During his first months in office, besides learning to cope with all his responsibilities and getting to know his staff across the country, John made six public-speaking appearances out of town. He often traveled to the city and back in a single day, which added to his increasing weariness. But he seemed to thrive on the attention of the events as well, since he kept a detailed file on each appearance, including letters, his speech notes and press clips. Typically he left before the children were up and came home after they were in bed, even when he was in town, says Charlotte. Now that he was also making speeches, there seemed to be little time left for his family.
Charlotte, too, was becoming increasingly fatigued, taking care of a newborn, a 3-year-old, a 7-year-old, an 8-year-old and a 12-year-old. She had four children in school-three in one and the fourth, whom she had to pick up at lunchtime, at another. She felt she was constantly driving the car. And despite the overload of so many children, Charlotte knew the house should be just as perfect, just as orderly as when she had only two sons to watch; that John would want his meals waiting for him when he got home, no matter what the hour.
”The major change the SEC made in John was his ego,” says Charlotte.
”There grew even more desire in him for power at home. And he got so that if someone got in his way, he walked right over them. People didn`t seem to matter anymore.”
John hadn`t hit Charlotte, that she could remember, since Easter, 1979. But John`s control suddenly cracked, and he beat her violently in November, 1981, barely five months after he became a major U.S. law enforcer. Had Charlotte pressed charges for his actions, John could have been arrested for assault and battery, an action that is against the law, no matter who the victim, who the attacker or what their relationship is.
”Fall was always bad for us for some reason,” she recalls. ”That`s the time each year John slipped into a mood of some kind. That night I had been following along behind him, trying to get him to talk to me. Crying, pleading, yelling. By that point in our marriage I had really gotten so that I could argue like a truck driver. I even spit at him a couple of times, anything to get him to respond and talk to me.
”He had been downstairs eating, and I followed him up the stairs into his study. I was pushing, pushing, pushing, trying to get some kind of response. He was ignoring me completely. I guess I had finally come to realize that not being able to wear shoes in my house (John`s order to the family to protect the carpet) was weird. I had them on and I stamped my feet and said,
`And another thing: I will wear my shoes in my own house.`
”He turned, and his face was terrifying, filled with this incredible hate and wide-eyed anger. I knew I had gone too far. I ran. He came after me and caught me right outside the room, at the top of the stairwell. I ran because I was afraid. But I never expected he would try to throw me over the banister. He denies it, but I`d like to know what he thought he was trying to do. He was pushing me over the railing as he beat me. There is at least a 6-foot drop straight down to the landing of the staircase from where we were.
”I felt I was going to fall over backward, so I collapsed my knees and fell to the floor. I was trying to push him away, but he had me by my hair. He shook me up and down, back and forth, by my hair, like he was shaking out a towel. The fury of it was terrifying. I think he finally realized what he was doing and walked away.
”The first thing to ache was my scalp. It wasn`t until later that my neck began to hurt so badly. I finally had to go see an orthopedic surgeon, it was so painful. John said he was sorry for the incident later because he had seriously injured me and he could see that it gave me pain. I still have to wear a neck brace sometimes.
”Luke and one of his brothers, Andrew, came out of their rooms and saw us. Seeing the shock on their little faces hurt me most, I think.”
This time, Charlotte called the police herself. Surely they would help her, she thought.
”I was really upset when I called them,” she says. ”I asked them what I should do, what I could do. They didn`t ask if I was all right or where he was. They didn`t tell me to leave or give me any telephone numbers of hot lines or counselors to call. All they said was that I could go to the police station or the courthouse and swear out a complaint. `How could I swear out a complaint against our provider?` I asked myself. I think I knew even then that it could hurt his career.
”And it was just too much work for the condition I was in. I would have had to pull myself together and do something the next day. After a beating, depression takes over immediately. All the feelings of inadequacy, of guilt, of fear, they totally immobilize you. I had mobilized myself enough to make the call, and maybe I`m naive, but it was crushing to me that the police, the protectors of the innocent, weren`t going to do anything to help me.”
Today more than half of the states allow officers to make arrests when they have ”probable cause” to suspect a crime has been committed, such as seeing bruises or cuts on the body of a crying victim, without the victim`s making a formal complaint.
In 1981, however, there was no such legal safety net in place for someone like Charlotte. And as she would say, she didn`t even realize that what had been done to her that day was a prosecutable crime.
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Ever since the beginning of their 15-year-old marriage, says Charlotte, she and John had had periodic flareups about their finances. They began arguing over spending almost immediately after he moved to the SEC. With five growing boys, a house mortgage, payments on the Virginia land (83 acres John had bought for $83,000 in 1974 as an investment) and dues at the
Congressional Country Club, his federal paycheck seemed a pittance after the $161,444 salary John had made one year at Arnold & Porter, when the (law)
firm`s profits were exceptionally high.
