Resolve to concentrate on Metrification Initiative.
—JOURNAL, NOV. 7, 1991
Major Arnold dressed my wounds, the javelin puncture being the most serious. Mrs. Metz retrieved my glasses from the residence, and I called Joan and told her I would be home early. I didn’t go into details, but Joan knows me better than anyone. She said she’d make meatloaf that night, which was her way of saying, It doesn’t matter. What a woman!
Feeley called, very worried. The First Lady had arrived in New York—on the Eastern Shuttle—and the press was demanding to know why they hadn’t been advised, why she was there, etc., etc. “Buying shoes, getting a divorce,” I said without interest. “Who knows?”
He arrived in my office in less than two minutes, panting and out of breath. I told him he really ought to cut down on his smoking. “Fuck that,” he said. “What’s going on?”
I explained.
“You can’t resign,” he said. “Not now.”
I told him it wasn’t a question of resigning.
“I’ll fix it,” he said.
I think I told him that I wasn’t really sure I wanted my job, or any White House job, back. He told me I was being hysterical, and to leave everything in his hands.
That night on the news the First Lady’s “surprise arrival” in New York was played prominently. She was holed up at the Sherry Netherland hotel on Fifth Avenue. Feeley was shown at a press briefing saying it was just some early Christmas shopping. The Greater D.C. Merchants Association spokesman was shown saying it was an insult to all the fine stores in Washington. The whole thing was a sorry spectacle. I was surprised that news of my “resignation” wasn’t included—I’d have thought Lleland would have had it announced even before my wounds were seen to; no matter. But, for the first time since arriving at the White House, I felt comfortably numb, beyond the care of such concerns and intrigues.
The next morning I asked Mrs. Metz to help me put things in boxes. As we worked, the phone rang without stopping: press queries about the First Lady. Mrs. Metz held them off with exemplary Teutonic firmness. Throughout my ordeal she maintained the most correct bearing. Another woman might have given in to emotions, but not Mrs. Metz. I came to regard the German character very highly on account of her. (Of course she was a naturalized U.S. citizen. It was not our practice to employ foreign nationals.)
Lleland called. “Sorry to hear you’re leaving,” he said. “You’ll be missed. But we can use the parking space.”
The conqueror’s smirk, the knife twisted in the wound. My West Exec parking space … they had tried to take it from me when I moved over to the East Wing. I’d fought them like a beast uncaged, and won. Who would get it now? Phetlock? Withers? I closed my eyes—it was too painful to consider. I’d become accustomed to the space.
If Lleland wasn’t magnanimous in victory, I decided I would be in defeat. I told him it had been “interesting” working with him and wished him luck with the Bermuda Crisis, the Inflation Crisis, the Budget Crisis, the Deficit Crisis, the Confidence Crisis, the First Lady Crisis, and with the campaign, which wasn’t far enough along to have become a crisis but which almost certainly would before long. He reacted as though I were being cynical, but I wasn’t.
Then an odd thing happened. I was summoned to the Oval. Maybe a goodbye photo, I mused on the way over. The President was very good about that sort of thing.
The President greeted me cordially, but formally—the way he did heads of uncooperative states. He seemed almost embarrassed. I tried to put him at ease by apologizing that I hadn’t put through my resignation letter yet, but that I would before the day was out.
He told me he didn’t want it.
He said he’d given the matter some thought, and that he wanted to offer me my old job back. The West Wing job. Deputy chief of staff.
This was startling. “But why?” I said.
He told me the National Metrification Initiative was faltering, and that he needed someone with my “instincts” to take charge of it.
I did not know what to say. The President had never really expressed much interest in Metrification. (Of course, he was deeply committed to it. He was determined that America should begin the twenty-first century “fully metric,” as he used to say.) Though I do think I had a certain—call it knack—in this important national initiative, I suppose there were others who could have done the job. I was, therefore, puzzled that the President, with so much on his mind—including, possibly, a very public divorce—should have his mind on this.
Just then Betty Sue Scoville walked in. “Mr. President,” she said, “it’s the First Lady.”
His hand darted for the phone when she said, “She’s apparently calling for Mr. Wadlough.”
He looked at me; I looked at him. Neither of us made a move.
“Should I put her through?” asked Betty, puzzled.
The President frowned and nodded. I walked to the phone by the fireplace and picked it up. “Madam?” I said cautiously, as if the receiver might electrocute me.
“Herb,” she said. It was a sweet, caring voice. “Are you all right?”
Most curious. I thanked her for asking, and said that I was quite well. She wanted to know about my stomach wound. I told her it was healing nicely. The President was listening intently.
She began to apologize for the day before. I said that it was nothing, really, just a few scratches. But she went on to explain that she’d been feeling out of sorts and had overreacted.
It was perplexing. Mrs. Tucker was a woman of some whimsy—theatrical people are this way—but this was positively, well, schizophrenic. (I do not mean to imply that the First Lady had psychological problems. It was simply strange behavior.)
She said there was someone there who wanted to say hello. Firecracker, no doubt.
But then on came a familiar voice.
“Jerb!” it said. “Is you?”
I looked over at the President; his eyebrows were knotted.
“I am furious with her!” Mr. Villanueva continued. “She say she beat you up.”
I was at a loss.
“She don’t understand. I tell her dat you jave tell me not to come to Washington. Sure, but now she tell me she think you are making plot against me. Jessica, you are so estupid sometime. I want you to say you are sorry again to Jerb. Here, say.”
The First Lady came back on, apologizing once again. We chatted. She said she was furious with whoever was spreading the rumor about me and Mr. Villanueva. She said, “Is my husband involved? Is he behind this?”
The President was in extremis, trying to figure out what was going on. I said, “Certainly not.”
She seemed to believe me.
I asked her if she was coming back to Washington soon. She said she didn’t know.
I told her the President missed her. He nodded vigorously. She said if he really missed her he’d spend more time with her and Firecracker.
It went on this way, me pleading with her to come back, she demurring. The President began writing things down on paper—talking points, as we call them in politics—for me to tell her. On one slip of paper he wrote, TELL HER MY COUGH WORSE.
It was certainly the most taxing phone call I have ever experienced, but twenty minutes later I had her promising to call him as soon as she hung up. I almost made a fatal mistake when she asked me to transfer the call to the Oval Office. I nearly handed him the phone. But I pulled myself together and said that it would be much more “dramatic” if she called him directly on his private line.
When I hung up, the President practically embraced me, he was so happy. I said I was only too glad to help and that I should withdraw before the First Lady’s call came through.
“Go ahead and write the book,” he said cheerily as I made my way to the door.
I didn’t understand. “What book?” I said.
But then the phone rang. As I closed the door behind me, I wondered what he had meant by that.