Silent Partner: A Memoir of My Marriage (38 page)

“The photographs are only coming down for a little while, pumpkin,” I told her. “We’re going to put them up again in our new house.”

But it was no use. She wouldn’t be consoled.

This morning, the movers continued to pack. Who knew that lives could be chopped up and stowed in two hundred boxes? In a few hours, the trucks would drive to my house and the movers would put all my belongings in my garage, the only option since the house was still full of behind-schedule painters, plumbers, and carpenters. Other boxes had already gone to my parents’ house and to the homes of three or four of my friends. The plan was that for the next two weeks, until my house was ready, Jacqueline and I would be staying with my parents. My grandmother lived there too, and so we would be four generations under one roof, my poor father the only male. I didn’t envy him.

Some items I’d be taking with me by hand—Jacqueline’s Tiffany place setting, her Dora the Explorer spoon and fork, and her battery-operated Elmo. Also not to be packed away was Jacqueline’s doll Caitlin. Because Jacqueline was so attached to Caitlin and got so upset if ever Caitlin was left behind or misplaced, we actually had five of them—one invariably under her arm and four body doubles. I wondered if it would make sense for Jim to keep one of the dolls at his apartment from now on. It made me sad even to think of separating the Caitlins.

I took a deep breath. I packed everything of importance in my two green floral rollie suitcases. Then I showered and dressed and looked around one last time. And then I went out the door.

Dawn, my trooper for the day, was downstairs waiting for me. Good, I was glad it was Dawn. After August 12, I’d asked that the troopers assigned to me be drawn from a list of six or seven I submitted. The troopers would be driving me to lawyers, to showrooms for kitchen cabinets or refrigerators, to real estate brokers who’d be waiting to show me houses for sale. I was making arrangements for my future without Jim, and I needed to know that the troopers could be relied upon to keep my private life private. There were half a dozen I was most comfortable with, and Dawn, who happened to be the only woman on my list, was among them. I trusted her and was glad that I was spending my last day with her.

As I walked toward Dawn, she got out of the car and greeted me somewhat awkwardly. “How are you, ma’am?”

“I’m OK. How are you?” I said, sliding into the backseat. Right after Jim’s resignation, I had asked all the troopers to call me “Dina” rather than “ma’am,” or “Mrs. McGreevey.” Most did, when they remembered. But today, Dawn didn’t remember. Understandable, I guess. This must have been uncomfortable for her, too.

“OK, Dawn. We’ve got a full day. First stop, Staten Island.”

Starting tomorrow, Dawn and the state-owned Durango she was driving would be gone, and I would be in the driver’s seat. The only problem was, I didn’t have a driver’s seat because I didn’t have a car. So today I was going to see Paul at the Ford showroom where he worked at the time. After my previous test drive, he had arranged for me to come to the showroom, lease a car, and drive it away.

I found a gray Ford Freestyle I liked, and Dawn came with me for the test drive. I had always enjoyed driving and actually felt good zipping around in that car with her. Not quite Thelma and Louise, but inch by inch I was taking control of my own life.

“I’ll take it,” I told the salesman when I returned.

“What would you like for your mileage allowance? Twelve thousand? Fifteen thousand?” the salesman asked.

I had no idea. “Do you know how many miles I drive?” I asked Dawn.

“Some weeks when you’ve had a lot on your calendar, you’ve put fifteen hundred, two thousand a week.”

“A week?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I couldn’t have put more miles on if I’d been moonlighting as a cabbie. But even knowing that figure didn’t help much, since I wasn’t going to be the First Lady making appearances up and down the state anymore.

“So what’ll it be?” asked the salesman.

“Let’s say fifteen thousand miles annually.” I could see there was going to be a steep learning curve.

I wasn’t quite like George H. W. Bush, who’d never seen a cash register up close because he didn’t carry cash, but I knew that I had to make some adjustments as I returned to civilian life. Not only would I have to take my car in for an oil change myself, but I’d have to pay for it too. I knew that it took half an hour to get from my parents’ house, where I dropped Jacqueline off on weekdays, to my job in Newark. But that was with troopers who could cut through gridlock with lights and sirens. How long would it take me in real traffic? I had no idea. Traveling with troopers, I never had to worry about parallel parking or even finding a parking place. I didn’t even have to know where a parking lot was. That was going to change. It also occurred to me that when the troopers were driving both Jacqueline and me anywhere, we always sat in the back together, she buckled into her car seat and I next to her. She was not going to be happy about sitting by herself in the back while I was in the driver’s seat.

