Joe Klein of Time magazine had heralded Edwards as the front-?runner, with a two-?to-?one lead in the polls over Hillary Clinton, his nearest competitor.) Although he still mentioned the “two Americas,” rich and poor, most of what Edwards said in New Orleans focused on the Bush administration’s post-?Katrina failures, his call for withdrawing troops from Iraq, and proposals for dealing with global warming and America’s dependence on foreign oil.
The policy ideas were almost standard-?issue Democratic talking points, but as any campaign expert would tell you, the words the senator spoke were not as important as the staging and images he hoped the media would transmit. He appeared in jeans and shirtsleeves, and between the muddy yard, the boarded-?up windows, and the fallen tree, the scene around him all but screamed “disaster area.” A casual glance at the picture would have left you with the impression that a strong leader had come to New Orleans and was about to take charge and make things better.
The event attracted lots of press attention, which you can see in the video shot by Rielle Hunter, who accompanied the senator to New Orleans while Mrs. Edwards stayed home. Wearing tight-? fitting jeans, a dark fleece top, a jester-?style knit cap, and a big pink scarf, Rielle flitted between the senator and the hordes of journalists and camera operators, presumably documenting the moment as the official campaign filmmaker. If anyone in the press saw something unusual in the way Rielle interacted with Edwards, it wasn’t reported. But Rielle had awakened that morning in the senator’s room at the luxurious Loews hotel, where, she later told me, she “felt just like his First Lady.”
Rielle continued to play First Lady as she spent the next few days traveling to campaign events. In Iowa, where he was leading in the polls, he signaled his Internet savvy by conducting a town hall with online participants around the world. He went from there to New Hampshire, where people noticed he had accented his shirtsleeves w sshiardrobe with a plastic “Save Darfur” wristband, and then to Nevada and finally South Carolina. Big crowds greeted the senator and Rielle at rallies in each of these early-?voting states. At his last stop, before flying home, they were met by an adoring crowd of more than a thousand people.
At some point after they left the South Carolina rally, the would-?be president and the wannabe First Lady began a premature celebration. The senator had one last appearance to make, a late-? afternoon address in the central square of Southern Village, a planned community organized around the shops and restaurants on the square. Our national headquarters was on the second floor of a building that overlooked the retail area. Outfitted with an amphitheater and lights, the square was the perfect backdrop for a rally.
As crowds gathered at Southern Village, I went to the airport to meet the senator and Rielle as they arrived on Fred’s jet. They got into my Suburban and shared sips from a plastic water bottle filled with Sauvignon Blanc. As we approached the square, we saw thousands of people gathered in front of a bandstand. Flags fluttered behind the stage. High-?powered projectors threw images of stars onto the buildings. Disney couldn’t have done a better job.
Knowing that Mrs. Edwards would be waiting for him, the senator had me drop him in a parking garage, where he could take an elevator upstairs. Before he got out, he leaned over to me and said, “Don’t let Rielle get close to Elizabeth.”
I then parked and walked to the office with Rielle. To say that everyone noticed Rielle as we walked into the busy campaign office would be an understatement. With sunglasses perched on her bleached blond hair, tight designer jeans, and a black sweater, she looked like she was taking a meeting in Hollywood, not attending a rally in North Carolina. Everyone else was dressed in more businesslike clothes and had the pale, drawn look of exhaustion that comes with working for a presidential campaign. Eyes followed her as she turned toward the restroom, and just before she reached the door, it swung open and Elizabeth Edwards came out.
For a moment, the two women were face-?to-?face. Rielle knew instantly that she was staring at John Edwards’s wife. Mrs. Edwards glanced past her, caught my eye, and quickly realized that this must be “the other woman.” A look of pain flashed across her face, but as she turned to go look for her husband, that pain seemed to turn to anger.
Out on the square, the Del McCoury Band struck up some trademark bluegrass and entertained the crowd gathered to celebrate the start of the campaign. Away from view, Elizabeth Edwards confronted her husband about the glowing blond woman who had obviously arrived with him from the road. However, they couldn’t discuss the issue at length because people were all around and they were about to go onstage.
When the Edwardses finally emerged from their private backstage hell, Mrs. Edwards looked stricken. At center stage, political consultant Mudcat Saunders, veteran of the 2004 campaign, took the microphone and declared himself a “redneck from Virginia Tech, a Hokie who is a recovering alcoholic.” He offered s1; a little testimony about his struggle with alcoholism and how John and Elizabeth Edwards had given him a second chance. Eventually, he worked his way to an introduction of “the next president of the United States,” and the senator instantly transformed his demeanor and walked forward to accept the acclaim of thousands. (Both of the Edwardses had this ability to shift instantaneously from private rage or anguish to public benevolence, and I had seen it so many times that I no longer took much notice.)
The hour was late, and the weather was cold. Edwards’s brief talk covered health care, the war in Iraq, global warming, and the need for change in Washington. He finished with a call for everyone to roll up their sleeves, dig into their pockets, and wear out some shoe leather to win an election that “isn’t about me,” said the senator, “but is about all of us.”
As he finished and the cheering reached a crescendo, no one who looked at the scene could have guessed that the senator’s marriage was coming apart at the seams because his wife had just stumbled upon his mistress, who stood mere yards away. All anyone in the crowd knew was that by announcing early, John Edwards had landed the first punch in the fight for the nomination. Conventional wisdom held that Hillary Clinton was such a polarizing figure that she could never win a general election. Barack Obama was so little known that he seemed to be positioning himself to take the second seat on the ticket, as candidate for vice president of a future White House run. This left John Edwards as the logical and likely choice.
That night, I drove the Edwardses home in silence. The next…
What I wouldn’t find out for many months was that the senator had told Elizabeth that although he had indulged in a “one-?night” fling with Rielle, in recent weeks she had become my mistress! And that’s why we were together as we arrived at Southern Village.
