“Who do you think will be hurt by overturning
Roe
?” Dr. Wycomb says. “Not women we know—they’ll go to their doctors like you came to me, very hush-hush but perfectly clean and professional. But the poor women, where do they go? Every doctor knows outlawing abortion doesn’t make it less common, it just makes it less safe. Before ’73, I had patients who found me after botched procedures. They’d show up with cases of sepsis and bacteremia that would give you nightmares, and these were the lucky ones—the others died before they could get help. I should stand by and say nothing as our country returns to that?” She is shaking, a mild tremble throughout her body. “What I can no longer abide with this administration is the attitude that if it doesn’t affect them personally, it doesn’t matter.
I
was never going to need an abortion, was I? Now I’m so old that come what may, I won’t be around to see it. But that doesn’t mean I say, ‘To hell with the rest of you, and so long.’ ”“Dr. Wycomb, it’s important to remember that the American people elected President Blackwell. Even if you don’t agree with him, a lot of citizens do. It’s impossible to satisfy everyone.”
“Those elections were fixed.” Her thin lips are drawn together; she is furious with me, truly furious.
I say, “I’m sympathetic to your frustrations, but—”
“You’re a puppet. Even the words you use, it sounds like a speech-writer told you to say them.”
This isn’t the way people talk to the first lady—no one does, except for a protestor at a speech, and if that happens, he is quickly quarantined. Dr. Wycomb’s comments are insulting and irritating, they are patronizing, but there also is something pure and true in her anger, like a winter wind. It’s almost refreshing, almost a relief, to be berated face-to-face.
Although I already know the answer, I say, “I trust that you’re aware I’ve said in two separate interviews that I’m pro-choice?”
“The times you gave one-word answers?”
“I’d like for us to come to a mutually agreeable resolution,” I say. “Do you think we can?”
“Keep Judge Sanchez off the Supreme Court.”
“That isn’t an area where I have any control.”
“For crying out loud, you’re married to the president of the United States! Who does he listen to if not you?”
Could
I convince Charlie to retract Ingrid Sanchez’s nomination—or, as protocol would have it, convince Charlie to convince Ingrid Sanchez to withdraw herself as a nominee? Even if it were possible, it seems so sleazy, a way of sparing myself public humiliation rather than a real political stand. It’s not that I wouldn’t strongly prefer for abortion to remain legal, not that I don’t understand that with Judge Sanchez’s confirmation, it might not. Nor is it that I don’t see how I come across as a hypocrite here, although I would disagree with the characterization; I actually haven’t said one thing and done another. It’s that I honestly don’t believe it’s my responsibility or even my right to try to legislate. No matter how many times I say it, people are unwilling to accept the fact that
I
was not elected. Have I tried to encourage Charlie in certain directions? Of course. A program on early education, increased funding for the arts, a literacy initiative—issues that inspire little controversy, issues on which he
seeks
my input.I say, “Dr. Wycomb, I admit that I don’t know yet if what you’re proposing is blackmail, but it certainly comes close, and Norene Davis is implicated. Please know I’m not threatening you when I say that striking a deal could only end badly for all of us. I can’t try to bar a Supreme Court nominee to protect myself—that’s not something I’m willing to do, and I don’t think I’m capable of it anyway. That puts the decision back in your hands in terms of how you want to go forward, but for you to tell a reporter about a medical procedure you performed on me seems a clear violation of patient confidentiality.”
“The word is
abortion.
” Again, she is not looking at me. “And you didn’t mind breaking the law when it suited you. For you people, it’s only a crime if someone else commits it.”She’s really going to do it, I realize—she’s fearless. She doesn’t care what the consequences are, even, apparently, for Norene. Her life of over a century has been distilled to this: She hates Charlie, she hates everything she thinks he represents, and possibly she hates me more. And she doesn’t just hate me by proxy—no, she thinks I am worse than he is. She subscribes to the belief, widespread among Democrats and shared by some Republicans, that he’s a moron, an evil moron, and to a certain extent, that lets him off the hook. But I—I should know better.
Unexpectedly, I think,
Okay. Okay, announce that I had an abortion; let the world know, let them hear about it in Missouri and Utah and Louisiana, in Ireland and Egypt and El Salvador.
