Silent Partner: A Memoir of My Marriage (39 page)

Jacqueline was a happy three-year-old that day, but it was a respite for both of us, not really an arrival, a moment of light in a dark and difficult winter.

THIS WAS INDEED A
period of adjustment—for Jacqueline and for me. And Jim didn’t make it any easier for us. He continued to plead poverty, despite the fact that he managed to afford a leisurely stay at the Meadows, a high-priced celebrity rehab center in Arizona, whose previous clientele included supermodels Kate Moss and Amber Valletta. Meanwhile he was often as absent emotionally as he was financially. Though he would regularly call Jacqueline on the phone, weeks would go by when he didn’t see her at all. When he did, usually at my parents’ house while I was at work, he’d be in and out in minutes.

I found out about Jim’s retreat to rehab in the desert in a roundabout way, when he dropped Jacqueline off after a visit early in the new year. “Listen,” he said, when she was out of earshot for a moment, “I’m going to be going away for a few weeks to figure things out.”

He didn’t tell me where he was going. A vacation to the Caribbean? A soup kitchen in Chicago? I didn’t learn anything more until one day I came home to find a FedEx envelope in my mailbox containing a questionnaire asking me what I thought Jim’s “issues” were, how I would characterize his interactions with his family of origin, and what I thought had brought him into treatment.

Didn’t these people read the papers?

Also enclosed was a letter from his counselor at the Meadows asking me to fly out to Arizona and participate in “Family Week.” A third sheet listed “desert lodging fees,” visitation rules, and the cost of meals and airfare. How I was supposed to pay for all this was beyond me. Had a similar envelope been sent to Jim’s parents? If so, were they going? I had no idea. I filled out the questionnaire, because I wanted to help him come to terms with his demons. Subsequently the counselor called, asking if I’d be attending. I said no. I didn’t offer any explanation. Jim would have to continue his personal path to healing without me.

After his return from the center, Jim never mentioned the invitation or my absence, nor did he discuss what had happened there, but he said he felt better about himself. I’ve since learned from mutual friends that Jim’s major “problem,” as he saw it, was his need for approval, his need to be loved above all else; and since securing the love and approval of others was at odds with his authenticity, then it was his authenticity he abandoned. Change is a slow process, but when Jim returned, he still seemed lost to me. Sad and lost.

As for me, I wish I could have had some more therapy myself. I’d spoken to a therapist a few times, not only on the day of Jim’s resignation but a few times subsequently, seeing her in her office in Manhattan. When I could barely put one syllable after another, it was such a relief to spill it all out to someone who was willing just to listen. I couldn’t talk this way with my family, because I knew it would upset them too much. Still, for reasons of time and money, I had to stop.

SINCE WE’VE MOVED TO
our home in the New Jersey suburbs, we’ve continued to make our adjustments. Jim himself remains the most difficult element in my life. Nevertheless, we share a love for our beautiful daughter, and that will keep him in my life forever. Still, I don’t know if I can ever fully trust him, or if I will ever really know who he is. His deep-seated need for approval unfortunately does not extend to me, and his grasp on truth seems to be tenuous—as I thought when I saw, on the jacket of his book, his claim that Jacqueline lived with him and his partner.

Not true then and not true now.

Jim remains a man of secrets, keeping from me information I need to know, especially with regard to Jacqueline. All too often, she becomes the source of information he should tell me but doesn’t. One Friday, he picked her up from home. I called his cell phone later that evening, just to see how she was doing, but there was no answer. Since I know that Jim often doesn’t answer the phone when his caller ID tells him it’s me, I let it go. The following morning, at nine thirty or so, when I thought Jacqueline would be awake, I called again. Again there was no answer. Jim didn’t return either call, but later that morning when I called for a third time, he answered, and after we greeted one another, not warmly but at least civilly—he handed the phone to Jacqueline.

Yes, she was fine, and yes, she’d had breakfast. We had a little chat, and I asked her all the usual questions: Had she brushed her teeth? Was she having fun? What were she and Daddy going to do today? Jacqueline sounded a little excited and very happy, but when she told me that not only was she going on a tour (she didn’t know what kind) but that she’d stayed the night at a hotel (she didn’t know where), I panicked. My heart was pounding, but I tried to stay calm—as calm as possible.

