The Legend of First Lady Eardley

I don’t watch pornography. I don’t read it either. That doesn’t make me a prude. Sex is simply low on my list of interests.

I wonder how much of that can be blamed on my husband? Governor Eardley. Former Representative Eardley. Former State Senator Eardley. Or when I first met him when I was nineteen and he was twenty-nine, Thomas Eardley, private attorney. He’s always been more active in his sex life than I have. My primary role was to remain docile and domestic.

It followed his great refrain of, “don’t make a scene.” Over and over, I think it was a phrase he said more often to me than he did “God bless America” to his constituents.

When I discovered the getaway apartment he’d leased under an assistant’s name, it was “don’t make a scene.”

The underwear in our bed, lost in the sheets until caught between my toes, “don’t make a scene.”

“Don’t make a scene” when I learned of his trip with the intern.

“Don’t make a scene” after I found the text messages between him and his campaign advisor.

And like during our conversion to Catholicism, I stood by quietly, only repeating what he and the Father told me to.

You must understand, today, my husband, Governor Eardley, signs a bill into law to make pornography illegal. While he’s doing that, I’m hosting a brunch for some of the other officials’ wives. Tonight, after the bill is signed, there will be a private dinner and campaign fundraiser. The Governor’s office called to tell me what time the chauffeur would be around to pick me up. I was in the bathroom when the office called a second time. I missed the call, but received a voicemail. Apparently the voicemail was not meant for me; the dial was accidental, and I heard the conversation of the whole room, the bulk of which came from my husband. He wanted to know if the tickets were secured for the private tour of the vineyard, and ordered an unnamed stooge to call Linda, and tell her the car would be by to the pick her up at eleven in the morning, and that he, my husband, would be in the car waiting. Surprise. And by the way, he was sending over the dress he wanted her to wear.

“Don’t make a scene,” I hear him say.

Well, I don’t really feel like brunch anymore. Instead, I have decided it is time to make a scene.

For the length of our marriage, my behavior has always been compared favorably to that of other “bad” wives.

When a state senator was ambushed by his wife at a riverside restaurant, where he ate with his girlfriend, and his wife threw a pitcher of ice water on him, my husband had said, “I knew that boy had a ceiling in politics. Could never control that woman.” 

Or when our son, following daddy’s footsteps into private law, was outed for infidelity by the mother of my grandchildren and my husband said, “I warned him about that woman the day he told me he was going to propose: she will bring us nothing but trouble.”

Ice water won’t do. And going to the press? The media?

Not in any obvious sort of way—because while I’m taking off my shirt, unbuttoning my pants, unhooking my bra, I am not airing any dirty laundry. I’m leaving it crumpled beside the bed like the exciting scandal that it is.

My heart was pounding at the thought and it pounds even more at the act of slipping off my underwear. Does his heart pound for the vineyard?

Whether by fate or serendipity or an intern’s ass on an unlocked phone, I think I have a dream now. Just another dream he says I can’t do. I could invent a long list of dreams like that. And if you haven’t been allowed to be yourself then at some point you must invent yourself, right? Right? From Eve up, right?

The only clothes I leave on are socks and shoes!

And the late spring sun exposes every other bit of me! Walking my bicycle out of the Governor’s garage. Wearing no sunglasses so that everyone can see my eyes. The First Lady’s faded blue, tired, docile eyes. Now lighted by blue energy and brighter than the cloudless sky above.

Breathe it in, the day dreams come true. I am fifty-eight years old. I work out, I cut a fine figure in a dress, and I just hiked my leg over the seat. The leather seat tries to be more than friends with my bare cheeks and I clench, put my shoed feet on the pedals, and ride down the Governor’s driveway, wind blowing through my dyed brown hair, rippling my breasts, hardening my nipples, while I wee all the way to the mailbox.

My, First Lady Eardley’s naked ride through town, begins on Washington Avenue. What are the political stakes of such a ride? Awareness? Sure, yes, but for what? For who? This is not a social protest on behalf of an industry or its workers. The only political stake I have in this is the metaphoric one that I plan to drive into his bureaucratic heart.

Blame the First Lady’s Book Club for my language! It was my husband’s publicist’s idea that I start one. As I ring the bell at a crosswalk and a pedestrian steps hurriedly out of my way, alarm on his face. Head turning as I pass. Following me front to back. I’m pedaling hard and the air is a tingly pleasure on my skin. Like the chill of a forbidden kiss surging through my body. The first catcall comes from a gas station. While pumping, a man shouts, “Let me hop on!”

I cut a path that avoids school zones and churches and stick out my right arm for a right turn onto Mulberry Street.

Although I very well know the way, I stop at the outdoor patio of a café to ask for directions, leaning on the railing, hovering beside the nearest table.

“Which way to the statehouse?”

Of the man and woman at the table, I make eye contact with the woman while the man avoids my breasts, looking away as if he’s overly keen on a particular salt shaker.

She points me in the direction of Main Street.

“Thanks,” I say, and straighten my bike.

“Wait. Aren’t you the Governor’s wife?”

“Yes, I am the First Lady.”