Of course, elsewhere in the country a $60,000 salary would seem generous, but in Washington many complain about not being able to get by on a government paycheck because of the city`s high cost of living.
Much of their financial problems resulted from trying to maintain an image. Washington style has a hefty price tag.
Not that John was expected to appear at parties in the same social stratosphere as are congressmen or Cabinet officers. But a snobbishness does exist in the nation`s capital about persons perceived as cheapskates. They are not tolerated-Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter`s no-frills White House was mercilessly ridiculed.
John probably was aware of an axiom, stated in the Washingtonian magazine, ”Visibility has a cash value once you leave the administration.”
He couldn`t afford to slip into social obscurity, darting from his SEC office to macaroni-and-cheese dinners at home. He would need the contacts he made while traveling in upper-crust society once he decided to return to private life.
Besides, John was accustomed to certain luxuries for himself, says Charlotte, and he wasn`t going to give them up, just as he refused to give up the fifth bedroom he used as his study, which put his five sons together in three rooms.
The children`s tuition, however, remained the top priority. Yet that was an expensive proposition, because the combined tuitions for a year exceeded $11,000. Charlotte tried to do her part to cut back elsewhere. Just as many well-off matrons with large families do in Potomac, Md., Charlotte had had her cleaning lady come twice a week; she trimmed that to once weekly. She learned to pump her own gas, would even drive out of Potomac to find cheaper gas stations and shopped specials at the grocery. But she knew that it wasn`t enough.
Charlotte would later testify that they would spend $137,000 in 1982, more than double what the federal government then was paying John.
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When John returned in the fall of 1982 from a vacation in Wyoming with his friend Marquette University (John`s alma mater) basketball coach Al McGuire, he told Charlotte that she owed him a major apology (they had quarreled before he left), and then he fell silent again.
The next weekend they attended a wedding, but John sat in a pew behind her. They had a discussion and reconciled the next day, but the peace between them lasted only a few hours.
Later that week the baby became sick with an ear infection. Despite the baby`s being ill, Charlotte tried to arrange a family celebration for John`s birthday, Oct. 21. He came home carrying balloons, a gift from his staff. But Charlotte says she had to beg him to come down to the dining room to open gifts from his family, which he then left in the dining room for weeks.
That night the baby came down with a high fever and suffered symptoms much like those John Michael had had right before he died. (Their 18-month-old son contracted spinal meningitis in 1977.) Charlotte was terrified but didn`t talk to John about it.
Also that month John refused to join the family for one of his sons`
birthday party and for Thanksgiving dinner, says Charlotte. On another occasion that month, John, evidently irritated that the front door was locked when he came home, smashed his briefcase through the front hall`s lead-glass window.
”I was upstairs helping Luke study,” says Charlotte. ”I heard him ring the doorbell, but I said to Luke, `Don`t worry, he can get in by himself,`
because a few days before John had actually opened the door himself. And John is a creature of habit, obviously. He always carried his house keys with him, and he admitted to me later that he had them with him that night.
”He started ringing the doorbell more frantically as we started down the stairs. Luke and I were halfway there when we heard the first crash. I got there to open the door for him; I was only a few steps away when he broke the glass. He walked into the house and walked right past me without saying a word. I just started to clean up the glass immediately, since I had little children around with no shoes on their feet.”
For almost six weeks then, John spoke barely a word to her, says Charlotte. Although she continued to fix his breakfast and to bring in his morning paper, she stopped helping John dress. He spoke long enough, she says, to accuse her of being selfish and petty.
Even so, in early December they attended a party together hosted by the Swiss Embassy, bidding farewell to Faith Whittlesey as the U.S. ambassador to its country.
”John ignored me the entire reception and didn`t talk on the way home either. But I stayed calm and quiet. I was learning to not panic or become argumentative or combative. And I think that evening, my seeming to be more rational and confident helped. He started to come out of the silence a little bit and a few days later called me from the office and asked me to go to a private premiere of the movie `Gandhi` that his friend, the president of Columbia Pictures, was hosting.”
Charlotte let John go alone, but the brief telephone conversation and his invitation encouraged Charlotte to try to reopen communication with John. Rather than try to talk to him in person and risk yet another fight, however, Charlotte sat down and wrote a letter. In it she stressed that they needed counseling. It read, in part:
A man of 41 who is not speaking to his family should not expect them to wait up and open the front door for him just because he had been on TV. You are powerful enough in your job (that) you don`t have to break lead-glass windows to impress us. . . . Do you realize the responsibility you have to find out what your problems are to help your children now and in the future?
Do you realize you are more likely to succeed further (i.e., Cabinet position, etc.) if your problem is taken care of now by counseling and/or medication than if your neighbors and friends and coworkers begin talking to
investigative agents about your bizarre treatment of your family? . . .
