What Really Happened (9 page)

From Vegas, Johnny was going to fly to Chicago to do
Oprah
with Elizabeth, for her book
Saving Graces
. It was the first time they had done
Oprah
,
and it was a very big deal. Once that I heard that Johnny was doing the show too, I was very upset about it every time it was mentioned. I really didn’t want the both of them to go on
Oprah
and lie to millions of people. I thought that he and Elizabeth should wait until they get to a place of honesty in their relationship, and then decide whether to go on
Oprah
and tell the millions of viewers about the journey. You don’t do the public stuff and lie. Don’t do it until you can be honest. Of course I shared my thoughts but come on, for a guy and his spouse who may actually run for the highest office in the land, do you know how many people watch
Oprah?

It still astounds me how naïve I was. Of course he went to Chicago and taped
Oprah
. I watched it and found the whole thing to be extremely sad—and extremely irritating.

Toward the end of September, Johnny called me sounding very odd and detached, informing me that he wanted to talk to me later in person. He sounded strange, so I began mimicking his tone and what he was saying, so he could actually hear it. I believe he had gone to church on Sunday and had gotten some good old-fashioned Southern religion. Whatever the case, I got the feeling from his tone that he intended to end our relationship when we talked later in person.

Johnny was set to come to New York to be on a panel at New York University for
The
New York Times
, which Sam was going to shoot. I met everyone downtown in front of the building.

Johnny was very odd that night and not at his best, which was not lost on any of us. Afterward Josh, Johnny, and Kim immediately got in the car and left while I was still upstairs. I thought that was so weird of Johnny to leave without asking me if I needed a lift uptown. Was this the end? How would I ever continue working with him if this were the end?

So I got in a cab alone and headed uptown. I figured I’d just go to Serafina and wait for his call. I sat down at the bar and ordered a glass of wine, and who should pop in to get dinner for the senator? Josh. He was a bit freaked out that I was there. It really wasn’t that weird, given how often I ate at Serafina, which was in Glory Crampton’s neighborhood, but Josh didn’t know that and acted as though he had caught me doing something I shouldn’t be doing. Granted, I didn’t know that this was the restaurant Johnny would order from, but it was a place that I often went, so I didn’t act as though it was odd because it wasn’t.

Josh and I chatted about how ineffectual Johnny had been on the panel. Josh said, “Yeah, no more panels for us.” He left and Johnny called. I went up to his room and we ate dinner together. He told me he wanted to end his relationship with me because he wanted to work on his marriage. Work on his marriage? Was that a joke? Like he and Elizabeth were finally going to enter therapy all of a sudden, all on his incentive? Despite my doubts, he insisted he really wanted to work on his marriage, so the only thing I could say was okay.

I spent the night as though it was our last, and when I left in the morning, I remember looking at him from the door as I said goodbye, thinking that I’d never see him again.

I went back to New Jersey and got into bed, where I stayed most of the day. My heart was broken. I had no idea how I would ever fulfill my contract nor did I want to think about it. I was experiencing way too much pain.

Around 5
P.M.
he called and asked, “How are you?”

“Broken-hearted.”

“Yeah, I feel it. I felt it all day. Do you want to come see me?”

“Yes.”

“Come on.”

And that was it. I went back to the Regency.

I think we both realized then that there was no way out of this. We were madly in love.

Two days before we left for Africa, I bought a new phone for myself—a pink Motorola RAZR with a Johnny Cash ringtone—and a black RAZR for Johnny that looked exactly like his work phone.

I took a train to DC to spend the night with him and gave him his new phone. He finally got rid of the ex-mistress’s phone, which solved all our ex-mistress problems. Why it took me so long to do that, I have no idea. Maybe because every minute I wasn’t traveling, I was logging footage or editing. Or maybe I thought there was a chance our relationship wouldn’t survive long enough for it to matter. Johnny told me that he really wanted to move forward, without the ex-mistresses, without all the extra baggage. And now, without anyone having a way to reach him (minus one or two incoming calls to his home phone), we finally could.

SEVEN

The Leaves Are Changing

“Never forget that the most powerful force on earth is love.”

—
N
ELSON
R
OCKEFELLER

T
HE END OF SEPTEMBER 2006 I drove with Sam Cullman, my director of photography, out to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. During the drive I got a call on my phone from Johnny’s work phone, but he hung up before I could answer it. Weird. When I arrived in the lounge to connect with our little traveling “Save Uganda” group, I learned what happened. Johnny couldn’t figure out where all his numbers had gone on his cell phone so he had handed the phone to Josh Brumberger. But it was the wrong phone—the cell I had just bought for him. Fortunately he realized what he had done before any damage was done.

After everyone arrived, four folks from the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and five people from Team Edwards—Johnny, Josh, Derek Chollet (Johnny’s foreign policy guy), Sam, and I—all headed to our gate.

Once on board, we were told that there was a problem with the plane and they were going to contact maintenance to fix it instead of deplaning us. That’s when the drinking began.

Josh and Sam were very excited to learn that rapper Flavor Flav was on our flight. (He wasn’t hard to miss given that he was wearing his trademark clock around his neck.) They wanted to get pictures but seemed a bit starstruck. I had no reaction to Flav so I went up to him and told him that Senator John Edwards was on the flight. “You know, the guy who ran for vice president?” Suddenly Flavor Flav got excited, and soon cameras were flashing everywhere.

After what felt like several hours sitting on the ground, our pilot finally informed us that we all needed to get off the plane, go through customs again, and get on another plane. We realized we were probably going to miss our connection in Brussels to get to Africa, but because the senator’s schedule was booked for months, it was decided that we would just fly to Brussels anyway and figure it out from there.

