Silent Partner: A Memoir of My Marriage (23 page)

Whenever I complained loudly enough about not being kept informed, Jim would say that it was an oversight and would promise to correct it. For a few days, I’d receive a schedule, and then it was back to the same routine. For a while, I persuaded one of his staffers to e-mail me with Jim’s schedule daily. When she left, I asked her replacement to continue the practice, but she out-and-out refused—I suspect at Jim’s instructions.

All Jim’s secrets started even before we were married. The secret I was most threatened by, and which kept me from ever considering the nature of Jim’s relationship with Golan, was Jim’s relationship with Kari. Although I didn’t expect to be privy to the terms of their divorce—especially the financial terms—I was kept in the dark as to his custodial agreement. Jim evaded the question anytime I asked, and I did ask, because I wanted to meet Morag. Before we were married, Jim would plan trips to Vancouver and not tell me until the day before. The evasion continued after we were married, and once Jim actually informed me that he was going to visit Morag only when he was already sitting on a plane.

Everything I knew about Jim and Kari’s separation led me to believe he still cared for her. He’d told me that she couldn’t handle political life, and he’d said that he’d attempted to salvage the marriage by asking her to go to counseling with him, but she refused. I didn’t know what to think.

Very early on, Jim turned away my efforts to meet Morag or speak to her on the phone. Then there was that business of having mail from Morag and Kari delivered to his office when I moved to Woodbridge, and to his secretary once we were at Drumthwacket. Did he think I was going to throw them away before he got home? Or maybe hold them over a kettle and steam them open?

I didn’t know. I had accepted that I couldn’t do anything about whatever Jim’s relationship was with Kari, but I was determined to establish a relationship of my own with Morag or perhaps to join him in his. This was important to me before Jacqueline was born and even more so afterward. I wanted the girls to think of each other at least as friends, if not as sisters. Still, Jim rejected my efforts to meet Morag. I tried to show my interest by asking questions or offering to go shopping for her before his trips (or for Christmas or her birthday) but he always waved away my offers. “Don’t worry about it. Cathy will go out and buy something,” he’d say. After a while, I stopped offering.

Jim always kept the most current photos of Morag on his refrigerator, so I had watched her grow over the years. When I first met him, the photo on the fridge showed Morag as a sweet little girl just out of toddlerhood. Over time she grew more distinct, a pretty child, but shy. Then came the school photo of Morag, then another of her wearing the costume she wore for her Irish step-dancing competitions. During all these years, I imagined how it would be, or could be, if we met—I could take her shopping at the local mall, we could get our nails done, we could have lunch or go to the movies. I could find out if she was a popcorn girl or a Gummi Bear girl. I knew it would take work on my part. I imagined that she would be a bit shy with me as well as a bit resistant to getting to know me, but I thought with time we would connect. And I wanted to connect. Not only was she Jim’s daughter, but now we had a blood relative in common: I was the mother of her half sister.

Now, in 2002, Morag was almost ten. Jim and I had been together for six years, and still I’d never met her. In fact, I’d never even spoken to her. Jim simply wouldn’t allow it. Not that he ever refused outright—not in so many words anyway. Sometimes, while we still lived in Woodbridge, I would hear Jim talking on the phone as he approached the front door, but he always finished the conversation outside the door, before coming in. If I happened to have come home after Jim and he was on the phone with Morag or her mother, he would wander out of the room I was in and into another. After we moved to Drumthwacket, if he wanted to call her, he would go downstairs, out of the residence to the offices. Now and then, if I went downstairs for whatever reason, I might overhear him. For years, whenever I raised the subject of finding some way to connect to Morag, he gave me a nonanswer or simply no answer.

I hadn’t given up, though, and I’d tried various ways to get to meet Morag, all to no avail. Jim even opposed my suggestion that she attend our wedding.

“If Morag comes, Kari will have to come also, and it will be awkward,” he said. He made it clear that he wouldn’t budge on the issue. But he had a point, so I let it go.

I had also suggested to Jim on several occasions that Morag spend some time with us in the summer or during holidays.

“No,” he said. “Her mother won’t allow it.”

“She’s your daughter,” I’d said. “She needs to spend some extended time with you.”

