The Confession (27 page)

On December 10 or 11, after I rebuffed several requests for meetings, Golan reached me on my cell phone, upset that I'd been out of touch. I invited him over to the condo for a late dinner, to assure him that he had a future in the administration. He arrived in a suit and tie, dressed impeccably as always. I don't remember what I prepared for us to eat, but it can't have been very good—the kitchen is as baffling to me as a submarine's helm. But with Dina still in the hospital with our newborn, I'd been left to my own devices. In fact, I think we ate cold cereal.

He was politely appreciative. We sat at the dining room table talking and half-watching the cable news, our shared addiction. I don't know at what point it occurred to me that something more was about to happen. But I know how it started. I stretched out on the couch and placed my legs out over his knees, as I'd done previously in the car. I then leaned forward and hugged him, and kissed his neck. His response was immediate and loving, just what I'd fantasized about since the first day we locked eyes.

It was wrong to do. I wasn't an ordinary citizen any more. There were state troopers parked outside. My wife was recovering from a difficult pregnancy and C-section in the hospital. And he was my employee. But I took Golan by the hand and led him upstairs to my bed. We undressed and he kissed me. It was the first time in my life that a kiss meant what it was supposed to mean—it sent me through the roof. I was like a man emerging from forty-four years in a cave to taste pure air for the first time, feel direct sunlight on pallid skin, warmth where there had only ever been a bone-chilling numbness. I pulled him to the bed and we made love like I'd always dreamed: a boastful, passionate, whispering, masculine kind of love.

Afterward, I lay on the bed and watched Golan on the pillow next to me as he slept. At around three o'clock in the morning I shook him out of bed for his walk home, not wanting to alert the state troopers to anything amiss. When he was gone, I realized that this might all explode on me one day, but I just didn't care. I felt invincible then.

MY CIRCUMSTANCES MADE HAVING AN AFFAIR EXCRUCIATINGLY
difficult, but not impossible. I visited Dina and Jacqueline every day in the hospital, and my heart ached to have our baby home, but until they returned I spent as much free time as I could with Golan. I loved our time together, whether talking politics over cups of tea or trying to remember whose T-shirt was whose at the end of the bed. He fiddled with my hair, which I keep slicked back tightly, still unhappy with its propensity to curl. “You should comb it like this,” he said, parting it with his fingers. “It's less severe.”

He had things to say about my wardrobe, too. For as long as I can remember, I'd worn a standard political uniform; in my closet were a dozen dark blue suits and a hundred white shirts, so many that I dropped them at the laundry once a month, thirty at a time. Golan even counseled me on my intonation. The New Jersey in my voice made him laugh. He was a consummate public relations man. I took his advice seriously (though not enough to change my hair). I ventured into the brown aisle next time I bought a suit, and sometimes added a faint wash of color to my shirt collection.

When Dina finally got home, things changed. Our condo became a scrum of familial activity. Her parents were always around, cooing to the baby in Portuguese. My parents and sisters stopped by a lot too, as did Jimmy and Lori Kennedy; they were all eager to get to know Jacqueline, who was a beautiful fireball even when she was only a few days old. Dina was exhausted from her birthing ordeal, but she took to motherhood instinctively. I loved watching the two of them together.

Knowing how much work I had ahead of me, the crowds at the condo
paid little attention to me. I raced out to the gym at dawn and didn't return on most nights until long after dinner.

Once, after an exhausting day in the transition office, I made secret plans with Golan to see him later, at his apartment. The state troopers, now my constant companions, dropped me at the condo and parked around back. When I was sure they couldn't see me, I pulled on my running clothes and slipped out the front. Golan's apartment complex was roughly half a mile away, but difficult to get to on foot. I ran along the sidewalk for a while, then below a railroad underpass before returning to the sidewalk and ducking into his building.

He greeted me in his briefs. “Did anybody see you?” he asked, closing the door quickly. We kissed, hard.

I was totally in love with this man. He loved everything I loved. Politics never bored him. He loved strategy and demographic analyses. He loved power, philosophy, justice. He never stopped thinking about these things, and that's what gave his life purpose and joy. I didn't always agree with him, but I always learned something from him. His intelligence and his compassion were equally far-reaching. More than anything, I loved how he viewed our relationship, as a political partnership without limits. Or so I imagined; we never discussed it.

“No, nobody saw me leave the condo,” I answered. “They don't even let me jog alone. Last time they saw me leave in running clothes, they sent somebody to run with me.”

He led me to his bedroom, past photographs of him and his naval crew and a set of painted toy soldiers, posed in some famous battle formation. Israeli folk music played on the stereo. He undressed quickly and jumped into bed.

