Silent Partner: A Memoir of My Marriage (6 page)

“Oh,” I said, returning the smile. “I’ve heard about you through my friend Frank, who works for Senator Lautenberg.”

“Oh, yeah, I know Frank,” Jim said. Then he eyed Manny, with a grin. “And you know this guy too,” he said. “Well, I won’t hold it against you.”

We chatted a bit more, and then we each moved on to speak with others.

Jim had a seat on the dais that night, and I was seated nearby at Manny’s table. After leaving my table for a quick trip to the ladies’ room, I came back to find that someone was sitting in my seat.

“There’s an empty seat next to Jim McGreevey,” Manny said, missing nothing. “C’mon,” he said to me, “go sit with him.”

Manny, it appeared, was intent on filling a number of roles, and the one that was foremost on his mind this evening was matchmaker.

“Manny . . .” I said, a note of mock exasperation in my voice. In truth, I was not interested in taking Manny up on his matchmaking services, because I’d been dating someone for nearly a year and had recently called it quits. He was a nice guy, but he wasn’t comfortable with how independent I was, nor how busy I was with my civic and political involvements, and I wasn’t about to change. Still, despite my self-imposed “break” from dating, I
was
interested in sitting down, so I joined Jim on the dais, where soon we were chatting easily in between the evening’s interminable speeches.

I hated these dinners and went only because my friends were hosting and would have been upset if I didn’t. Thankfully, this event happened only once a year. The previous year’s dinner had been unquestionably odd. The duke, a fastidious-looking man with a prominent mustache, had greeted the guests not only in uniform but wearing a rubber snake around his neck. It had always been hard to take him or his speeches seriously, but now it was impossible. And yet here I was again, listening to him ramble on, first in Portuguese and after that in English, feeling more than anything like a kid stuck in high-school detention. In this mood I was quite ready to strike up a conspiratorial conversation with a fellow detainee. That happened to be Jim.

“I don’t know what this guy is actually saying, but he sounds like he’s certain he’s going to save the world,” Jim whispered.

“Actually, he’s saying the salad was good,” I replied.

“He does this every year?”

“Every. Single. Year.”

“Any references to the snake?” I had already told Jim about the duke’s rubber snake.

“Not yet. Maybe by the time he works his way through the menu and is ready to praise the dessert.”

It was more than easy chatting. I felt a kinship with Jim right away. We were bantering as if we’d known each other a long time.

When the duke’s speech was over, we continued talking.

“How many people are going to speak?” Jim asked me.

“Too many,” I warned him, rolling my eyes. I liked this man. I liked laughing with him and, truth be told, I liked flirting with him too. But there was more to it than that. We connected. We talked about my job doing community outreach, patient relations, and public relations at St. James Hospital and about Jim’s work on the Health Committee of the state senate.

“If there’s anything I can ever do for you, let me know,” he said. If anyone were listening, and I’m not even sure I was, they might have heard the sound of a door opening.

When the evening ended, we went our separate ways—something neither Manny nor his wife was happy with.

“I think Jim’s attracted to you,” Grace said when we next saw each other.

“Hmmm,” I nonanswered.

“The two of you would make such a cute couple.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, my attempt at a tactful “No comment.”

A few weeks later, I heard something similar from another friend, Maria, who had also been at the dinner when Jim and I met. “You know,” she said, “my husband and daughter said they think Jim McGreevey is interested in you. Come to think of it, you’d make a great couple.”

“C’mon, stop!” I protested, laughing. “There’s nothing there. We enjoyed chatting that night, but that’s it.”

Actually, spark or no spark, for whatever set of reasons on Jim’s part, nothing more was forthcoming.

In the months that followed, Manny persisted in telling me more about Jim.

“Did you know Jim’s wife left him?”

“Oh, that’s a shame.” It really was a shame. And, I thought, maybe the reason our conversation that evening hadn’t led to a next time.

Taking my response as a sign of encouragement, Manny continued.

“Yeah, in ’94.” He nodded at me significantly. “She didn’t like politics. She couldn’t take it.”

