Spoken from the Heart (34 page)

At the ranch, there were briefings each morning, teleconferences, and piles of papers. Being President of the United States does not include an allowance for vacation days. George never took a full day off. There was little difference between being in Washington and being in Crawford, except that I could hike the trails we were building and could step out the door into the fresh air without trailing down hallways and having a phalanx of Secret Service agents filing behind. In the White House, I could walk each morning along the corridors from the residence to my offices in the East Wing. Most of the events we hosted and the entertaining we did, even simple coffees, were inside the White House itself, and unless I took Barney and Spot for a walk, it was possible to spend several days without ever venturing outside. At our ranch, from first light, the outside found us.

As September 2001 opened, I was reviewing my upcoming briefing before the Senate Education Committee on the findings of the early childhood cognitive development conference, readying events for the book festival, preparing for the official inaugural gown presentation at the Smithsonian, and overseeing plans for our first state dinner, in honor of Mexico's president, Vicente Fox. State dinner guests are selected by the president, the State Department, and the National Security Council. We had a particular interest in inviting Mexico because of trade and border issues. George wanted to establish a strong working relationship with our closest neighbor to the south.

I was not nervous before my own wedding--there were no jitters or cold palms then--but I was anxious now. A state dinner is far more intricate, an elaborate display of hundreds of moving parts, from guest lists to menus, which require an advance tasting, to table seatings, arrival protocols, and choices of linens, flowers, china, and silver, even the champagnes and wines. And traditionally all of this falls under the purview of the White House Social Office, working with the Office of the First Lady. If the four-hour evening is flawless, it is only because of the hundreds of hours that have been invested beforehand. No detail is too small. My dress of red lace over hot pink silk had been custom-made by Arnold Scaasi, bright colors in honor of the bright tones of Mexico. Cathy Fenton, the social secretary, who had worked for both Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush, and Nancy Clarke, the longtime White House florist, created tablescapes of white hydrangeas, lilies, and roses interspersed with limes as another nod to Mexico. The arrival ceremony in the morning included a full twenty-one-gun salute and a review of the troops. Afterward, we escorted the Foxes to the balcony off the Blue Room, and surrounded by overflowing pots of red geraniums, we watched a fireworks display light up the sky above the Washington Monument.

The next day, Marta Fox and I flew to Chicago to tour an exhibition surveying two hundred years of Latino art in the United States at the city's Terra Museum of American Art. Many of the contemporary Latin American artists whose work was featured joined us, and it was a wonderful day of art and culture and beauty. The Foxes departed the next morning, as I began final preparations for the National Book Festival, which was set to open that weekend.

On Friday night, we held a gala for the festival at the Library of Congress, before the official day of author events. Dr. James Billington, the Librarian of Congress, introduced me. As the back of the stage opened, I walked out in a blue Arnold Scaasi dress, with sheer chiffon and a short underskirt. The crowd gasped, and I felt as if this was my official debut as first lady. Not quite nine months after George took office, I was now doing what I loved, finding my place in the world of Washington and beyond.

Goodness in the Land of the Living

With George at the Pentagon, October 11, 2001.
(White House photo)

Tuesday morning, September 11, was sunny and warm, the sky a brilliant cerulean blue. The day before, I had hosted a lunch for Janette Howard, wife of the Australian prime minister, while George met with her husband, John. My friends who had come for the National Book Festival had all flown home, and even George was gone, in Florida for a school visit. George H. W. Bush and Bar had spent the night, but they had already left at 7:00 a.m. to catch an early flight. And I had what I considered a big day planned. I was set to arrive at the Capitol at 9:15 to brief the Senate Education Committee, chaired by Edward M. Kennedy, on the findings of the early childhood development conference that I'd held in July. In the afternoon, we were hosting the entire Congress and their families for the annual Congressional Picnic. The South Lawn of the White House was already covered with picnic tables awaiting their fluttering cloths, and Tom Perini from Buffalo Gap, Texas, was setting up his chuckwagons. Our entertainment would be old-fashioned square dancing and Texas swing music by Ray Benson and his classic band, Asleep at the Wheel.

I finished dressing in silence, going over my statement again in my mind. I was very nervous about appearing before a Senate committee and having news cameras trained on me. Had the TV been turned on, I might have heard the first fleeting report of a plane hitting the North Tower of the World Trade Center at the tip of Manhattan as I walked out the door to the elevator. Instead, it was the head of my Secret Service detail, Ron Sprinkle, who leaned over and whispered the news in my ear as I entered the car a few minutes after 9:00 a.m. for the ride to the Russell Senate Office Building, adjacent to the Capitol. Andi Ball, now my chief of staff at the White House; Domestic Policy Advisor Margaret Spellings; and I speculated about what could have happened: a small plane, a Cessna perhaps, running into one of those massive towers on this perfect September morning. We wondered too if Hillary Clinton might decide not to attend the committee briefing, since the World Trade Center was in New York. We were driving up Pennsylvania Avenue when word came that the South Tower had been hit. The car fell silent; we sat in mute disbelief. One plane might be a strange accident; two planes were clearly an attack. I thought about George and wondered if the Secret Service had already hustled him to the motorcade and begun the race to Air Force One to return home. Two minutes later, at 9:16 a.m., we pulled up at the entrance to the Russell Building. In the time it had taken to drive the less than two miles between the White House and the Capitol, the world as I knew it had irrevocably changed.

