Silent Partner: A Memoir of My Marriage (32 page)

“Why did you ask Cathy to make the reservations? Why didn’t
you
make them?” I tried to explain that I hadn’t even spoken to Cathy, but he would neither listen nor be appeased.

Now it was my turn to be angry. Why was he upset with
me
? This was a very difficult time for him, and his career was over, but
I
hadn’t done it. He’d done it to himself. He had done it to us. If anyone had a right to be angry, it was me.

Jim was still in a foul mood about the reservations when he came back later that afternoon, and he proceeded to bark at me some more. By that time, Celia and Maria, who had once owned a travel agency, were both on the phone, trying to find us a place to stay.

Cupping the mouthpiece so the hotel reservation clerks at the other end of the line couldn’t hear, they just looked at Jim in disbelief. Maria later told me that she felt like hitting him.

Finally, after further back-and-forth and with Annapolis looking less likely by the minute, Jimmy Kennedy suggested we go to Connecticut instead. I agreed. I liked Connecticut. By that point, Stamford, where we finally got reservations, seemed almost as desirable as Tahiti. I tossed some clothes in a bag, and at 7:00
P.M.
, we took off—caravan style as always—with Jim, me, and Jacqueline in one car with two state troopers, and two more state troopers in a second car for backup. In Rahway, we stopped for the Kennedys, who piled into the second car.

Coincidentally, just as we were driving into New York, Governor George Pataki called Jim to offer his support. Just as Jim hung up, he suddenly realized that we had crossed the New York State line without his having transferred power to Dick Codey, president of the state senate. Under New Jersey law, the governor is required to transfer power to the senate president when he leaves the state so that an official would be present with the power to act in the event of an emergency. There was no reason this transfer of power couldn’t be done across state lines, but Jim—perhaps because he would so soon actually lose power—immediately ordered the troopers to turn around and head back to New Jersey. It was clearly a hysterical reaction.

“Why are we doing this?” I asked. And really, what did it matter?

I was in no mood to consider this calmly or in a more nuanced fashion. This was a weekend when we needed to be together, or at least that’s how I thought of it then. We’d been through a trauma, and maybe this wasn’t the weekend when we could map out the future, but at least we needed peace, a moment to catch our breath with friends we trusted.

Jim placed a call to Jimmy Kennedy in the other car to tell him why we were turning around. Jimmy didn’t know how to respond, so he repeated it to Lori.

“It’s not necessary for him to turn around,” she said. “What are they going to do to him? Force him to resign?”

Ultimately Jim agreed with her, or calmed down anyhow. He again told the troopers to turn around, and again we were headed to Stamford.

Once we had actually made it to the hotel, our goal was to get inside unrecognized. Not an easy task when you’re traveling with four state troopers. They may have been in plainclothes, but still, four men in suits with spiral phone cords disappearing down their shirt collars are hardly inconspicuous, even when they’re not holding up their arms and muttering into their wrist microphones. We left a couple of the troopers at the desk to register for us. Meanwhile I pulled out a scrunchie, stuck my hair in a ponytail and, though it was dusk, threw on my sunglasses. Then I picked up Jacqueline while the others gathered the bags, and I headed for the elevators.

Jacqueline was not any happier today than she’d been for the last few weeks. She was clingy and cranky. As much a sponge as any toddler, she was undoubtedly absorbing the tension and stress from Jim and me. As I tried to soothe her and settle into the room, Jim went across the hall to Jimmy and Lori’s room. Earlier I had told them with some bitterness that during this week of acute crisis Jim had never, not even once, apologized or even acknowledged the collateral damage he’d inflicted on my life.

Jimmy, or more likely Lori, must just have said something to him, because as he walked back into the room, he said, “For the record, I apologize.”

His face was expressionless. His tone was flat. And that was it. One single sentence. This is the way you apologize to your wife for lying and cheating on her, for humiliating her in front of the entire world? It was such a pitiful, perfunctory specimen of a throwaway apology that I would have preferred none. I didn’t dignify it with a response. It didn’t deserve one. I turned away in disgust.