It’s not inaccurate; I did have one. I will be judged, I will be criticized, I will be dissected on talk shows, joked about on late-night TV, excoriated or defended (though mostly excoriated) in op-eds. The Sunday after the news breaks, in
The New York Times
’s “Week in Review,” three separate articles about me will make variations on the same point. Even those who are pro-choice will denounce me as a dissembler; women’s groups will use me as proof of something, or as a cautionary tale about something else. In every interview from now until the end of my life, I’ll be asked to explain why I had an abortion and why I was silent for so long afterward, asked to reconcile the inconsistencies between my private experience and my husband’s policies and legislation. Anything I say in reply will boil down to this:
I did not contradict myself; I live a life that contains contradictions. Don’t you?Pete Imhof will know, if Dena hasn’t already told him. My mother will know, my poor mother, if, in her present state of senility, she is cognizant enough to absorb the news. The silver lining, such as it is, is that other women who have had abortions might feel—what?—less alone? Less guilty? But that’s to assume they feel alone and guilty now, which I generally doubt. Personally, I’ve never regretted having an abortion; I’ve regretted the circumstances that led to its necessity, but I maintain that it
was
a necessity, that it was, however cowardly Dr. Wycomb thinks I am to lean on the phrase, a medical procedure. Would I feel more uncomfortable if it had occurred in the twelfth week or the sixteenth instead of what was likely the fifth or sixth? Yes, I would. But the debate about when life begins seems to me misguided; I made a private, personal decision related to my own health.When it becomes public, it’s difficult to know how adversely the news will affect Charlie. His administration has proved resilient at weathering scandals, but he is a lame duck at this point, obstructed by Democrats in the majority in both the House and Senate—the ’06 elections were when Hank’s supposed political sorcery faltered at last—and Charlie’s focus has returned after all these years to his legacy, the topic that so used to rankle me. I suppose the preoccupation is more justified now, but I still silently resist it. Viewing a legacy as a few grand acts seems reductive. Isn’t your legacy not the one or two exceptional gestures of your life but the way you conducted yourself every day, year after year? Either way, Charlie personally will forgive me, I feel confident. To lobby him to withdraw Ingrid Sanchez’s nomination would be a betrayal in his eyes; to be outed as the first lady who had an abortion would merely make me a victim. In order to placate his conservative Christian base, it’s likely he’ll want me to grant an interview in which I condemn my behavior, to say,
I am a sinner,
but when I decline, he won’t push me. This is our implicit agreement, that we can suggest or recommend but that we never force, never make ultimatums; it’s why we don’t resent each other.And perhaps in some secluded part of my conscience, I even welcome the disclosure, just as I welcome the scolding from Gladys Wycomb. The Lutherans I was raised among believed less in a vengeful God than a disciplining one: If we had faith in Jesus, we’d find eternal salvation, but in the meantime, here on earth, we might encounter obstacles or tests intended to help us grow. Many years have passed since I’ve had faith in Jesus, but it is undeniable that the framework of our upbringing stays with us, and it’s entirely plausible to me I’m now being “disciplined” for past transgressions: not for Andrew (in that case, the mistake and the punishment were one and the same) but for the life I’ve lived in spite of that terrible early error. It all could have unraveled for me, couldn’t it? But it didn’t, and I became lucky—I was allowed the felicities of marriage and motherhood, the comforts of wealth, and ultimately, the exorbitant privileges available at the highest level of politics. Since Charlie entered public office, I have felt an amplified version of what I used to feel at the Maronee Country Club, the fear that we were like the Californians who live in beautiful houses overhanging cliffs.
In my expectation that good fortune will lead inextricably to its reversal, I should note that I don’t think I’m less deserving of happiness than anyone else; it is that in an unequal world, nobody deserves the privileges I enjoy. I’ve thought often since Charlie became governor that it isn’t a surprise so many famous people seem mentally unstable. As their celebrity grows and they’re increasingly deferred to and accommodated, they can believe one of two things: either that they’re deserving, in which case they will become unreasonable and insufferable; or that they’re not deserving, in which case they will be wracked with doubt, plagued by a sense of themselves as imposters. I suppose this is why I’ve tried mightily to lead a “regular” life—why I still make our bed, why I stay at Jadey and Arthur’s house instead of at a hotel when I’m traveling in Wisconsin without Charlie, why I read the newspaper instead of relying on briefings, why I shop myself, albeit with agents, at Hallmark, where I pick out birthday or anniversary cards (never ones featuring us) because how can you rely on an aide to know what kind of birthday card to get for your own friend or brother-in-law? If I can remain a normal person, I hope to share my normalcy with Charlie; I realize my attempts are inadequate, but they are better than nothing.
In Dr. Wycomb’s living room, I say, “It doesn’t seem as if either of us will be able to persuade the other to come around, does it?”
