Silent Partner: A Memoir of My Marriage (2 page)

I don’t know exactly what he said when he walked over to Teddy’s car, but Teddy nodded and pulled out of the lot, and that was that. Jim tossed his bag into my trunk, and then we were on our way. It was not quite four o’clock. With any luck, we’d be in Montreal by midnight.

I WONDERED IF THIS
might be the weekend Jim would ask me to marry him. I loved Jim and was imagining a life together in which we would establish ourselves as a family—I had always wanted children—and work as a team in support of goals we cared about. My only concern was the breakneck pace of politics and campaigning, and how it might interfere with our relationship and our future as a family.

It’s not as if the question of marriage hadn’t come up. We had just spent New Year’s Eve with Jim’s best friend, Jimmy Kennedy, a tall, balding bear of a man in his fifties, and his wife, Lori, a petite and bubbly kindergarten teacher. Like Jim, Jimmy was a New Jersey mayor—of a smaller city called Rahway. On that New Year’s Eve, Jimmy, who’d had a little too much to drink, turned to Jim and said, “So is this the year you’re going to marry Dina?” I was driving when Jimmy asked his unexpected question, but in a quick glance at Jim I saw he was looking at me with an expression that seemed to say that the answer was up to me. Was he hoping that maybe I would answer the question then and there?

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know if Dina wants to get married.” Clearly, Jimmy had caught Jim off guard.

I smiled at Jim and said, “Can we discuss this later?”

“Sure,” he said.

Jim himself had brought up the subject of marriage a couple of years earlier. We’d been at a conference when he turned to me out of nowhere and said, “I’m going to marry you.” I didn’t know if he really meant it, and so I tried to think of something noncommittal to say and in the end said nothing. I was attracted to Jim, but I wasn’t sure he was really ready for a serious relationship at the time, and I didn’t want to find out by getting hurt. I thought he might still be nursing a broken heart following the end of his marriage, a year before we’d met. His wife, Kari Schutz, a Canadian librarian whom he’d met on a cruise, had left him without warning and gone back to British Columbia, taking their young daughter, Morag, with her.

As for me, I was in no hurry to get married. I had a job I enjoyed, a family I was close to—including my two adorable nieces, Meagan and Nicole, whom I loved spoiling—and I had my own rat pack of half a dozen women friends, most of whom I’d known for at least ten years. We hung out together, went on vacations, and generally just had a good time. Jim was not the only person I knew in politics—not by a long shot. I knew quite a few politicians, and many had failed at marriage just as Jim had. Jim hadn’t said much about why his marriage ended, though. “Kari couldn’t stand politics,” was all he would say, and I left it at that.

I’d always loved politics. Being with Jim, I learned I also loved campaigning and was good at it. Still, I hadn’t been sure then that I could handle marriage, politics, and public life any better than the others had. And if I was sure of anything, it was that once I got married, I was going to stay married. No one in my family had ever been divorced, and I didn’t want to be the first. My parents, who’d met when they were teenagers, had now been married thirty-four years. Different as they were—my mother excitable, my father a man of few words—they were each other’s best friend. It wasn’t important to me that I get married soon, but it was important that once I got married, I stayed married. I wanted my marriage to be forever, the sort of solid and lasting marriage I’d witnessed growing up. During the course of our relationship, I had come to love Jim deeply, and to trust him. Still, I hadn’t mentioned marriage because of the crazy schedule that would be involved in the year and a half left to the campaign. Now Jimmy Kennedy’s extra few beers had put the subject back on the table.

We didn’t get to have that conversation the next day or the day after that, and right after New Year’s, Jim left for India. But a week later Lori called me to ask if I would have lunch with her. “There’s something I want to talk to you about,” she said. We met at a nearby mall, where we shopped for a while, and then went to a café at Nordstrom’s, where we settled in to talk and have lunch.

Since Lori had asked for us to meet, I waited for her to say what was on her mind. She seemed to be a little jittery, and by the time we were up to coffee and dessert, we had darted through quite a few subjects.

Finally the talk turned to Jim. “Have you heard from him since he left?”

“No, not yet,” I said.

“Really? You haven’t?”

