The Water Is Wide.  The Residence was too quiet to sleep in tonight.  Not that Hillary was in any mood to sleep.  Since Evan had left her, their last encounter had become a waking dream.  She kept reliving it in the hopes of feeling something slightly different, feeling many things slightly less.

 

She could be quiet in her thinking.  In her own mind, she could deny nearly anything about herself.  She could say she didn’t drink more now than she had when there had been a Bill to go along with her Hillary, but that would be a lie.  It didn’t have to be, however, if she never told herself it was the truth.

 

She could even say she wasn’t lonely, although she dreaded the nights when Evan spent his evenings elsewhere, as he had this time.  She just preferred the company of a person when she was sure that worries of the day would keep her conscious long after it was healthy.  When he—or anyone, really!—was with her, she didn’t have to think about the pretzels into which she twisted logic in order to justify letting Evan touch her the way he did.  There was nothing necessarily untoward about it, simply a friend assisting a friend.  That’s what she told herself and would tell anyone else if they knew enough to ask.  Just the same, she flushed scarlet thinking about his hands.  He knew her more intimately than anyone still living; those hands knew her.

 

The truth didn’t lessen her guilt any.  The ring around her neck seemed determined to catch even the dimmest light and twinkle it mercilessly in her eyes.   She continued to finger it anxiously, feeling quietly judged by the ghost that didn’t linger here anymore.  He’d been missing for so long, she half-wondered why she still searched.

 

She’d wandered around the Residence for awhile before going to the place that always brought her peace.  Standing outside the burgundy velvet ropes was a little surreal, as it always was with her. This was her home and yet there were still some things she couldn’t touch.  This portrait was no exception.

 

There he was, gargantuan in oil paints and framed in solid gold.  The government spared no expense when it came to keeping record of who its leaders had been.  Soon there would be a painting of her hanging just a few feet down on the same wall, eternally linked to him by a journey and by a name.

 

“William Jefferson Clinton.  1946-2008. President: 1993-2001,” she read the name plate out loud.  Reading it never got old.  Often she hardly believed that she had been there with him; she had lived near everyday at his side.  The White House with them had been an ordeal, but they’d handled it together.  She had expected that things would be the same when it was her turn.  She would turn to him when she was uncertain about what to do next. She would play to the strength of their combined political animal.  She had been prepared to do that very thing when it became clear that she was going to win November 4, 2008.  She hadn’t been prepared for what she’d ended up doing that night—saying goodbye to him.

 

Even having said what she’d said then, these subsequent years had been spent learning and remembering what else she would have said if there’d been time.  She wanted to tell him about inane things he already knew or spill the few secrets she’d kept.  They felt like sacrilege in hindsight, even in the face of the secrets he’d kept from her in the past.  She’d wanted him to pass on knowing that he’d loved her completely, with all her shames and sins revealed.  The assurance she wanted, she supposed, was that he loved her as she’d loved him.  He was her favorite sinner, but he used to say, before they married, that she was his “favorite sin.”

 

She still loved thinking of their life together. It had been so remarkably full.  The sinning—well, the sinning had been fun, but the sainthood hadn’t been bad either.  The feeling she got when they succeeded at helping someone in need had never gone away.  It had never gone away for Bill either.  To the last day of her Presidential campaign, he still cried when he heard of how someone had been brought up from poverty during his administration only to sink again beneath his successor.  Those tears were why she hadn’t died in mourning.  Suffering had outlived him, and would outlive them both, but the good they did would live on too.

 

That was what got her up in the morning and that was what drove her when she was exhausted from her most restless nights.  There was so much good that had to be done.  When on earth would she find the time to do it all?

 

She could answer that, staring up at the solemn face of her former President.  There would never be enough time for her, but there could be someone to take her place.  There could be someone to do what she did today, but do it for tomorrow.  There would have to be an heir apparent to her life’s work.  He was someone she’d already picked.  Therein, complications had arisen.

 

“I love him…Bill.  I didn’t mean to love him, it just sort of happened.”  She bit her lip and began to pace the narrow red carpet that lined the hall.  “He’s remarkable.  Like you in some ways, but not too much.  He’s handsome, kind, brilliant.  He’s my best friend and I’m falling hard for him.  I don’t know what to do.”  She started to play with her nails. She didn’t really want to look up at the painting that had so well captured the compassion in his face.  She didn’t want to see sadness there—even the imagined sort—or the disappointment.  “He has a wife, a family, but I can’t stop myself from spending time with him.  We haven’t done anything—not really.  I mean, he’s given me a few back massages and they were all great, but totally innocent!” she declared vehemently.  She declared vehemently—to a painting…of someone who wasn’t there.

 

She felt like a fool.

 

“I wanted to tell you because I guess I didn’t want you to be blind-sided.  Silly thing is, you’ve been gone almost three years now and I’m still holding out for you.  I think I probably told you when we first got married that if I lost you I’d wait forever for you to come back.  We were so young then; you seemed like you’d live forever and I couldn’t imagine a time when you’d be too sick to go on.  But you did get too sick and you didn’t live forever—though the thirty-eight years we had together feels like an eternity looking back.  It’s taken me this long to admit it to myself: You’re not coming home, baby.  I know.

 

“That’s why I’ve been fighting so hard.  I realize that I’d never come between a man and his wife, but I can admit that I have feelings for him.  I can only do that because I can admit that it’s okay to let go of you.  You’ll always be my very first love, and the one I’ll probably always be known for, but you’re not here with me anymore.  I don’t think you’d ask me to stop living because I’m living without you.  And even if you did, I’d ignore you.  You were cute but not that cute, Bubba,” she chuckled.  Her smile dulled sadly, but never waned.

 

“I will and have loved you everyday of my life, Bill Clinton.  And I don’t regret that at all.”

 

 

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