Silent Partner: A Memoir of My Marriage (7 page)

“Thursday?” he asked.

“Sorry, I’m booked.”

“The following Tuesday?”

“Um, I have appointments I can’t get out of.”

“How about the next Wednesday?”

“Afraid that’s not good either.”

I seemed so busy you would have thought
I
was the one running for governor.

“Well, how about the evening of November third?”

“That’s a Sunday,” I said.

“Well, that’s OK.”

The scheduler had caught me off guard.

“Uh. OK.”

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER
3, 1996, was a bitterly cold day, and I remember it because I spent most of it in Union, New Jersey, shivering for several hours at an outdoor rally, waiting to see Bill Clinton, then two days away from being elected to his second term. This would be the third presidential election I’d be voting in and the second time I’d vote for Clinton. President Clinton arrived at the rally very late, and by the time I left to get ready for my whatever-it-was with Jim, I was chilled to the bone. All I really wanted to do was take a hot bath and crawl into bed. When I got home, though, there was a message from Jim on my answering machine. He was sorry, but he would have to reschedule. Political gridlock. Jim had been at the Clinton rally too, but since the president was late in arriving, Jim was late in leaving for his next meeting. I was relieved. But how, I wondered, had Jim McGreevey gotten my unlisted phone number? I hadn’t given it to him.

The following day Manny called. “How’d your date go?”

Mystery solved.

“It wasn’t a date,” I said. “And besides, it didn’t happen.”

Jim’s scheduler also called me within a few days to reschedule for Thursday of that week, the day before I was to leave on my cruise. I still thought it was weird that Jim had a scheduler for what I now suspected might be a personal meeting, but—shrug—whatever. We met at seven o’clock, just blocks from where I’d grown up, at Iberia, a well-known Portuguese restaurant in the Ironbound section of Newark. Conversation came easily. We talked about ourselves and our lives.

Many men on a first date seem to think they’re required to deliver a monologue—a long monologue, covering everything from their astoundingly high grade-point average to their amazingly low cholesterol count. But Jim wasn’t that way. He seemed genuinely interested in me and what I was doing. He wanted to know about my new job at the hospital and why I’d left my old job. He wanted to know about the trip I was set to take.

I was disarmed by his interest, but I wasn’t quite sure of my footing. I was interested in him, I now realized, but I didn’t want to be if he wasn’t going to reciprocate. At the same time, I didn’t want to ask him where he stood with his marriage, because then he might
know
I was interested.

The conversation between us, however, never faltered, and I found myself feeling more and more comfortable. Two hours into dinner, I knew that this really was a date after all. After dinner at Iberia, neither of us wanted to end the evening, so we decided to go for a stroll on Ferry Street, even though by then it was 10:30, and I had to leave my house at 7:00
A.M.
to get to the airport. We’d been walking about half an hour, when it began to rain. I was wearing a suit, but without a coat over it. Jim was wearing only a suit, but he took off his suit jacket and draped it over my shoulders. If there was a single moment that was a bridge to all the moments to come, this was it.

Still not ready to end the evening, we stopped in at the Riviera Café for coffee. By 11:30, we were among the last customers there. I didn’t want to go, but I had to. I hadn’t even begun to pack.

Jim gave me a hug and a quick kiss on the lips. “Pack me in your suitcase?” he said.

I THOUGHT ABOUT JIM
on the trip. I remained hesitant because, aside from what I’d heard from Manny, I still didn’t know where Jim stood in relation to his marriage. Was it over? Was he still trying to get his wife to come back? I wondered what was going to happen when I returned. I didn’t have any grand outcome in mind, but I was open to seeing what might develop. The day I returned from the cruise, I began to wonder when I would hear from him, and even if. But I had a fund-raiser to go to, and that’s what I focused on. When I got there, Manny was already there. “Your boyfriend’s coming,” he said. “I’m saving him a seat next to you.”

Jim walked in soon after. What can I say? We talked. We caught up. We were glad to see each other. That’s what I thought then, and that’s what I think now. My plan was to leave at 10:00
P.M.,
because I was tired and was scheduled to work at a voter-registration drive the next morning. As I stood up to put on my coat, preparing somewhat regretfully to go, Jim stood up too.

