plane.
In the early years of our marriage, we were very happy—for most of our marriage, we have been happy, though like all couples, we have experienced bumps. This is not necessarily the story the public wishes to hear, that the good times have greatly outweighed the bad, but it is the true story. The longer we have been together, the more far-fetched our compressed courtship has come to seem. Engaged after six weeks! Married after six more! How impulsive, how bold or foolish. Did we know each other at all? But I think we did. In most ways, I believe we’re the same people we were then, though the circumstances of our lives have changed dramatically.
During that initial congressional run and in later elections, when pundits or journalists underestimated Charlie, I could not be surprised; after all, when we’d first met, I had underestimated him, too.
PART III
402 Maronee Drive
B
ECAUSE WE HAD
theater tickets for seven-thirty, Charlie had promised to be home by six-fifteen, and I’d made a chicken marsala we could eat with Ella before we left. But by six-forty, Charlie still wasn’t back, and our sitter, a college sophomore named Shannon whom Ella adored, had arrived. I called Charlie’s office, where his answering machine picked up, his secretary’s voice explaining that he was away or in a meeting. Had he forgotten about the play—it was Chekhov’s
and gone to the country club to play squash or lift weights? Had he gone to a baseball game? It was a Wednesday in May, and though we had season tickets to the Marcus Center, we usually went to performances on Friday or Saturday nights.
I checked the paper, and the Brewers were indeed playing at home; they were playing the Detroit Tigers. That was the likeliest explanation for Charlie’s absence, but just in case, I called the country club, and the operator connected me to the athletic building, where Tony, the seventy-year-old who tended bar in the oak-paneled lounge between the men’s and women’s locker rooms, told me he hadn’t seen Charlie. This still could mean Charlie had entered the squash courts or the weight room through the side door, or it could mean he’d gone to his parents’ house, where he and Arthur liked to watch baseball games together in peace and quiet. Harold and Priscilla had moved to Washington, D.C., in 1986, two years earlier, when Harold was elected chair of the Republican National Committee, but the house was still fully furnished.
I called Jadey—she and Arthur also lived on Maronee Drive, a mile west of us—and their son Drew, who was fifteen, said, “Mom’s walking Lucky.”
“Is your dad home yet?” I asked.
“He’s working late.”
When I hung up, it was ten to seven, and it would take a solid twenty-five minutes to get downtown. Shannon and Ella sat at the kitchen table, Ella finishing her dinner. I crossed the kitchen and kissed Ella on her forehead. To both of the, I said, “Upstairs at eight-thirty, lights out at eight-forty-five, and no TV.”
“Mommy, your earrings look like thumbtacks,” Ella said.
I laughed. The earrings in question were gold, and they did look a little like thumbtacks. I also wore a pale pink suit—a skirt and jacket—and pink Ferragamo pumps. “Make sure to put away Barbie’s tea party,” I said to Ella, then looked at Shannon. “There’s some cooked steak in the fridge if you want to reheat it. We should be home by ten- thirty. I’m stopping by Mr. Blackwell’s parents’ house, because I think that’s where he is, but if he comes here, tell him to meet me downtown.”
He wasn’t at his parents’, though. At first, pulling into the driveway of their castlelike dwelling, I’d noticed lights in the kitchen and thought I’d found him, but when I approached the side door on foot, I saw through a window that it was Miss Ruby; she was cinching the belt of a tan raincoat.
She opened the door for me, and I said, “Charlie’s not here, is he?”
“You try the country club?”
“I don’t think he’s there, either.” I glanced at my watch. “We’re supposed to go to a play that starts at seven- thirty.”
Miss Ruby regarded me impassively. Over the years, I had observed the Blackwells competing for her opprobrium—if she scolded Arthur for, say, setting a glass on the living room table without a coaster, he’d treat it as a minor victory—but this was not a competition in which I wanted to participate. If Miss Ruby was grumpy, she was also an unfailingly hard worker, and on more than one holiday, I’d walked into the kitchen to find her scrubbing dishes at eleven
P.M.
, then I’d returned to the house the following morning and found her setting out breakfast fixings by eight o’clock. Just a few years before, I’d learned she had a bedroom off the kitchen, as well as her own adjacent bathroom, but sleeping at the Blackwells’ rather than going home for the night seemed to me more a drawback than a perk of her job.
It was by this point exactly seven, which meant I’d likely miss the start of the play, which meant why bother? I nodded toward the back door. “You’re headed out, I take it?”
“Just making sure the house is ready for Mr. and Mrs.”
I had forgotten that Harold and Priscilla were coming to town for the weekend, and that in fact we all were due for dinner there Saturday night. I made a mental note to call Priscilla and ask what I could bring.
I gestured to Miss Ruby to walk out in front of me, and almost imperceptibly, she shook her head; I walked out first, and she followed. It was about sixty degrees, the late-May sky darkening, the Blackwells’ lawn canopied by trees thick with new leaves. As we crossed the gravel driveway, I realized my car was the only one parked, and I turned to Miss Ruby. “Can I offer you a ride?”
“No, ma’am, I take the bus.”