By dinnertime, I had finished every errand on my list, with me in my new car and Dawn following behind. Now I had invited her to join us for my mother’s birthday dinner. When we arrived, Jacqueline greeted me as if I’d been gone for weeks. My whole family was there—my parents, Paul, Elvie, my nieces, my brother Rick, and my grandmother. We all sat around the dining room table and ate barbecued chicken my father had ordered in, and for dessert we ate the birthday cake that Elvie had picked up from the bakery.

My family tried not to make a big deal of my presence, acting as if it were just another family birthday dinner, but we all knew better. At 10:00
P.M.
, Dawn left. We said our good-byes, and I made a point of not watching through the window as she, the Durango, and a major phase of my life headed down the street and out of sight.

Then I turned to Jacqueline. “C’mon, honey. Time for us to go to bed.” I reminded her that we would be staying here for a while, with Vóvó and Vôvô, her grandma and grandpa, and that it would be an adventure.

“No,” she said stubbornly. “I don’t want to stay here. I want to go home. I want Daddy.” She wasn’t quite three, but she was nobody’s fool.

Later that night, after Jacqueline was finally asleep, I crawled into bed beside her and one of the Caitlins. I was grateful to be here. What would I have done otherwise? But I had just turned thirty-eight, and returning to sleep under my parents’ roof in a room that had become mine when I was a teenager—that felt like a defeat. The last time I’d slept in this room had been a wet October night a little more than four years ago, the night I’d come home from Father Counselman’s office in the pouring rain, newly and secretly married to Jim. But here, curled up beside me, breathing evenly, with Caitlin’s bow tickling her nose, was my daughter, Jacqueline. Whatever else, Jim was right about one thing: Our years together had not been worthless, and the proof was this child, lying here beside me.

Sleep was elusive that night, and I tossed and turned in the dark, trying not to wake Jacqueline, imagining what the future might hold. I couldn’t bear to think about what life might be like. How could I explain to Jacqueline why her father wasn’t there, why he wasn’t coming home? The only silver lining was that she was too young to understand what was happening, too young to have friends who might cruelly taunt her because her father was gay. There would be time enough to prepare her for that.

This child had led a happy life amid a throng of people, all of whom doted on her—her family and our friends, but also the staff and the troopers. Wherever she looked, there was someone who was perfectly happy to swing her, play with her, carry her, spoil her. She wouldn’t realize the change immediately. My parents had helped care for her since her birth, so their home was very familiar to her. But close as she was to my parents, she adored her father, and now she would not be living with him, or even seeing him every day.

I remained desperately worried about money. Even though I was working—had
always
worked—I wondered how I would be able to pay my bills. My parents had helped pay for renovations on the house, and my friends had bought me a secure alarm system. Now I was pretty much on my own. I had a steep mortgage, a down-payment loan to repay, and the usual cycle of bills. Would I be able to put food on my table? I didn’t even have a table.

I was tense about how Jim would conduct himself in relation to Jacqueline and to me now that we were entering a new phase. Would he be a regular part of Jacqueline’s life? Would he provide support? So far he hadn’t contributed anything. Not a single cent. I had done everything I was supposed to do, but there’d been no response from him. Now that we were no longer going to be at Drumthwacket, expenses were going to mount. What would Jim do? He said he had no money, but was he crying poverty and withholding all support as his way of getting leverage? For months, he’d been badgering me to sit down with him and come up with a settlement on our own.

“We need to work out a separation agreement,” he’d said to me, not for the first time, a few weeks ago.

“We have lawyers. Let the lawyers do it.”

“I don’t think we need attorneys complicating matters,” he said. “Let’s just sit down, the two of us, without attorneys. That’s what Kari and I did, and it worked out smoothly.”

