Silent Partner: A Memoir of My Marriage (20 page)

13. STICKS AND STONES

IT WAS THE END
of January, and I was trying to catch my breath. The election had been victorious, but the campaign had been grueling, as had the month and a half in the hospital and childbirth. I was exhausted. Jim and I both were.

The learning curve was steep for Jim, and for me as well. Jim was now charged with balancing a multibillion-dollar state budget, dealing directly with the federal government, and making cabinet and judicial appointments. As a legislator, he had been an advocate for his district, but now his point of view had to shift. He had to become an advocate for the entire state, a manager who would make sure that all the different systems, appointments, and priorities worked as harmoniously as possible.

As for me, the role of mother was brand-new, and I relished every moment. Well, almost every moment. When Jacqueline slept more than an hour, I did have to learn not to race to her crib and place my fingers under her nose to make sure she was breathing. I nursed her for the first few months but worried a bit about what would happen when she moved on to cow’s milk, which, especially when heated, has always made me gag. Would I retch my way through Jacqueline’s toddlerhood and childhood? Would I deny her hot cocoa? If I did, would that make me a bad mother? But I started to relax, and even warm milk became manageable. I soon came to think of the burp cloth I wore on my left shoulder as a fashion accessory and that only people with narcolepsy slept through the entire night.

By February, I was back at my job and had become an almost expert juggler. In the span of an hour, my phone might ring a dozen times—with calls from my assistant Cindy, at the hospital, reminding me I had to decide on the date for the fund-raising gala by tomorrow; from Jim, hoping my calendar was clear to attend the next Democratic Committee fund-raiser with him; from my assistant Nina, at the statehouse, wanting some dates when we could schedule a meeting on childhood obesity with various community leaders and health-care experts; from a contractor, asking whether I preferred tile or wood for the Drumthwacket kitchen floor; and from my father, who took care of Jacqueline while I was at work, worrying about what he thought might be a rash on her stomach. Meanwhile, in just about every one of these realms, I was aware of being watched and reacted to by the media.

Two weeks into Jim’s term, he suggested we get away—“flee” might be a more accurate word—to Cape May, a lovely seaside resort town at the southern tip of the New Jersey cape, the oldest resort in the country, frequented by nearly half a dozen nineteenth-century American presidents. These days, Cape May is famous for its large Victorian houses richly adorned with gingerbread trim (now converted into quaint bed-and-breakfasts), for its summer jazz and music festivals, and for its trendy shops. In summer, its population swells to a hundred thousand, but in winter, with only the permanent residents, there are no more than five thousand souls. In other words, the perfect getaway.

We were reluctant to leave Jacqueline behind, but we both realized that exhausted parents didn’t make the best parents, and also that we were in desperate need of time out and time together. We would never have left her with a sitter at that young age, but we knew that Jacqueline would be lovingly cared for by my mom and dad, and that we were reachable twenty-four hours a day. So we piled into the car with our luggage, our three troopers, and our four cell phones (I had one, and now that Jim was governor, he had acquired a third), and off we went.

We arrived in Cape May at teatime. The bed-and-breakfast where we had booked a room was an enormous Victorian with several towers. Inside, the tearoom was small, as most Victorian rooms are, with one dining table where four other guests were already seated. We ordered tea and scones from a pleasant waitress. I warmed my hands against the teapot as the tea steeped, then poured it into the lovely but endearingly mismatched bone china cups resting in their saucers.

“Cold?” Jim said, placing his hands on top of mine.

“What do you think?” I said, smiling. By now he knew that my hands were almost always cold.

This was our first time alone in public as governor and First Lady. The people at the table recognized Jim, and as usual he struck up a conversation, introducing me as well. It was teatime for the six of us rather than the two of us, but this was just the way things were. I was flattered at this first hint of celebrity status, though not quite comfortable.

After tea, as we were about to check in to our room, Jim asked the receptionist if we had a room with a view. “You can’t see much of the ocean, but if you want an ocean view, I can check the owner’s other property.”

