Gaston’s friends . . . assured her she would spend little time in Charleston because he loved to travel. He had taken her to Paris and Tuscany. . . .
But she had been naive–or intentionally blind–to believe that . . . she would not spend a great deal of time in Charleston, a place where she now felt deeply isolated.
Gaston was different. . . . He loved her body; she had beautiful breasts, he told her softly while she cried. He wanted to please her.
Orgasms, beautiful breasts and mommy hangups may be tame subjects for a Danielle Steele novel. But when the book is non-fiction, and “Gaston” is a sitting governor and “she” is the first lady of a Bible Belt state . . .
. . . then it’s a sticky summer for Rachael Worby in West Virginia.
Worby, an ambitious New York conductor who married Gov. Gaston Caperton in 1990, stirred up a swarm of attention with revelations in Elsa Walsh’s book, “Divided Lives: The Public Struggles of Three Accomplished Women” (Simon & Schuster, $23)”
Worby may have also deep-sixed her husband’s political career.
Besides stealing the spotlight, Worby, 46, spoke freely in the book of her distaste for West Virginia in general and of some powerful Democratic allies in particular.
She was still smoldering at the refusal of Jay Rockefeller . . . to lend his name for an early fundraiser. . . . . She told friends that `Jay was welcome in our home, but not in our hearts.’ “
Rachael was suspicious of Bill Clinton and found Hillary cold and distant. . . . But Gaston and the Arkansas governor were friends, and Rachael secretly hoped that Gaston might get a cabinet appointment if Clinton won and Gaston lost. She could work on the friendship.
Caperton, 55, cannot run for a third term in 1996. Some expected him to get Robert C. Byrd’s Senate seat when the 77-year-old veteran decides to step down. But “Divided Lives” may be the last straw for voters stung by Worby’s brash confidence and bold remarks — such as the one about starting a literacy campaign because of all the West Virginians who ask her to read labels for them in supermarkets.
“I don’t think Rachael Worby has any idea what it means to be first lady of West Virginia to conduct herself in this way,” said state Republican chairman Steve LeRose, a political foe. “I personally feel sorry for the guy.”
Worby had already raised eyebrows with reports she kicked a trooper on her detail, scolded a young visitor to the mansion and, most recently, called Bob Dole “an idiot” in a speech to young campers. “Divided Lives” adds more complaints, and perhaps an immodest dose of self-absorption.
Worby never saw her parents naked, causing her problems with intimacy, she believes. She finds few artistic friends in her adopted state and considers asking Caperton to resign so they can escape to New York. She disdains the model for political wives, asking “Am I the only feminist left?” when Hillary Rodham Clinton tries a more moderate public image.
Worby caved in at least once during a tough re-election bid, agreeing to shave her legs and bikini line. She was too embarrassed to argue with the campaign handlers, she says in the book. But she did not forget the humiliation.
Walsh, a Washington Post reporter, wrote “Divided Lives” after about two years of conversations with Worby and the other subjects, breast-cancer surgeon Alison Estabrook and former “60 Minutes” correspondent Meredith Vieira.
All three pursued traditionally male fields. At the time of the interviews, they were in their late 30s or 40s, wondering aloud about choices they had made for their careers.
Countless writers have mined the “women’s juggling act” theme, but the social class here may be new territory. These struggling women make up to a half-million dollars a year (Vieira’s salary for part-time production at “60 Minutes”) or have state troopers and small airplanes to shuttle them around.
They feel no less overwhelmed. Worby floats between jobs with Carnegie Hall’s Concerts for Young People program in New York City and the Wheeling Symphony Orchestra, occasional hostess duties in Charleston and political trips and retreats to the couple’s four public and private homes.
She came to West Virginia in 1986 for a chance to lead her own orchestra. By all accounts, the maestro revived the symphony, expanding its concert season and boosting ticket sales.
At the governor’s mansion she started a popular series of free cultural evenings, wooing the likes of filmmaker Lawrence Kasdan (“The Big Chill”), African-American scholar Henry “Skip” Gates and journalist Bob Woodward, author Walsh’s husband.
Worby’s high energy and unique marriage earned positive ink for the state last year in People magazine and the New York Times. Yet critics at home say she steals the show from her Arts and Letters series guests and from the amiable, low-key governor.
Worby met Caperton, a millionaire insurance executive, at a symphony fundraiser in 1989. He would soon separate from his wife of 23 years. Later in the year he called Worby for a dinner date. She came three hours late, then left abruptly.
She felt confused and beset with self-doubt. She was one of a handful of women in the country to lead her own orchestra, but the achievement had come at a cost. Her husband of three years, a screenwriter and producer named David Obst, had recently asked her for a divorce. He was fed up with all the time she spent in West Virginia and New York, . . . away from him and their home in Los Angeles.
She married Caperton in May 1990.
Worby’s self-described, steamy trysts with the governor — before her divorce — stunned some readers in heavily Baptist West Virginia.
Caperton, who at 6 feet 3 towers over his 5-foot-2-inch spouse, has stood firmly behind her through the controversy.
“I respect so much her courage. . . . How can anyone be so honest?” he said at a press conference when excerpts surfaced in July.
Asked about the adultery, he replied, “I’m a very religious person, and I think most people live in glass houses and I think questions like that are difficult.”
On the lighter side, many in the state are merely amused.
An alternative monthly offered $1,000 to anyone who described the tattoo Worby said she has on her inner thigh. The governor, reduced to questions on the boxers-or-briefs level, said of the mystery, “That’s something I’ll know and you’ll never know.”
Worby has been mostly silent. But she told a few local reporters handpicked to attend a prerelease chat that the book recalled an earlier time, when she was still struggling with political life and a new marriage. She now felt differently, she said.
“I really adore being first lady,” Worby told them. “I really adore Gaston. I treasure being in West Virginia. I treasure everyone who comes to the Arts and Letters. I am honored, thrilled and touched.”
Walsh met Worby through Worby’s first husband, and the two call each other good friends.
“One of the many things that is wonderful about Rachael is that Rachael is way out there, sometimes ahead of everyone else, which is very good as an artist but not as a first lady,” Walsh told the Charleston Gazette last month. “What Rachael is is in many ways contrary to the expectations that not only West Virginians have of a first lady, but most Americans.”
