Curtis Sittenfeld - American Wife

“I never thought of living anywhere else,” she says.

I hesitate, then I say, “Obviously, we both know why I’m here. I understand your concerns, I really do, and I want to make it clear that I respect your opinion. But for you to talk about my medical procedure with members of the media would be a serious mistake. I won’t pretend that it wouldn’t be damaging to me, but I strongly suspect it would be damaging to you, too.”

“If it’s damage you’re worried about, Alice, look around you.” Dr. Wycomb’s tone is abruptly different than it was when we were making small talk. “Your husband and the vice president should be tried as war criminals.” I’m about to respond when she continues, “I suppose the president’s excuse is that he was born a fool, but I’ve wondered for the last six years what yours is. I don’t know how you sleep at night.”

It’s not that I’m unaware people think this, but the sentiments are rarely expressed at such close range. Also, they don’t emerge from the mouths of people I know, or people so old.

I say, “Aren’t we both lucky to live in a country that allows the expression of this kind of criticism? Dr. Wycomb, it’s your right to disagree with any or all of the president’s choices, but please remember that his administration is a different entity from me personally.”

“How convenient.” She is looking straight ahead. “But the personal is political, or did you miss the women’s movement?” She turns her head so our eyes meet. “Many times, I’ve had the notion to write you a letter, and I’ve told myself, Gladys, it won’t make it to her. She’ll never see it. But I still thought you’d intervene. I kept waiting for evidence that you were reining him in and speaking as a voice of reason.”

“Not every conversation I have is public, Dr. Wycomb.”

“Are you telling me that you have confronted your husband?”

“I answer to my own conscience. That’s as much as I want to say.”

“And I answer to mine,” she says. “Lest you think I have misgivings about sharing your secret, my only regret is that I didn’t speak out years ago.”

We both are quiet, and I can hear another television—a soap opera, it sounds like—somewhere else in the apartment. Norene Davis, I saw when she let me in, has black hair pulled back in a low ponytail and is wearing scrubs with teddy bears.

“Who do you think will be hurt by overturning

Roe

?” Dr. Wycomb says. “Not women we know—they’ll go to their doctors like you came to me, very hush-hush but perfectly clean and professional. But the poor women, where do they go? Every doctor knows outlawing abortion doesn’t make it less common, it just makes it less safe. Before ’73, I had patients who found me after botched procedures. They’d show up with cases of sepsis and bacteremia that would give you nightmares, and these were the lucky ones—the others died before they could get help. I should stand by and say nothing as our country returns to that?” She is shaking, a mild tremble throughout her body. “What I can no longer abide with this administration is the attitude that if it doesn’t affect them personally, it doesn’t matter.

I

was never going to need an abortion, was I? Now I’m so old that come what may, I won’t be around to see it. But that doesn’t mean I say, ‘To hell with the rest of you, and so long.’ ”

“Dr. Wycomb, it’s important to remember that the American people elected President Blackwell. Even if you don’t agree with him, a lot of citizens do. It’s impossible to satisfy everyone.”

“Those elections were fixed.” Her thin lips are drawn together; she is furious with me, truly furious.

I say, “I’m sympathetic to your frustrations, but—”

“You’re a puppet. Even the words you use, it sounds like a speech-writer told you to say them.”

This isn’t the way people talk to the first lady—no one does, except for a protestor at a speech, and if that happens, he is quickly quarantined. Dr. Wycomb’s comments are insulting and irritating, they are patronizing, but there also is something pure and true in her anger, like a winter wind. It’s almost refreshing, almost a relief, to be berated face-to-face.

Although I already know the answer, I say, “I trust that you’re aware I’ve said in two separate interviews that I’m pro-choice?”

“The times you gave one-word answers?”

“I’d like for us to come to a mutually agreeable resolution,” I say. “Do you think we can?”

“Keep Judge Sanchez off the Supreme Court.”

“That isn’t an area where I have any control.”

“For crying out loud, you’re married to the president of the United States! Who does he listen to if not you?”

Could

I convince Charlie to retract Ingrid Sanchez’s nomination—or, as protocol would have it, convince Charlie to convince Ingrid Sanchez to withdraw herself as a nominee? Even if it were possible, it seems so sleazy, a way of sparing myself public humiliation rather than a real political stand. It’s not that I wouldn’t strongly prefer for abortion to remain legal, not that I don’t understand that with Judge Sanchez’s confirmation, it might not. Nor is it that I don’t see how I come across as a hypocrite here, although I would disagree with the characterization; I actually haven’t said one thing and done another. It’s that I honestly don’t believe it’s my responsibility or even my right to try to legislate. No matter how many times I say it, people are unwilling to accept the fact that

I

was not elected. Have I tried to encourage Charlie in certain directions? Of course. A program on early education, increased funding for the arts, a literacy initiative—issues that inspire little controversy, issues on which he

seeks

my input.

I say, “Dr. Wycomb, I admit that I don’t know yet if what you’re proposing is blackmail, but it certainly comes close, and Norene Davis is implicated. Please know I’m not threatening you when I say that striking a deal could only end badly for all of us. I can’t try to bar a Supreme Court nominee to protect myself—that’s not something I’m willing to do, and I don’t think I’m capable of it anyway. That puts the decision back in your hands in terms of how you want to go forward, but for you to tell a reporter about a medical procedure you performed on me seems a clear violation of patient confidentiality.”

“The word is

abortion.

” Again, she is not looking at me. “And you didn’t mind breaking the law when it suited you. For you people, it’s only a crime if someone else commits it.”

She’s really going to do it, I realize—she’s fearless. She doesn’t care what the consequences are, even, apparently, for Norene. Her life of over a century has been distilled to this: She hates Charlie, she hates everything she thinks he represents, and possibly she hates me more. And she doesn’t just hate me by proxy—no, she thinks I am worse than he is. She subscribes to the belief, widespread among Democrats and shared by some Republicans, that he’s a moron, an evil moron, and to a certain extent, that lets him off the hook. But I—I should know better.

Unexpectedly, I think,

Okay. Okay, announce that I had an abortion; let the world know, let them hear about it in Missouri and Utah and Louisiana, in Ireland and Egypt and El Salvador.

It’s not inaccurate; I did have one. I will be judged, I will be criticized, I will be dissected on talk shows, joked about on late-night TV, excoriated or defended (though mostly excoriated) in op-eds. The Sunday after the news breaks, in

The New York Times

’s “Week in Review,” three separate articles about me will make variations on the same point. Even those who are pro-choice will denounce me as a dissembler; women’s groups will use me as proof of something, or as a cautionary tale about something else. In every interview from now until the end of my life, I’ll be asked to explain why I had an abortion and why I was silent for so long afterward, asked to reconcile the inconsistencies between my private experience and my husband’s policies and legislation. Anything I say in reply will boil down to this: