Silent Partner: A Memoir of My Marriage (18 page)

Every politician makes a myth of his own life story for public consumption, and Jim was no different. In fact, over the years I’d watched as he honed and shaped his myth. Just as Bill Clinton sold himself as “the man from Hope,” Jim’s myth—as a true son of the red, white, and blue New Jersey Irish working class—began with his namesake, Uncle Jim McGreevey, and the day Jim had learned that his uncle had died serving his country at Iwo Jima. As Jim told me the story, seeing the letter honoring his uncle had been a moment of transformation in which Jim, true heir to his uncle, picked up the mantle of public service, setting his destiny in motion. As for his Irish-American roots—that was a half-truth, since his maternal ancestry was English, not Irish. And finally there was the myth I understood least—the myth of his father—the marine drill instructor who ran a tight ship, demanding his son make a bed so tight that the quarter bounced off the sheets. Now and then, for reasons I’ve never understood, Jim liked to hint that his father’s instructions came at the end of a belt strap, but from everything I knew, Jim’s father was a kind and loving man, generous in his praise of his son. And he’d been long gone from the military during Jim’s New Jersey childhood. Actually, he was a traveling salesman, but that occupation didn’t really lend itself to the mythic.

And now, just weeks before Christmas, here was Jim, the governor-elect of New Jersey. Still intact in his mind was the conviction that he thought had helped him defeat Torricelli the year before—that the governor of a state needs not only a face but a family. We weren’t the Holy Family, but I’m sure it didn’t hurt that we were right on the cusp of the Christmas season. At the very least, at just the moment that his hidden infatuation with Golan was at a boil, we established Jim as a family man, and he was eager to present his wife and child to the public.

In the end, I was too uncertain about the demands of my new role
not
to agree to the press conference, and on December 8, one-day-old Jacqueline and I—First Baby–elect and First Lady–elect—were wheeled into a conference room at St. Peter’s where a crowd of journalists awaited us, cameras aloft, bulbs flashing. Jacqueline, who was characterized in later press reports as being the first young child of a New Jersey governor in thirty years, slept through the whole thing (probably the last time she was known to miss a photo op) while I sat by as Jim told reporters—in what was news to me—the most recent addition to the myth: that Jacqueline had been named after his father, Jack.

I spent the next few days learning to be a mother—handling such a small infant, feeling anxiety over her mild jaundice, and figuring out how to breast-feed. I had been told that she would probably be able to go home within the week, but Jacqueline was not gaining weight, and the pediatrician told me she now might have to stay even longer. I was not leaving that hospital without my baby. I hadn’t wanted to add formula, but I did want to take my daughter home, so late one afternoon we settled into a rocking chair in the NICU and I introduced Jacqueline to the bottle. She didn’t much like the bottle and liked the formula even less, but I said to her, “Listen, little one, we have to get you out of here, so drink.” On December 14, the McGreevey family went home.

12. FIRST LADY, SECOND WIFE

I HAD READ EVERYTHING
I could get my hands on to prepare myself for Jacqueline’s arrival, but I didn’t have a clue about how to get ready for the role of First Lady. There was no
What to Expect When Your Husband Is Elected
, no
T. Berry Brazelton for First Ladies
, and there was no one around to tell me the rules. Just as well, because apparently there weren’t any. But that would all have to wait. I didn’t have the time, or the energy, to figure it out—especially not when I was also trying to figure out how to be a mother.

We were driven home to Woodbridge by a state trooper. Jim and I were sitting on each side of Jacqueline, who was in her car seat. In the front next to the trooper was Jason Kirin, Jim’s traveling assistant, who was overflowing with pressing questions for Jim. Nevertheless, I noted happily that Jacqueline was more than a match for Jason, as she tightly gripped Jim’s thumb with her tiny pink fingers, prompting him to lean down more than once to kiss her forehead.

When we arrived home, Jim carefully lifted Jacqueline out of her car seat and shepherded us both inside. I’d been gone for more than a month, and Jim was notoriously blind to disorder and clutter, so I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. But I needn’t have worried. Knowing that neatness and cleanliness were important to me, he had taken pains to make the house presentable.