Now the whole patio gasps and gossips. Some pull out their phones for videos.

It’s like an election night smile, only genuine, that beams across my face. The wind is all pleasure again. I’ve somewhat relaxed against my new friend, the leather seat. The further down Mulberry Street I go, the quicker it seems the news of my naked ride outpaces me on my bike. People are already waiting in their windows at the upcoming apartment buildings. The mechanics at an auto-shop cheer, whistle, and rev their motors.

I hold out my left arm for a left turn onto Main Street, and switch into a proper bike lane. Foot traffic increases at every block. For a stretch, people are either homeless, or they’re a man or woman in a suit carrying a briefcase, with little in between. From an intersection, there’s a slamming of brakes, but I hear no crash, no scream, no indication that I’ve caused an accident. The street bends toward the river and the buildings on my right suddenly end and there begins the view of the water. Many of the people enjoying the riverside, whether jogging, biking, throwing a baseball, or playing pickleball, have stopped what they’re doing to watch me ride. Phones are following me for what seems like the whole length of the river. I merge into a small group of serious cyclists. They have water-packs on their backs and wear skin-suits that are quite different from mine.

One shouts, “You should at least be wearing a helmet!”

A daring cyclist takes a selfie with me as we ride.

Yes, take more pictures, take more videos. On the day the Governor bans pornography, make the image of his wife the most distributed obscenity in the state.

On passing an adult whiffle ball game, I start a wave of flashes. Tattooed women and men on the sidelines lift their shirts, and the man at bat turns his head as a high-floating strike wafts past him.

I veer away from the riverside cyclists, and cross onto Lincoln Boulevard, toward the statehouse. People are waiting on the steps of the limestone courthouse, though there’s hardly anyone next door at the history museum. I do a quick circle around the statue of the state’s most influential governor, who is holding up a bronze hand to wave at the crowd hooting after me.

The statehouse rises in the distance, it’s white dome a symbol of decorum and dignity.

And it’s on seeing it that I hear the first police sirens.

I burst through a red light without hitting the brakes. The pleasant chill surging through my body is heating with anxiety. I slip onto the sidewalk and into the shade of the sweet gum trees that line the way to the statehouse. The sirens swirl closer and I pedal harder, sweat running down the valley of my spine.

My husband is holding a press conference on the statehouse steps. He stands behind a podium, his hair dyed brown like mine, arching his eyebrows like a soap opera actor, wearing a navy-blue suit with a red tie, black belt and black shoes, flanked on either side by similarly dressed nondescript men in dire need of chin implants.

“Today,” he says into a microphone, “we take the biggest step in generations toward eliminating this severe public health crisis which is ripping families apart not only across our great state, but throughout the entire nation! Today I sign into law the very sanctity of our state’s women!”

He can’t see me through the press, and is too consumed by his own voice to hear the sirens.

“Young women,” he shouts, “will no longer be humiliated for public consumption.”

“Only humiliated in private!” I shout in return.

I crash my bike into the steps and the press turns toward me.

“Honey, am I late?” I shout. “Are we past the moment of forever holding peace?”

“Helen?” he says into the microphone.

“Has it been so long since you’ve seen me?” I say, walking up the steps.

The press divides to open space between myself and the podium. I lift my arms, stretching my sunny wrinkles, and start tying my long brown hair into a bun.

“Stop that!” shouts the Governor. “Turn off the cameras! Turn off the cameras!”

The nearest cameraman, who’d been taking stills of my husband for the national papers, those pictures of him smiling and signing with a flourish, begins clicking his camera at me.

“Don’t look! Don’t look!”

“Hey, give us a spin!” says the cameraman.

There’s anger, horror, fury in my husband’s voice! He’s shaking, seething.

“That’s illegal!” he shouts at the clicking of cameras.

But no one looks at him or listens to him or acknowledges his authority as Governor or spouse.

Every flash like the electricity of another forbidden kiss on my skin.

The nearest cameraman continues clicking and my husband grabs him by the back of the collar, swipes uselessly, pathetically, for the camera, screams at the man, don’t look! stop shooting, it’s illegal can’t you hear me! I said it’s illegal! And by the gold-plated pen he made such a thing illegal with, tries to drive the steel tip, fresh off signing a law, into the inkpot of the cameraman’s right eye! The camera falls with one last click on the ground like a loaded gun and they wrestle hands and wrists as the pen comes ever closer to stabbing out the man’s eye on the statehouse steps.

Police grab me from behind.

They grab my husband, Governor Eardley, just as the tip of the pen is about to meet the cameraman’s pupil. Two men put his hands behind his back so that his back is pushed out, and just as some people with long stately noses always enter a room nose-first, my husband is following the tent of his erection, rising out of his navy-blue dress pants, while the cameras keep rolling.

“Helen! Helen!”

Oops, I started more than a scene. Caused more than a scandal. Our whole lives will be wrapped in this legend now.

Good riddance to the wrappings of the sham. Goodbye to any wrappings at all. It’s a lost election night smile the world sees in my mug shot. Through wind-ridden hair, I’m proud and flattered that it’s only the twentieth most-viewed picture of me on the day.