) If Hank didn’t find the charge credible, he wouldn’t be here; after all, the White House receives dozens of letters, e-mails, and calls a day from delusional individuals: “Tell Alice Blackwell to quit sending my dog messages through the TV!” Or “I’m the president’s secret half brother from his father’s affair in 1950, but for two million dollars, I promise to keep quiet.” These accusations, like the threats to our lives, are constant, yet we learn the specifics of very few.
“Charlie knows what’s going on?” I ask.
Hank nods. “He said I should come to you directly.” Did Charlie tell Hank the charge is true? I doubt he said it outright, but he may have hinted.
I look out the window; we’re heading east on Arlington Boulevard, the other cars on their way to Washington pulled over as we whiz past.
“Listen,” Hank says. “This is a solvable problem. If Norene Davis is operating on her own, she’s in way over her head. The likelihood that she’ll back down with a little intimidation is high. Now let’s say for the sake of argument that she’s worked herself up and decides she’ll go to jail before she’ll be silenced, so she goes ahead and talks to a reporter, or let’s say she does shut her trap, but oops, wait a second, she’s already told her sister, she’s told her boyfriend, whoever it is—either way, the allegation is out there. In that case, I’m thinking
Not an immediate booking, we don’t want to go on the defensive right away. We wait ten days or two weeks, we fold it into another appearance—literacy, breast cancer, you pick the topic—and we let him ask you point-blank. You categorically deny it.” There is a question mark implied in this scenario, and I allow the question to hang there in the air.
I say, “And when the press corps asks Maggie or Doug about it?”
“ ‘While we’d normally consider it beneath us to acknowledge such outrageous and false accusations, Mrs. Blackwell’s respect for this sensitive and controversial issue blah blah blah . . . ’ Then, you know, lather, rinse, repeat.”
“Just don’t say ‘sanctity of life.’ ”
“This isn’t the time to fly your pro-choice flag, Alice.”
“You’ve told me yourself the public accepts—”
Unusually, Hank interrupts me; he has turned in his seat so we’re face-to-face. “The public accepts a first lady who supports the right to choose. Don’t kid yourself that that’s the same as accepting a first lady who had an abortion.”
So he believes the allegation; he should, and I already knew he did, but there’s a bitter satisfaction in forcing him to say it aloud. In the front seat, Walter and Cal are as alert and impassive as sphinxes.
I look Hank in the eye. “I’m not sure who Norene Davis is, but the person behind this is a former friend of mine named Dena Janaszewski. I haven’t spoken to her in thirty years, and I haven’t heard anything about her in probably fifteen, but she—she and maybe her boyfriend—are the only ones besides Charlie who’ve ever known about my abortion.”
“Can you spell her last name?” Hank has his BlackBerry out again; if he’s shocked by my admission, he has the restraint not to show it, and no one else says anything, either.
I say, “I’m not sure what name she goes by now, but she’s much older than thirty-six—she’s my age. She was married, and her name was Cimino, and then she was divorced, and she might be remarried, possibly to—” I pause. “Back in the late eighties, she was dating a man named Pete Imhof, so they might have broken up, or they might still be together. He’s the brother of Andrew, the boy who—”
“Right.” Hank nods.
“And also he—Pete—he’s the one I got pregnant by, but he never knew.”
“Dena would have told him.” Hank isn’t asking; he’s making a statement.
The SUV is quiet except for the sirens of the police motorcycles escorting us, though even those sound distant because of the Doppler effect.
“Please have the investigators who talk to Dena be careful,” I say to Hank. “I wish she weren’t doing this, but I don’t want her life to be ruined, and I don’t want her going to prison.”
“The pregnancy was before or after Andrew’s death?” Hank is, I can see, imagining how to spin this, wondering if somehow the death can cancel out the abortion. I could spare him the trouble and tell him it can’t.
“After,” I say.
For a moment, Hank is silent, absorbing the information, and then he says, “Well, we’ve got our work cut out for us.” (On second thought, perhaps he doesn’t worship at our feet at all. That he is eating this up, luxuriating in the sordidness, is undeniable—it is not so much that Hank loves nothing more than a crisis but that he loves nothing more than his own indispensability to my husband in the face of one; there is a reason Charlie’s nickname for Hank is Shit Storm.)
“Don’t let the investigators physically threaten Dena,” I say. “Do you hear me, Hank? I want them to be respectful.”
“Alice, she’s trying to thwart a Supreme Court nomination and lead a smear campaign against the president and the first lady of the United States.”
I frown at him. “Don’t be melodramatic.” Before turning again to look out the window, I say, “She was once a close friend.”
THE WAY FAME
works is that people start to see your name in the news, whether on television or in the paper or a magazine. Something has just occurred (your husband has, with seven other men, bought a baseball team) or something is about to occur (your husband is on the verge of announcing he’ll run for governor of Wisconsin, or he’s on the verge of being elected), and people you know, though not necessarily well, contact you. People from the country club, whose house you have never been inside, who have never been inside yours—they call and leave joking messages, saying, “Don’t forget us little people.” Or “I saw you on Channel Four, and I had to get in touch while you still