When we finally landed in Belgium, we were met at the gate by some super nice airline folks who were very eager to help. (Traveling with Senator John Edwards was usually a big plus because airline people treated us like real human beings.) We had definitely missed our connection. The next plane to Uganda was a couple of days later, so our best bet was to claim our bags and recheck them with another airline. We headed to London to pick up a connecting flight to another spot in Africa, where we could catch a bush plane to Uganda. While waiting in the bag check line, Johnny managed to express to me how much it meant to him that I was there, how happy he was being with me, and how I made him feel so happy—no small feat to say all that without all our traveling companions hearing a thing.

We flew to London where we had to go through the most intense security I had ever been through. Senator or not, they did not care—he, too, may be packing bombs—and searched through every single bag. Once we made it through security, we hung out in a VIP room where the IRC men briefed us on the crisis going on in Uganda and the details of the Lord’s Resistance Army, the army of children who had been kidnapped and forced to fight.

At one point I left the VIP room to use the bathroom and ran into Johnny in the hallway, just as he was coming out of the men’s room. He proceeded to plant a huge kiss on me. We were deliriously tired, out of our element, and full of fire, which I obviously liked. But my response was, “Stop! Are you crazy? Someone will see us!”

We finally got on an African airline and were seated in first class. Team Edwards was outrageously comfy. We were all in the front row—Johnny was at the window, I was next to him on the aisle, and then the guys. As usual, Josh was unable to hide the fact that he was less than thrilled that I was next to Johnny. Everyone except me took a sleeping pill. Big mistake. Johnny and I stayed up way beyond everyone else, and he was out-of-his-mind sleep-deprived funny and adorable.

(It is a trait our daughter has inherited. I call it her “running-for-president” phase. Normally she is very shy but when she gets tired, she gets more energized, becomes hilarious, very open, and will talk to everyone. I recently said to Johnny, “She needs to go to sleep, she is running for president.” Without missing a beat, he replied, “I hope she does a better job than I did.”)

We finally made it to Africa and again had to wait (probably only a few hours, but I had lost all sense of time) to board a smaller plane to get to Uganda. In that airport, we ran into Anderson Cooper, who was on his way to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Anderson only had eyes for Johnny. He was clearly starstruck, which really tickled Sam and me.

On our last leg to Uganda, the pilot came on the sound system and told us that he didn’t think we could land due to bad weather. I can’t remember what the problem was but I do recall that our group was about to turn very religious, having decided that God did not want us to get to Uganda. It was beyond comical, given we were in hour
forty-six
of travel time. Fortunately the weather quickly cleared and we finally landed in Uganda.

We were greeted by a nasty woman who was barking orders at everyone (except Johnny, of course). We had missed staying the night in our first hotel because we were still flying but we stopped at that hotel to take a shower before we boarded a puddle-jumper bound for our camp. The woman barking orders informed Sam and me that we were on a different puddle-jumper than the senator. Yeah, that makes sense: spend thousands of dollars on getting cameras to follow you in Africa and then put the cameras on a different plane. I couldn’t believe it. After some rearrangements, at least one camera always ended up with Johnny.

After our little day trip, we drove to the hotel in Kampala, which would be our home base for the remaining two nights in Africa. What struck me the most about our time in Africa was how spoiled we are in America and how much we take for granted every day, like fresh water whenever we want. What also stood out were the kids in the camps and the eye contact they would make with us. I fell in love with the curiosity and the openness of the children. They didn’t have any computers or TVs, no Game Boys, no iPhone, iPads, or iPods—just total openness to other humans. They were very different from most American children.

In our hotel, Johnny’s room was directly opposite mine, and shockingly enough, I overheard Josh complaining about it. Josh was down the hall near Sam. For some reason, Josh was being really mean to Sam and all buddy-buddy with Derek. Sam was not happy about this and ended up being late for one of our excursions, which was way out of character for him. Josh was very snippy with me, but that was nothing new. Derek was also having his own meltdown. He felt that the IRC people were actually doing something that mattered—making a big difference in the world—while he was in Washington “thinking about things.”

Oh, it was just a sleep-deprived, life-altering experience for all involved.

After I was already in his room one night, Johnny thought it would be a good idea for me to go get my camera so we could create our own little “private” video. I did and oh have I paid dearly for that adventurous, sleep-deprived run across the hall. We made a short tape and then I put the camera down. Regardless of how sleep deprived I was during this less-than-brilliant escapade, and despite what was reported to the media by some people, one thing I know for sure: I was not pregnant when this happened nor did I look like it from any angle.

During our last excursion to a camp, a woman who couldn’t have been more than twenty years old followed me through the camp with her baby. I gathered, as she kept trying to hand me her baby girl, that she wanted me to take her baby out of the camp and give her a better life. This really upset me. She followed me the entire time we walked through the camp. I guided them to Johnny, who held the baby right before he was getting in the car to leave. I don’t know what I thought was going to happen, but nothing extraordinary transpired for this little child. The entire event really broke my heart.

The African music that these kids played in the camp also moved me. There was a young guy I nicknamed “Uganda’s Bob Marley.” He was very talented yet stuck in the camp; I wanted to help him somehow.

After our weekend visit was over, we were once again on the way to the airport. It was after dinner and dark outside. I was in the backseat with Josh; Johnny sat in the front. I asked Johnny a question about something and he answered by calling me “Baby.” In my sleep-deprived state I didn’t think I heard him correctly, so I kept asking myself over and over,
“Did he just call me ‘Baby?’”
When we got out of the car (and away from Josh), I asked Johnny, “Did you call me ‘Baby?’” And he said, “Yes, I sure did.”