Nine
If you’re not from the South, where these places seem to be on every other corner, the first thing to know about the Golden Corral buffet is the price. Our family of five could eat there for about thirty dollars. The second thing is clown night. Once a week, the management at our local corral brought in a clown to work the dining room. With the kids gaping at his makeup and big rubber shoes and occupied with balloon animals, the clown gave weary mothers and fathers a chance to breathe.
On a clown night in early 2007, Cheri and I balanced the nutritional hazards of turning our kids loose on a pile of fried and sugary food against our need for a little stress relief and decided the rewards outweighed the risk. After we worked our way through the line and found a table, my cell phone began to ring. A check of the screen told me the call was from Mrs. Edwards. All I had to do was show it to Cheri, and she just sighed with acceptance and glanced toward the door, which let me know I could take it outside.
I answered the phone as I walked through the dining room, past the clown and tables filled with families like mine. The first words I heard were, “Hey, Andrew, how are you? How are the kids?”
The pleasant opening made me wary. She hadn’t been nice to me since the PlayStation 3 conflict. She told me the refrigerator at the new house had been acting up, and I thought that perhaps she wanted me to call the repairman again. But as I stepped outside onto the sidewalk and leaned against the wall, her tone changed abruptly. She said that she and the senator had been discussing Rielle Hunter and that while she believed she knew the entire story, she wanted to clear up a few details with me.
Once I agreed to talk, Mrs. Edwards turned from friendly to prosecutorial. The interrogation began with questions about Rielle’s visits to her home. She knew that Rielle had been there to interview the senator’s parents and the children, but she had spent hours reviewing the tape handed over when Rielle was fired and couldn’t find the stuff shot at her house. This only made her more suspicious, and she wanted to know how many other times I had helped this “other woman” invade her sanctuary, to sit on her furniture and enjoy her food and drink.
As my mind raced, I couldn’t think of any other time I may have transported Rielle to the estate, but the shock of being questioned made me feel uncertain and confused. Whenever the senator was home, I might bring half a dozen parties a day to see him. Rielle could have been in one of those groups. But I didn’t think this had happened more than once, and I told her so.
“Andrew,” she replied, “I know you are lying.”
Here she was acting like a detective, using the old technique of suggesting she possessed some kind of incriminating evidence when in fact she did not. It worked a little, making me scour my memory for something I may have forgotten. But then I got a little angry. After all I had done for the Edwards family, I didn’t deserve to be pushed into a triangular drama with the senator and his wife. (He should be answering those questions, not me.) When I stood my ground, she applied one last bit of pressure: “And I have Heather standing here beside me. I know you are lying to me, and if you don’t tell the truth to me, I’ll have John fire you.” When I repeated my answer, insisting I was telling her the truth, she abruptly hung up the phone.
The call gave me something to discuss with Cheri when I got back to the table. She was accustomed to hearing about my difficulties with the Edwardses and had grown bored with their c {d womplaints about household problems like broken refrigerators. However, Rielle Hunter had introduced a new level of drama and danger into the Edwards saga, which made any scene involving her far more compelling. At the table, we agreed that Mrs. Edwards’s investigation was not over and that Rielle was not going to go away. Of course, we didn’t know that Mrs. Edwards believed I had become Rielle’s lover after her husband saw the error of his ways.
After dinner, we went home and I decided to get on the treadmill to work off some of the mashed potatoes I’d eaten. I was still angry when our home phone rang. I checked the caller ID and answered because it was Mrs. Edwards again. Cheri, who had glanced at a phone in another room and knew who was on the line, came to listen to my side of the conversation. It was a good move, because this was one of the few times that my end of an exchange with Elizabeth Edwards was worth hearing.
She began by saying that she thought I hadn’t been given a full opportunity to “tell the truth” and now she was willing to listen. After I asked whether she wanted the truth or “what you want to hear,” she opted for the straight story and I launched into a minor diatribe.
“Mrs. Edwards, I love you like a big sister, and I love your husband like a big brother,” I continued, “and after ten years of me working for you, for you to treat me like this is wrong, utterly wrong.”
She was not impressed. As far as she was concerned, the real issue was her “thirty-?year marriage” and not “about you working for us” as a staff person. “Andrew, you are not family. You work for us. Nothing more. You get paid for all you do.”
For a decade, I had heard the senator and Mrs. Edwards use that word-“staff”-to dismiss certain people as if they were interchangeable parts. Hearing it used to describe me was too much. “I don’t do the things I do because I get paid,” I answered. “I’ve changed your kids’ diapers. I helped your parents move twice. That’s not what a staff person does. You take advantage of people. You chew them up and spit them out. I’ve done everything in my power to help you and your family because I believe in you and your goals.”
My resistance and anger only made her come on stronger. She said that her husband wore “blinders” when he looked at me, not noticing that I had worked my way into a tight relationship with the family so I could exploit them. “Andrew, you hold us close so you can advance yourself.”
“What do I get for changing your kids’ diapers?” I asked. “What do I get out of helping your parents move?”
After telling me that household chores were part of my job, Mrs. Edwards said I had “thirty seconds to tell the truth” or I would be fired. This time I was the one who ended the call. As I clicked off the phone, I turned to see Cheri staring in amazement. “Fuck her,” I said. “It looks like I {lono longer work for the Edwardses.”
“Yeah, right,” said Cheri. She didn’t believe they would let me go.
Later I thought about the commitment we had made to build a new house (I had really forced that decision on her) and about our kids and their needs, like health insurance. Then the senator called to ask about my argument with his wife. “Did you just yell at Elizabeth?” he asked. I told him I had and explained why. He laughed in amazement and then asked, “You said that to Elizabeth?” He
