Saving Graces - Elizabeth Edwards [123]
John’s chief of staff for the general election would be Peter Scher, a handsome, open-faced man with an easy smile. When his cell phone had rung the previous week, Peter had been driving to a Baltimore Orioles game with his wife, Kim, and two boys. He didn’t recognize the number, but he answered anyway, and the first thing he heard was “This is John Kerry.” A robo-call! Peter figured he had just gotten one of the automated calls with taped messages from candidates that campaigns everywhere use. “Oh, cripes!” Peter said to Kim. Then, from the other end of the line, “Is that the way you answer your phone?” Oops. It wasn’t a robo-call. It was actually John Kerry, asking Peter if he would be chief of staff to the vice presidential nominee. Kim busied herself bribing the boys to silence, while Peter pulled over and talked about the offer. Would Kerry tell him who it was? No, he wouldn’t. Peter thought about it, and, it is our good fortune, agreed to do it, blind.
The next days were so terrifically public that it hardly seems I could tell anyone anything that they didn’t watch on television. We left our house about 3:30 in the afternoon. As we moved the children toward the door, I heard the television still on in the study. I went in to turn it off, but before I did I called to John to come look at the image on the screen. It was our front door, live on CNN. Just as we were to walk out that door, however, Jack, who is a congenitally cheerful child, tripped. He started crying and saying he wasn’t going. John picked him up and told him he was going. More tears. We’re going, son. And then John opened the front door. Jack, the natural politician in the family, took one look at the assembled cameras and the gathered crowd and instantly became again an engaging four-year-old. We came out of our house to a street full of black SUVs, television cameras from one end of the block to the other, and the spaces in between filled by our neighbors—neighbors who knew that they would be inconvenienced by the Secret Service in the months to follow—applauding and wishing us well.
The Pittsburgh to which we flew was not the Pittsburgh I remembered as a girl. I remembered working-class neighborhoods and soot from the factories that clung to your hair and the folds in your knuckles when you played outside. We were headed to the incredibly lovely Heinz farm, pristine and gracious. There was not a single thing not to like about this home. We stayed in a cottage next to the main house, and the children were in a perfect bunk room downstairs. Teresa played effortlessly with the younger children as they swam, and John Kerry and John had their first few minutes to talk alone as a team. Except for Teresa’s eldest son, all the children were there. A few of Teresa’s friends were there, including the lovely photographer Diana Walker. A person’s friends can say very nice things about them, and having Diana Walker as a friend said a lot of nice things about Teresa.
The next morning—a truly glorious day—was the formal announcement. Both families, rows of children of all ages, gathered with the Pennsylvania hills as backdrop. If you judge a photograph in a campaign by how much pain it gives the other side, and many do, this was a painful tableau. Myself aside—I don’t think I looked particularly good in a new suit that didn’t quite fit me (could I possibly have gained weight since I tried it on the day before?)—this was an extraordinarily good-looking group. That didn’t stop the criticism, of course. Later, when I got on the Internet, I read complaints that John and I were somehow using the younger children by