I’d heard that in Woodbridge, the town where Jim was now mayor, the politics were down and dirty. Another mayoral election had been coming up for Jim in ’95, so, said Manny, sometime in 1994 Jim’s wife packed a bag for herself and their toddler daughter and headed out the door. She never came back.

“That’s the story,” Manny said. “Isn’t that terrible?”

“It is,” I agreed.

“Want to help him mend a broken heart?” That was Manny—subtleties not included.

I retreated back into my noncommittal, monosyllabic mutter. I didn’t like being so evasive, especially with Manny, who was so well intentioned, but I just was not ready to be set up. Besides, I had no idea whether this man I’d so recently met was done with his first marriage, hopelessly pining, or perhaps trying to repair it. Knowing as little as I did, I wanted to keep my distance. But on the face of it, I thought it
was
terrible what Jim’s wife had done. What kind of person would take off with her child and leave her husband behind, depriving him of watching his own daughter grow up? I could imagine the pain he must have felt, was probably still feeling. I didn’t know what their relationship was like, but to me, if there was a child involved, it changed everything. The marriage might be so much dirty bathwater, but you just can’t throw the baby out with it. No parent has the right to destroy or disrupt a child’s relationship with the other parent. And let me say I still feel this way today. At the time Manny told me about how Jim’s marriage had ended, I didn’t reply, because I didn’t want to encourage him. But I felt a flood of sympathy for Jim that might have opened my heart to him a bit more.

Meanwhile Manny and Grace continued to entertain themselves with their matchmaking plans. I know this because at one of the meetings Manny and I were at together, he told me.

“Grace and I have been talking to Jim McGreevey about you,” he whispered conspiratorially.

“Oh?”

Manny nodded. “We went to him and said, ‘Boy, do we have a girl for you!’”

“Oh?”

“We asked him what he thought of you, too.”

This time I didn’t even insert my noncommittal “Oh?” It wasn’t that I didn’t want to know. What woman doesn’t want to hear how she’s thought of by a man she herself finds both attractive and interesting? Besides, it was probably a safe question. Since Manny was raising the subject, the news was bound to be positive. But I still wasn’t sure I was up for anything. I was readier than I’d been months earlier, but that didn’t necessarily mean ready. Besides, I knew that if I showed any interest in what Jim thought of me, Manny and Grace would push it with him, and I didn’t want that. The scrutiny would have made my skin crawl. I didn’t want to feel like I was under surveillance and being monitored. I’d never wanted to feel as if my personal life were anyone’s favorite soap opera or, worse, sitcom. The beginning of a new relationship was uncertain enough. If something were going to develop between Jim and me, it would happen in its own good time.

I’ve been reserved my whole life. I grew up in a close-knit community where neighbors were in and out of my mother’s kitchen, trading tales about this one or that one, and I vowed to avoid being the subject of anybody’s gossip. That seems almost funny now.

I remember an incident my mother often recounts about how one day her next-door neighbor had come in and was telling my mother about another neighbor who had been seen with Somebody Else’s Husband.

“And you know what?” the neighbor said.

“What?” said my mother, trying to be polite. She wasn’t much of a gossip herself. She was too busy raising three children.

I must have been in my teens by then, and I was brimming over with an adolescent’s conviction of her own wisdom. I marched into the kitchen and cut them short. “Don’t you have anything better to do? Other people’s lives are none of your business.” I said it to both of them but really meant it for the neighbor alone. I knew I was being rude, but I guess I didn’t care. The neighbor just looked at me and kept talking, while my mother gave me one of those I’ll-talk-to-you-later looks.

When the neighbor left, my mother told me what I already knew. “That was bad manners.”

“And it’s bad manners to talk about others,” I huffed.

“What am I going to do with you?” my mother asked, and not for the first time.

Over the years my view about gossip hasn’t changed, though I’m less likely to share my unsolicited insights. These days my mother tells me I’ve missed my calling as a CIA agent, because I never reveal secrets that are told to me.

It wasn’t until a year later, in September 1996, that Jim and I were together for more than a few minutes. It was late one evening at a fund-raising dinner in Newark for the Portuguese-American Congress, of which I was then vice president. I knew that Jim had been invited, but when he hadn’t arrived by 10:00
P.M.,
I figured he wasn’t coming. But in he walked at 11:30. More oddly still, here he was right in front of me—I was emcee for the evening—asking if he could speak.

