Saving Graces - Elizabeth Edwards [132]
CHAPTER 13
AMERICA, THE GENERAL
The Race
JOHN AND I have always celebrated our wedding anniversary at Wendy’s. It started, as so many rituals do, without any thought. We were moving out of the townhouse in Virginia Beach that day, packing to move to Nashville. We were wearing cut-off jeans and we didn’t want to stop and shower, so we went to the nearest fast-food restaurant, Wendy’s. The next year, we found ourselves at Wendy’s again. The trip the third year sealed it, and it has been Wendy’s ever since. So the campaign allowed that we could stop the caravan of full-size buses, filled with families and press and Secret Service, and eat at a Pennsylvania Wendy’s.
The patrons at Wendy’s were not alerted. Not only were cameramen suddenly leaning over them, not only were Secret Service agents filling every available square inch of floor space, but even if they had been able to get up, there was no way to leave, unless they had walked to the restaurant. The parking lots were all blocked. We all ate. Teresa had chili, John Kerry a hamburger. John and I ordered our usual: number one combos. Also celebrating were Cate, the Kerry girls, the Heinz boys, and Ben Affleck, who was traveling with us for those first days. We ate and got back on our respective buses. At the next stop we were asked about the gourmet meal we had eaten. It was great. Wendy’s always is. Not Wendy’s, the reporter said. The five-star gourmet meal delivered to the bus after the Wendy’s stop, how was that meal? We had no idea what he was talking about. It sorted itself out in a day or two. It turned out that the Kerrys had never eaten at a Wendy’s, and although they were willing to go with us, they made sure they had a backup—a quite nice backup, willing to deliver to a bus—if they hated it. One side note of the Wendy’s trip: everywhere I went, in rope lines or in town halls, people would hand me Wendy’s gift certificates. We used some for our anniversary dinner the next year, in 2005. Even if the Kerrys don’t go, it is clear Wendy’s is getting plenty of business.
Early in the campaign, our family had a bus tour separate from the Kerrys, a bus tour of the South. We worked our way through Louisiana, where we tried alligator meat and Louisiana barbecue—and where the campaign decided later not to fight. We had a great rally in Arkansas on the banks of the Arkansas River, where Jack and Emma Claire stole the show by sweeping the stage during everyone’s speeches—and where, again, the campaign decided later not to fight. We had a beautiful day in Missouri, where once more the campaign withdrew, deciding not to fight. The entire experience was delightful and unbelievably frustrating.
The bus tour ended in St. Louis, where we joined the Kerrys for a train tour. And you should have seen this train. The Kerry car was the back car and more luxurious than ours, but ours was terrific. Truman, we’d heard, had ridden in the car in which we traveled, perhaps slept in the bed in which we slept, maybe written a note at the mahogany desk in the small lounge. It was like the first time stepping into the Senate chamber, rubbing your fingers over the names of senators carved there over the years. It was wonderful and inspiring and important. We left the grand Union Station and headed west.
Not every moment was a perfect moment. And there were times on this trip that were not perfect. It is a sad fact that Teresa was not permitted to be nostalgic about her first husband, Jack Heinz, the Republican senator from Pennsylvania who died in an airplane crash.