Senator Kennedy was waiting to greet me, according to plan. We both knew when we met that the towers had been hit and, without a word being spoken, knew that there would be no briefing that morning. Together, we walked the short distance to his office. He began by presenting me with a limited-edition print; it was a vase of bright daffodils, a copy of a painting he had created for his wife, Victoria, and given to her on their wedding day. The print was inscribed to me and dated September 11, 2001.

An old television was turned on in a corner of the room, and I glanced over to see the plumes of smoke billowing from the Twin Towers. Senator Kennedy kept his eyes averted from the screen. Instead he led me on a tour of his office, pointing out various pictures, furniture, pieces of memorabilia, even a framed note that his brother Jack had sent to their mother when he was a child, in which he wrote, "Teddy is getting fat." The senator, who would outlive all his brothers by more than forty years, laughed at the note as he showed it to me, still finding it amusing.

All the while, I kept glancing over at the glowing television screen. My skin was starting to crawl, I wanted to leave, to find out what was going on, to process what I was seeing, but I felt trapped in an endless cycle of pleasantries. It did not occur to me to say, "Senator Kennedy, what about the towers?" I simply followed his lead, and he may have feared that if we actually began to contemplate what had happened in New York, I might dissolve into tears.

Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the ranking Republican on the committee and one of our very good friends in the Senate--Judd had played Al Gore for George during mock debates at the ranch the previous fall--was also designated to escort me to the committee room, and he arrived just as I was completing the tour. Senator Kennedy invited us to sit on the couches, and he continued chatting about anything other than the horrific images unfolding on the tiny screen across the room. I looked around his shoulder but could see very little, and I was still trying to pay attention to him and the thread of his conversation. It seemed completely unreal, sitting in this elegant, sunlit office as an immense tragedy unfolded. We sat as human beings driven by smoke, flame, and searing heat jumped from the tops of the Twin Towers to end their lives and as firemen in full gear began the climb up the towers' stairs.

I have often wondered if the small talk that morning was Ted Kennedy's defense mechanism, if after so much tragedy--the combat death of his oldest brother in World War II, the assassinations of his brothers Jack and Robert, and the deaths of nephews, including John Jr., whose body he identified when it was pulled from the cold, dark waters off Martha's Vineyard--if after all of those things, he simply could not look upon another grievous tragedy.

At about 9:45, after George had made a brief statement to the nation, which we watched, clustered around a small television that was perched on the receptionist's desk, Ted Kennedy, Judd Gregg, and I walked out to tell reporters that my briefing had been postponed. I said, "You heard from the president this morning, and Senator Kennedy and Senator Gregg and I both join his statement in saying that our hearts and our prayers go out to the victims of this act of terrorism, and that our support goes to the rescue workers. And all of our prayers are with everyone there right now." As I turned to exit, Laurence McQuillan of
USA Today
asked a question. "Mrs. Bush, you know, children are kind of struck by all this. Is there a message you could tell to the nation's--" I didn't even wait for him to finish but began, "Well, parents need to reassure their children everywhere in our country that they're safe."

As we walked out of the briefing room, the cell phone of my advance man, John Meyers, rang. A friend told him that CNN was reporting that an airplane had crashed into the Pentagon. Within minutes, the order would be given to evacuate the White House and the Capitol.

I walked back to Senator Kennedy's office and then began moving quickly toward the stairs, to reach my car to return to the White House. Suddenly, the lead Secret Service agent turned to me and my staff and said that we needed to head to the basement immediately. We took off at a run; Judd Gregg suggested his private office, which was in the lower level and was an interior room. The Secret Service then told John that they were waiting for an Emergency Response Team to reach the Capitol. The team would take me, but my staff would be left behind. Overhearing the conversation, I turned back and said, "No, everyone is coming." We entered Judd's office, where I tried to call Barbara and Jenna, and Judd tried to call his daughter, who was in New York. Then we sat and talked quietly about our families and our worries for them, and the overwhelming shock we both felt.

Sometime after 10:00 a.m., when the entire Capitol was being emptied, when White House staffers had fled barefoot and sobbing through the heavy iron gates with Secret Service agents shouting at them to "Run, run!" my agents collected me. They now included an additional Secret Service detail and an Emergency Response Team, dressed in black tactical clothing like a SWAT force and moving with guns drawn. As we raced through the dim hallways of the Russell Building, past panicked staffers emptying from their offices, the ERT team shouted
"GET BACK"
and covered my every move with their guns. We reached the underground entrance; the doors on the motorcade slammed shut, and we sped off. The Secret Service had decided to take me temporarily to their headquarters, located in a nondescript federal office building a few blocks from the White House. Following the Oklahoma City bombing, their offices had been reinforced to survive a large-scale blast. Outside our convoy windows, the city streets were clogged with people evacuating their workplaces and trying to reach their own homes.