Saving Graces (36 page)

We all left Cleveland together, with Charlotte and Greensboro, New York, LaCrosse, and Milwaukee on our schedules. We stayed where the children wanted in Milwaukee: the Hilton with the indoor water park. We would have done it for the children, but it was also fun to see the Secret Service, in their suits, avoiding the cannonballs and water sprays. And then we were off in our different directions. Gone now were off times, walking the property in North Carolina we had purchased accompanied by the Secret Service; B.A., the architect; Tom Hunter, who would help us with the site plan; and Andrew Young, all of us sitting on fallen trees eating the sandwiches Andrew had brought. Gone were times for the parent conferences at the children’s school that I had managed to fit in earlier. I would see the children on the weekends and in the evenings, but there was less than a month left before the election.

As we traveled, in a sense we took with us the people we had met, thinking of them and speaking of them. How often I mentioned McKinley Bailey, a beautifully spoken boy, not much older than Cate, who had already served in Afghanistan and in Iraq. “When I was in Afghanistan,” he said, “I knew why I was there. When I was in Iraq, none of us knew why we were there.” A woman in her eighties, like Mary, should not be driven to tears because she could not afford her medicine, and I could not, would not drive her from my thoughts. And then there was Beverly. I had spoken to an organizing meeting, a rally really, in Grand Rapids. I gave a speech, which I am not very good at doing, and then I took questions. The last question came from Beverly, who was maybe just shy of forty, her skin so dark I had to focus to see her in the darkened theater. “My son is in Iraq,” she got those words out, and then she fell apart. “I can’t sleep, he can’t sleep,” she gasped between sobs. And then she could not speak at all. Her whole body was racked by fear and love. I’d seen this grief, and it would be wrong to say she hadn’t earned the right to such debilitating grief. She had. I could only hug her and pray for her son. And take her with me.

The last days felt particularly intense, for we knew that it was our last chance to change minds. I did a town hall in Sandusky, with, as improbable as it sounds, a veteran named Del Sandusky, who had been on John Kerry’s Swift boat, and with a woman whose husband had been called up at fifty and had trained to go to Iraq using his finger as a gun and a make-believe transport to practice how to evacuate after a roadside bomb exploded. He practiced without guns and without vehicles, and then he was sent to Iraq. If there was anyone other than a true believer in that town hall, surely they would be convinced, but were there any? From there we went to a union hall in Lima, where I was introduced by a young woman, Christina Lhamon. The next day I heard that her car tires had been slashed that night after we left. I knew from what she’d said when she introduced me that she had no money to replace them.
Get them replaced. We can do that for her.
Ryan agreed.

And I went back to Pittsburgh. First to the Southside Market House, where my Aunt Alba Whitacre, my father’s youngest sister, waited for me. She asked not to be identified, so of course I made her do everything but twirl around. I was proud of her: she raised a houseful of children alone, she’d taught school. A few days later I went to Brownsville, south of Pittsburgh. I had asked to go; it was my father’s hometown. And it seemed the whole town was there to see his daughter. Certainly every living member of his high school class was there, including Frank Ricco, who was the head of the Sons of Italy lodge where we met and who had been class president when my dad was vice president at Brownsville High School. I had to start the event with an update on Dad, the sad news that the gregarious young man they knew had been silenced and now seated by a stroke. They brought presents and photographs for me and for him, and I met children and grandchildren of people I did not know. It was in the rope line that two tiny ladies, twins still dressed alike or nearly so at eighty, told me they were in class behind my father and had always had a crush on him. There was no doubt in my mind I was home.

There was a certain insanity to the schedule, but who could say so with so much at stake? Lancaster, Des Moines, Reno, Carson City—
No, I don’t know John Kerry’s position on grazing rights
, and I had long ago learned never to try to wing it. Fess up and take the hit; never bluff. Elko, Denver, Grand Junction—of FATSO fame. And then south to Florida before joining Cate, for just the evening, in Kenosha, Wisconsin. It is now twelve days before the election.