We are all very proud of your success, but none of us can build our whole life around your fame and power. A well-rounded, healthy man can balance his family and business. We do not resent your long hours, if you could just be pleasant and interested in us for the short time you`re home. . . . I am committed to the children and my marriage, and I know you are a good, decent man when you are healthy-that is the man I loved. I know he`s in you somewhere. I pray you will get the help and guidance to free him from his prison within you.
The letter affected John enough that he agreed to talk.
She told John she had been seeing a therapist. She also said that she thought they needed to see a marriage counselor together, that they obviously weren`t happy and needed to work on changing the dynamics of their relationship. No personal invectives, no pleading, no tears, she says. Not even when John said he thought they should try separating for a while. Charlotte swallowed hard and agreed. They went back to the house.
That night John woke Charlotte up to make love. They were reconciled.
But the peace between them was deceptive and short-lived. John was under a lot of pressure and again became preoccupied with work. He was being questioned by two House subcommittees about his initial resistance to an SEC bribery probe involving a client of his old firm. And a former client of his, Southland Corp., the Dallas-based owner of 7-Eleven convenience stores, was being charged with trying to bribe a state official. He could be called eventually as a witness in the case, which probably would bring a flood of press questions about his work for the company.
In mid-February, the day before Luke`s birthday, a large snowfall kept John trapped in the house over the weekend when he wanted to go to his office. ”It had snowed a foot or more,” Charlotte recalls, ”and John couldn`t get into work. We cleaned the driveway, and it had taken all day basically. The boys were still young to be doing such hard work. Luke, the oldest by several years, was only 14. John had that look in his eye. He had actually shoved me a few times and once pushed me down into the snow as we worked, but it hadn`t hurt me, so I tried to pretend that it was just playing.
”It was late that Sunday afternoon, and we had just gotten inside and taken our boots off and were resting. John was outside poking at the gutter over the garage, worrying about the snow on the roof. It all fell down, of course. It would have been another hour`s work to shovel it. I didn`t want the boys to have to go out again right away, so I said that I`d help him after dinner. That wasn`t good enough for him, and he started yelling at the boys. I had just picked up a little wooden toy because it was on the floor as I tried to reason with him. He said that line to the boys again (he had used it during an earlier argument in the house), `Go suck on your mother`s tit,` and I saw red. I threw the toy at him-it missed him-and he hit me with a clenched fist right in my eye and broke my glasses.
”I packed the boys and left them at a friend`s and this time actually went to the police station in Rockville. The police were so cold to me. They told me all they could do was issue a warrant for his arrest if I would swear out a complaint.
”I didn`t want him hauled off to jail. I didn`t want to ruin him. I just wanted someone to talk to him. They were so impersonal to me. I just felt like a fool, so I left.”
Charlotte went home. A few days later John left for Florida on business. He sent flowers on Valentine`s Day. But he didn`t call while he was gone, says Charlotte, didn`t tell her where he was staying in Florida or when he was coming home. When his boss, John Shad, called on a Saturday morning looking for him and kept pressing Charlotte about when John was getting back, she finally blurted out that she didn`t know and didn`t care because he had just given her a black eye. Shad`s response was that he was sorry but that John had been under a lot of pressure recently.
Charlotte decided to talk to a lawyer, and on Feb. 20, 1983, she wrote John a letter telling him she wanted a divorce:
I am writing this letter to tell you how much I have loved you and indeed still love you. . . . Although you deny it, I have always been intensely interested in you and your life, your work, your worries, your ups and downs. I have yearned to be included in your confidence-you have constantly shut me out. . . . You are the major being in your life. . . . And you, like so many, chose . . . your profession to devote all your being. This is not uncommon in this society-especially Washington society. The difference is that you . . . have lost much, much more than the everyday workaholic. . . .
Oh, how I have wanted to believe the fact that we would always be together-you said it so many times, yet you have never been willing to help that promise live. It apparently (was) too much trouble for you to seek a concrete basis for keeping us alive. . . . In order to love another, one must love (him)self first. As much as I love you-and I do-I have finally learned
(and it was hard) to love myself. . . .
Can you possibly remember how many times you have beaten me? . . . Why didn`t you believe me when I said I would never let you do that to me again?
Know this-no woman deserves to be beaten by her husband, not ever. . . . The final realization is that you are incapable of showing me and my children the respect and . . . love that we deserve. . . .
I have cried the entire weekend because I now have to do the only thing I can. . . . I can no longer have you living in the same house as the boys and me. . . . It is a shame because most men would kill to have children as good as yours to nurture, guide and love. Indeed, look around you and see if you can honestly find a better wife than me. And I would caution you not to be too macho in telling all your acquaintances about our situation-the truth will come out, and no one admires a wife beater.
John`s response to Charlotte`s letter was a one-page note in which he thanked her for her note, calling it ”generally constructive,” and asked what were the plans for informing the boys about their future and joint concern for their welfare. He commented that her threat to tell people he was a ”wife beater” was ”unseemly” and closed with: ”If you will not do my laundry today, at least leave me written instructions for operating the washer and dryer.”
