. . . And His Lovely Wife (18 page)

fifteen

Dream On

I
N A MESSAGE DATED
A
UGUST 1, 2006, A STAFF MEMBER FORWARDED
an e-mail from the man hired to direct Sherrod's TV commercials, who instructed me to provide the following:

THURSDAY'S WARDROBE

Business-Professional Wear:

Three suits

Three blue dress shirts, could have slight color/style variations

Three white or off-white dress shirts

One of another shade or color if he has it and it works with whatever suit he brings

Eight ties, including two power red ties

Business Casual Wear, as if walking in a parade or going to the county fair:

Two pairs of tan/brown-tone khakis

One pair of khakis in dark color, navy, black, deep green

Six casual button-down shirts, try to bring a mix of colors that will work with the above khakis

Miscellaneous:

Handful of T-shirts for underneath

Comfortable shoes, since we won't really see his feet

FRIDAY'S WARDROBE:

Business-Professional Wear:

Three suits—two should be different than the day before, and one of them should be his ultimate power suit

Another three blue dress shirts, could have slight color/style variations

Another three white or off-white dress shirts

One of another shade or color if he has it and it works with the suits

Eight ties including 2 power red ties…at least 4 different than what was brought on Thursday

Business Casual Wear, as if walking in a parade or going to the county fair:

Two pairs of tan/brown-tone khakis, can be the same as Thursday

One pair khakis in dark color, navy, black, deep green—can be same as Thursday

Six casual button-down shirts, try to bring a mix of colors that will work with the above khakis—hopefully half are different than Thursday's

Miscellaneous:

Handful of T-shirts for underneath

Comfortable shoes, since we won't really see his feet

In a message also dated August 1, 2006, I sent this response:

I just read the wardrobe list and you can tell the director to dream on. We'll have a mix, but not nearly the number he wants, especially on such short notice. Sherrod will look fine.

Sherrod doesn't own that many suits, and I can't imagine there is a single one that he considers his “power suit.” (How silly.) Clearly, this director hasn't met my husband.

Connie

Finally, in one more message dated August 1, 2006, campaign manager John Ryan sent this response to my e-mail:

Connie,

This was the best e-mail of the entire campaign—and the competition is fierce. It describes Sherrod the best out of anything I have ever read.

It also shows why I love your husband so much. He is who he is—and we like him that way.

John

sixteen

What a Mesh

I
T WAS THE THIRD WEEK IN
A
UGUST, AND WE WERE ON THE VERGE
of getting three whole days to ourselves. Or what was left of our selves after two red-eye flights for California fundraising. This is what happens when young people plan trips for the middle-aged.

I'm always a little cranky with Sherrod after these flights, and I admit this isn't reasonable or fair of me but, honestly, try spending five long, wide-awake hours in the middle of the night sitting next to a man who falls sound asleep before most passengers have even boarded.

“How'd you sleep?” he asked, stretching as the pilot announced our descent into Cleveland.

One look at me and all thoughts of chit-chat evaporated.

“Well, baby, less than twenty-four hours,” he said, rubbing my shoulders. “In less than twenty-four hours, we'll be on our vacation.”

Three days may not sound like much of a vacation, but it felt like a downright retreat to us, because it was the only period of time in the next eighty-three days in which we would have more than four consecutive unscheduled hours, if you didn't count the time we slept in an actual bed. For three whole days there would be no press, no fundraisers, and, if we were really lucky, no one who even knew our names.

We were heading to Canada.

A four-hour drive north deposited us at Niagara-on-the-Lake, home of the Shaw Festival, a summer-long feast of plays written by George Bernard Shaw and authors who lived during his lifetime. Shaw carries a special significance for Sherrod and me, but even as I consider sharing this story I realize I am confirming our staff's gleeful suspicion that Sherrod and I are the biggest nerds of all time. On our first date—at a Cooker's restaurant in Cleveland on January 1, 2003—Sherrod brought with him two typed pages of his favorite quotations. One of them was also one of mine, by Shaw:

I want to be all used up when I die. Life is no brief candle to me; it is a sort of splendid torch which I've got a hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

Spending a little time with Shaw in August was, we thought, the perfect antidote to the Senate race. We were giddy as lovesick teenagers to return to the place full of warm and fuzzy memories from our visit there the previous summer. We checked into the bed-and-breakfast that was within walking distance of all the theaters and immediately set out for dinner before catching H. G. Wells's
Invisible Man.
Over the next two days we had tickets for three other plays, including Chekhov's
Love Among the Russians,
which made Sherrod, bless his Russian-studies heart, laugh harder than I'd seen in weeks. Maybe months.