“Jacqueline, honey . . . um, where are you?”

A murmur of voices, and then something about Washington.

As soon as I could without its seeming too sudden, I asked Jacqueline to put Daddy back on the phone.

“Hi,” said Jim when he came back on the phone.

“You took her to Washington, and you didn’t tell me?”

“What’s the problem?”

“What do you mean, ‘What’s the problem?’ If you’re taking her out of state, you have to tell me.”

“You don’t tell me where you take her all the time.”

“Well, I don’t take her out of the state!”

“It’s not a big deal. Why are you getting so upset? Besides, we’re coming back today.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Look, she’s having a good time. I took her to the Washington Monument and to the Capitol.”

I cut the conversation short so that Jacqueline wouldn’t hear any more of the dissension between us. The following day, when I read the
Star-Ledger
, I learned why Jim was in Washington. It was the weekend of BookExpo, and since Jim’s book was scheduled to come out three months hence, he’d gone there with his partner and his editor to hawk an excerpt and sign autographs.

Jacqueline’s precocity is such that much of what I know about Jim and his life, I learned from her. When Jim started spending weekends with his partner, Mark, the news came my way from Jacqueline. First I heard about Daddy’s “friend.” Then it was Daddy’s “partner.” When he gave up his apartment in Rahway and moved with his partner to Manhattan, Jacqueline was my original source as well. The first weekend Jacqueline spent in Manhattan, I didn’t quite get the picture, so I asked Jim why he and Jacqueline had spent the weekend there. All he said was, “I’m there now.” He has never mentioned his new home, just as he’s never mentioned his new partner or his book.

Like any child in her position, Jacqueline has lobbied ingeniously to restore a marriage whose end she still cannot easily bear and certainly doesn’t understand. “Mommy, will you marry Daddy again?” she’s asked me more than once.

“I can’t marry Daddy again,” I tell her.

“But why?” she always asks.

I give her the stock answers divorced parents always give. Just yesterday, we were talking, and I said, “You know you’re the most important person in the world to me.”

“Yeah, I know I’m number one, and Daddy’s number two, and Meagan and Nicky are number three, and Vóvó and Vôvô are number four.”

I should have let it go, but instead I said, “No, Meagan and Nicky are number two.”

“No, Daddy is,” she said.

I changed the subject—or tried to. But it took me a while, as Jacqueline continued to lobby on behalf of her father.

Some days, she is at once so old and so young that I could cry. One day, she came back from an outing with her cousins.

“Mommy,” she said, “we went on a ride and we passed the beach house. But you know what?”

“What?”

“There’s a gate in front of it now.” She started to cry.

“A gate?” I had heard that Jon Corzine was renovating the beach house now that he was New Jersey’s governor. Maybe he’d installed a gate?

“OK,” I said. “But why is the gate making you cry?”

She looked at me as if I were unspeakably obtuse. “With the gate there, how will we ever get in?”

JUST AS JACQUELINE IS
trying to make her way with the help of those who love her, I am trying to make my way too, not only with the help of those who love me but with the help of God. As a Roman Catholic, I have always practiced my faith with prayer and attendance at weekly mass, but over the last two years my faith has grown and my spiritual practices have deepened. Otherwise I could not have survived. Faith, or at least my faith, is not passive. Americans believe in self-help, and it informs everything we do, from faith to therapy to fitness. In my hours—and months and years—of need, I have found that a group of contemporary spiritual writers speak to me, among them Wayne Dyer and Rick Warren. Dyer especially has helped me with his conviction that when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

When my life fell to pieces two years ago, the shock to my system was so profound that my body couldn’t even manage it, which is how I now understand the panic attacks that made me fear I was dying. But now I am training myself through my spiritual practices not only in the way I look at my experience but even in what I look at. I try every day to remember and make real that what I focus on is my choice. I know that a higher power exists and that if I can tap into that power, God’s power, God will help me get through my struggles.

