And the Good News Is... Read online

  I tried to keep busy and do all the things I’d envisioned during my quarter life crisis. I watched documentaries, read the entire Telegraph and Times newspapers every day, and then counted the hours until Peter would get home. I tried riding my bike and headed down to the village green on a mildly sunny afternoon, but when I turned south to head along the waterfront, the wind stopped me dead in my tracks. I had to get off and walk. Humiliated, I went home, put the bike in the garage, and never rode it again.

  I rocked the pub quiz on Wednesday nights. Well, not really, but it was my favorite activity. We cobbled together a pretty good team from Lytham, and I was better at English history than anyone there. For example, I was the only one who knew the answer to which queen had served for just nine days (Lady Jane Grey). Unfortunately, I blurted it out. “Thank you, madam!” someone at the next table shouted. I learned to whisper after that.

  On weekends, Peter would take me to visit places I’d read about in books: Hampton Court outside London, Durham Cathedral in the North, Beatrix Potter’s house in the Lake District, and Robin Hood’s Bay on the east coast. Once he even took me to several countries in Europe when he had to go on a business trip. We took our SUV on the overnight ferry and drove through Belgium, Holland, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland. I had never traveled like that and learned a lot on that trip and saw some beautiful scenery, like Lake Como in northern Italy. When we passed by Torino, I thought of my great-grandparents who’d come from that region. It must have been difficult to leave there without knowing what they’d find in America, but I think I’d have done the same if I were in their shoes. One side of the mountain was beautiful, and the other was dusty and without hope. Considering the Perino and sons’ ranch, they certainly made the right choice.

  I didn’t think I stuck out like an American tourist with Peter by my side, though in a bar in Zurich I got a lesson in European political correctness. We were having a drink and watching one of the World Cup games—Iran versus the United States. I cheered a couple of times for the Americans (as one should) and got some strange looks from others at the bar. I thought it was because I’d been too loud so I dialed it down a notch; to the contrary, when Iran took a shot at the goal and almost scored against the Americans, the rest of the bar cheered. I was shocked. I couldn’t imagine supporting the Iranians over the Americans, but they did. They thought we were the enemy? Europe seemed like a continent with a short memory.

  The best thing we did right away was get a Vizsla puppy from a breeder in Scotland. He had a smooth red coat, long ears, and blue eyes. I held him the entire ride home to Lytham. We named him Henry, after the king. He became the second love of my life (and lived in two countries and three cities, visited twenty-six states, and briefed the White House press corps with me in Kennebunkport, Maine).

  Since I wasn’t working, Henry was my project. I taught him everything you can think of—all the regular stuff like sit, stay, come, lie down, and some unconventional things like barking once for please and twice for thank you, and barking a lot when I asked him if he thought Bill Clinton should be in jail. (It was a joke, folks!) Henry and I were inseparable, and after our walks on the dunes at the beach (a place we dog owners affectionately called The Dog Sh*t Park), he would sit on my lap and rest his chin on my forearm while I sat at the computer refreshing the Drudge Report for hours to see if there was anything new on the Lewinsky front. I didn’t know that the local telecom company charged by the minute for Internet access. Whoops.

  I got a bit stir-crazy, so we decided I needed a vehicle so that I could explore a little on my own and at least go to the grocery store. Peter wasn’t entirely confident of my driving, especially when I would veer to the wrong side of the road. In order to pay for a used car, Peter sacrificed one of his treasures—a Yamaha motorcycle. I didn’t fully appreciate at the time what a bummer it was for him to part with it. Before he handed the bike over to the buyer, he took me on a ride and claims we went 140 mph at one stretch on the highway. I loved it, which seems strange to him now that I’m such a nervous passenger. Recently he replaced the bike with a new toy—a Harley with a sidecar (you can bet the sidecar wasn’t for me but for our current dog, Jasper).

  After a while, it was time to get hitched. On the anniversary of our meeting, I was finally ready to accept his marriage proposal. He’d given me the time and space I’d asked for, and I didn’t know how to get him to bring it up again.

  So I did the best I could and wrote him a letter. I sat nervously while he read it and wondered if it wasn’t clear when he didn’t respond right away. But he says he read it twice, taking it all in. He was thrilled… and I still can’t believe I almost missed that flight.

