Rodham Read online

  Between the letter signing and the potluck, I was meeting Bill at three. When I arrived at the café, he was waiting outside. He cocked his head to the right and said, “I have a better idea. I passed the art gallery on the way here. You interested in the Rothko exhibit?”

  “The gallery isn’t open,” I said. Because of a labor dispute, several university buildings were currently closed.

  “Exactly,” he said. “Want to see me work some Arkansas magic?”

  I couldn’t help myself. I said, “Does it involve watermelons?”

  He laughed. “I thought you might have been eavesdropping in the lounge.” This had been six months prior, and although I remembered the day, I was a little surprised he did. He added, “If you want to get specific, it’s the town of Hope, in the southwest part of the state, that grows the very best watermelons of all. I grew up mostly in Hot Springs, but Hope is where I was born. The soil there is nice and sandy because of the river, and we once sent a melon that was almost two hundred pounds to President Truman.”

  “ ‘We’ as in your family?”

  “ ‘We’ as in the town, though my uncle Carl, who was married to my grandmother’s sister Otie, was a watermelon-growing champ. To be honest, it’s not the really big watermelons that taste the best. The small ones are the sweetest.”

  “I promise not to tell Truman that you shortchanged him,” I said. “And yes, I’m interested in the Rothko exhibit. As for Arkansas magic, I’m willing to temporarily suspend disbelief.”

  “If that’s the best I can do, I’ll take it.” He then gave me a kind of once-over and I had the strange thought that he might be about to take my hand, but instead we were soon walking side by side, and I wondered if I’d imagined the strangeness. As we walked, I was conscious of his height and heft next to me; I had to crane my neck to meet his eye.

  I said, “How are your classes?” In the days since we’d spoken in the library, I’d concluded that if the purpose of this meeting wasn’t to pick my brain about working at the clinic, it might be that he wanted advice about which courses to select in his second year.

  “I can’t lie,” he said. “I’m a terrible procrastinator. I have a bad habit of taking on more projects than I ought to off campus, and I usually finish the reading about three minutes before class starts.” He winced before adding, “That’s assuming I come to class at all.”

  “What are you doing the rest of the time?”

  “I’m teaching criminal law at the University of New Haven, for one. It’s to make money, but it’s not a bad gig. The students are studying to be policemen, so I get an interesting window into their lives. I also do errands for a lawyer in town, delivering papers and whatnot. But the best job, until all of a sudden it wasn’t, was campaigning for Joe Duffey last fall.”

  “Ah,” I said. “I’m sorry.” Duffey, a seminary professor who’d run for U.S. senator from Connecticut on an antiwar platform, had lost to a Republican named Lowell Weicker.

  Bill shook his head. “Classic example of the right guy having the wrong message. Joe grew up blue-collar, but he couldn’t convince factory workers he understood them. Have you worked on any campaigns?”

  I said, “I actually walked precincts for Duffey the Saturday before Election Day. And in college, I’d go to New Hampshire on the weekends to volunteer for McCarthy. But this might make you want to end our conversation right now. My first campaign experience was going door-to-door for Goldwater.”

  “Oh, Hillary.” Bill’s expression was a mix of appalled and amused. “Say it ain’t so.”

  “I started to see the light gradually. In ’68, I attended both the Republican and Democratic conventions.”

  Bill squinted. “Is that legal? Or even possible, metaphysically speaking?”

  “I’m a staunch Democrat now, and it’s because I carefully considered the alternatives. But honestly, I’d already switched sides and wouldn’t have attended the Republican convention except that the Wellesley intern program assigned me to work for the House Republican Conference that summer. I did meet Frank Sinatra at the convention, though.”

  “Well, that’s something.” Bill hummed a few bars of “Strangers in the Night.” “What are your plans for after Yale?”