That was in Canada. He’d married in Canada and gotten divorced in Canada. And whatever separation agreement he and Kari had worked out, he’d seen to it that it was sealed.

“Don’t worry,” he continued, his tone a little too thick with reassurance. “It’ll be fair. We’ll each have our attorneys look it over at the end and sign off on it.”

Did he think I was an idiot?

That conversation, like all our others on the subject, ended without any resolution.

Here I was, an independent woman who had never even given up her job, and I was still in the hole. If I’d learned anything, it was that I should have saved more. If I’d known how short-lived Jim’s governorship—and my marriage—was going to be, I would have. During my marriage to Jim, and especially during my days as First Lady, I spent what I earned on Jacqueline, food for our family, and other household necessities. But I’d also spent a huge amount on my second job as First Lady. As much as I put forth every effort to be the best First Lady I could, it was important that I also look the part. And that was very expensive.

Meanwhile, in my new house, the renovations crawled along, and December 1—the date by which the renovations were supposed to be completed—came and went with Jacqueline and me still at my parents’ house. Amazing, I thought. As First Lady, I’d been able to get nine large rooms, one hallway, and five bathrooms renovated in three weeks. Now it was almost five weeks after the purchase of my home, and the contractors had not yet completed a much smaller renovation. I guess it was to be expected. Then the contractors had been working for the First Lady, wife of the governor. Now I was just a woman, and a single woman to boot. Apparently, I had left my clout at Drumthwacket, along with the coffeemaker.

Eventually, though, the job was done, and on December 18, 2004, I had a home of my own, ready for us to move into. I repacked our green floral rollies, got Jacqueline settled in her car seat, and off we went to our new home in the suburbs—twenty minutes away from my parents’ home and half an hour away from my job in Newark. As Jacqueline and I walked in that first day, the house smelled of fresh paint, the bathrooms had running water, and the sun was shining. The house wasn’t finished—there wasn’t even a stove to cook on—but it was home. Our home.

Our furniture had arrived the day before, after which Jacqueline and I had walked in together to make sure everything was in order. No sooner had we reached the end of the entry hall than she surveyed the living room and gave a yelp of pleasure. In front of her was the only furniture I’d taken from our family room in Drumthwacket—two overstuffed couches that had been wrapped in plastic and standing on their sides in the garage for the previous month. They were still wrapped in plastic and masking tape, but at least they were where they belonged, in our living room, and standing on their own four feet. Jacqueline rushed to help me unwrap them as if she were unwrapping a birthday present.

When the plastic was off, she hugged and kissed them, calling them her couches. I’d never seen a child kiss a couch, much less do so with such fervor. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, and I think I did a little of each. To her, the couches were two long-lost friends. Jacqueline’s reunion with the couches was an apt beginning to her day. She had actually turned three just a week and a half earlier.

Crazy as it may have been, I planned her birthday party for our move-in day, with the half dozen women in my rat pack coming early to help me clean. I had presented it to her and to everyone else as a birthday/tree-trimming party, and Jacqueline was thrilled at other reunions the day held, including those with a few of her favorite troopers, who arrived to celebrate the day with her.

The house was full that day. Along with the troopers, Jim and his family came too and mingled happily with everyone. It was hard having him in the house that he tried so hard to prevent me from buying, but my focus was on Jacqueline, and making it a memorable day for her. If I thought about Jim at all—and I tried hard not to—it was with sadness, that this lovely day was the exception, and not the norm. Jacqueline was delighted to see Jim and rushed to hug him when he came in. Looking around the room, I saw my friends and my family, everyone who had done so much for me.
These are people who know me,
I thought gratefully, watching them enjoy themselves. They know who I am and where I’ve been. Two friends had been my wedding attendants, another one had gotten me to the hospital right before the election and been there to decorate the tree with me right after Jacqueline’s birth, and still another had sat with me the night of the election. All of them had known me ten or fifteen years, longer than Jim and his family had known me.

The only person to trim the tree was me, but . . . oh, well, I’d always loved holidays, so trimming my tree in my own house meant something to me. The lights on the tree twinkled, and the ornaments glittered, and when it started to get dark, I turned on the living room lamp in my brightly lit home.