IT WAS NOW LATE
in the evening, and none of us had eaten. Jim, constantly on the phone, didn’t want to leave the hotel room. “Bring something back for me?” he asked as Jacqueline and I left with Jimmy and Lori. I wasn’t in the mood to go to a restaurant, because I didn’t want to be recognized, so we went in search of the hotel lounge, which we hoped might be somewhat quiet. I was relieved to see that the lounge was dimly lit, but all the same I noticed that the four troopers were sitting at the bar, watching the first day of the Olympics from Athens. I propelled Jacqueline to a table in the corner, where I sat her in a booster seat with her back to the troopers. They were among her favorites, and I knew she would shriek if she saw them. That would surely call attention to our group, the last thing any of us wanted.

Sitting next to Jacqueline, I couldn’t see the television and wasn’t paying attention anyhow, but when I heard “McGreevey,” it registered loud and clear, as your own name always does. I glanced over my shoulder, and all of a sudden there was footage of Jim making his announcement, with me beside him in the blue suit. I turned immediately to Jacqueline and began talking to her just a notch louder than the voice emanating from the TV. I knew that if she saw the images of Jim and me on the television, she would have called attention to us by shrieking about Mommy and Daddy being on TV. Luckily, we made it through dinner without being spotted.

Back in the hotel room, I handed Jim the takeout I’d brought back. He was lying in bed now, under the covers but still dressed and still on the phone, and he took the bag absentmindedly, though with a nod of acknowledgment. He was arguing vehemently with his staff about a forthcoming series of issues and meetings, despite the fact that some of the meetings would take place after his resignation. From what I overheard on Jim’s end, it seemed that decisions were being made without his consent or approval. His tone had an unfamiliar note of urgency, even desperation. It seemed obvious to me that his anxiety was not about the meetings at hand but about the enormous power he would be stripped of three months from now. The hysteria in his voice had also been there a few hours earlier when he recognized he’d left New Jersey without turning power over to Richard Codey. (It was Codey who, as president of the state senate, was in line to succeed him as governor.) Everywhere Jim looked, he could feel his power and control draining, and he was resisting it because it scared him.

I put Jacqueline in the crib in the room, and then I got ready for bed myself. I took a sleeping pill to try to get some sleep, and Jim did the same. Neither of us was able to sleep, and as we lay there in the dark, he asked if I’d made any plans for the next day.

“No,” I told him. “I’m taking one day at a time. I can’t think beyond that.”

The following morning, when the Kennedys, Jacqueline, and I went downstairs for breakfast, Jim stayed behind—in bed and on the phone, looking pale and deflated. When we came back, I gave him his breakfast and told him we were going out for the day. Did he want to join us?

“No, I think I’ll just stay here,” he said. But he had some news:
People
magazine wanted to do a cover story on us, and Ray Lesniak was negotiating the terms. He wanted to know whether I was willing to go forward with it. I told him that I’d think about it.

We got in the car, and I suggested that we go to New Milford, a town I’d been to before and remembered as scenic. But it was a longer drive from Stamford than I’d remembered, and we were in the car with the troopers for well over an hour. We arrived in the center of town, and as the troopers pulled into a parking spot, I once again put on what I would come to think of as my Gidget getup—scrunchie, ponytail, shades—and we were off. We watched a band play (although all that was playing in my mind were the events of the last six days) and then strolled around the town with Jacqueline as we tried to work up an appetite for dinner. As we were walking, Jacqueline asked for crackers, so we went into a CVS store to buy them. Standing in line to pay, I was confronted by a tabloid bearing a huge picture of Jim and Golan, with the word “Predator” in bold, bellowing letters. I didn’t want Jacqueline to see the photo—another opportunity to shriek out “Daddy!” and blow our cover—so I quickly got Lori and Jimmy to take her from the store while I remained in line.

This was the second time in less than twenty-four hours that I’d had to protect her from images that represented the devastation of our lives. Hundreds of times would follow in the next months. Images of Jim and me or Jim and Golan would appear on television like sudden sniper fire, or I’d find them lurking behind what seemed an innocent enough newspaper or magazine page. I had never thought much about Golan one way or another, but now I hated the sight of him.

