The Politician (35 page)

By the end of the evening, after we fed Rielle dinner and Cheri started the roundup for bed, I drove the candidate’s mistress to her house, leaving her car in the garage. It was visible because we had opened the door to walk out. As I arrived back home, I saw that a dark-colored Jeep Liberty (a boxy sport utility vehicle with four doors) had been backed into our driveway. All of its doors were open, and no one was in sight. I stopped my car in a spot where I blocked the Jeep from leaving and walked into the garage. I could hear the kids squealing inside and thought for a moment that some friends must have come to visit. When I opened the door to the house, I saw they were all running around half-naked (it was bedtime), and Brody screamed, “There are two big men looking in the kitchen window!” Cooper and Gracie ran to me and grabbed my legs.

In an instant I figured it was probably the
Enquirer
guys, which meant they weren’t burglars or rapists. But I still felt we were being threatened, even violated, and I could feel anger rising through me. I called out to Cheri, telling her to take the kids upstairs and get behind a locked door. I went back out to the garage and, before reaching the driveway, grabbed a broom and hit the switch to close the big door.

It was now dark outside, which meant the prowlers would have trouble seeing me. I shouted, “Cheri, where’s our gun?” as if she could hear me and we actually had a gun (we didn’t), and then I pressed the broomstick against
the driveway and used my foot to snap it in half. The noise was surprisingly sharp, almost like a gunshot, and in an instant two men came scurrying out of the darkness with their hands up.

One of these fellows was an older British-sounding man. The other was a young American. The Brit tried to explain that he and his colleague were from “the American Media Corporation of Los Angeles,” as if they represented a prestigious company, perhaps the
Los Angeles Times
. He did not say “the
National Enquirer
.”

At this point, Cheri came outside. She was shaking with both fear and anger. Above and behind her, the kids peeked out of the second-story windows, pushing apart the blinds so they could get a view of what was going on. I told her to go back inside “and call the sheriff.” Cheri was pleased to turn the tables on these guys with a call to the authorities.

As she retreated, the two men, who couldn’t leave because I had blocked their Jeep, tried to talk me into letting them go. They also pressed me for information about Rielle and the senator. “Why are you covering up for him?” they asked.

I wasn’t bothered by their questions. In that moment, I thought they were scummy guys who had terrified my kids, and I was hoping they would be arrested. But as it turned out, they knew more about the laws on trespass than I did.

The sheriff’s deputy soon explained to me that the local law would allow him to make an arrest only if our property was posted with “No Trespassing” signs (it wasn’t) or if they had been peeping at naked people inside. Since the kids had their pajamas on halfway, we couldn’t claim they were violated. The deputy had to let the two men go, but as he did he made sure to tell them, “If you had come to my house, I would have shot you first and asked questions later. That’s what we do in Chatham County.”

Once the deputy had informed us of the law and I had discovered how the skulking journalists had gotten inside the Governors Club—they had posed as golfers headed for the clubhouse—I moved my vehicle and let
them depart. Inside, I apologized to Cheri for being so gruff in the middle of the confrontation. While we talked, the kids hugged us and asked about the men who had been peering in at them and about the deputy who had come to our house with the lights on his cruiser flashing. They were scared, and all we could say was that the men were not supposed to be on our property, they had made a mistake by coming to our house, and the deputy had protected us.

In the next hour, I spoke to the senator several times. He was remarkably calm and absolutely certain that he could control the
Enquirer
. Determined to stick with his denials about the affair, he decided to confront the editors and publisher with their Clinton connection and argue that going to press with baseless charges would make them look like a tool for his opponents. If this argument failed, he said, he would attack the
Enquirer
report as “tabloid trash” and offer to sign an affidavit denying that he was Rielle’s lover and the father of her child.

