Silent Partner: A Memoir of My Marriage (9 page)

“Sounds good,” Jim said. “Let me check the schedule, and I’ll call you.” Romantic or not—and Jim could be romantic—we needed to tend to our various responsibilities. Still, we were always in touch by cell phone. Jim might be upstate or downstate, but we’d always find time to speak.

My trust in him continued to grow during this period, as did my admiration. Yes, he was charming, but I’d met a lot of charming guys, enough to know that charm is just the wrapping paper. What touched me about Jim was that he was caring and kind, consistently so. One snowy winter night, for example, as he was entering Woodbridge after driving back from a visit to his sister Caroline and her family in Delaware, Jim saw an elderly woman stepping off the curb. She was tugging her loaded grocery cart across the street as if it were a balky mule. It seemed bigger than she was, and getting to the other side of the road appeared to be an exhausting undertaking. Jim was overcome with sympathy for the woman and wanted to help. He stopped his car, leaving his motor idling as he helped the woman across the street.

He didn’t announce who he was, but this was Woodbridge, and she obviously recognized him.

“Oh, thank you, Mayor,” she said, continuing to make her way up the block.

“How far do you still have to go?” Jim asked.

“Oh, a few blocks. It’s not a problem,” she said.

“Don’t be silly. I’ll give you a lift.”

It was typical of Jim to look for a way to help people. He’d go out of his way for kids, too, especially high-school kids. Jim had earned spending money working part-time in the admissions office at Columbia when he was an undergraduate, and he’d often strike up a conversation with kids he met at a football game or picnic, inviting them to come to his office because he knew he could guide them through the application process. He seemed to me to be an idealist, a man who thought that just by virtue of his position in public life he could change the world.

I knew that Jim saw me as a political asset, and I appreciated it because it meant he saw something in me that wasn’t immediately apparent to other people. Jim recognized that my being reserved didn’t mean I wasn’t something of a people person. I was never as gregarious as he was—Jim would talk with anyone who was still breathing—but if I sat down with a group of strangers at a table, I could move a conversation along and then some. I also knew that to Jim I was both beautiful and stylish. Any woman who knows that a man sees her that way is bound to credit him with astounding perceptiveness, and I was no exception.

I liked taking Jim 101, getting to know him, getting to know all about him: He had a pet snake as a kid, drank coffee (but only at breakfast), showered in the morning rather than at night, and had very sensitive skin. He worried that he was too short and prided himself on his warmth and friendliness. If Jim had placed a personal ad at that time, it might have read “Single white mayor, with ideals to spare, looking for like-minded Democrat. Must be interested in and knowledgeable about politics (esp. cult figures like Abraham Lincoln and Robert F. Kennedy), a C-Span junkie. Also desirable: interest in beachcombing, St. Patrick’s Day parades, Springsteen, and Italian cuisine.”

I felt increasingly drawn to Jim; nevertheless, I remained somewhat cautious. Even in my close relationships, which also include my friendships, I’m never the first to declare my feelings, never one to express anger. I don’t usually voice criticisms, and I never ask questions that might seem intrusive. I wait for people to show themselves, if they care to. Jim told me that he loved me, and then he built on that with thoughtfulness. He often sent flowers, not only for my birthday or Valentine’s Day but when I had an important meeting or function I was hosting. When my grandmother died, though he’d never met her, he bought me a Tiffany-style lamp. He knew I liked the style, and he thought it would cheer me up.

But what I appreciated most of all were the quiet times we had together, just walking and talking. And as much as this sounds like a cliché, we really did take long walks on the beach. One walk always stood out for me. We were strolling along the water’s edge, hand in hand, both in our windbreakers, with the wind blowing at our backs.

“You know,” said Jim, “there’s one positive to having lost the election.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’ll have more time to get to know each other better and to develop our relationship,” he said.

“I guess that is the silver lining,” I agreed happily. I hadn’t always been sure he wanted me in his future.