Now, unless you’re the sort of reader who skips the first chapter, you know that I discovered the lump in my breast in Kenosha. Hargrave was scheduled to leave for the weekend in a couple of days; her son John’s college was having Parents’ Weekend. She fretted about what to do, but she told Karen and Ryan and perhaps Kathleen McGlynn, who came to take her place for the weekend, about the lump, and she made them promise to make certain I didn’t get too tired. In fact, the next days were wonderful. I know my memory is clouded by the Wallingford’s Orchard in Maine. There I answered questions as I stood in a wagon that had been piled with hay and parked in front of the open doors of a barn. It was next to impossible, standing outside as I was, to hear the questions from inside, but there were some helpful boys sitting at my feet, their legs dangling from the side of the wagon, who would repeat them for me. It was a very crisp and entirely luscious day, a perfect setting. And to top it off, the Wallingfords gave me a box of the most delicious apples I had ever eaten. And Ryan gave them all Elizabeth! buttons in thanks. I definitely had the better end of that trade.

As hard as it is to believe, except when I was showering or talking to John—and we talked several times a day, always have when we’re apart—I didn’t think about the lump. From Auburn, Maine, it was a Michigan rally, then Cincinnati, and finally a town hall in Harrisburg. I had been talking for the past three months, honing what I said and how I said it, stealing good lines from John and from Cate when I would hear them. For example, Cate—speaking on college campuses—would remind students that the 2000 election had been decided by fewer votes than the number of people who resided in the average dorm. But the crowds to whom I had been speaking were not large—several hundred. A thousand would be an excellent crowd. And now I was doing a town hall that would be carried live on C-SPAN. Now, I don’t know how many voters who are still undecided a week out watch C-SPAN. My guess would be in the single digits, but I treated all town halls as if they were my chance to convince the entire country. I didn’t have a lump on my mind, I had a town hall on my mind.

When it was over and I had done all I could, the lump started to creep into my thoughts, but by then it was only a few days until I would see my doctor in Raleigh, and this would—I assumed—be cleared up. Before going home, though, I would go to Florida. It was there that I met Ann Marie Mattison. She is beautiful and regal, like a young Adele Graham, the wife of Senator Bob Graham of Florida who once, when John complimented her on a handmade wooden “Graham” button she was wearing during the primaries, said, without the least rancor, “I believe it was made for me before you were born.” Anne Marie was lovely in every way. Her assignment in the program was to speak for a few moments and lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. She used her minutes well. She spoke of her son, tall, handsome, intelligent, tenacious. She talked about how Jeffrey always wanted to do the right thing, serving in the Army, joining the Florida National Guard. He wanted, she said, to be president one day. Jeffrey Mattison Wershow was killed in Iraq on July 6, 2003. I have the bracelet Anne Marie gave me with his name on it, and I will always have it.

I left Florida and went home. Home to see my doctor, Wells. Home to get a mammogram and ultrasound. Home to wait for John. Although I didn’t want to burden John with the news that it was likely that I had cancer—I had kept the secret for over a week already—telling him was the medicine I needed. From the moment I told him, I knew what he would do: he would start taking care of me, he always had. And in a very real sense I was, at that moment, unburdened. It all moved to him, all on his shoulders. Though I regret that it must have been such a terrible weight for him, I felt so safe with my care in his hands. I had read his depositions of doctors; he had always learned what he needed to know and often he knew more than the doctors he was questioning. He knew the questions to ask. He seemed intuitively to know when he wasn’t being told the whole story. Dr. Hudis later told him he had the mind of a medical researcher, a considerably better compliment than “Mom” telling me I was a born waitress, I think. I knew he understood the medicine better, knew better the questions to ask, and I was right. After news of my cancer became public, people said to me how strong I must have been to keep this secret and continue campaigning, when I hadn’t kept the secret at all—Hargrave and then John knew, and they, not I, carried the weight. Hargrave would ask me in the days ahead what I was going to do, and I would tell her,
Whatever John thinks is best
. I wasn’t being deferential, I was being smart: he would look after me far better than I would look after myself.