I thought his strategy was wrong. Attacking the paper would only invite more aggressive reporting, and a false affidavit is always a bad idea. I counseled him to wait. Even if the story leaked out, it would take many days, if not weeks, for it to reach a mainstream audience. By then the caucus would be over and we could have a more coherent strategy. Nothing was settled that night, in part because the senator was too busy preparing for the final debate of the Iowa campaign, which was set for the next day in the Des Moines area.

It was almost midnight by the time things got quiet at our house. The kids were so upset that we let them all come into our big bed to sleep. This would be the first night of many that all five of us slept together, heads and feet everywhere. It would also be the first night of many that I would keep a knife at the bedside and get up frequently to check the windows and doors. Somehow, we were supposed to go back to our regular lives in the morning. Cheri and I planned to drive the kids to school and then shop for a turtle habitat and food at a big pet supply store called PetSmart. We needed
turtle stuff because Cheri had found a cute orange-and-brown eastern box turtle on the dirt road leading to our building site. She had put him in the car and brought him home for the kids. They loved Mr. Turtle, but Cheri and I worried they might handle him a little too roughly, or a little too often, and thought he would be happier in his own secure home. Anyone would.

A
lthough we had moved out of the purple mansion, for the sake of stability we had kept Gracie and Brody at Scroggs Elementary School in Southern Village. It was just a few blocks from the campaign office I had helped set up for John Edwards but where I was no longer welcome. On the morning after the deputy sheriff came to our house, we actually saw several of my former colleagues on the street. They turned away, either pretending they didn’t see us or snubbing us intentionally. At school, Brody told his class that “the police were at our house last night.”

After we made sure the two older kids were safely inside Scroggs and delivered Cooper to his three-hour preschool class, Cheri and I ran a few errands together. (We were feeling a little paranoid and didn’t think we should separate.) The last stop on our schedule was the turtle supply department at PetSmart. If you have never been to one of these places, imagine a supermarket-size store filled with rawhide bones, aquariums, catnip toys, and every other item a family pet might require. As we went inside and looked for the right aisle, Cheri and I went through a little routine we have, where I predict that whatever we’re shopping for is going to be exorbitantly priced—say, five hundred dollars for a clear plastic turtle house—and she says we can get everything we want for next to nothing.

When we finally found the spot in the store where they sold the terrariums, heaters, misters, food, rocks, decorations, and other turtle items, I knew that outfitting Mr. T was going to cost us far more than Cheri expected. I became more certain when the young man in charge greeted us and began his monologue about what we owed this little critter when it came to his care and feeding. I was almost relieved when my cell phone rang and I saw it was the senator. I told Cheri I was going outside to speak to him, and she nodded.

The weather was warm for a day in December, and the sun felt good on my face. I sat on the curb in front of PetSmart and listened as the senator told me he wanted to find a “way out of this thing,” which meant he wanted to kill the
Enquirer
story or, barring that, prevent the rest of the media from picking it up. He talked about how he and John Kerry had lost by a few hundred thousand votes in Ohio in 2004 and he knew how to win in November but would never get the chance if we didn’t act decisively now. “A black or a woman can’t win the general election,” he said again.

Sensing that this was going to be a hill that would require all of my focus, I got up from the curb and walked to my minivan with the cell phone still held to my ear. I got inside and noticed, in the pile of mail on the seat, that Edwards was on the cover of the
Newsweek
that had just been delivered. (The article about him, which I read later, noted his surging popularity and quoted him saying, “I’m going to speak the truth.”)

The senator talked as if he had all the time in the world, even though the Des Moines debate was just two hours away. (His demeanor made me think that he possessed at least one presidential quality: the ability to stay cool in a crisis.) Gradually, he came around to the real purpose of his call. He wanted me to issue a statement taking responsibility for Rielle’s baby—to insist I was the father—and then disappear with her, Cheri, and the kids for a few weeks. The senator’s rich trial lawyer friend Fred Baron would let us use his private jet and pay for our expenses as we enjoyed the equivalent of a multiweek luxury vacation.