To get what I wanted after so many years of denial was almost too much for me. Our first few times together burned so fiercely in my mind I could hardly recall them even as we were still lying together. I'll never forget the look of trust in his eyes and the dead weight of his vulnerability in my arms. But I was like a kid on his first days of drivers' ed, too thrilled to be behind the wheel, unfamiliar again with the roadways I'd known all my life.

He was patient and understanding. In fact, I believed his journey was
the same as mine, that he had also taken great risks to arrive at this place of happiness, unity, and integration. And love.

When we finished our lovemaking, our thoughts returned to the enormous task we shared, building an administration from scratch in just two months, governing in a post-9/11 world. He was conversant in foreign affairs, diplomacy, and global economics, subjects that still were far from my mind. Once, he discovered that a staffer had received a letter from the Chinese consular office in Toronto and inadvertently sent a reply to the Japanese consulate, a stupid error.

“You can't let this kind of thing happen,” he said to me. “You're not the mayor of Woodbridge anymore, worrying about relations between this neighborhood and that one.”

“Golan, it was just a mistake.”

“You can't tolerate mistakes! The terror attacks show that. New Jersey is part of the world now in a way it never was before.”

I think Golan expected me to end up in the White House. Maybe that's what he loved about me—my potential to bring him to Washington. If he was using me as the engine driving his own ambition, I didn't mind. I liked seeing myself reflected in his eyes. And in a way he was my tutor, too. He shook me out of my pedestrian New Jersey parochialism. He helped me think big.

“Gole,” I said, “what do you think about the New Jersey State Department? You'd be working with foreign dignitaries, heads of state.”

That wasn't what he had in mind. “But I want to work with you, not on the other side of Trenton.”

“How about Commerce? You could work with global trade arrangements.”

“Jimmy, please—can't I work with you?”

 

DRUMTHWACKET, THE GOVERNOR'S MANSION IN PRINCETON, IS
one of the most fabled and elegant of America's executive residences. Built in 1835 on land originally owned by William Penn, the house is a classic example of the Greek revival style, surrounded by ornate English gardens that
have been celebrated for nearly a century. Charles Smith Olden, a businessman from New Orleans, was the first owner and the man who gave it its name, which means
wooded hill
in Gaelic.

Active in community and political affairs, Olden was elected governor in 1860 on a platform supporting Abraham Lincoln's stand against secession. He began the tradition of aristocratic benevolence among chief executives in the state. When the treasury sank precipitously during the Civil War, he reached into his great personal fortune to keep New Jersey solvent. After his death, an industrialist and banker named Moses Taylor Pyne expanded the structure with seven new public rooms downstairs and a dozen private rooms upstairs. A grandchild, Agnes Pyne, sold Drumthwacket in 1941, and twenty-five years later the grounds were sold to New Jersey, to be used as an official residence. Jim Florio, who moved there in 1990, was the first modern governor to use it, and I was only the second; Christie Whitman favored her own family estate, visiting Drumthwacket only during official receptions.

Dina was looking forward to setting up home there, much more than I was. I didn't really know anybody in Princeton, one of the state's old-money enclaves. Woodbridge and Carteret, my home for four decades, were forty minutes away. More significantly, Drumthwacket had all the “official residence” accoutrements, including guards at the door and a staff of cooks, maintenance engineers, and groundskeepers. Surely this would be the death knell to any love affair, much less the unusual one Golan and I were undertaking.

Luckily, we couldn't move in right away. Although the building had been extensively renovated in the 1980s, it smelled of mold and its decor was badly outdated; as Florio once said, the restrooms were done in “early Turnpike.” Moreover, it was full of lead paint and asbestos, unsuitable for a newborn. Dina and I requested an extensive renovation, and the nonprofit foundation that runs the place agreed, embarking on a $590,000 facelift funded by contributions, including money from Charlie Kushner. To avoid spending taxpayers' money, friends and family agreed to join me for a “painting party.”

At least until April we would have to stay put in our tiny Woodbridge condo, down the street from Golan.

In public I struggled to maintain a professional relationship with him, but it wasn't always possible. I remember one day walking from the transition office to the statehouse with Jason Kirin, Gary, and Paul. “Jimmy, I need to talk to you,” Golan whispered in my ear. We fell behind the others, no doubt blushing. I could tell that Jason, my body man, found this strange. Afterward he even said something about it.

“Golan's pretty free with his hands,” he remarked.

“Israelis are very affectionate people,” I told him.