“And maybe I can spend a little bit more time with Morag, too.” His transition momentarily sobered me. Always in the back of my mind were questions about his feelings for Kari. He was hesitant about letting me meet Morag, and that seemed to me a measure of his continued involvement with Kari. Morag, who was five and a half, had started doing Irish step dancing and had already won a few local competitions. I didn’t want to spoil this special afternoon with a possibly complicated conversation, so instead I asked about her progress in step dancing.

“How’s Morag doing, getting ready for her competition?”

“She’s been practicing a lot. And she’s growing so quickly she needs another new costume already.” I’d seen a photograph of the costume—a beautifully embroidered green skirt and top.

Morag was thriving, and that made Jim happy, but the fact that so much happened for her in between each of his visits made him sad. He had seen her the previous New Year’s, but now he wouldn’t be visiting her again until Easter.

“It’s hard having her so far away,” he said, as he’d said many times before.

“Why don’t you have her come and visit you here?”

“It’s not that easy,” was all he’d say.

BY FEBRUARY 2000, JIM
and I were engaged, and my role in his campaign now became fully visible. I didn’t have a lot of time in which to plan the wedding—the campaign took precedence—but in the time I did have, I began to look at bridal magazines to get an idea of what I might like to wear. My friend Ana, who would be my maid of honor, had once owned a bridal shop in Newark and was willing to discuss gowns with me endlessly. I knew I wanted simple and elegant, with not too much lace. And my height required that I stay away from puffy. It didn’t take me long to decide that I wanted a Vera Wang design, and once I’d made that decision, with my mother along I began looking at and trying on Vera Wang gowns in varying shades of white.

“What do you think?” I said, the first time I tried on a gown, the most elaborate one I would ever try on.

“I like it,” my mom said.

“Well, I don’t. I think I look like a Christmas ornament.”

And that set the tone. Elaborate? She loved it. Simple? Not so much. In the end, when she first saw—on a hanger—the gown I eventually selected, she said, “I don’t like that. Why are you even trying it on?”

“Because
I
like it.”

To her credit, once she saw it on me, she liked it too.

A multitasker like most brides-to-be, I soon started looking around at wedding bands—in magazines, at jewelry stores, and online.

As for a wedding shower—my mother should’ve known better than to bring it up. She knew how much I disliked showers. I complained about the ones I’d had to go to and sent my regrets to the rest. I’d told her, “When I get married, whenever that happens to happen,
no shower
.” After I got engaged, she’d tried hard to bite her lip. But she couldn’t help herself, and eventually she broached the subject. “So how about a bridal shower?” she said to me one day while we were looking at wedding gowns.

“Absolutely not,” I said. But I said it with a smile.

MEANWHILE, MY GREAT JOY
in our upcoming marriage floated merrily along on a tainted sea. In March 2000, just weeks after our engagement, while I was eyeing my first Vera Wang wedding gown, Jim took a trip to Israel, meeting Golan Cipel, then spokesperson for the mayor of an Israeli town Jim visited. There, apparently on impulse, he invited Golan to come work for his campaign, thereby setting the stage for all that came later.

But what is the most disturbing to me, and perhaps the most damaging to my capacity to trust even my own judgment, is that Jim’s deepest feelings were absolutely invisible to me. His conflicts over his sexual orientation, and the risks he took with his health and possibly mine, must have tormented him. And yet his torment was as imperceptible in our relationship as carbon monoxide would have been in our home. If there was ever a time when Jim seemed happy, loving, and connected to me, it was in the months leading up to our marriage.

I never heard him have a moment’s doubt about getting married, and wherever we went, he was quick to announce our upcoming marriage. He was even eager to go shopping with me for china and crystal for our new life. As you might imagine, these days I don’t often peruse our wedding album, but I happened to do so recently. That book, and the accompanying videotape—me in my gown and Jim in his tux—brought back a rush of memories. I tried very hard, Monday-morning-quarterback style, to see in the photos or in the videotape or in my recollections clues to the duplicity, a crack in the armor. But it just wasn’t there.

On the morning of July 4, I picked Jim up early, and we headed to the train. We were going to Washington, D.C., to look for sites for our wedding and reception. Although Jim and I both grew up in New Jersey, we’d ruled out getting married in our home state. Since I had already shared so much of Jim with the public and the media, I wanted this day to be private, our day, with only our family and our friends present. Jim agreed to keep the wedding private—not even an announcement in the
New York Times
or the
Star-Ledger
—and I was grateful, although I have wondered again and again at the readiness of his agreement.

