Silent Partner: A Memoir of My Marriage (16 page)

As for the third room, Jim held his meetings there, while the troopers hung out in the hallway. When he was with me, the troopers hung out in the meeting room. It was hard for me to get used to Jim’s perpetual retinue of troopers.

THE DAY AFTER THE
election, I was taken on a tour (in a wheelchair, since I wasn’t allowed to walk) of the NICU. If my daughter arrived too early, this is where she would be. The NICU was one large room with several bassinets and incubators, many of them filled with the tiniest babies I’d ever seen. Some were no larger than an eggplant. Others were even smaller than that. It broke my heart to see these helpless babies with tubes and wires coming out of their mouths, noses, and every other bodily opening. One little boy, now three months old, had battled his way, ounce by ounce, from less than a pound to three and a half pounds. The nurses called him “Our Little Fighter.” The stronger infants cried, while the others lay there silent and almost motionless.

Just as heartbreaking were the fear and anxiety on the faces of the parents and grandparents as they sat by, watching their tiny kin, talking to them through the incubator holes, because for the most part they couldn’t hold them. The NICU staff was dedicated, taking care of the babies as if they were their own, often getting their own hearts broken with setbacks or worse. I was terrified that Jim and I might soon be among the parents watching a child lying in an incubator amid a tangle of tubes and needles, but it encouraged me to know that the hospital had both the equipment and the remarkably compassionate humans ready to care for her.

Once I’d spent a few days in Labor and Delivery, my condition stabilized, and I was moved to another section at the hospital, again commandeering three rooms—one for me, one for flowers, and one for the troopers or Jim’s meetings. The security guard was still stationed outside my door, and I was still confined to bed.

After a couple of days, I begged the doctor to let me go home, and—to my joy—she agreed, though only if I agreed to a set of conditions: I would have to learn how to read the strips recording my contractions and how to inject myself with steroids, and I would have to agree not only to having a visiting nurse but to having a nurse monitor my contractions independently from a remote location, Big Sister–fashion. Being at home would make it easier for Jim and my family to spend time with me, although I was to be on bed rest 24/7. I admit that I harbored fantasies of jailbreak—visiting Drumthwacket was high on my list—but I never even got to enact a single act of insurrection, because my home stay was short-lived. I began having contractions, perhaps because I made one or two trips down the stairs to the kitchen. By the second week of November, after being sprung for a mere twenty-one hours, I was back in the hospital, the doctor turning a deaf ear to my pleas, my bargaining, and my tears. And here I would stay for the next five weeks.

The doctors and nurses tried to make me as comfortable as possible; nevertheless I became more restless with each passing day. The hospital staff had installed cable television and Internet service, had provided a laptop for my use, and had given me a room large enough to accommodate my visitors. They even cooked a full Thanksgiving meal for me and Jim, setting up a table with a real tablecloth, real dishes, and a beautiful centerpiece with real flowers. (Well, I guess there was no shortage of real flowers!) It was a turkey dinner with all the trimmings, served up by someone from the hospital’s dietary department. There was so much food that we could have fed our entire family and then some.

Because it was a special occasion, Dr. Ayers gave me permission to get out of bed for the first time, and Jim and I sat together at the table and had Thanksgiving dinner. After that, however, it was back to bed, and it was from there that I hosted the rest of our visitors—my parents, Jim’s parents, his sister Sharon, and his sister Caroline and her family. I wished that Jim and I could have had our traditional Thanksgiving with Caroline in Delaware, and I missed that, but I was grateful that we could improvise as satisfyingly as we did.