“What do you think?” he asked. “Pretty clean, isn’t it?”

“Looks great,” I said, relieved and also touched at the effort he’d gone to on my behalf. “I’m really glad to be home.” He helped me off with my coat and placed Jacqueline in her bassinet, wrapping her tightly in her blanket, the way she seemed to like it. My close friend Freddie, who had driven me to the hospital when I went into labor, was already at the town house when we arrived. Freddie was going to stay over to help me because I was still so weak I could barely walk. My mother would be coming over later.

Home always feels a little strange to me when I’ve been gone for a while—and in fact everything
was
different now, very different—so I was grateful to finally begin the process of settling in, to sit around with nothing more to do for the next few hours than just be a family at home. This was the first moment when Jim, Jacqueline, and I were home together as a family, and I was looking forward to settling into the afternoon, to finding our rhythm. Jason and the trooper had followed Jim in, and I was hopeful that they’d be leaving soon, which they did. But after half an hour, Jim stood up.

“Well,” he said, “I have to go to a meeting now.” I could
hear
his gears shifting.

“A meeting?” I was incredulous. “We just brought our brand-new baby home, and you’re leaving?” Was this what it was going to be like from now on?

“I’m governor now,” he said, a phrase I would hear hundreds of times in the next two and a half years. “There’s so much I have to do—a staff to assemble, a cabinet to put in place, an inaugural to plan,” he said.

I must have looked as if someone had just slapped me. I guess Jim noticed, because he softened a bit.

“I’ll try to be home as early as I can. Really, I don’t think this will take too long.”

“Why do you have to do it now?” I asked.

“If not now, when?” he said. “We’re a month away from my swearing-in.” There was no point in arguing. Jim was going to do what he was going to do. But that moment stayed with me. It wasn’t dramatic or explosive, just one of those small, telling episodes that, paradoxically, really
doesn’t
tell you what it means, at least not right away.

As I see it now, I’d been waiting for this homecoming, yearning for it, since we’d begun dating in 1996. Like many men, Jim had never participated in the life of our household at all, and I’d made my adjustments to that. When I first moved in, there was a hole in the dining room ceiling, a leak in the bathroom, soot in the chimney, and canned food in the cabinets that had been there since before Clinton was president. I took care of all of it, with the help of my father and friends. I was Snow White, and Jim was all seven of the dwarfs. But I hadn’t really minded. In a way, we had been weekend nomads, most at home on the campaign trail.

But it was different now—for me, and I hoped for Jim as well. Even though we would be moving to Drumthwacket sometime in the next several months, for the present I needed this house to be
home,
especially after six weeks in the hospital that began less than two months after 9/11. Many people I knew, especially those of us who had once seen the Twin Towers daily as part of a familiar skyscape, were still recovering; we needed to be able to retreat into a sheltering home and a welcoming family. At the same time, we had to get on with the rest of our lives, our
new
lives. Now that we’d brought our hardy little daughter safely into the world, I wanted—and Jim should have wanted—time to consolidate, to take pleasure in her and in us, to come together as a family in our home. For years, he’d been running for office, and now, in my first hour on the outside with him, he was still running. And he was exhausted. I could see that. With all his secrets, how could he not have been?

FOR BETTER OR WORSE,
all marriages have their chapters. In hindsight, our homecoming and Jim’s instant departure marked the beginning of a new chapter for us, though not so much in terms of external events, which were all so exciting that they served to mask a feeling of disillusionment I didn’t recognize until much later. During the years of campaigning, I’d found Jim elusive, maybe even evasive, but I’d never admitted it to myself and had chalked it up to the campaign; and that had worked pretty well to keep any discontent at bay. Now the campaign was over, and so my disappointment and diminished expectations took root, waiting for me to feel them whenever I got around to it. I tried not to get around to it.

