Spoken from the Heart (29 page)

We had last lived in Washington, D.C., thirteen years earlier, when George had come up to work on his father's presidential campaign. Then, as we drove around the city in our family station wagon, official motorcades would occasionally pass us. One evening in particular, we were in our car when George realized that a small motorcade was coming up from behind. He slowed down, sure we would know whoever was in the vehicle, most likely Secretary of State George Shultz. As we coasted and waited for the entourage to pass us, a Secret Service bullhorn blared, "Texas, move along." We, of course, had Texas plates on our car, and the procession wanted us to hurry up and get out of the way. Now we were the ones who would be riding in official motorcades.

On December 18, I returned to Washington. I had a new title, First Lady-Designate, and I was going to be shown the White House by Senator-elect Hillary Rodham Clinton. I knew the White House from Bar and Gampy's four years; I had slept under the high carved headboard and heavy covers in the Lincoln Bedroom. In the last six years, the Clintons had also hosted us for official governors association dinners. But that morning, as I waited at the ornate, gilded Mayflower Hotel for word that Hillary Clinton was ready for us to depart for the White House, there was a profound difference. My visit this time was rather like the walk-through of a house on the morning before settlement, except that a president and his wife do not own the White House. It is the American people's house. I would inhabit it, like Dolley Madison and Mary Todd Lincoln and Eleanor Roosevelt and Bess Truman, like Jackie Kennedy, Lady Bird Johnson, Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush, and the other women before me. I would care for it, and perhaps leave a little something of myself behind.

Hillary Clinton was waiting for us on the South Portico. With plans to move out and to assume her role in the Senate, she had been running late that morning, but in the press reports, I was the one who was chided for tardiness and for my clothes. That's the struggle with trying to find news when you have twenty cameras trained on two women greeting each other at a doorway for a private tea. What seems most interesting is often mostly wrong. I do remember that when my big, black car pulled up and the Secret Service agents appeared, they couldn't open the car doors. The agents tugged on the handles while we stayed stuck inside, smiling gamely, and Hillary stood, waiting awkwardly. Finally, someone figured out how to release the locks.

Once I stepped out, Hillary was gracious and forthcoming. There is a particular kinship that develops between the spouses of political leaders. I had it with many of the governors' wives, and I would continue to have it with former first ladies and the wives of many foreign leaders. There was a similarity and at times a strangeness to our shared circumstances that created an instant bond. It is a kinship I felt regardless of political persuasion, and I felt it that morning at the double-door entrance to the South Portico with Hillary, as she began our tour of the public house and the private living quarters and offered me her very candid advice. She even told me that, if she had it to do all over again, she would not have had an office in the West Wing, that she seldom used it after the healthcare debate ended. And I do know many women who wonder to this day why it is still referred to as Hillary's healthcare plan, rather than the Clinton healthcare plan, when it was done under the auspices of her husband, the president.

Hillary gave me another piece of heartfelt advice. She told me not to turn down invitations to unique or special events. In the late winter of 1995, Jackie Kennedy had called Hillary to invite her and her daughter, Chelsea, to the ballet in New York. Chelsea was in school; Hillary had a full schedule, and, feeling pressed, she declined. In May, Jackie died of cancer. Hillary said that she had long regretted her choice to stay home and wanted me to know that story so that I would not do the same.

Joined by Chelsea, Hillary led me through the lower level, sharing with me her fond recollections of the parties they had hosted in the Palm Room, the glassed-in conservatory that divides the formal White House from the West Wing. It was a brief tour through their public and private lives, a whirlwind of parties arranged in the Blue Room, the Red Room, and the Green Room, until I could almost glimpse the elegantly set tables and the banquet chairs. But when we went up to the State Floor, both Hillary and I had forgotten about the public tours. She opened the door to lead me through the formal state rooms, and we caught sight of a large tour group. She quickly shut the door, but not before some very surprised tourists got a good look at the outgoing and incoming first ladies.

We moved upstairs to the family quarters, where at one point Chelsea said, "Mom, tell Mrs. Bush about the tomato plants," and Hillary led me out on the parapet off the third floor, where each spring they set out pots of tomato plants, because "you just can't get good tomatoes." I nodded my head and smiled and thought, Tomatoes? You can't get good tomatoes at the White House? But George and I also grew pots of tomatoes on the parapet.

Hillary was thinking about her own future and how much she wanted to buy a house of her own in Washington, saying that "men keep saying to me, 'You're going to be a senator, just rent something, and you can find something later.' But," she told me, "that doesn't work on my time line. I need to be moved into a new house. I need to have a house." And I understood her completely. If I had been Hillary, I would not have wanted to wait until after I was in the Senate to find my home.

We were standing in the first lady's dressing room when Hillary paused and remembered something that Barbara Bush had shown her, eight years before. "Your mother-in-law stood right here and told me that from this window you can see straight down into the Rose Garden and also over to the Oval Office, and you can watch what's going on."

I did look out that window many times over the years, out to the Rose Garden and around the grounds, always careful to stand just inside the frame so that no one would spot me. If George was doing an event in the Rose Garden, I could see it from the window and live on television at the same time.

