticket, but the more recognizable its other members were, the more they too could bring in votes.

IT WAS LATE JUNE
when we learned that Bret Schundler, the mayor of Jersey City, had won the Republican primary (defeating the party’s handpicked candidate) and would therefore be Jim’s opponent. He was brash and outspoken, a pit bull of a man with an appetite for personal attack that he seemed unable to muzzle. Jim thought of himself as pretty thick-skinned, so he wasn’t worried about Schundler in that regard. Besides, there was every possibility Schundler would shoot himself in the foot before Election Day.

Jim was also happy that he was running against someone further to the right than most New Jerseyans on key issues such as gun control, school vouchers, and a woman’s right to choose. True, a Republican, Christie Whitman, had won the last two gubernatorial elections, the last against Jim in 1997, but most residents of the state, when they’re not in a state of revolt, have historically been moderate and likely to vote Democrat. The voters’ repudiation of Jim Florio in 1993 had been seen as a statement of indignation by citizens about New Jersey’s out-of-control property and sales taxes more than a broader repudiation.

All along, the polls had shown that Jim was ahead of Schundler, though as we moved past Labor Day into the last stretch of the campaign, Jim, who’d acquired the nickname “Robocandidate” in his first bid for governor, wasn’t slowing down a bit. Plus, there were several live debates with Schundler to prepare for. Jim was being prepped for them by the wife of a politician who had once run against Jim and knew Schundler’s record, as well as how he was likely to handle himself during a debate. And that’s where we were when the sun went down at the end of the day on September 10, 2001.

8. THE FALL

WHATEVER SEPTEMBER 11, 2001,
became or will become in our national story, it was an astoundingly beautiful day—a day so crisp and clear it allowed you to make peace with the coming fall. Kids were back at school and their parents back at work. I remember it as if it were yesterday. Don’t we all? Jim had gone off that morning for a full day of campaigning, and I was still at home. Though I was well along in my pregnancy, I was feeling fine, not yet like the beached whale I was shortly to become.

That morning, I was watching
Good Morning America
—as usual—while I prepared to leave. Suddenly the station broke for a special report: A plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. The reporter’s voice was grave. The screen showed smoke billowing out of the tower. I stood there, frozen by the image, aghast at what I imagined to be the carelessness of a private pilot who had somehow made a wrong turn.

I watched for several minutes before shutting off the TV and heading to work. I was unaware that the world had changed, unaware that, driving north to my job in Newark, I was heading closer to what would shortly be known as Ground Zero. I had the radio on and was listening to WCBS Newsradio 880 when a caller reported that he had just seen a plane hit one of the towers. The newscaster thought he was getting an account of the crash that had already happened, but almost immediately he understood that a second plane had struck the towers. And then, for the first time, I heard the phrase “terrorist attack.”

Once I arrived at work, I and many of my co-workers gathered in front of the television in the doctors’ lounge, riveted to what was happening onscreen. Nobody could believe it when the South Tower came down in a monumental swoon, followed by the North Tower twenty-nine minutes later. Meanwhile I had called Jim on his cell phone—several times, in fact—but had reached only his voice mail. I knew he hadn’t planned on going into Manhattan, but still . . .

It was unbearable feeling so helpless. I tried Jim again, and again no answer. My fear was mounting. Maybe he’d gone into New York after all, for a meeting with a supporter, or maybe he’d gone to a fund-raiser? I contacted my parents and brothers, and they were OK, thank God, but I was worried about Jim. As I wondered what to do next, the hospital’s loudspeaker broadcast an announcement: “Code One, Code One.” It was official. We were now in disaster mode. Four or five department directors hurried past my door to the Command Center, which was just two doors down from my office. Walkie-talkies in hand, they were preparing for communications with emergency personnel. Columbus Hospital was only a dozen miles from the World Trade Center, and we were expecting a huge influx of victims. But first we waited. The focused quiet of anticipation was palpable as medical personnel readied themselves for the grueling hours they thought awaited them. As time passed, however, the quiet grew flat and deflated. Not a single ambulance had approached the entrance of our ER. Slowly we began to face the grim realization that just a few miles away, thousands of people were likely dead.