Between plays, we slept, hour after blissful hour. We ate, too, but only if it didn't take too much time from sleeping. Our only encounter with a member of the American media took place during intermission—Sherrod called it halftime—at a performance of George Bernard Shaw's
Arms and the Man.

An elderly man approached me from the left.

“Excuse me,” he said softly on his way to the aisle.

Sherrod and I did a double take as we let him by.

“Was that…?” Sherrod said.

“Maybe,” I said.

A few minutes later the man reappeared.

“I'm afraid I must impose on you again,” he said.

“Not at all,” I said as we stood.

Sherrod could not resist.

“David?”

“Why, yes,” the man said.

“Sherrod Brown.”

“Oh, yes,” he said, grabbing Sherrod's hand. “Sherrod, how are you?”

Sherrod immediately turned to introduce me to
Washington Post
columnist David Broder, mentioning that both Broder and I had won the Pulitzer for commentary.

“Oh, right,” he said, shaking my hand, his face blank. I'm always embarrassed when Sherrod does this, especially when it's clear the other person has never heard of me.

They talked about the race a bit. David said he'd been in Columbus, Ohio, and “It's looking good.” Then he asked Sherrod if they could meet for coffee soon.

Sherrod looked at me and said, “We'd love to.”

I shook my head. “I think he means you, honey.”

Broder nodded.

“Oh, sure, we can get together,” Sherrod said.

They never did meet for that coffee. The next month, Broder slammed Sherrod's trade policy in his
Washington Post
column.

By our third and last day, we were rested enough to stroll up and down the main drag, popping into art galleries and checking out the shore of Lake Ontario. I thought nothing of it when Sherrod said he'd wait on the bench for me outside one of the gift stores. He's not a shopper, and he smiled when I showed him the two hand-painted squares of slate I had bought for our home: “Never Too Old to Dance in the Kitchen” and “Welcome to Heaven on Earth.” (The closer I get to fifty, the more I am like my mother, the Queen of Kitsch.)

Our last evening ended with the musical
High Society,
and as soon as we returned to our room, Sherrod collapsed on the bed with a groan.

“It's getting harder for me to stand or walk for very long,” he said.

My hand, still holding the earring I'd just unhooked, froze in midair.

Harder? Harder than what?

This was the man who snapped the pedometer onto his sweatpants as soon as he leaped out of bed and loved to boast that he'd logged more than nineteen thousand steps in one day on Capitol Hill during the CAFTA fight.

I turned to face him.

“What are you talking about?”

“I've been having some pain,” he said, pointing to his abdomen.

“For how long?”

“I don't know. Two weeks maybe?”

“Two weeks?
Two weeks!
”

He frowned. “I think I might have a hernia.”

I sat down next to him on the bed. “Why didn't you tell me about this sooner?”

“I thought three days off might make it better.”

“You thought three days of walking everywhere we went would repair your hernia?”

Silence.

“Sherrod?”

“I never said I was sure it would work.”

The following morning we were standing in the Buffalo airport waiting for our flight to yet another airport, JFK in New York, where we would land and then immediately catch a ride for the two-hour drive to back-to-back fundraisers in East Hampton.

“I'm calling Shana,” I said, referring to our campaign scheduler, Shana Johnson. She knew my doctor, Patricia Kellner, because I had referred her there as a patient the year before. “I'm going to ask her to call Patty Kellner and see if we can get you in on Monday.”

No argument from the Senate candidate, who was eyeing the long line ahead of us and wondering how long it would be before he could sit again. “That's probably a good idea,” he said, smiling weakly.

When Sherrod first ran for Congress in 1992, he promised he would never take the congressional health insurance until all Americans had health care. He never dreamed that fourteen years later, even more Americans would be uninsured, but then again he never thought George W. Bush would be president, either, so life had been just full of surprises.

Anyway, a promise was a promise. When I met him in 2003, he was still buying minimal coverage every year. When we married in 2004, I insisted he get on my health care plan.

“I've got bad news for you,” I told him at the time. “No matter how many times the press describes you as ‘boyish,' you are getting older. It's a trend, see, and one you can't stop. So, I want you on my health care plan.”

Sherrod, never one to miss a jab at the mainstream media, found this a delightful proposition. “After all these years,” he said, chuckling. “
The Plain Dealer
never once wrote about how I refused the congressional health care plan, and now they're going to pay for mine.”

I pointed out that I actually contributed to this health care plan, but that did nothing to mitigate his glee. He did agree, however, not to mention it at the microphone when he spoke at our wedding reception, where a fourth of the crowd was
Plain Dealer
reporters and editors. Since my leave of absence, we were paying
The Plain Dealer
for my coverage through the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, which Congress passed in 1986 to ensure that those who lose their jobs and don't have a boatload of discretionary income can still afford their insurance. The acronym for this dubious benefit is, appropriately enough, COBRA.

