I tilted my head back so we were looking at each other. I said, “Ella’s swimming at the club with Winnie and Jadey. I don’t suppose you could duck out early.”
Charlie grinned. “Let me ask the managing partner.” He cocked one ear, pretending to listen—there was no sound except, in the distance, the whirring of a very large fan—and then he nodded. “He says for a woman as good-looking as you, it’d be a crime to stay.” Charlie gathered some of the papers from his desk, set them in his briefcase, and fastened the lock. Before we walked out, he took my hand.
Forty minutes later, we lay naked in our bed, I on my back and he on top, and just before he entered me, he paused—at this point, I was ready to take him in, more than ready—and he said seriously, “From now on, I’m going to be the man you deserve.”
I nodded; I was breathless and flushed. I said, “Hurry.”
ALL THESE YEARS later, they say I told him, “It’s Jack Daniel’s or me.” Or in some versions, “It’s Jim Beam or me.” These ultimatums sound catchy, I suppose, but I didn’t say them. I didn’t even say, in a less pithy manner, that I’d leave him if he wouldn’t stop drinking. I did leave him briefly, and he did stop drinking, and the events are connected, but not as cleanly or directly as anyone might imagine from the outside.
His critics are more fond of this false anecdote than his supporters, and what they think it illustrates, I gather, is that it’s my fault—his election is my fault, his presidency is my fault, his war is my fault. Why couldn’t I just have let him be an alcoholic? Plenty of wives put up with it every day!
But these accusations presuppose a consensus on the kind of president Charlie has been; a dreadful one, is what his critics believe. Do I think he has been a dreadful president? I think the story is always more complicated than people realize.
The accusations also presuppose that I knew, that any of us did. But I could not have imagined in 1988 how rapidly our lives would change, and if someone had told me, I’d have thought the prediction was as plausible as that of a man standing on a street corner, holding a sign that warns of the apocalypse.
THE WEEKEND AFTER my return to Maronee, our friends the Laufs had an anniversary party that Joe Thayer also attended, and he approached me as I was walking toward the buffet dinner. I could tell from his posture, even before he spoke, that he was worked up—impassioned, I suppose. He said, “It’s not my intent to pressure you, Alice, but have you given thought to what I said at Princeton?”
Surely he couldn’t mean his suggestion that he and I embark on some type of long-term relationship, surely that had just been the alcohol speaking. But yes, clearly, that was what he meant. He gazed at me with such a fierce ardor that I might have laughed, if not for the very slightly threatening undercurrent that such ardor is always accompanied by.
In what I hoped was a firm but not unkind way, I said, “Joe, I’m not leaving my marriage.”
“But in Princeton—”
I shook my head. “I ought to have been more discreet.”
“Alice, you kissed me. I don’t imagine you just
“It can’t be,” I said, and for the benefit of his ego, I tried to strike a note of regret. It may have been an ironic twist that it was Charlie who unwittingly saved me; he appeared at my elbow, setting a hand on my back and saying, “Joey T., when are you gonna come to a ball game with us? You pick the night, and we’ve got a ticket with your name on it.”
Joe seemed to be gasping for air. He sounded accusatory as he said, “Aren’t you generous.”
“Heck, we ought to make it a men’s night.” Charlie nodded toward me. “This one is gonna be sitting through more games than she ever imagined in her wildest dreams, so we’ll let her off the hook for once. But give your brother a jingle, see how everyone’s schedule best coordinates, and we’ll nail down a plan.” Charlie leaned in, speaking more quietly. “Now, I don’t know if you’ve taken the plunge back into the dating pool yet, but Zeke Langenbacher has a very attractive young lady working as his assistant, a super girl who comes from a real nice family in Louisville, and I’d love to set the two of you up. Alice, cover your ears.” I didn’t—he’d known that I wouldn’t—and he said, “Not a bad rack on this gal, either.”
“Charlie!” I swatted him, though I loved my husband very much in this moment. I was reminded of how, Joe’s sarcasm aside, Charlie could be truly generous and kind. Joe glowered—I’m sure he currently despised Charlie as much as I adored him—and from then on, for the rest of our time in Maronee, Joe avoided me. He did it in such a way that I would notice, catching my eye when we found ourselves in the same place, then violently looking away and not talking to me. As far as I know, he and Charlie never attended a game together.
____
JADEY HADN’T TOLD me until my return to Milwaukee that my departure to Riley had greatly rattled Arthur; that the afternoon following Charlie’s one ill-fated night at their house, Arthur had come home from work in the middle of the day, weeping, telling Jadey that if she ever left him, he would be completely lost and would rather be dead; that they had then proceeded to have stupendous sex; and that ever since, he had doted on her and had even, on two occasions, brought her flowers for no reason. (“One bouquet had carnations in it,” she said, “but he’s trying.”) She revealed to him neither how hurt she had been by his comment about her weight nor with what enthusiasm she had considered an affair; she told me she’d decided to let sleeping dogs lie. She said, “Maybe you should skip town a little more often, because Arthur finds it to be a
“I’m glad I could help,” I said.
FOR CHARLIE AND Ella and me, the next five or six years were, I think, our happiest ones as a family. As everyone had anticipated, Charlie was perfectly suited to his new role with the Brewers. He attended just about all the home games and some of the away ones, and Ella and I attended quite a lot of them with him, though as she made her way through adolescence, the idea of spending an evening watching baseball with the two of us struck her as less and less appealing. But I remember all those weeknights and Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons with real nostalgia—the times it was windy and sunny, the times it was unbearably hot and we’d come home burned, the times we crouched together in raincoats, waiting for the umpires to call the game. We ate hot dogs and french fries, we chatted with the people in the seats around us, sometimes we even sat in mediocre seats for the purpose of Charlie mingling and signing autographs, which he loved being asked to do, taking particular delight in being asked to sign baseballs (I assumed at the time that sitting in the upper deck was something Zeke