“Give me a ride home to Woodbridge?” he asked, smiling.

“No driver tonight?”

“No,” said Jim. “Once I got here, I told him he could go.” He looked pleased and mildly abashed at having revealed his strategy.

“Sure,” I said. “I can give you a lift.”

When we reached his town house, Jim invited me in. I guessed I wasn’t so tired after all. My first impression, as he turned on a table lamp, was that the décor showed a woman’s touch. The two couches were upholstered in peach and off-white stripes, with matching peach curtains. The rest was . . . well, eclectic. The pink porcelain lamp he’d just turned on was one of a pair that had come from his grandmother’s house, I later learned. In the dining room was a black lacquer table and chairs and a tall, narrow, dark wooden bookcase posing as a china closet, which had also been his grandmother’s.

Overall the effect wasn’t exactly warm and cozy, but it was comfortable. In the living room was an inviting corner fireplace, which didn’t seem to have been used in a while. But all the equipment was there, and from what I could tell, someone might well be able to light a fire in it. I took off my coat.

I don’t remember what we talked about, but it felt relaxed, and the conversation came easily. I sensed that something was starting here, a feeling one person can’t have alone. We were sitting close together on a couch that could have held three. We kissed—our first real kiss—and soon Jim asked me to stay the night. I’m not someone who leaps. I tend to inch into things. So I didn’t stay the night. For the second time that evening, though, I put my coat on with some regret.

From that day on, Jim and I were dating. We were exclusive and intimate, but time for just the two of us was rare, right from the start. That was just the way it was. We might have dinner alone. The Armory was one of our favorite spots, for sentimental reasons, but also because it overlooked the water. Frequently after dinner we’d go for a walk along the Raritan River waterfront. Occasionally we’d go to a movie, but more often we preferred quiet time just hanging out at his house. As often as we could, we’d walk along the shore at Spring Lake. Winter, summer, spring, fall—it didn’t matter.

These evenings with me were Jim’s only downtime, and I wanted to help him unwind, though it was hard to get him to talk about anything other than politics. It was his passion. People who knew him affectionately called him “the Energizer Bunny.” When we began to date, he was a full-time mayor of a township of one hundred thousand people; he was a state senator, which meant a round trip of ninety miles from Woodbridge to Trenton and back once or twice a week;
and
he was a would-be candidate for governor. Where was the time for relaxation?

Jim was a tireless campaigner who did what he had to do. If I thought of it at all, and I rarely did, I figured he might be able to structure his days to make more time for his private life, meaning us, when he won the election. Besides, I’m not so sure I was all that temperamentally different myself. Frankly, his frantic pace and unwavering devotion to his work were what attracted me, beyond our initial chemistry. I didn’t want someone who was needy or clingy or who would be put out if I were off doing whatever I needed to do. During the first year we were dating, I was almost as much of a workaholic as he was. I worked full-time at Columbus Hospital in Newark; I traveled with Jim on weekends to local campaign events (where he wouldn’t introduce me publicly as his “date,” although he often did so privately at meet-and-greets); I was involved in Jim’s campaign, behind the scenes, sometimes attending staff meetings, sometimes doing fund-raising; and I continued my own political involvement with issues that affected the Portuguese-American community.

In my view, Jim’s candidacy was good for the Portuguese community in New Jersey, a group of seventy thousand or so. New Jersey is among the half-dozen states in the country with the largest immigrant populations, and, as I knew from my own experience, immigrant groups can have great power—but only if they are, first, naturalized and, second, registered voters. Jim understood this as well, and he organized an Ethnic Advisory Board, to which I belonged, along with representatives from such major immigrant groups in New Jersey as the East Indians, Dominicans, Chinese, and Polish.

One good friend who was involved with Portuguese-American politics and whom I’d known for about ten years since my college days also supported Jim’s run for governor. One day, as I was leaving one pro-Jim event to go to another, she fell into step with me on our way to the parking lot. “If this guy wins,” she said, “I hope he gives you a job in Trenton.”