DURING THIS FIVE-WEEK
period, Jim visited me most days. Some days he visited me twice. And some days he didn’t visit me at all. It was during this time that Jim is said to have begun his adulterous affair with Golan Cipel. I knew Golan. Not well, but I knew him. And here’s what I knew: Golan was an attractive Israeli in his early thirties, with a pleasant, boyish face and thick, dark hair. Jim had met him in Israel in March 2000, just several weeks after he and I got engaged. The two men had hit it off, and Jim had invited Golan to come and work on his campaign. Taking Jim at his word, Golan arrived in the United States in April 2001 to work, not for Jim but for a public relations firm associated with Charles Kushner, the wealthy real estate magnate who had contributed well over a million dollars to Jim’s campaigns. In fact, Kushner was Golan’s sponsor for a work visa. By September 2001, Golan had begun to work directly for Jim’s campaign as his liaison to the Jewish community. It seemed odd to many that Jim had picked an Israeli with no connection to New Jersey or to New Jersey’s Jewish community for this position, but Golan did have a definite connection to Charles Kushner, who was very active in the New Jersey Jewish community and, given his donations to Jim, very influential in Jim’s campaign choices. In politics everywhere, he who pays the piper calls the tune, so I just always assumed that Jim was accommodating Kushner.

A report published in the
Bergen Record
places Golan at the Democratic headquarters at Woodbridge on 9/11. “He was one of many campaign officials who gathered at Democratic Party offices on the top floor of a Woodbridge skyscraper that had a clear view of the World Trade Center towers,” wrote a reporter in an article published after Jim announced his decision to resign. “With arms crossed and his brow furrowed, Cipel paced the floor propounding on the effect the terror attacks would have on U.S.-Mideast relations.” If that report is accurate, Jim probably crossed paths with Golan that day, since Jim likely stopped at the Woodbridge headquarters on his way home.

I didn’t find anything particularly unusual in Jim’s relationship with Golan that fall. Jim often had three or four young men on his staff who were in the throes of “finding themselves,” and he had a solicitous attitude toward them. The other Lost Boys—there were six or seven of them—were sort of mellow or laid back. One of them, for instance, was Teddy Pedersen, Jim’s driver, who had stayed behind that Valentine’s Day weekend. He was a slim and boyish college student, maybe five-seven, fair, with a baby face. He was in his early twenties, going to Rutgers part-time. Another, quiet but slightly more mature, was Jason Kirin, also in his early twenties, and newly graduated from a local college, Fairleigh Dickinson. He was Jim’s traveling assistant, which meant that he traveled with Jim Monday to Friday, making his phone calls and appointments, keeping track of his schedule, and taking notes at meetings. Teddy, Jason, and the others were all willing to fade into near invisibility, never overshadowing Jim or making demands of their own on him.

And then there was Golan.

He was older than the others, and also intense and demanding. During that time, I was at a few of the Jewish community-related events he was involved in at Jim’s behest—fund-raisers, usually. Regardless of what Jim was in the middle of, if Golan had something he wanted Jim to do, it was always something he wanted done
now
. It might be that Golan wanted Jim to be photographed with a potential donor or that he wanted to schedule an appointment between Jim and a guest, but whatever it was, in Golan’s mind it had to take priority over anything else Jim might be doing. Jim didn’t seem to mind Golan’s insistent self-importance, nor did he mind, as I did, when staffers, Golan included, simply dropped in during the rare hours Jim and I were home alone. Golan came by a few times that fall. He was courteous enough to me, but he obviously had something urgent to discuss on those occasions, something he’d wanted to lobby Jim about.

But now, looking back, I wonder at the timing of Jim’s affair with Golan. I wonder at its coming so soon after his election, his marriage to me, and so close to the birth of our daughter. Did family life, or marriage to me, a woman, fill Jim with such despair and such a sense of incarceration that it catapulted him into a relationship with Golan? Was it that the closer he came to realizing his dream, the more he had to punish himself, good Catholic boy that he was, by threatening to destroy what he must have guiltily felt he didn’t deserve? Was it arrogance—not simple arrogance but a rather complicated arrogance—whereby Jim felt he could have whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted? Or maybe some part of him was objecting to the loneliness he felt, finding it too high a price for an achievement that hadn’t left him feeling as gratified as he expected to feel.

JUSTIFIED OR NOT, JIM
had had coattails. With his election, the Democrats had again become the majority in the state assembly, and in the state senate at least there were an equal number of Democrats and Republicans. Though Jim had billed himself as a consensus builder, almost immediately he found himself embroiled in an intraparty dispute over who would be the new assembly Speaker. He had backed a particular candidate and as a result had to spend a great deal of time defending his choice and persuading others to support it. I witnessed many screaming matches early on and assumed that there would be more to come.