“You want to speak.” I repeated his request more or less blankly.

“If that’s OK . . .”

Well, it wasn’t exactly OK. Actually, it wasn’t OK at all. The evening had already run far too long, just as it always did. It was invariably the same routine. People came late, so the speeches started late and each speaker spoke for too long. Then there were all the photographs—this one shaking hands with that one, this one holding up his or her plaque with that one, and still another of this one and that one surrounded by all the organization’s officers.

Even at this late hour, the coffee, which I desperately needed, wasn’t even brewed. Now here was Mr. Senator, wanting me to ask people to pause, mid-chew, to listen to yet another speech. I had recently begun a new job and was pretty tired. All I really wanted to do was get my coffee, get rid of the guests, and then get home and get to bed. There were 150 people in the room, and very few could even vote for Jim, either as mayor or state senator. Not only were we not from his city, we weren’t even from his county!

His request to deliver a speech didn’t make any sense, but he was an invited guest, so letting him speak was the polite thing to do. I’m stubborn if I feel strongly about something, as my mother would be the first to tell you, but I’m generally not confrontational, and most things aren’t worth making a fuss over anyhow. I certainly wasn’t about to express my annoyance to someone I hardly knew, nor do so at a microphone in front of a crowd. I let it go but wondered if maybe Jim wasn’t quite as charming or quite as astute as I’d thought he was. His talk was brief and warm, though, and my annoyance quickly evaporated.

After Jim spoke, he joined me and some others on the dance floor, where we had gone to revive ourselves. Manny and Grace were dancing, when she grabbed Jim and said, “Here, dance with Dina.” We danced a little, and after a few songs he, I, and several others collapsed into seats around an empty table and began the kind of talk that doesn’t take heightened concentration—or any concentration. I was twenty-nine, and about to take myself on a Caribbean cruise in early November to celebrate my thirtieth birthday. It wasn’t a big deal, maybe because most of my friends were ten or twenty years older than I was. There weren’t a lot of people my age in this organization. One of my friends routinely referred to me as “the kid.”

Jim, meanwhile, was listening to the conversation.

“When’s your birthday?” he asked.

“November fifth,” I said. “Election Day, this year.”

Jim turned to his assistant. “Get Dina’s phone number,” he said, “and remind me to take her out for her birthday.” His assistant asked for my phone number, and soon after, Jim and his assistant left.

I didn’t know what to make of this. If he liked me enough to want to take me out for an event as personal as my birthday, then why would someone have to remind him to do so? Was he trying to come off as Mr. Busy and Important? Or was he just awkward? Or, following his marriage, was he so unused to dating that he was now rusty? I didn’t know how to read him, and it made me feel a bit distant.

When Jim’s scheduler called a few days later, he told me that Jim wanted to meet with me. Meet with me—what did that mean? By then I had learned that Jim wanted to run for governor the following year, which at least explained his desire to make a speech at eleven thirty at night to people who weren’t his constituents. He knew we did a lot of voter registration, so perhaps he wanted to ask for my organization’s help in his campaign? But he’d taken my number because my birthday was coming up, or so he said. Didn’t that mean it was a personal invitation? I knew that by now Manny and Grace had used up a whole quiver of arrows playing Cupid, and the hints coming my way were that they believed they had at least grazed their target. But wait. If he did want to take me out, why would he plan something that wasn’t going to happen for another month and a half? And why wouldn’t he call me himself, instead of having his assistant take my number and his scheduler call me?

That’s how I thought about it at the time, and even then it threw me a little off balance. Now, after only a mere ten years, I mark this occasion—right at the get-go—as the first of Jim’s pulled punches, a suggestion of a not-so-well-concealed ambivalence, or at least uncertainty. It is now clear to me that Jim’s invitation was
un
clear. He couldn’t even bring himself to ask me a direct question, even one as simple as, “Do you want to have dinner?”

While all my confusion swarmed through my mind like fog on wings, Jim’s scheduler on the other end of the phone continued to rattle off dates.