Christmas was days away, but there was no sign of it in the house. I wasn’t up to decorating, and Jim didn’t care. Before we were married, he hadn’t had a Christmas tree in the house since Kari and Morag had left in 1994. Thankfully, my friends went out and got a tree and decorated it. I was happy to have visible signs of the holiday. I had bought decorations the previous year—an angel for the treetop and some ornaments—and we’d gotten a bunch more ornaments as gifts for Jacqueline. One I still love says “First Christmas.”

On Christmas Eve, Jim and I exchanged gifts. Thinking of a winter inaugural parade three weeks away, I got Jim a navy blue cashmere coat. For me, Jim got a 14-karat-gold charm bracelet with two charms—a Santa Claus and little golden booties engraved with Jacqueline’s initials, JMM, and her date of birth, 12-7-01. I still wear it during the Christmas season.

A few days later, Jim stayed put for the afternoon because the three of us were the subjects of a photo shoot. Our photographer friend, Jerry Casciano (who later became the governor’s official photographer), came over to photograph the new baby and the new “First Family.” These were the official photos the governor’s communications office would now start providing to the press. For variety, each of us, including Jacqueline, appeared in two different outfits. I finally got to wear the red maternity dress I had planned to wear on Election Day. Jacqueline was so tiny that Jerry had difficulty photographing her other than in the turkey-just-out-of-the-oven position. Finally we propped her up against a number of pillows so Jerry could get a decent shot of her.

The following week, I was scheduled—finally!—to visit the residential floors of Drumthwacket, where we expected to live for the next four years, and maybe even eight. I didn’t know what that part of the mansion looked like or what furnishings I’d have to buy. I didn’t know which rooms would have to be painted or which floors would have to be sanded. The only thing I knew was that Drumthwacket was Scottish for “wooded hill” and that the house itself was in the Greek Revival style.

Construction on Drumthwacket had begun in 1835 by Charles Smith Olden, who became governor in 1860. Later his widow sold it, and it hadn’t returned to its stature as the official governor’s mansion until the 1960s, when it was purchased by the state of New Jersey. It lay unrestored until the early 1980s, and since then only one governor—James Florio—had actually lived in it. He’d left office eight years earlier, and his successor, Christie Whitman, had preferred to live in her home in Oldwyck and commute to the statehouse in Trenton. For Jim, living in a two-bedroom town house in Woodbridge an hour and a half away from Trenton was going to be untenable, so we had to move.
How bad can this place be?
I wondered.
It’s the governor’s mansion.

The mansion was under the auspices of the Division of Parks and Forestry, within the Department of Environmental Protection, so its director, with Diane DiFrancesco, the wife of Acting Governor Donald DiFrancesco, and a few other staffers were there to meet me and give me a tour.

As we walked up the steps to the residence, Diane turned to me. “You’re going to hate living here,” she said.

If she only knew.

It wasn’t quite the Addams Family mansion, but it was dismal, faintly shabby, and down-at-the-heels—not what I expected a governor’s mansion to look like. There were forty-two windows in the residence, and given that the house was more than 150 years old, I wondered about the presence of lead paint, since it hadn’t been banned until 1977. The walls had likely been painted several times in the subsequent quarter century and thus were likely to pose no problem, but the windowsills had undoubtedly been painted less frequently, and while lead paint hadn’t been used on the top coat, the chipping of the windowsills would expose it.

“This house was built in the 1830s,” I said. “Has it ever been tested for the presence of lead paint?”

“Good question,” said the director. “I’ll look into it.”

That evening, Jim arrived home and asked me about my tour. “So how’d it go? What did you think of the place?”

“There’s lots of potential. First big question is where Jacqueline will sleep. There are two bedrooms in addition to ours on the second floor, but they’re too far away for a nursery. We’d never hear her cry.”

“So where will she sleep?”

“There are two options—an exercise room and our dressing room. I think the exercise room would be perfect. It’s right down the hall and a little bit larger than the dressing room. But there’s a possibility of lead paint, especially on the windows.”

“I never would have thought of that,” he said.

“But, you know, we just can’t live there in its current condition, especially with a baby,” I said. “It’s not just the windows—it’s the dirty rugs, the rusted stove top, the old refrigerator. Nobody’s really lived there in eight years. The place is awful.”