  “It depends on the day.” I laughed a little. “I definitely want to work in Washington at some point. This summer, I’m clerking at a firm in California, and I can see how litigation would be exciting. But I’ve also been doing research for Gwen Greenberger at the National Children’s Initiative. Do you know the Greenbergers?” In addition to admiring Gwen and Richard professionally, I was fascinated by them personally. He was white and Jewish and from Georgia, and she was black and Baptist and from New York, and they were the parents of three-year-old twin boys. The Greenbergers’ life and home charmed me—their many bookshelves, the fact that he sometimes cooked the meals, the way they joked around and fought for justice and were both dazzlingly yet casually brilliant. It was all so different from the way my parents interacted.

  “I’m in Richard’s Constitutional Law class right now,” Bill said. “He’s fantastic.”

  “I’m having dinner at their house tonight,” I said. “What are your plans for after Yale?”

  “I’ll go back to Arkansas and run for either Congress or attorney general.” Bill wasn’t the first person at Yale I’d heard express this kind of goal, but he expressed it with the greatest certainty.

  I said, “I was president of the student government at Wellesley, but I think that may have been it for me—that my involvement with campaigns from here on out won’t be as the candidate.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, there’s being female, for one thing. Also, I take it you don’t mind asking people for money.”

  “No doubt about it, money-grubbing is part of the game. But I’m pretty shameless.”

  I laughed.

  “I did student government in high school and the first couple years of college,” he said. “But I went to Georgetown, and the longer I was in Washington, the more time I spent on Capitol Hill instead of campus. It was hard to resist the lure of the real thing. I was a staffer for Fulbright, and if the choice was attending a Foreign Relations Committee meeting versus listening to twenty-year-olds complain about the food in the dining hall, it wasn’t much of a contest.”

  “Being a member of Congress and being attorney general of Arkansas seem really different,” I said. “Don’t they? Geographically and also, you know, metaphysically speaking?”

  This time, he laughed. “I’ll see what makes the most sense once I’m home,” he said. “Frankly, I’m prepared to serve in just about any capacity that improves the lives of the people of Arkansas.”

  “You certainly sound like a politician.”

  We were turning onto Chapel Street, and he seemed unbothered as he said, “You mean I sound like a phony?”

  “Maybe rehearsed more than phony.”

  “Is there a difference?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “There’s a real piece-of-shit GOP congressman, a Nixon crony, up in the third district, which is mostly rural besides Fayetteville. This man is nice enough if you’re talking to him, but when he’s in Washington, he forgets all about his constituents. Unseating him would be a long shot, but you’ve got to start somewhere.”

  We had reached the front of the gallery, which was in another Gothic building, this one particularly castle-like. I stopped walking, causing Bill to stop, too. I looked up at his face and said, “Why are we here? I don’t mean at the gallery. I mean, why are we spending time together? What do you want?”

  He smiled. “What do you think I want?”

  “No,” I said. “Give me a real answer. There’s been enough of this”—I searched for the correct words, then landed on a phrase I’d never used before—“this chitty chat.”

  His
expression grew concerned, and when he spoke, his tone was serious. He said, “We’re on a date. I wanted to go on a date with you.”

  For a few seconds, I stared at him. “Why?”

  He still seemed worried, fearful of misstepping, and matter-of-fact rather than fawning, as he said, “Because you’re the smartest person at Yale.”

  I didn’t know how to reply, so I laughed. It came out as more of a cackle than I’d intended.

  “You must know that’s what people say,” Bill said. “I knew who you were more than a year ago. My mom clipped the article about you out of Life magazine and sent it to me at Oxford.”

  “And that’s your thing? Smart women?”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “If you’re planning on a career in politics, I’d assume you want more of a doting housewife.”

  “Well, I’m not proposing marriage,” he said, and I felt a surge of embarrassment. Then he smiled again and added, “Yet.” I suppose this was my first experience of Bill’s overlapping flirtatiousness and kindness. He said, “Listen. I’m just happy to be spending time with you right now. I had a hunch you were really cool, and you are.” He paused for a half second and, not entirely unselfconsciously, added, “And also really attractive.” He tilted his head toward the entrance to the gallery. “Wasn’t I about to show you some Arkansas magic?”