 

THERE WAS AN UNUSUALLY MILD BREEZE IN THE AIR ON JANUARY
15, 2002. Dina and I hadn't slept well the night before, excited about the inaugural events, though the fact that recovery efforts were still ongoing in New York gave the day an appropriately somber tone. Again, costs were covered by private donations. As a favor to me, Golan joined in the planning. It was an impressive lineup. The world famous American Boychoir came to sing the “Hallelujah Chorus,” one of my favorites, followed by the Shiloh Baptist Church Choir, the Southern Regional Select Choir, and the Malcolm X Shabazz High School Marching Band.

In a hint that my future was bigger than New Jersey, several national heavyweights attended, including John Sweeney, head of the national AFL-CIO.

Dina was beautiful in a red silk suit, cradling our baby in the crook of her arm. We didn't speak much in the morning as we dressed and headed over from Woodbridge, with an official state photographer recording our every move. A state police bagpipe chorus accompanied our entrance to the War Memorial in Trenton, hand in hand. My heart almost stopped when I looked out from the dais. Two thousand people had gathered to witness the swearing-in ceremony. Leaders from every religion practiced in New Jersey sent delegates. Police, firefighters, and marching bands, battalions of veterans, hundreds of union regulars representing all the trades, and schoolchildren of every size and color marched past in formation along West State Street.

I felt their expectations on me like a heavy weight, but I was happy to do my best; this new phase of my life was a burden, but a joyful one.

Dad and Mom stood with me for the swearing in, resting my hand on two Bibles Dad held—one that had been in the family for generations, and another that I used for daily devotions. As I declared the oath of office, I looked over to my mom—I prayed to carry out my term with the pure sense of service she had taught me by example.

In his invocation, Rabbi Menachem Genack, a good friend, set a tone for the day and captured my hope for the coming four years, for the state as well as the nation. “The journey ahead will not be easy,” he said. “But as the Bible tells us, ‘Those who sow with tears will reap with joy.' If we all join together, united, with God's help, we will surely reap a plentiful harvest of prosperity and peace, progress and yet unimagined possibilities.”

I kept my address brief, touching on education, our ballooning recession, and the need to strengthen our antiterror programs. “Today we are facing a moment unlike any other in the history of our state or nation,” I said. “We have witnessed in real time an attack that shattered our domestic tranquility and threatened us all. Our neighbors died. Our buildings fell. Not since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy thirty-eight years ago have we mourned so collectively as a nation, as a people.

“But in the wake of this horrendous attack, we have revealed our better angels. Police and emergency workers waded into Ground Zero searching for survivors. Families lit candles and prayed for neighbors they had never met, nor would ever know. Firemen climbed blazing stairwells and emerged at heaven's gate.

“Out of this catastrophe, we have come together. From Ground Zero, we have found common ground. We were reminded that what we do together as a community is as important as what we do one by one, or family by family. Our shared loss became our shared resolve.

“Today, our state faces a new set of challenges—the challenge of keeping our families and streets safe from further acts of terror and violence; the challenge of living within our means in the face of a national recession; and, our most important challenge, making our schools work so that we prepare our children for their future, for their challenges. These are difficult tasks. But we already have witnessed the key to their solution. If we come together as Americans—as New Jerseyans—in the same way we came together in the
wake of September eleventh, there is no challenge we cannot meet, no problem we cannot solve. We need only draw upon that spirit of community—upon that same sense of passion and resolve.

“So this is my call to action. In the days ahead, each citizen of New Jersey should demand more of me. That is your right. But you also must ask more of yourselves. That is your responsibility.”

Not for a minute did I feel unprepared for this challenge. With the grace of God and the inexhaustible intelligence of my loyal staff, I was certain we could march forward from the ashes of September 11—stronger than ever, embracing our diversity, proving the resilience of our great nation.

Overcome with the joy of the moment, I pulled my wife into a gentle kiss, igniting the crowd to cheers. We had arrived. Then, looking into the audience I spotted Virginia Jones, my kindergarten teacher.

“Hey, Mrs. Jones,” I called out, pushing past the state troopers guarding the stage. We embraced lovingly after so many years, as television cameras jockeyed around us.

“He's our future president,” she beamed.

 

THE LEARNING CURVE IN TRENTON WAS STEEP. FROM MY FIRST DAY
as governor, I made serious miscalculations with the press. I had expected to be able to work with them the way I always had in Woodbridge; the reporters from the
Home News Tribune
were generally apt to include our point of view in their stories, and I never felt we got a bad shake. There weren't many controversies in my ten years as mayor, but whenever one came up they gave me ample opportunity to explain my decisions. I also found, in those milder circles, that the quickest way to kill a controversy was to say nothing about it. Minor dustups got bigger only when I sunk my teeth into them defensively.