She didn’t suspect we were dating, and I didn’t tell her. Nobody knew. Not Manny, though he did suspect, not my friends, and not even my parents. Part of it was my desire for privacy, and part of it was my cautious nature. But there was more. As of 1997, Jim was still not divorced from Kari, and neither one of us thought it was wise for him to be seen dating someone when he was still legally married.

No one in his family had ever been divorced, nor had anyone in mine. Worse, my parents would have been disapproving if they’d known I was dating someone who to them was still a married man.

Jim’s divorce, which finally came through at the end of 1997, forced me to become more accepting of divorce, but our attitudes were both influenced by the fact that we were religious Roman Catholics. Even after his divorce went through, I didn’t tell my parents we were dating until early in 1998, when I invited him to a family christening. He was out campaigning somewhere and was to meet me at the restaurant where the reception for my niece’s christening was taking place. About an hour before Jim was to arrive, I said to my mother, “Jim McGreevey is coming, I’m dating him.”

My mother, as I’d imagined, was not at all surprised. She told me she already knew and was just waiting for me to get around to telling her. (Once, in an attempt to keep
me
from knowing that
she
knew, she asked me whether “the mayor of Woodbridge” would be coming to an event that I and the rest of my family were attending. She figured if she called Jim “the mayor of Woodbridge,” then I wouldn’t suspect that she suspected, but of course it was her question that was the dead giveaway.)

During Jim’s first campaign for governor, however, there was only one major media occasion when we broke our Vows of Invisibility so that I could appear in public as someone connected to him. It was the day of a big rally at John F. Kennedy High School, in April 1997, which Jim had called in order to officially kick off his first gubernatorial candidacy. I took this invitation to be a sign of our deepening relationship and was pleased when Jim said he wanted me to sit in the first row with his family, whom I had not met more than once or twice.

The press regularly characterizes Jim’s father, Jack, as a “marine drill instructor,” implying a kind of ramrod severity, but in my experience he was gregarious and warm, just like Jim. As for Jim’s mother, Veronica, known as Ronnie, like other members of his family, she worked very hard for him and did everything she could to help her son get elected. But even for Jim, at that time a forty-year-old man, she was more the drill sergeant than Jack—a force to be reckoned with, and often a disapproving force. Ambitious on her son’s behalf, she pushed him unceasingly, always thinking he should do more, and criticized his campaign staff, whom she saw not only as lazy but as sloppy dressers. I can’t say they were enthusiastic about her either.

When I arrived at the rally, Jim was in the wings somewhere preparing to go onstage, so a member of his staff escorted me down the aisle to where the McGreevey family was already sitting. As I sidled into the row, his father and his sister Sharon gave me a friendly greeting, but all I got from his mother was a quick glance and a chilly hello before she turned her head away. I don’t think she said another word to me that day, and I could tell by her expression that she wasn’t happy I had turned up. Later I learned that she thought my mere presence would renew speculation about the reasons for the breakup of Jim’s marriage, and that in turn would hurt his campaign. But I’ve always thought that deep down she didn’t want him to be with anyone. I guess in a way he wasn’t.

When Jim had begun his campaign, he never really imagined he could win, because the incumbent, Christie Whitman, had been so popular. He thought of his candidacy as an effort to gain name recognition and face recognition so he could make a serious run in 2001. But the previous few years had not been good for Governor Whitman, especially because of high property taxes and state budget deficits, and now it looked as if Jim might really have a shot at winning!

Election Day came, and I voted—flipping the switch next to Jim’s name—and then I stumbled through a distracted day at work before going to the Sheraton in Woodbridge to wait for the election results. Though Jim and I were both in the same hotel, I was in the ballroom with my friends, including Jimmy Kennedy, who had now become my friend as well, while Jim was elsewhere in the hotel, with his advisers and family. Amazingly, we didn’t see each other. We had talked that morning by phone. “It looks like it’s really close,” he said, excitement in his voice. But in the flurry of events, we didn’t make any plans for how we might get together that evening, and we didn’t connect.