  * * *

  —

  In 1957, my friend Maureen Gurski’s tenth birthday party took place at her house in Park Ridge, a block away from where my family lived. Six girls sat at the Gurskis’ dining room table eating cake, along with Maureen’s younger brother and parents. The subject of baseball came up—I was an ardent Cubs fan, despite their terrible record that year—and I said, “Even if the White Sox are having a better season, Ernie Banks is clearly the best player on either team. If the Cubs build around him, they’ll be good in time.”

  Maureen’s father smiled unpleasantly from across the table. He said, “You’re awfully opinionated for a girl.”

  It was not the first time someone had said such a thing. Starting when I was in third grade, my teacher, Mrs. Jauss, had routinely asked me to be in charge when she left the room, a task that sometimes necessitated my telling John Rasch to sit down or stop poking Donna Zinser and resulted in John reminding me that I wasn’t a teacher. In fourth grade, I’d been elected co-captain of the safety patrol, which occasionally elicited similar resistance from my peers. But Mr. Gurski’s remark was the sentiment’s clearest and most succinct expression in my life thus far and gave me, henceforth, a kind of shorthand understanding of the irritation and resentment I provoked in others. Not all others, of course—plenty of people admired that I was eager and responsible—but among those provoked were both men and women, adults and children.

  Is it odd that I feel a certain gratitude to Bud Gurski? It’s for (yes) two reasons. First: He said what he said at just the right moment. I was still in possession of the brazen confidence of a nine-year-old girl and didn’t take him seriously, the way I might have if I were twelve or thirteen. Second: He used less ugly terms than he could have, far less ugly than I’ve encountered in the years since. Opinionated for a girl? Of course I was opinionated! And indeed I was a girl. He was stating facts more than offering insult.

  Mr. Gurski was about thirty-five at the time of Maureen’s tenth birthday, which seemed to me rather old for putting a grade school girl in her place. I hadn’t yet learned this is an impulse some men never outgrow. But he was easy to dismiss, even though I was aware that to convey my dismissal wouldn’t have been respectful. You’re awfully dumb for a grown-up, I thought. Aloud, I said, “Well, Ernie Banks is a great ballplayer.”

  * * *

  —

  On his way to meet me at the café, Bill had noticed that trash had accumulated in the gallery courtyard, presumably because the janitors who usually picked it up were part of the strike. He’d started talking to a security guard and asked the man if he’d let us into the museum if we cleaned up beforehand. The guard was a black man who looked to be sixty or so, whose hand Bill shook warmly. Extending an arm toward me, Bill said, “And this is Hillary, the girl I’m hoping to impress.”

  The guard’s name was Gerard; he and I also shook hands. The next thing I knew, Bill and I were striding around the courtyard picking up discarded soda cans, cigarette stubs, and bits of paper, and throwing them away. We were calling to each other as we passed in front of and behind an oversized bronze sculpture of a reclining human figure, and it was some of the strangest fun I’d ever had. Was I enjoying myself because it was a cool but sunny spring day and I was outside and moving around? Because everything about this afternoon was surprising? Because Bill was tall and silly and handsome and flirtatious?

  It was ten to four when Gerard let us in a side door, into the cavernous and shadowy museum proper; the lights were not on. We wandered past an ancient Greek vase and a ceiling tile from Syria and a bust of the Roman emperor Commodus. We paused at a nineteenth-century American oil painting of pink jungle orchids, and Bill pointed at one of the leaves and said, “Look at that level of detail.”

  I pointed, saying, “I like the hummingbird.”

  Bill’s index finger fleetingly brushed against mine as he said, “There are two hummingbirds.”

  I hesitated—it was plausible he was a person who did such things without deciding to, but I wasn’t—then I fleetingly brushed my finger against his. “They look like they’re telling secrets.”

  He laughed. “How do you know they’re not debating important jungle policy?”