Meantime, as November moved glacially toward December, I tried to keep busy while baby-waiting. Since my doctor had refused my numerous requests to leave the hospital for only a few hours to visit Drumthwacket, I requested that the residence manager there come to the hospital to meet with me. She showed me a layout of the house and told me that there was really no bedroom that could serve as the nursery. Our only two options were to take either a dressing room or an exercise room and turn it into a nursery. Either option would necessitate significant renovation. With me stuck in the hospital, it was all going to have to wait.

There was only so much television I could watch, so much reading I could do, and so much surfing on the Internet I could stand. My family and a few friends visited me almost daily, and my mother and Ronnie never skipped a day, even though I’d tell them they didn’t really need to stay. They thought that I was asking them to leave because I didn’t want them inconvenienced, but the truth was that I really wanted to be alone. The only person I wanted to see daily was Jim, but right after Thanksgiving, during a visit, he informed me he was going to Las Vegas to attend a labor convention.

“Las Vegas? Why do you have to go?”

“The unions were crucial to my victory. I have to show my appreciation.”

“I’m sure they’d understand if you didn’t go. Especially now! They know I’ve been hospitalized and that we’re expecting a child any day!”

“It’ll be fine,” he said. “I’ll be back before the baby is born.”

“What will happen if I go into labor tomorrow? It’s not like you’re across the river in New York. You’ll be five hours away by plane.”

“If you go into labor, I’ll get on the first available flight,” he said.

I couldn’t change his mind. It was absurd that he was going away at such a critical time, with a baby due any moment. How could he have taken his public responsibilities so seriously and not have invested equally in his family responsibilities? How could he be leaving at a time like this?

The answer was Golan. I didn’t know it at the time, but Golan Cipel would be going to Las Vegas with Jim, or so the papers eventually reported. Lust, it seemed, trumped everything else.

11. WELCOME TO THE WORLD, BABY GIRL

SOMETIME ON THE EVENING
of December 6, as I lay in my hospital bed, my abdomen suddenly tightened, and then it slowly relaxed. A few minutes later, it happened again. I was in labor. I felt it, and the fetal monitor, my constant companion, confirmed it.

The fact that I was in labor wasn’t a shock, despite my due date still being five weeks off. The doctors had told me that once I had reached the thirty-fifth week I would be home free, and that they might be willing to discontinue the medications that had halted my labor. I couldn’t stand much more time flat on my back, or in bed, or in the hospital. So as soon as Jim returned from Las Vegas, I lobbied Dr. Ayers to get me off the meds. I wanted to have my baby
now
, I told her. After some deliberating, she and the rest of the team agreed that I could stop the meds. “But be patient,” she cautioned me. “It could take a day or so for labor to begin.”

Just hours later, though, I had what I was sure was a real contraction. Jim was in the room at the time.

“I think I’m in labor,” I told him.

He practically bolted out of his chair in his eagerness to tell the nurse. It wasn’t just new-father jitters. Both of us knew there might be another problem ahead: The baby had her umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. My medical team didn’t think this was necessarily worrisome, since about 30 percent of babies are born with the cords wrapped around their necks, and in most cases the cords can easily be slipped over the baby’s head at birth with no problem. But in some cases, if the cord is squeezed or stretched, blood flow is reduced, and that can cause a slowing down of the fetal heart rate, with brain damage as a result. There was no way of knowing in advance whether the cord would be a problem or not. The uncertainty itself was yet another worry, and I wanted to have it resolved.

Jim was now keyed up, but the staff doctor told him that it might be many hours or even the next day before I was ready to deliver. I told him to go home because I knew he was exhausted. But it wasn’t just altruism. I was also reacting in character. Now that the going had gotten a little bit tougher, I wanted to be on my own.

Close to midnight, the staff doctor came back. “Well,” he said, “we’re not there yet, but we’re getting there. Time to transfer you to Labor and Delivery.”