“All those women who’ll have to have back-alley abortions—you’ll be able to live with that?” She still is shaking.
“Dr. Wycomb, I know you feel passionately—”
“You have the power to change history, and you don’t care. Reproductive rights don’t strike your fancy? Well, how about gay marriage? I can think of at least one reason that ought to be close to your heart. How about the environment, how about civil liberties, how about this godforsaken war, or do the two of you plan to sit there with your blinders on until he’s out of office and his successor can clean up the mess?”
“You’ve made your point.” I stand; I have had enough. “I’m going to leave, Dr. Wycomb. I wish you well.” I can’t imagine touching her in goodbye, I can’t imagine she’d want it. I begin walking toward the foyer.
I’ve reached the threshold when Dr. Wycomb says, “Your grandmother would be so disappointed in you.” The part that stings most is that her voice in this moment is less angry than wonderingly sad.
I turn, and though I remind myself that Gladys Wycomb is no different from a journalist who writes an article about me, that her saying something doesn’t make it true, I can’t help responding. “I don’t agree,” I say.
“Emilie may not have been a political person, but she knew right from wrong.”
“
You
disappointed her,” I reply, and I can hear in my own voice an unattractive note of ferocity. “She told me herself that you tried to make her choose between you and us, and she chose us. That’s all I need to know—she chose us.”“You and your parents practically held her prisoner in that dumpy little house. And the way you all tried to whitewash her sexuality, I shouldn’t be surprised by what kind of person you’ve become.”
Is this accurate? Either way, is it what my grandmother believed, what she told Dr. Wycomb, or is it what Dr. Wycomb decided on her own?
“I loved my grandmother, and my grandmother loved me.” Before continuing into the foyer and out the door of the apartment, I say, “You can’t poison that.”
ONE SATURDAY EVENING
in October 1994, by the time it was clear Charlie was likely to win the gubernatorial election in Wisconsin, our old friend Howard from Madison drove to Maronee for an overnight visit with his wife, Petal. (Howard and Petal had gotten back together, and married, over a decade after I’d met her on the Mendota Terrace as a pretty young college graduate.) This was an exhausting time for our family—on many nights, Ella slept at Arthur and Jadey’s while Charlie and I and Hank and other members of the campaign staff wound our way among the tiny towns up in the northern part of the state, Cornucopia and Moose Junction and Manitowish; if we stayed in a Holiday Inn as opposed to a no-name motel, it seemed like a luxury. (Early in the campaign, Charlie had started traveling with his own down pillow, which I folded in half each morning and set in my canvas bag.) Given our schedule, the opportunity to visit with friends was rare, and I felt that it would be restorative for all of us and especially for Charlie. I’d noticed that the more days in a row he spent campaigning, the more impatient and cranky he became—that morning at a power plant in New Richmond when a single mother of three asked him why she should believe he knew anything about working families, he’d snapped, “If you don’t think I do, then maybe you shouldn’t vote for me”—but even just a short break could do him a world of good. That Saturday afternoon, we’d flown back to Milwaukee from Eau Claire on an eight-seat prop plane. Though initially I’d had grand plans of making a real meal, all I had the energy for was spaghetti, but the evening turned out to be great fun, Howard and Petal and Charlie and Ella and I sitting in the kitchen instead of the dining room, talking and laughing.Ella was in the middle of reading
The Odyssey
for English, and I was rereading it myself—I took it with me as we campaigned, and I’d made a copy of her syllabus so that I could read the same pages each night that she did and we could discuss them on the phone if I wasn’t there (I had always loved
The Odyssey
). It turned out that when Howard had read it in ninth grade, he’d been required to memorize the first five lines in Greek and still remembered them:
Andra moy ennepay moosa / polutropon hos mala polla . . .
Then they announced that Petal was thirteen weeks pregnant—they’d been trying for years—and we were, they said, the only ones they’d told besides their families; they didn’t know yet if it was a boy or girl, so we debated names for both. Ella suggested Ella, Charlie suggested Charles, and when I didn’t suggest Alice, Howard said, “Why so bashful, Al? Can’t you keep up with these egomaniacs?” After dinner, we went into the den to play hearts, and Ella shot the moon; the night had taken on the festive air of a slumber party. Charlie was the first to turn in—ever since he’d started jogging in the morning, he went to bed by ten if he could—and when he was asleep, Petal and Ella and I went to the attic so I could find my old maternity clothes to give Petal. Most were hopelessly outdated.