  He turned from the painting then, and I turned, too, and he set his hand on my back just below my left shoulder. Inside me, there was a ripple, a kind of swooning. He wanted to be on a date with me? I was the person he wanted to be alone with? Being courted, being found “really attractive” by a man like Bill was not a type of good fortune I’d expected or even actively wanted; to want it would have seemed ridiculous and indulgent and possibly greedy. I’d had crushes, of course. In fact, I’d had many crushes. But I tended to feel excitement for the other person in inverse proportion to his excitement for me. And I didn’t even aspire to men like Bill, to anyone magnetic or exceptional—I pinned my hopes on guys who were smart but ordinary, and still it worked only when they were the ones who liked me first.

  In front of an Edward Hopper painting of a woman in a hotel room, Bill said, “This is my favorite piece in the museum. Sometimes I stop by just to check up on her.”

  The woman wore a sleeveless red dress with a low-cut neckline and high-heeled brown shoes and sat on the edge of a made bed, some kind of dunes or mountains in the picture window behind her, beneath a blue sky. The painting wasn’t overtly sexual, but it wasn’t entirely unsexual, either.

  “Why do you like it?” I asked.

  “The intensity of her expression—what’s she thinking? Is she heartbroken? Is she angry? Is someone else in the room with her?”

  Now that he mentioned it, it did seem another presence, perhaps that of the painter, was implied.

  “How do you have time to come here?” I asked. “Between working on Senate campaigns and procrastinating?”

  He grinned. “Coming here is procrastinating.” He pointed at sunlight against the wall in the painting and said, “Aren’t the shadows and light remarkable?”

  “I wouldn’t have guessed that you were such an art aficionado.”

  “You mean because I’m from Arkansas?”

  “Because you’re so busy.” Sheepishly, I added, “And maybe partly because you’re from Arkansas, although I promise I’m not an East Coast snob. I grew up outside Chicago, so I can’t be.”

  Bill appeared enthused rather than offended as he said, “I have a hard time getting people to believe this, but Hot Springs is incredibly sophisticated. The sulfur springs have always attracted people from all over the country an
d, really, the world—everyone from Hernando de Soto to Al Capone to Teddy Roosevelt. De Soto literally thought he’d found the fountain of youth. Now there’s different religions, there’s beautiful houses and hotels, there’s arts and culture, and it’s even where a lot of baseball teams come for spring training. Admittedly, there are seedy parts, and some avid fans of the seediness include people near and dear to me, but I think it’s a mix of activity that makes life interesting. Don’t you?”

  There really was something ridiculously endearing about the man beside me. “Yes,” I said. “I do.”

  “And there’s an alligator farm and an ostrich farm. Oh, and a zoo with a mermaid skeleton.”

  I smiled. “Did anyone ever mention that to Darwin?”

  “You do realize,” he said, and he was smiling, too, “that it’s entirely possible to be from Chicago and still be an East Coast snob?”

  * * *

  —

  In the spring of seventh grade, I ran for student council president, as did four other rising eighth graders. When the list of candidates was posted on the bulletin board outside the principal’s office, it didn’t surprise me that all my opponents were boys, and if anything, it pleased me: I immediately understood the advantages conferred if students voted along gender lines.

  On a warm May afternoon, following lunch in the cafeteria, the four boys and I gave our speeches to the entire junior high. We’d been told by Mr. Heape, the student council adviser, to speak for a maximum of five minutes.

  My father, who was sarcastic, exacting, and often mean, helped with my speech. Starting in grade school, I’d write papers in their entirety then give them to him, and he’d mark them up with a ballpoint pen: crossing out entire paragraphs, flagging repetition or soft arguments, writing puerile or vacuous in the margins. I’d make changes based on his suggestions but not show him second drafts. There was a joke my father told about a piano tuner whose surname was Opporknockety, which allowed for the punchline “Opporknockety tunes but once,” and early on, when I’d asked him to read a revision, he’d replied, “Hugh Rodham tunes but once.” By profession a supplier of drapery fabric and window shades, my father was also a Republican, a political junkie who disdained most politicians, a cheapskate, and a man not only easily bored but disinclined to conceal his boredom. It was he who provided me with the introduction to my student council campaign speech.