“No,” I said. I knew he had a busy schedule, and I didn’t expect to hear from him. He didn’t have access to e-mail, though I wasn’t sure he would have known how to use it even if he did.

But Lori barely listened to my answer as her own words came stumbling out. “Jim wants to know if you’ll marry him,” she said rather awkwardly.

“What!?” I said, not because I didn’t hear what she’d said but because I didn’t believe what I was hearing. “So why doesn’t he ask me himself?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he’s afraid you’ll say no, and then he’ll feel rejected. . . . Oh, Dina, this is so awkward . . . but he doesn’t want to feel rejected, so maybe that’s why he asked me to ask you if you’ll say yes.” It was out, and Lori looked relieved.

I was silent, surprised that Jim needed Lori to broker a marriage proposal for him. What was this, high school?

“He
asked
you to ask me?”

Lori nodded.

“Why didn’t he ask me himself?” I repeated.

Lori shrugged and shook her head. “I told you what I know—he’s not sure you’ll say yes. I don’t know, Dina. Jim’s been really hurt in the past. Maybe he’s just nervous and wants to be sure.”

I mulled over her response. Was Jim’s nervousness born of his doubts about reading my feelings correctly? I’d never known him to be hesitant about anything else before. To the contrary, I thought of him as very decisive, though not exactly an open book. He’d told me about the end of his marriage. I knew that the abrupt ending had to be traumatic, though he didn’t quite say so. What I thought as I sat there with Lori was that maybe he was still afraid of rejection or still afraid of misreading his partner and wanted to be positive that I would say yes when he proposed.

She must have been watching me as I processed the conversation, because when I returned to the present moment, her eyes were on me.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said finally. “If he asked me to marry him, I would say yes.” I hadn’t expected to be proposed to by a surrogate, and so the exuberance I might otherwise have expressed was tempered. But nonetheless, I had already given the matter a lot of thought, so I was excited and happy at the prospect of spending my life with Jim.

If Lori thought there was anything odd about Jim’s mode of pursuing a potential wife, she was eager to get beyond it into the safer realm of her own excitement. “I’m so happy he found you!” she said. “It’ll be such fun to plan a wedding!”

Driving home, I thought some more about Jim’s using Lori as an intermediary. I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Politicians often delegate very personal chores to their staff, but this was going too far. They also make decisions strategically, not spontaneously. Was Jim’s wish to marry me a decision of the heart or of the head? I knew that he had deliberately left his divorce incomplete until after the election in 1997 because he didn’t want his marital status to be an issue in the campaign. He didn’t want the media to focus on his divorce, because he felt that it would make the headlines, which in turn would contaminate his campaign. Maybe that was true, maybe not. He also saw his marriage as a failure, and as a candidate for governor he didn’t want to be perceived as a failure or a loser; though when I think of it now, I wonder if deep down his chagrin was at having failed not as a husband but as a heterosexual. Then (as well as now, for different reasons), it did cross my mind that possibly he was interested in marriage now because he
did
want his marital status to be part of the campaign.

Later, when I looked closely at Jim’s “Gay American” speech, three sentences leaped out at me, all of them about “love.” Right at the beginning, he’d said, “I married my first wife, Kari, out of respect and love.” Further on came two sentences about me: “I then had the blessing of marrying Dina, whose love and joy for life has been an incredible source of strength for me. . . . She has been extraordinary throughout this ordeal, and I am blessed by virtue of her love and strength.” In a speech where every single word was calibrated and calculated, he mentioned his love for Kari and my love for him—twice—but nowhere did he mention his love for me. Feel free to draw your own conclusions.

Jim came back from India a week or so after my conversation with Lori, but he still didn’t bring up the subject of marriage. I didn’t bring it up either. And now it was two weeks later. Valentine’s Day was approaching, and we were heading off for a romantic weekend. Perhaps Jim really was planning something.

ON THOSE OCCASIONS WHEN
it was just the two of us in the car, I always drove. Jim was a notoriously bad driver, so much so that it was as much a part of the lore about him as the fact that he was a good Irish Catholic boy from Jersey City. He was well known for his speeding, his multitasking behind the wheel (driving while shaving, for instance), and his chronic blindness to one-way signs. He also routinely drove with a cell phone at his ear. He never said as much, but he obviously knew that his own behavior was dangerous, since after he was elected, he signed a law making the use of handheld cell phones while driving illegal.