But first we had to vote—an old friend from college, Gerry Cohen, handed us our absentee ballots—and speak at the Bon Jovi concert at the fairgrounds. I spoke to Cate at home, telling her I had another bump, like the one I had had before, and after the campaign I would get it checked out.

Hargrave talked to me about stopping campaigning. We were sitting on the stoop at my house with Peter Scher, who also knew what was going on. She said, “Can you continue campaigning through Tuesday, knowing what you know?” I looked out at my yard, at the driveway where nearly two years before John had talked to the press after announcing he was a candidate. It had been such a long road. I can do it. Hargrave said, “You have every reason in the world not to.” No, I can do it. For a hundred reasons, for Beverly and Mary and George and Hope. For us, too, for all the reasons that led John to that spot on the driveway. And I knew, too, what the response would be if I canceled my remaining schedule—speculation that I’d delayed announcing my cancer until the last minute in an effort to garner sympathy votes. I could deal with what I had on my plate, but I didn’t know if I could deal with that ugliness. And John was taking care of it. If we couldn’t wait, he’d know. We went to vote and we went to the concert.

But that first night, we didn’t want to be apart. Our schedules were sending us both west, so we said goodbye to Cate, and I joined John’s caravan. I would spend the night with him in West Virginia and drive to our events in Ohio in the morning. Cate and Adam, with whom she had been traveling, set off for another round of college campuses and we took off in John’s reconfigured 737. It wasn’t the same gleeful we usually were when we were all together. Karen was usually happy, because she had a beau who traveled with John. The Secret Service was happy because there was actual leg room on this plane. Ryan was happy because the food was better and because Reggie Hubbard from John’s staff, not he, took care of the luggage. But tonight John and I were tired, beaten down. We rested against each other in the dim cabin.

And then the plane caught fire. No, it’s not a joke. If this were a movie, they would have to leave out the cancer or leave out the fire, because no one’s luck is this bad. The fire turned out not to be serious. The battery for a large video camera had exploded, setting a seat afire briefly and causing a lot of smoke. There was an alarming degree of disorganization, and it was Ryan who finally grabbed the extinguisher and Ryan who finally insisted that we land the plane to make certain there wasn’t unseen damage. We made an emergency landing. Fire trucks surrounded the plane and firemen rushed on board. Jack was ecstatic, as any four-year-old boy would be, asking them questions as they were stuck four and five deep in aisles filled with camera equipment and laptops and duffle bags. The Secret Service was hesitant to take us off the plane, because they had made no alternative arrangements. There were no waiting SUVs here. So we waited for the all-clear in the front of the plane, with the television on, watching CNN’s live shot…of the plane. Meanwhile, the office was trying to find Cate or Adam before she saw a television screen, to tell her that her family was all right. And everyone was scrambling to figure out where to stay. The winning hotel was the worst of the general campaign. It smelled like smoke and sewage, and there was a dampness to everything. But I was there with John, and I didn’t want to be anywhere else.

Having Emma Claire and Jack on the plane changed the dynamic for everyone, I think. The following day the press and crew, afraid that Emma Claire and Jack were going to miss Halloween, decorated the plane and bought candy so they could trick-or-treat down the aisles. I had brought their costumes with me—the only problem was getting Jack not to dress as a red Power Ranger every day—and they happily collected their goodies. Emma Claire is devoted to her father, and when I was not on the plane she claimed the seat next to him. Jack, on the other hand, would get on the plane and head to the press section, high-fiving the Secret Service on his way to see his friends. His friends set up a basketball hoop in the rear of the plane and taught him some sort of simple gambling game that might have worried a mother of a child with an allowance. When we were in hotels, he would come in early—Jack is our early riser—and say, “It’s okay if you want to sleep. I’ll go see my friends. What room is Dave in?” Dave has no idea how many times we protected his sleep. We had no better ambassador than Jack Edwards.