I finished that day by interviewing potential staff members for my new East Wing office at the White House. The last candidate had four legs and was ten weeks old. He was a Scottish terrier puppy, born to a dog owned by New Jersey governor Christie Todd Whitman, and, of course, I fell in love. I had seen his puppy pictures on November 4, my birthday, when George and I were in New Jersey on the last leg of the campaign trail. George hadn't gotten me a gift, and Christie Whitman suggested a puppy. Our D.C. interview sealed the deal. Barney flew back with me to Austin the next day to join our animal family. We already had a springer spaniel, Spot, one of the six puppies born to Bar's dog, Millie, in 1989, when she lived in the White House. Spot was the runt of the litter, and I can still recall Barbara and Jenna proudly taking their new puppy and their grandmother, simultaneously, to first-grade show 'n' tell in Dallas. Afterward, the principal of Preston Hollow Elementary, Susie Oliphant, had the children line the halls so that Jenna, Barbara, Bar, and Spot could walk past the whole school.

All our animals in Dallas were named for Texas Rangers baseball players. Spot got her name in honor of the infielder Scott Fletcher, Barbara's favorite player. Of course, the Rangers almost immediately traded Scott. Our cat was named after Ruben Sierra, whose nickname, El Indio, gave Kitty her name, La India. And at times, I would look at our pets and remember our girls and our lives, the family that we were beyond the White House walls.

For the move to the White House, I packed our clothes, family photos, and a single piece of furniture, a chest of drawers that had belonged to George's grandmother, which I thought would fit perfectly in my dressing room. We didn't send another thing. I knew from Bar that the White House has a huge and exquisite collection of furniture and art, and that we would leave office with an entirely new book collection, titles given to us by authors, publishers, and friends. For the trip to Washington, our possessions took up less than one very small moving van. The rest I planned to send to our ranch, and the incoming governor, Rick Perry, and his wife, Anita, very kindly waited to move into the Governor's Mansion until our home was ready, so that the movers could transport our furniture directly to Crawford.

I do regret now that in those hectic days I never sat down with Anita, the new first lady of Texas, to give her much of the same helpful advice that Rita Clements had given me. I never had a chance to walk her through everything, from the house to the responsibilities; there just wasn't time. Our good friend Jeanne Johnson Phillips was overseeing the inaugural festivities, and I was being asked to decide on programs, a prayer service, an authors' event, and of course, clothes. I had not looked at or contemplated an inaugural wardrobe for me or for the girls before the election was decided. Now I had barely one month to be dressed, not simply for the inauguration and the night of balls but for the three days of events surrounding them. And clothes are a big part of being first lady, dating back all the way to Martha Washington and Dolley Madison. The Dallas designer Michael Faircloth made me a deep turquoise outfit for the inaugural and a red lace gown with Austrian crystals for the inaugural night. But I had to have more gowns and outfits for other inaugural events, and I bought two other long dresses, one champagne, one deep teal, as well as two suits and a cranberry-colored dress. Jenna and Barbara bought inaugural ceremony outfits designed by Lela Rose, the daughter of our good Dallas friends Rusty and Deedie Rose; she also made their gowns for the Texas Black Tie & Boots Ball the night before. For their official inaugural night ball gowns, they chose designs by Susan Dell of Austin, a strapless beaded black gown for Jenna and a V-neck silk and chiffon beaded currant gown for Barbara.

We arrived in Washington, D.C., and stayed, as all presidents-elect do, in the historic Blair House across the street from the White House, the same home where we had stayed with Gampy in 1988. When I went to the Lincoln Memorial for a concert to open the inaugural festivities, my place on the platform was next to the spot marked "President-elect."

Inauguration Eve began early in the morning with a series of interviews at Blair House, including a sit-down with Katie Couric, then of NBC's
Today
show. Toward the end of our conversation, she said to me, "You appear to be a very traditional woman. Is that a fair characterization?" It was slightly better than the other perennial interview question, "Are you going to be Hillary Clinton or Barbara Bush?" as if the first lady's role was like hand-me-down shoes and I had to choose between two previously worn pairs. But there was, from the start, an underlying assumption on the part of the press that I would be someone else when I assumed the role of first lady, that I would not, under any circumstances, simply be myself.

As I had done when George was sworn in as governor of Texas, I planned an event to celebrate authors. This was to be my "first lady" inaugural party. I was much more interested in listening to Stephen Ambrose discuss history or Mary Higgins Clark and Carol Higgins Clark talk about plotting a mystery or having Stanley Crouch and the Texas author Steve Harrigan discuss literature than I was in attending another large luncheon or party; and to me, an afternoon with authors was as glamorous as a high-heeled, long-gown ball. The Cheneys sat in the front row, along with Bar and Gampy and my mother and George, who introduced me by saying, "Her love for books is real, her love for children is real, and my love for her is real." Then I walked onto a stage decorated to look like a library, and before a crowd of more than three thousand, I spoke of my passion for literature, saying, "Our country's authors have helped forge the American identity, create its memory, and define and reinforce our national consciousness," adding, "Books have done what humans rarely do, convince us to put down the remote control."

Inauguration Day dawned cold and rainy, but to George and me, the morning was beautiful. We began with a church service at the nearby St. John's Episcopal Church. The creamy yellow building held its first service in 1816; its nearly one-thousand-pound steeple bell was cast by Paul Revere's son. Every president since James Madison has worshiped there; pew fifty-four is designated as the President's Pew. St. John's became our Washington church while we were at the White House; it was where we had attended services in 1988, when George had been working on his father's presidential campaign.