Saving Graces - Elizabeth Edwards [116]
Months before Laurie McCray had told me that she had narrowed it down to three candidates and John was in those three. She was smiling, as if that was good news. Not good enough, I told her. She would come to town halls and ask about nursing, the profession she loved but had left. And maybe then it was down to two. And finally Laurie came on board. She and her son Michael, who is now a happy, handsome teenager, had a pleasant, organized, busy life, and she was managing a lot—including Michael’s extra chromosome—to make that so. But when Michael, seeing John again at another town hall, would reach to hug him and John would grab him and give him a bear hug back, I could see the beginnings of tears in Laurie’s eyes. Life was harder than it should be, and it didn’t have to be this way.
We still weren’t polling, but we knew we hadn’t cracked the Kerry-Dean juggernaut in New Hampshire. The night before the primary, the entire traveling entourage—Sam and Jennifer, Miles and Colin, Hunter, Jay Heidbrink, Meghan and John and I—worked until there was no one left to talk to, and then we started looking for dinner. John wanted to go to Outback Steakhouse and a bookstore. It is nearly eleven, Hunter said. Okay, just an Outback. They were closing the restaurant when we arrived, but they kept it open and cooked for John—and, since we were there, the rest of us. In the nearly empty restaurant we sang and laughed as if we had reason to celebrate early. Which we didn’t.
Though room after room would be closed by the fire marshal because the crowds at John’s rallies had gotten so large, though at event after event crowds of people had to be turned away, there was no bump from Iowa. Kerry finished first again, then Dean. Clark, who had skipped Iowa and concentrated on New Hampshire, beat John by less than eight hundred votes. It was January 27, 2004, and we were headed South and West with no momentum. A week later there were primaries in five states and caucuses in two. People and organizations that had endorsed Dean when he was on top were bailing out, but it wasn’t helping us, as they were signing on with Kerry, who was now on top.
So it was on to South Carolina, and John Moylan or Robert Ford or Bill Clyburn taking one or the other of us to beauty shops and university campuses, farmer’s markets and diners. And then I was on a plane to Oklahoma and then, nearly as soon, to Missouri and then New Mexico. There was less than a week before the primaries, and there was too much ground to cover. I knew it almost didn’t matter how well I did. I watched the Super Bowl between the Patriots and the Panthers in New Mexico, and first thing in the morning, I flew to South Carolina. I arrived in time to watch the clock wind down in Columbia. John won in South Carolina and gave one of the best campaign speeches of the year that night. But, except for Oklahoma, Kerry won elsewhere. It was going to be hard to derail that train.
There were primaries in Tennessee and Virginia the next week. Again, I campaigned on my own, in Norfolk and Virginia Beach. My cousin Robert and his wife, Rachelle, helped with a women’s luncheon attended by one of Cate’s first-grade teachers. I left energized; we might be down, but we could still do this. The volunteer driver, a handsome college boy, dropped me at the airport so I could fly to Richmond for a Democratic event that night at which all the candidates would speak. I was still feeling great, until my flight was