As afternoon turned to dusk, and our trip to Montreal was well under way, I drove north at a steady pace while Jim rested, his eyes closed. Occasionally he would crack open an eye, telling me to speed up so we could get there as soon as possible. I was on an unfamiliar road and it was now snowing, but I sped up because I wanted to get to Montreal. We were going more slowly than we’d intended because of the weather, but with a little luck we could still make it by 1:00
A.M.
, early enough to get a decent night’s sleep and be ready for sightseeing the following day. I’d been surfing the Internet and had found a lot I wanted to see. I was eager to visit the Basilique Notre-Dame (it was in the same style as one of my favorite cathedrals, Notre Dame in Paris), and some of the smaller art galleries. I had also hoped to get in some shopping, especially in the Underground City that Jim had told me about. We were also considering a side trip to Quebec City, if we could fit it in.

Despite the bad weather, we seemed to be making good time. As we drove north through New York State, there was nothing but darkness and a light snow shimmering as it fell from the sky. It was pretty, but the conditions weren’t the best, since the roads were covered with several inches of snow from a previous storm already on the ground. Suddenly, not far from the Canadian border, the car went into a treacherous spin. I had hit black ice. Jim, who’d dozed off, awoke startled, while I tried to control the spinning car as it careened across three northbound lanes. Finally the car skidded off the road, where it was stopped by, and instantly became stuck in, a mountainous snowbank.

Sitting for a moment in the dark, Jim and I just looked at each other. “We could have been killed,” he said.

“Thank God there were no other cars in those lanes.”

“Thank God! Are you OK?”

“Yeah, are you?”

“Yeah.”

When we caught our breath, we got out of the car to see if we could dislodge it from the snowbank. Rocking it didn’t work, and neither did putting it into reverse and pushing. It just wouldn’t budge. I hoped there was nothing wrong with it except for a fender stuck in a snowbank. Our cell phones had no signal, so we couldn’t call 911, and none of the few passing cars would stop. It was freezing, so we had no choice but to set out on foot in search of help—two stranded, shivering people walking through the dark night with nothing in sight but snow and ice.

We trudged toward the ramp that would take us off the highway, and then we headed left, because that’s where the trucks were heading. We were careful to stay to the side of the road and keep out of the way of any passing vehicles. All we saw were trees, snow, and more trees. Then, at last, we came upon signs of life: a truck stop with a small convenience store. Our oasis in the snow was about a hundred feet off the road, so we couldn’t even see it till we were right there. That little store was as welcome to us as a four-star restaurant would have been.

Inside, I got coffee and Jim got tea. We didn’t so much want to drink as to hold the hot cups in our freezing hands. We were too exhausted to eat, but if we’d wanted to, we could have feasted on Twinkies and Devil Dogs. The friendly clerk helped us find a room at a nearby inn and a driver who would take us there.

Soon we were in our room—a drafty space with cold floors, twin beds, and a dresser—with an adjoining bathroom consisting of a toilet and a sink. No shower, but with our belongings still in the car, we didn’t have any fresh clothes to change into anyhow. We didn’t even have toothbrushes. I had pulled back the faintly musty plaid bedcover on one of the beds and crawled in, and now Jim took off his shoes, pulled back the second bedcover, and began to climb into the other bed.

“How about coming in here with me?” I said, patting the mattress. “It’s freezing!” He complained good-naturedly that the bed was too small even for one person, but he climbed in anyhow, and we huddled and cuddled together in the chilly room, staying up awhile to watch Bill Clinton on TV. Normally I didn’t find a man with his socks on sexy, but hey!—it was so cold I kept my socks on too. At least for that night. How wonderful to be warm in that little bed, curled up next to Jim’s lean and muscular body. It was bitterly cold outside, and the room itself was none too warm, but that didn’t matter. We generated our own heat. And we spent a beautiful night together—in love, and with love—close as two people could be.