I wondered if she would be doing this for any customer and decided that since it was the dead of winter, she probably would. They had the spare rooms, so why not? But it was also star treatment and, for me, the beginning of a kind of divided consciousness where I was always wondering why people were acting as they were acting toward me. It was flattering, but it made me feel like a different person, not quite myself. They’re doing this for me? This is me? After a quick phone call, she directed us to a second bed-and-breakfast. “It’s right on the ocean, and they’ll be able to put you in a beautiful room with a fireplace that looks out at the water.”

Since we both loved the ocean, we headed back to the car to tell the troopers we were changing our location. They drove us a few blocks to the waterfront lodging and brought our bags in. “You guys can go. We’re OK,” Jim told the troopers. “We just want to be alone.”

“Are you sure, Gov? We’ll stick around,” said one of the three. Actually, all of us were aware that it would be quite irregular to leave Jim unattended. By law, they were not supposed to do so. They knew it, I knew it, and Jim knew it. Still, he insisted.

“No,” said Jim. “I want you to leave and come back and get us on Sunday afternoon. Besides, who’s going to kidnap us in Cape May in the middle of winter?” They looked at each other, clearly uncomfortable with the request.

“OK, but call if you need anything,” they said.

“We’ll see you Sunday afternoon,” Jim replied, and then the troopers took off. They were uneasy leaving us, but Jim was their boss and they wouldn’t disobey his orders. Anyhow, two was company and five was a crowd.

OUR LODGINGS CONSISTED OF
a large room done in Victorian floral wallpaper—red and blue florets on a white background—with the promised fireplace and spectacular ocean view. We settled in and then dressed to go for a walk on the beach before dinner. On the way out, we stopped to make reservations for eight o’clock dinner. The restaurant at the inn was very popular, and it was best to make reservations, even in the winter.

We crossed the street to the beach and began walking north, close to the ocean’s edge. It was a cold but beautiful night. We walked hand in hand and stopped to gaze at the sky as we embraced. It was just great to be away from the rest of the world, so peaceful, with only the lulling sound of the waves and the cawing of the gulls. Not another soul was in sight, not even a car. After walking for about a half hour, we turned around and began to head back south in the direction of the inn, still walking on the sand.

The night was clear, and the stars filled the sky in a way they never seem to in the city. Jim and I were holding hands, looking up, stargazing, comfortable in our silence. The wind felt strong, but we were nonetheless enjoying its roar along with the sound of the waves.

Suddenly, though, Jim’s Irish tweed hat was seized by the wind and carried off. He rushed after it, disappearing from my view into the dark. I couldn’t see him, and I didn’t hear him.

“Jim?” I called. “Where are you?”

No answer, or if there was, it was muffled by the sound of the wind and the waves. After a minute or two of calling “Jim!” and peering into the dark, I got scared. I couldn’t imagine what had happened to him.

“Honey, where are you?” I called out again. I was probably
shrieking
by now, the panic rising in my chest.

Finally I heard a faint voice. “Dina! Help! Over here! I’m over here! I fell, and can’t get up.”

I still couldn’t see him, but at least I could follow the sound of his voice.

“I think I broke something,” he said. The sand was uneven, and the erosion had formed a small ditch of sorts. And that was where Jim had fallen.

“Are you OK?” I asked, relieved to finally reach him.

“I’m really in a lot of pain,” he said. “And I think I might have internal bleeding.” I grabbed Jim’s arms and tried to drag him out of the ditch and through the sand, but I was unable to make any headway. On his own, he couldn’t move at all.

“I’m calling 911,” I said, taking my cell phone out of my jacket pocket.

“Wait,” he said. “Let’s think about this.”

“What’s there to think about?” I asked. “You’re hurt and you can’t move! I’m calling 911.”

“No, wait. I don’t want anyone to know I was running after my hat when I fell.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. “Why not?” I asked.

“I’ll look stupid.”

Poor Jim. Ever mindful of appearances, he seemed to be imagining the morning’s headlines:

GOVERNOR BREAKS LEG CHASING IRISH TWEED CAP

And then he backed down. “All right,” he said reluctantly. Clearly, his pain was worsening.

I called 911.