I was dumbfounded. How, I asked, was I supposed to explain to my wife that I should confess to an affair I never had, claim an unborn child
that was not mine, and then bring her along with our family as we attempted to vanish into thin air? Although he couldn’t begin to tell me how I might accomplish these tricks, the senator did appeal to my commitment to the cause that is “bigger than any one of us” and to our friendship. When I told him that he was asking me to ruin my career and my ability to support my family, he said that was not true. He would make sure I had a job in the future, he said. “You’re family. A friend like no friend I’ve ever had,” he added before concluding that if I helped him, I would make Mrs. Edwards’s dying days a bit easier. “I know you’re mad at her, Andrew, but I love her. I can’t let her die knowing this.” He said he thought her days were short.

Sitting there on the curb in front of PetSmart, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. My wife and children had been so shaken by the creeps from the
National Enquirer
that they were no longer comfortable at the Governors Club. My colleagues at the office I had opened, but where I no longer had a desk, were shunning me. All of my professional contacts, made through my work for Senator Edwards, were slowly evaporating. And the much beloved and respected Elizabeth Edwards was telling mutual friends, donors, politicians, and anyone else who would listen that I was the worst kind of scoundrel. (The senator had obviously told her the lie about my being the baby’s father long ago.) In short, I was fucked, and at that moment I couldn’t see that I had any options but to continue playing John Edwards’s game.

As I hung up the phone, Cheri came out of PetSmart hauling turtle stuff. When I didn’t say anything about her purchases, she realized that the content of the phone call must have been serious. I told her that I needed a few minutes to think before I tried to tell her about it. With about a half hour left before Cooper would be ready for pickup at preschool, I steered the car toward McDonald’s.

The drive-through was backed up with the cars of other parents buying Happy Meals, so we moved slowly toward the intercom station where you place your order. After I finally got to holler for Chicken McNuggets with chocolate milk and the right toy, I turned to Cheri and in the time it took us
to reach window number one (where you give them the money), I said, “Edwards wants me to say I’m the father of Rielle’s baby, and then Fred’s gonna fly us off to someplace where we can all hide.”

At this point in the “conversation,” I had reached the pay window, so I pulled out my wallet and handed the young McDonald’s cashier a twenty-dollar bill. She gave me the change, and as I pulled forward to collect the food, Cheri began to sputter.

“Are you out of your mind? Why would you even tell me about this? Why didn’t you just say no?”

Cheri wasn’t exactly yelling, but she was loud. At the delivery window, I reached out and took the McDonald’s Happy Meal box from the clerk and said, “Thank you.” The clerk didn’t bat an eye. My guess is that she had seen plenty of women talking loudly to their husbands at the drive-through.

Once she had vented her outrage, Cheri sat quietly for a few minutes. Among the thoughts that raced through my mind in the silence was that I had gotten us stuck in a big mess involving two billionaires, a presidential candidate, a pregnant mistress, and a whole lot of money. Cheri was having the same thought, and she was recalling the run-in with the men from the
Enquirer.
That ruckus had only added to the sleep debt she had been accumulating ever since Thanksgiving, as Gracie and Cooper seemed to get one cold or ear infection after another. We were both exhausted and afraid, and once we started talking about the John Edwards/Rielle Hunter problem, we could see it only in the most threatening way. What if the press kept hounding us? Who would ever hire me after the collapse of my career and Mrs. Edwards savaging my reputation? I started to feel light-headed, and Cheri could see I was upset. We were already deep into this mess. I had signed an expensive lease for Rielle’s rental house. I had bought her a car, and I had agreed to be responsible for her into the foreseeable future. These facts hung over our decisions.

The trip from McDonald’s to Cooper’s school was so short that we got there before we could settle anything. We stopped talking when Cooper got into the car and let him tell us about his experience in class. He chattered
all the way home, where we went inside so he could eat his Happy Meal and we could get ready for Rielle to come over. She wanted to watch the Iowa debate with me, and since I couldn’t go to the campaign office anymore, and Cheri was not the least bit interested in what John Edwards had to say, I had told her she could come over for it.