If Jim’s persona as solid heterosexual citizen was then so precarious, wouldn’t he have wanted a visible marriage to anchor that identity? Wouldn’t stabilizing that identity further advance his appeal as a gubernatorial candidate? Wouldn’t a man as astute as Jim in the management of appearances want his wedding to be a page-one story? Perhaps. But then again, news stories need a hook, a reason to tell them
now
rather than at some other time, if at all. Maybe a news story about our wedding might have sent reporters in pursuit of riskier stories. Maybe Jim feared that a high-profile wedding story might renew an open investigation into the rumors about his sexual orientation or renew interest in his first marriage and the real reason it had died.

So New Jersey was out. New York was briefly in the running. Since Jim had been an undergraduate at Columbia University, the thought of getting married in the campus chapel had briefly crossed his mind. But New York was too close to New Jersey, so that was that. Portugal was another possibility. This was Jim’s idea, and it touched me deeply. We gave it serious consideration, and my mother even checked out reception halls—including one on the outskirts of Coimbra, the town of my birth—on one of her visits, but when the U.S. ambassador to Portugal told us that for our vows to be legal we would have to get married at the U.S. embassy in Lisbon, we decided against it. Too secular.

Whatever else we were, we were a Roman Catholic couple. Perhaps we were a couple each engaged in a lover’s quarrel with our church, especially in regard to our views on birth control, a woman’s right to choose, and stem-cell research, but we were both at the time—and I still am—observant Roman Catholics. That was central to who we were. One day, driving between campaign stops, we talked about setting our wedding date. “Let’s pick a date that will have some significance,” said Jim. “Maybe a feast day.” The following day, I scanned a Roman Catholic calendar, the kind the church hands out at Christmastime, and I looked for dates in the fall that had some significance. I picked October 7, the feast day of Our Lady of the Rosary, the name by which Mary was known in her appearances at Fatima, in Portugal. During our conversation that evening, I suggested the date to Jim, and he said, “Great, then let’s do it that day.”

Once we had a date in mind, we started looking for chapels, which is why we were on a train heading to Washington, D.C., on the Fourth of July. Jim had gone to Georgetown University’s law school and knew there were several chapels on campus. We encountered a pale, elderly Jesuit priest almost the moment we set foot on the campus. He showed us around, and we left thinking that one of the chapels, Copley Crypt, would be perfect, though we knew that Jim’s status as a divorcé might be a problem. For our reception, we chose the Hay-Adams Hotel, because we were both charmed by its terrace overlooking both the White House and the Washington Monument.

And that was it. No angst, no uncertainty, no hesitation, no retreat. Not on his part and not on mine.

5. TWELVE DAYS OF TORRICELLI

BACK FROM WASHINGTON, I
was now in a position to start planning our wedding. But the next few weeks would turn out to be full of more than tulle and white roses. Just days after our return, Jim found himself in the middle of the biggest political battle of his life, one that threatened to undo five years of hard work and eliminate him as a contender for the governorship.

The week before our train trip back from D.C., Robert Torricelli, a Democrat and then the junior senator from New Jersey, had made the same journey, during which he discussed his political future with his chief of staff, Jamie Fox, later to be Jim’s chief of staff. Torricelli had always wanted to run for governor but thought of the statehouse as something he would, or could, pursue later in his career. And now it was later. For one thing, Torricelli knew that with the possibility of George W. Bush in the White House and a Republican majority in both houses of Congress, life wasn’t going to be much fun for a Democratic senator, who would find it difficult to accomplish anything. But there was more to it. A gubernatorial campaign costs money, and Torricelli had always prided himself on being a powerful and charismatic fund-raiser—rightly so, since he set a record by taking in $2.15 million in campaign contributions in March 1999. However, when Torricelli learned that Jim had beaten his record by nearly a million dollars, he concluded that knocking Jim out of the running was a now-or-never proposition. Jim might not be beatable if Torricelli waited too long.