Thankfully, I am now able to shift not just how I’m thinking, but what I’m thinking. One afternoon, I cleared my calendar, and Jacqueline and I went into Manhattan with Samantha, her American Girl doll, to the American Girl Café on Fifth Avenue. We met a friend of mine there and had tea. Afterward we got matching pink robes for Jacqueline and Samantha. At the end of the afternoon, nothing new had developed in relation to my problems, but somehow, amid all that pink and all those hopeful little girls, my concerns seemed more manageable, less overwhelming to me. I know that I’m a stronger person now than I’ve ever been or thought I could ever be.

What remains is to speak of work and love. As of today, I’m still employed at the same Newark hospital I worked at when I was First Lady, in part because its familiarity has been soothing and stabilizing. Had I lost my home, my husband, and my job, I’m not sure I could have survived. When I was First Lady, people would ask me why I was working in a hospital in Newark—not a major medical center, but a small community hospital that is the primary health-care provider for a large percentage of the Newark-area population. Those who rely on our hospital, routinely using its ER for non-emergency health issues, are generally the neediest members of the community.

My answer, then and now, is that everyone—and especially uninsured families in urban areas—is entitled to quality health care. As a fund-raiser for the hospital, I’m doing my part to make sure everyone gets that care. My volunteer work remains important to me as well, especially for the March of Dimes, because prematurity is still a problem, and for the Cancer Institute of New Jersey—not only because my father is a patient there but also because New Jersey ranks at the top in the nation in the incidence of cancer. Whenever I attend an event or talk to people who are served by either of these two organizations, I realize that there are many people whose circumstances are much more dire than mine. I know that there are others who have to bear more than I did, and if I can help them or someone in their same circumstances in any way, I feel a sense of satisfaction and forget my problems, at least momentarily.

As Jacqueline gets older, I will be able to consider other job offers, but I know that whatever I choose to do, it will involve helping people. If there is a Guinness World Record, or at least a Guinness New Jersey Record, for the longest time needed to obtain a divorce, Jim and I should surely be under consideration. As of the beginning of 2007, our divorce is in sight but not in hand. I’ll just leave it at that. I am not yet unencumbered emotionally. I am still dealing with my anger and pain. Recently a friend mused that it would be great if I could end this account of my life on a note of forgiveness. “It would be great,” I told her. “And I want to be able to forgive, but I’m just not there yet.”

As to love? I’m not there yet either. Despite an amusing tabloid headline in a New Jersey newspaper announcing that I was seen “nuzzling” John Whitmire, a Texas legislator whom I’m allegedly dating, there is, as usual, no truth to the rumor. In the last two and a half years, I’ve had a few dates, but nothing sustained or serious. I’m not sure if I haven’t yet met the right person, or if I’m not yet prepared to meet the right person. And then there may be those who are reluctant to approach me because they’re not sure that I’m ready. The question is not am I capable of loving again, but am I capable of trusting again, enough to allow myself to love?

And perhaps what I most need to reckon with is not whether someone else is trustworthy but whether my own judgment is trustworthy. My confidence in my own judgment is what Jim has most seriously damaged, and it’s occurred to me that there may be a need for some more therapy in my future to repair that confidence.

I am forty now, and curious as to what this decade will bring, in work and love and spirit. The absence of pain is still so novel as to be an almost-palpable pleasure, like the silence after the vibrating furor of a jackhammer stops. I have yet to unpack the last box, the heat in my house is sometimes balky, and I still have a bare bulb over my dining room table, but my house has now become my home, as I furnish it and warm it with memories of good times with family and friends seated under that bulb around the table. For a while, I thought my sense of humor was still packed away, maybe even missing, but it’s returned—with a vengeance, you might say. Out in the world, I can now reasonably estimate a mileage allowance for my car lease, and Jacqueline has made her adjustments to sitting in her car seat in the back without me. In my travels here and there, I’ve met a man or two worthy of a mild crush, a practice crush, a bit of flirtation. And I once again see small things I’d previously been too numb to notice or take pleasure in. Last summer, I saw the cautious approach and quick retreat of a tiny wave on the beach, a little shell in the sand waiting to be found, and, back at home, as I looked out my kitchen window, I noticed a trio of doves making their way up my front walkway, heading in the direction of my front door. They don’t know that they’re said to be harbingers of peace and of love. But I do.