The next day, on Monday, we wedged Sherrod's doctor's visit between a news conference and a fundraiser. It took Dr. Kellner all of five minutes to determine that Sherrod did indeed have a hernia.

“Do you want to feel it?” she said, looking at me.

Sherrod immediately raised his gown and his eyebrows in my direction. Dutiful wife that I am, I placed my hand on Sherrod's lower abdomen, and Patty told him to cough.

“Whoa!”

“Yeah,” she said, nodding. “We need to take care of this.”

“How soon can we get him in?” I asked.

She went to her office to call the surgeon while her staff drew Sherrod's blood and did an EKG to spare him an extra visit. By the time she returned to the examining room, Sherrod had a Thursday afternoon appointment with Dr. Raymond Onders and a 7:15
A.M.
slot for surgery the following day.

Immediately, we asked if she would be willing to talk to reporters if there were any questions. The last thing we wanted was even the suggestion in print or on the airwaves that Sherrod wasn't up for the job.

“Oh,” she said with a sigh. “That's right. I guess you have to think about that. Well, of course. Have them call me.”

Dr. Onders was already nationally known as the doctor who helped enable the actor Christopher Reeve to breathe better. We fell in love with him for other reasons. It turned out that Dr. Onders was that most unusual of surgeons: an ardent Democrat, and an activist one at that. He had recently helped to found Wounded Warriors, recruiting surgeons around the country to donate their time and skills to help wounded Iraq War veterans from rural and small-town America who weren't getting adequate care from their local Veterans Administration clinics.

“The majority of the troops over there come from rural areas and small towns, and they don't want to travel to the big cities, where the better VA centers are,” he said after examining Sherrod. “Unfortunately, that often means they're getting inferior care, and they need major medical treatment.”

Oh, and by the way, he said, Sherrod had two hernias, not one.

He started drawing diagrams and explaining the options as Sherrod let the news sink in. Having already read everything on hernias that I could find on the Internet, I had my own question.

“Why do more men have hernias than women?” I asked.

“Testicles,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “We have testicles.”

I wadded up my stack of reading material and swatted Sherrod on the arm. “
Finally,
you pay for those things,” I said, followed immediately by one of those moments of dead silence that illustrate exactly what I mean when I say my humor is often dramatically underappreciated in our marriage.

After more discussion, Sherrod opted for laparoscopic surgery, which requires three tiny incisions but general anesthesia. Major abdominal surgery, on the other hand, splits you open but requires only a local anesthetic.

Dr. Onders pulled out of his pocket a square of mesh that looked as though it had been cut from a screen door. “This is what we use to repair the hernia,” he said, handing it to me. “You can keep it.”

First I got to feel Sherrod's hernia, and now I had a sample of the foreign body that would be left in his. Why don't more people envy my life?

I pulled out my notebook and asked if I could get a quote from him for reporters, which I later dictated to Sherrod's communications director, Joanna Kuebler: “Sherrod Brown will have the same routine hernia surgery that more than a half million Americans undergo each year. He will return to a full schedule on Monday.”

Like Patricia Kellner, he said he'd be happy to answer any questions from the media.

“You'll be back to work by Monday,” he told Sherrod.

That night, I assured the hovering campaign staff that we didn't need a driver or an entourage to get to the hospital by 6:15 the following morning. I would take Sherrod to the hospital, I would wait for him in the reception room, and I would drive him home.

“You're sure,” Shana said, sounding not even remotely convinced.

“I really am.”

“Okay, well, if you change your mind…”

“Right.”

That night, Sherrod curled up against my back in bed and whispered in my ear, “We get the whole weekend off.”

I rolled over and looked at him. “You never want the whole weekend off.”

He grinned and said, “Doctor's orders.”

Finally, a guilt-free break from the campaign.

         

T
HE FOLLOWING MORNING
S
HERROD ARRIVED AT
U
NIVERSITY
Hospitals in Cleveland at 6:13, no worse for the wear after riding in the front passenger seat of the family car driven by his wife—who, it should be noted, listened patiently as he read aloud stories from
The Plain Dealer
all the way to the hospital.

The friendly receptionist, an elderly woman with a curved spine and sensible shoes, asked Sherrod to sign in. Being in a most cooperative mood, he did just that.

We turned toward the seating area and, as if on cue, the TV mounted on the wall immediately started blaring the National Republican Senatorial Committee's latest attack ad against Sherrod.

To make the ad, the Republicans had hired four different trackers to videotape Sherrod on the road so they would have footage of him for their own ads. Three of these trackers looked like college students, but one of them was a freelance photographer who also did work for CBS News. He actually tried claiming that was why he was there, until our communications director, Joanna Kuebler, demanded to see his press credentials.