A little after 11:00
A.M.,
Jim called me back, safe in South Jersey, where he’d been at a breakfast meeting. Like many, he had first imagined that a small plane had accidentally hit one of the towers, and he’d then gone ahead with his plans for the morning. But once he knew the extent of the attack, he presumed that there were probably Woodbridge citizens who wouldn’t be coming home, and he went into mayor mode. “I’m headed back to my office,” he told me.

At the hospital, hours passed, and we grew more certain—and devastated—that thousands were dead. There was nothing to be done, but the helplessness of doing nothing was intolerable, so my assistant and I decided to buy white ribbons to give out to the staff as we had done during the Gulf War. Incongruous as it seemed, we headed to a party store in a neighboring town. There had been no visible signs of the tragedy at the hospital—there were too many tall buildings in a region that was more or less a valley—but the party store was located in a shopping center on a hill, fifteen miles or so northwest of where the towers had stood. From the top of that hill, before someone driving east would head downhill again, the towers—the whole New York skyline, in fact—had always been visible. Now as we approached the mall, all we could see was a dark cloud of smoke coming from where the towers had been. That smoke claimed the sky and darkened that beautiful day. Seeing it on TV was one thing. This was quite another. It was sobering and unimaginable.

Late in the afternoon, I returned home and waited for Jim. He was home at about dinnertime that day, unusually early for him.

He’d been at the mayor’s office as well as at his campaign headquarters, where he too could see the smoke-filled Manhattan skyline. “We’re lucky to be home safe and know that our families are all safe and sound,” he said. He told me he’d decided to suspend his campaign for a few days.

“That’s the right thing to do,” I said.

Meanwhile the facts of death were everywhere. Everyone knew, or knew of, someone who had died. Each day when I came into my office, I pulled out faxes with photographs and descriptions of people who were missing. These were their families’ desperate attempts to find their loved ones alive—hoping against hope that they were lying in a hospital bed rather than incinerated under tons of rubble.

All told, 2,973 people had died that day.

And 674 of them were from New Jersey.

I ATTENDED ONE OF
the first funerals of a 9/11 victim at the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark. His name was Tony Rocha, and he was a friend of Celia’s, my matron of honor. Tony was thirty-four, the father of two small children, one an infant. He had also been a bond trader at Cantor Fitzgerald, a job to which he had commuted a mere two dozen miles from his home in East Hanover. Tony’s body was one of the first to be recovered, and so his was one of the first funerals. But at the cathedral, as the throngs of mourners entered, news vans and crews swirled around the family, not always at a respectful distance. I wondered how the family tolerated it. I was appalled at the disruptive swarm during such a painful and private moment and relieved that the crews were not permitted to enter the cathedral. And yet I also realized that it was a very public moment, as if the whole country were part of the congregation. The media had a responsibility to be there, to help ensure that this was a shared national moment, that those who died did not die in obscurity.

As the weeks passed, I thought about what might await Jim if he were to become governor. I had never thought political leadership was something to be assumed casually, but 9/11 made me think gravely about the position Jim was so avidly pursuing. We were all more vulnerable now, and therefore we would need real leaders, people of vision and stature. I felt that Jim was capable of such leadership, but as his wife, and the mother of the child we would soon have, I was fearful of what the costs of that leadership might mean for our family.

During this period, the phrase “homeland security” entered the public parlance, and the structure of government—federal, state, and local—would soon be altered to accommodate this new and crucial priority. Becoming the governor of a state had to be about more than personal ambition, more than just the next step after being the mayor of Woodbridge.

Jim went to visit Ground Zero a few days after the attack, somehow getting there and back without the press knowing. At that point, the fires were still burning, and the smoke still hung acrid in the air. There was not a single square inch untouched by the devastation. There were photographs of missing loved ones, swarms of weary firefighters, piles of bent and twisted girders. Jim came home that day sobered and sooty.

“It was like nothing I’ve ever seen before, not even in the movies,” he said.

When I asked him to tell me more, he just shook his head.

“I don’t even want to talk about it. But the smell was unbearable,” he said. “You can’t imagine the smell.”

I
could
imagine the smell; but I didn’t even really need to. He’d brought it all the way back with him on the blackened soles of his boots.