“I don’t want any problems,” he’d told me. “If I fight with Kari over Morag visiting, I’m afraid Kari and her mother will poison her against me.” For a while, quite a few years, I didn’t push because I didn’t want to complicate his relationship with Morag. I had no immediate knowledge of Kari myself anyhow, so I had no basis on which to believe or disbelieve him, though eventually I became suspicious and thought Jim’s fundamental motivation was to keep Kari and me apart because of what I believed his relationship might be to Kari.

More than once, though, I asked to go with Jim when he went to see Morag in Vancouver. He went three or four times a year and stayed for a period of five to seven days each time—at Easter, sometime during the summer, for her birthday in late October, and during the week between Christmas and New Year’s. I didn’t expect to tag along with them every minute they were together. I just thought that gradually Morag and I could get to know each other.

“No,” said Jim. “I want to spend time alone with Morag. Besides, having you there would be uncomfortable for her.” What Jim said hurt me and made me feel rejected, but I could understand how, seeing her as seldom as he did, he might feel possessive of his time with her. Still, I always felt I was there in spirit. He stayed at the Inn at Westminster Quay in New Westminster, British Columbia. After we’d been together awhile, I knew the hotel phone number by heart.

THE EASTER AFTER JACQUELINE
was born, I became more insistent. “This time Jacqueline and I are going to Vancouver with you,” I said to him late one night. He was already in bed, and I was about to climb in beside him.

“No, you’re not,” he said, suddenly erupting. He was so furious that he got out of bed. It was now a month or two after our Cape May visit, and Jim was still on crutches, so he picked them up off the floor next to his side of the bed and began to head toward the stairs. When I followed to ask why he didn’t want us to go with him, he spun toward me, flinging one of his crutches at me. Thankfully, he missed. Then, picking it up, Jim hobbled down the stairs in a fit of anger and went out the front door, slamming it behind him. I was shocked. I had never expected this reaction. What’s more, I couldn’t understand it. I went back to our bedroom, where Jacqueline, awakened by his screaming, was now crying, and I cried with her as I held her.
What was this all about?
I wondered.
Why didn’t he want me to go to Vancouver? What was happening to our marriage?

For the next few hours, I alternated between weeping and nursing Jacqueline. By midnight, when I went to bed, Jim wasn’t back. The last time I remember looking at the clock, it was close to 1:00
A.M.
, and he still wasn’t back. When I woke up, Jim was next to me in bed. I had no idea what time he came in.

“I’m sorry I lost my temper,” he said, more defensively than apologetically. “But it would just be too complicated if you came. When Jacqueline’s older, she can meet Morag.”

Jim and I rarely disagreed, and when we did, one or the other of us would apologize, and then we’d kiss and make up. In fact, Jim’s trips to Vancouver and his unwillingness to have me meet Morag were one of the only issues we quarreled about. We didn’t quite kiss and make up, because the issue wasn’t resolved and was by now a sore point, but if nothing else, I was willing to have this particular fight end. Still, the damage was done.

Whether I chipped away at Jim’s resistance over time, or whether something else happened, I just don’t know, but in June 2002, Jim told me that Kari and Morag were coming to New Jersey.

It was about time. Maybe he wanted to show off his new life—the Princeton mansion and the state troopers who escorted him everywhere—or maybe he realized it was time for Morag to meet her new baby sister. Whatever it was, arrangements were made for Morag and Kari to visit at the beginning of July 2002.

It was a good time for their trip. The campaign was long since over, and Jim was settling into his new role as governor, which meant that he wasn’t being besieged by reporters. Besides, if the press did intrude, the troopers could always intervene. And with Jim as governor, the problem of comfortable accommodations for Morag and her family was resolved.

The governor of New Jersey has the use of two secluded beach houses in Island Beach State Park, ten miles of otherwise-undeveloped land on the long barrier island off the Jersey coast. Referred to as the Ocean House and the Bay House for their location, the two cedar-shingled houses are right across the road from each other on the island, which at that point is no more than a quarter of a mile wide. Generally the governor uses the sprawling six-bedroom Ocean House, whose back door leads to a beach on the Atlantic Ocean, while guests or cabinet members use the Bay House, the back door of which leads to a beach on the bay side.