We walked around a little while longer and then found a place to stop in for dinner. Jim called while we were having dinner to talk to me about the
People
story, which he now thought would happen on Monday, with a reporter coming to do an interview. Would I go along with it? “Sure,” I said, not really caring. By that point, nothing seemed to make a difference one way or another. That was the last I heard about it, and I don’t know whether the interview ever took place or if the article was written. To me, Jim’s concern over whether
People
magazine did an article about him was bizarre. Here he was, still spinning, while I was worrying about our daughter’s well-being, the collapse of our marriage, and where Jacqueline and I were going to live when he was no longer governor. He was on Mars, and I was in a tailspin.

He asked where we were, and why we hadn’t told him where we were going. Not that it would have made a difference. I don’t think he would have accompanied us anyway. He asked me to bring him back dinner. I felt pity for him. He sounded so lost. This was a man who lived in and for the future even more than he did the present. Now everything was up in smoke, charring the present and blocking any glimpse of a future.

We arrived back at the hotel late, and he was lying in bed waiting for his dinner. What a pathetic sight, I thought.

Once we’d settled in for the night, again I couldn’t sleep, even with Ambien, and neither could Jim. In the crib across the room, Jacqueline, who was a night owl, couldn’t seem to settle down either.

The next morning, we checked out of the hotel and headed back home, stopping on the way at Bear Mountain in New York. It was a beautiful scene, a vista offering serenity and peace. But not today. I was carrying Jacqueline, and even she felt unusually heavy to me. As we stood there, one of the troopers approached.

“Ma’am, that family over there seems to have recognized you.”

The dark glasses and ponytail hadn’t provided the disguise I’d hoped for. We got in the cars as quickly as possible and headed back to the Kennedys’ in Rahway, stopping on the way for take-out pizza. At the Kennedys’, however, we encountered two reporters who’d been lying in wait for us—one from the
New York Post
and the other from the
Philadelphia Inquirer.
Jim acknowledged them with a wave, and we went inside, where we hastily gobbled down our pizza so we could leave as soon as possible. Both Jim and I were worried that now that the reporters knew where we were, they would put in a call to photographers and they would all be lying in wait for us when we left. Telling Jacqueline she could finish her pizza in her car seat, we took off.

For the past two days, we’d been living like escaped felons, and though Drumthwacket seemed a sad and sorry prison, we were actually eager to return there. At least there, the reporters could be kept at more of a distance. I felt locked in, but the press would be locked out. When we arrived at the gate to Drumthwacket, sure enough a small crowd of reporters and photographers awaited us.

At Drumthwacket, it was another sleepless and sad night. All I could do was cry. As for Jim, he told me his adversaries were trying to force him out of office earlier than he wanted to leave so that an election could be called for November rather than allowing for Democrat Richard Codey to succeed Jim. Some Democratic bosses wanted to put their own person on the ballot, and of course all the Republicans favored an election. “I’m fighting for my survival,” he said, “and I need you to be strong. You can’t fall apart.”

Easy for him to say.

THE NEXT FEW DAYS
were a spin cycle of despair, anger, pain, and uncertainty. I wandered around Drumthwacket aimlessly. I contemplated going to work but quickly decided against it, because I knew I would be beset by reporters’ phone calls or possibly even surprise visits from reporters themselves. As for other employees in the hospital—people who’d known me by sight for years—I didn’t know how to face them. How could I? I was ashamed. How could I have allowed something like this to happen to me? What did people think? Did they think that the press speculations about me, even accusations, were right? Many journalists were convinced that I’d known all along that Jim was gay and that my marriage had been a contrived political arrangement. Some took gratuitous swipes at Hillary Clinton while taking swipes at me, saying that, like her, I was an opportunist, and that I’d married Jim knowing he was gay because I wanted to be First Lady and wanted to advance my own political future.

Reading those stupid speculations made me angrier and even more depressed. I couldn’t stand what was being said by people who didn’t know me or anything about me. I would never have married Jim knowing that he was gay. And, as much as I’d enjoyed politics before I married him, I wouldn’t have married him as a way of advancing my own chances of becoming a successful candidate for office myself either. Who needed Jim? I would have done it on my own if I’d wanted to.