  We eloped a few weeks later at the registry office (nicknamed in Britain as the Office of Hatches, Matches, and Dispatches) and spent two weeks as a secret married couple in Santorini, Greece. We zipped around on a motorcycle, fed the stray dogs, drank champagne while we watched the sunset, and listened to opera in a restaurant carved into the walls of a cave.

  When we passed by a shop window, I’d catch of glimpse of myself and think, “Is this really me?” My values and heart seemed intact, but the adventurous part of me was new. It may have been the first time I felt like a grown-up, and I liked it.

  My parents came to England for a visit a couple of weeks after our honeymoon, and Peter spilled the beans at a dinner we arranged to have with his parents. We held up our ringed fingers—I was wearing my great-grandmother Rosi’s gold wedding band. Everyone seemed happy but my mom didn’t seem surprised. I later learned that before she’d left for London, she told my sister that she suspected we’d gotten married. I couldn’t get anything past her, even if I was thousands of miles away.

  But honeymoons end. After many months of not being employed, I started to get bored. I could feel my brain shrinking. I was afraid that all the gains I’d made in Washington were for naught and that I’d have to start over somewhere. I thought about what kind of work I could do in the U.K. There wasn’t much need for a Republican press secretary, and there really wasn’t anything else I truly wanted to do.

  And then there was the weather. Every day showers from the Irish Sea washed away the English charm. To mess with my brain, the sun usually only came out about thirty minutes before sundown, right about when Peter came home, making it look like I didn’t have much to complain about weather-wise. The sun gave me false hope for the next day, and we’d take a drive and go walk on the beach or go up to the McDonald’s drive-thru and get shakes (vanilla for me, chocolate for him). The next morning it’d rain again. My sunny disposition clouded over.

  Peter and I always thought we’d move back to the States—and in our newly found spontaneity, we brought forward our plans to just after the New Year in 1999. There wasn’t much for us to miss in England and a lot for us to look forward to in America. We chose San Diego. Why? Because we could. I wanted palm trees and sunshine. Just how impulsive was that?

  I started to purge—the opposite of nesting. I couldn’t wait to leave. I gave away furniture, kitchenware, and clothes. What we couldn’t give away and didn’t absolutely need to move to the States, we sold at a car boot sale (like a garage sale but a gathering of people in a field selling stuff out of the back of their cars). In a bitter memory for Peter, I basically gave away most of his CDs for about ten cents apiece while he was arguing with a woman over what she wanted to offer for an old Chinese tea set he’d brought back from one of his business trips. I didn’t want any of his music. I sold albums by Pink Floyd, the Beatles, and Paul Weller. Though Peter was upset, a friend of ours agreed with my decision and said that, except for the Beatles, it was all overpriced.

  While I was excited to be going home, I realized that Peter was about to leave his, and probably forever. I thought he’d be sad, but he didn’t have a hard time leaving. His dad encouraged him to go—he knew it was a great opportunity and an adventure. Peter said he’d really only miss the beer and the football. He missed his kids, but they w
ere out of college and on their own by that time. Years later I’d have reason to return to visit—Peter’s daughter Kelly and son-in-law Warren had twins in 2006, Sebastian and Rachel, and they call me Grandma America (I love that).

  We flew by the seat of our pants. We didn’t have jobs, transportation, or anywhere to live. We had a six-month-old puppy and some dreams. Looking back on it now, I can’t believe we didn’t plan anything. I don’t know if I could ever do that again. We had to borrow a bit of money from Peter’s boss to help start his business and put down a deposit on a one-bedroom apartment off the I-5 next to the Mormon Temple in San Diego.

  We bought an old Ford Explorer and I used some loose connections to land a job at City Hall. It was tough to swallow after working on Capitol Hill. Let’s just say the deputy mayor wasn’t exactly the same caliber as the congressmen I’d worked for, and I lasted in that job only two months (I don’t even list it on my résumé). That said, I think city government is the toughest—that’s where dollars and cents really matter and where people typically don’t go into public service to make a living. They actually have to make a difference.

  When we didn’t have much income, I worried about money a lot. Eventually I turned our finances over to Peter and trusted him to handle that. I love that he still makes sure I always have cash for a taxi and that he’s in charge of balancing the checkbook. That’s one of the ways I learned to let go and not control everything. Turning over the money matters to Peter has eased a lot of stress in my life (except when he waits to pay the bills until the last moment—that drives me crazy. I like to pay bills a month ahead of time).