Jim had planned something of a family reunion for Morag’s visit. Morag, her mother, her grandmother, her aunt, and her uncle would stay at the Bay House, while the ten members of the extended McGreevey family—Jim, me, Jacqueline, Jim’s parents, his two sisters, his brother-in-law, and niece and nephew—would stay at the Ocean House.

Still, despite all Jim’s new options, whatever concerns had pushed him to keep his life with me totally separated from his life with Kari and Morag all these years continued to gnaw at him. As the visit drew closer, Jim retreated into the emotional state that always indicated he was anxious: He brushed aside, evaded, or otherwise short-circuited any question and every effort I made to discuss the details of the visit. Just days before Morag and her family arrived, Jim’s parents and his sister Sharon had come to Drumthwacket for dinner, and we sat around the dining room table as Jacqueline played on a mat on the floor between us. None of the McGreeveys had seen Kari or Morag at all since the two had departed for Vancouver ten years earlier, and, perhaps in an effort to alleviate their own anxious feelings, they wanted to talk about the visit, learn all the details, anticipate some of the events.

“So next week we’ll all be down at the shore,” said Sharon. “It’ll be good to see Morag. She must have gotten so big,”

“Yes,” said Ronnie. “Christopher and Catherine”—Caroline’s children—“haven’t seen her in years. I wonder if they’ll remember her.”

Jim didn’t say much and looked uncomfortable.

“Are you planning to take her anywhere?” Ronnie asked.

“Oh, we’ll plan some day trips,” Jim said vaguely, before he abruptly changed the subject. “Hey, Mom, look at Jacqueline. Look at how she’s trying to reach for all those toys on her mat.”

The talk then turned to Jacqueline. But Ronnie hadn’t forgotten what was on her mind. When Jim left the room, she looked at me and said, “So Kari is coming.”

“Yes,” I said, as noncommittally as possible. I had never discussed my misgivings about Kari or Morag with Ronnie, though Jim had once told me that his mother never really cared for Kari. Not so surprising, I’d thought. Regardless of what had prompted Kari’s sudden departure, no mother is likely to feel great warmth toward a woman who flees a marriage to her son and whisks her granddaughter thousands of miles away.

“It’ll be OK,” Ronnie said, as if she were comforting me. “Kari will be cordial to you.”

“I’m sure she will,” I said. That was the end of the conversation, but clearly she had her own unease not only about the visit but about how Jim seemed to be handling it. Or not handling it. After dinner, likely at some subtle signal from Ronnie, Jim followed her outside to the gardens for a walk around the grounds. They were out in the back for about half an hour—undoubtedly discussing Kari’s visit, which Ronnie would never have done in front of me—while my father-in-law, Jack, and my sister-in-law Sharon remained upstairs with me and Jacqueline. Eventually Ronnie and Jim came back upstairs.

“We were just catching up,” Jim volunteered.

The July Fourth weekend came around, and Morag and her family arrived. As Jim planned, they would be at the Bay House, while we would be across the road at the Ocean House. I thought we’d spend most of our time at one house or the other and that we’d see one another on a regular basis for meals or at the beach. I was especially looking forward to having Jacqueline spend time with Morag. Jacqueline, who was now seven months, wouldn’t remember the visit, but Morag would, and I hoped it would be the start of their lifelong relationship. I imagined that Kari would be as interested in having Morag know Jacqueline as I was in having Jacqueline know Morag. I didn’t think that Kari and I would become best friends, but I thought that since we were the mothers of half sisters, we might spend time together with both girls. I was curious about Morag simply because she was Jim’s daughter, and I thought Kari might be curious about Jacqueline in the same way.

Early in the afternoon on the day of Morag’s arrival, the troopers drove Jacqueline and me from Drumthwacket to the shore. All the McGreeveys would come that day too. Meanwhile Morag and her family would come to the Bay House straight from the airport—the troopers would pick them up, and if Jim could get away, he would go too. That was the plan. Then, early in the evening—joined by Jimmy and Lori Kennedy—we’d go out to a local restaurant for dinner, and that’s where we’d all meet for the first time.

Jacqueline and I arrived at the Ocean House before anyone else. Then we waited. And waited. And waited. Eventually one of the troopers told me that Jim was waiting for me outside. I had no idea how long he’d been on the island. Had he just arrived? Had he arrived with Morag and her family? I carried Jacqueline outside, and there stood Jim, more nervous than ever.