“Hello, this is Dina McGreevey, the governor’s wife. We were walking on the beach at Cape May. My husband fell. We think he might have broken his leg.”

I guess the story was sort of preposterous, because the dispatcher’s tone was incredulous. She seemed to find it astounding that anyone would be on the beach at this hour and in this weather. But she kept to protocol and asked for further details about our location. I really didn’t have a clue. I had no idea how far north of the inn we still were. There weren’t even streetlamps, so I couldn’t see across the street to the houses and the hotels.

EMS was now sending an ambulance, the dispatcher told us. Meanwhile I called the inn to alert them, too. At least I didn’t have to persuade them that I was Jim McGreevey’s wife. It was cold on the beach, and I figured they might be able to come find us before EMS got there. But when they asked our location, I was unable to identify it. Jim, lying on the damp sand and unable to move, was now trembling from the cold.

My concern was that no one would be able to find us. It was so dark. I tried to comfort Jim, telling him that someone would be coming to get us soon, then attempting again to drag him farther away from the ocean, but I couldn’t. That’s when it occurred to me to hit the “send” button on my cell phone so that it would light up. Hopefully, the faint beam would be visible even two or three hundred feet away, where the beach met the street.

While we waited for help, Jim asked me to call Kevin Hagan, a member of his staff. He had realized that the troopers were going to be in big trouble and that someone had to notify them so they could turn around and get themselves back to Cape May as fast as possible. I hadn’t even thought about the troopers. I wasn’t yet used to having them around, and it hadn’t even occurred to me that the essence of their job was to be with us for just this kind of emergency. Jim told Kevin Hagan what had happened and that he would call back once we’d gotten to the hospital, wherever that might be.

It took EMS only about ten or fifteen minutes to arrive and find us, but it seemed like hours. The dispatcher called back to tell me that while the ambulance would be in the area within minutes, we might be hard to locate. I told them that I would attempt to alert them with my cell phone’s light, praying that my battery didn’t die before they came. When I finally saw the ambulance as it attempted to drive north along the back edge of the beach, I waved my phone frantically.

They saw the light! And soon they reached us.

Jim was now trembling violently and in excruciating pain, all the more as they moved him onto a board so they could carry him to the ambulance. True to the narrative tradition of injured political officials—again I think of Reagan greeting his surgeons—Jim joked with the EMTs as he was loaded into the ambulance.

“You’re lucky to have gotten the only two Democrats on the squad,” one said.

Jim laughed, reminding them to “go easy on the bumps.”

So once again, in this unimaginable life we were leading, one of us was in enough medical trouble to require an ambulance, for the second time in four months. We were headed to the nearest hospital, Burdette Tomlin Memorial Hospital, about ten miles north. I knew that Jim was in excruciating pain because he would let out a yelp with every bump, but the fact that he was able to kid around with the EMTs offered me a bit of relief. I held his hand and stroked his hair in an effort to comfort him. When we arrived, we learned that the state troopers, however they’d learned about Jim’s whereabouts, were on their way.

A team was assembled to care for Jim in the emergency room. They took his vital signs and attempted to move his leg, but he gasped and cried out. Had he broken something? Fractured it? The medical staff said they wouldn’t be sure until they saw the X-rays, but from my years of following my brother’s leg injuries, including his fractures, it was pretty clear to me that something had to be broken for Jim to be in that much pain.

The X-rays showed that he had in fact broken his left femur, the bone in the thigh. The radiologist was surprised, telling me that the femur was the strongest bone in the body and very difficult to break, especially in someone as young as Jim, who had just turned forty-four. And in the sand, no less. By this time, two troopers had arrived. As the nurses cut one leg of his trousers, Jim joked about how they were ruining a new and perfectly good pair of pants.

It was clear that Jim would have to have surgery to set his femur as soon as possible. The question was, where? We were unfamiliar with this hospital and its staff. Jim’s designee for commissioner of the Department of Health, Clifton Lacy, M.D., recommended that Jim be brought to an orthopedic surgeon at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick. It was an excellent regional trauma center and he was on staff there. But now the question was how to get Jim to that hospital.