  Job stability was not my middle name. Over two years, I worked at three different public relations firms—but every move was an upward climb. The public relations companies ranged from small to medium to international. I tried to put a good spin on it, but I didn’t like my experience at any of them. I love communications strategy and being a spokesperson, but the structure of most public relations companies doesn’t fit my style.

  I had one chance to escape—the problem was it didn’t pay anything. In March 2000, an old friend I’d stayed in touch with from Capitol Hill, Mindy Tucker, called me from the Bush campaign. They wondered if I could help out as a spokesperson in California until the election. I was so glad they still remembered me and thought I was good enough to speak on the governor’s behalf, even though I knew they didn’t think he’d win California. It was a great opportunity, but I was the only one in our family who had a salaried job with benefits, and we needed my income to make ends meet. I had to turn her down. I felt awful and dreaded hanging up the phone, cutting off the connection. I cried and said, “Now I’ll never get to work for George Bush.”

  It was time to get real. Poor Peter, no matter what job I had, I seemed bored (my mom told him this was not a new problem). I was happy with him and liked our lifestyle of dog beach visits on weekend mornings and Mexican food restaurants on weekend nights. (Peter had a hard time differentiating between enchiladas, tostadas, and burritos. I finally told him it’s all the same ingredients in a different wrapper.) Peter got a surf board and a wetsuit. We were trying to fit into the southern California lifestyle, but I couldn’t get comfortable.

  I kept up with politics in Washington and longed to be a part of the action. I naturally put a D.C. angle into my public relations tactics, even helping one medical device company get invited to testify at a Congressional hearing on a new set of Department of Transportation rules (about how many hours a truck driver needed to sleep before he could haul a load on the highway). The CEO of that company loved it because it was a different way to get the word out about his invention, a CPAP machine for people with sleep apnea. Happy clients, happy bosses. But I still was unsatisfied.

  The White Board Incident

  Peter knew I was restless. He’d spent most of his career with Johnson & Johnson and that set him up to have a successful start-up business of his own later in life. He didn’t want to hold me back from what I really wanted to do just so that we could stay in San Diego.

  He finally told me to sit down while he stood in the living room with a white board and a dry-erase marker. He told me to list everything I wanted to do in a job (speak on the record for a major political player, advise a politician on how to talk to the media to advance a policy or cause, and work on more exciting clients dealing with bigger issues than how to get more venture capital money). Then I had to list all the things I didn’t want to do in a job (send pitches to reporters who were too busy to care about some .com business, be at the beck and call of senior vice presidents who always overpromised results to a client, and have the pressure of finding new clients when there was no time to work on the clients we already had). The PR business was a pyramid scheme to me, and I didn’t see how you got to the top unless you broke out of it. Even then, I didn’t think I wanted to be at the top.

  I gave him my lists and then he made me assign a value to each thing. The final score? Anything in D.C. was better than what I would do anywhere else.

  “I think this is pretty clear. We need to move to Washington,” Peter said.

  Peter doubled as a career counselor. He helped me get out of my rut. Forcing me to put my goals down in black and white, leaving aside any lifestyle questions, showed a stark contrast. He made me realize that we shouldn’t be afraid to move. We’d already proven we could do that and survive.

  I didn’t want to be so impulsive, though. I had hundreds of “buts”—we had just bought a house, he loved San Diego, I should try harder, I should give it more time, I was scared of going back to East Coast winters, etc. But he was right—I wasn’t going to be happy unless I gave it another shot in Washington. And because I had his support, I had the freedom and the financial security I needed to take a chance.

  That was August 2001. I wasted no time and e-mailed my friend Mindy, the same person who called me about volunteering on the campaign in 2000. She was now at the Justice Department running communications. I told her and some other former colleagues that I’d booked a flight for the week of September 17 to come look for a job. Several of them said they’d love to see me, so I felt that I was set up to at least get back in the mix for any good jobs that might open up.

  But a week before I was to make the trip, terrorists attacked America.

  On 9/11, Peter woke me at 5:30 a.m. as usual and set my English Breakfast tea on my nightstand and left to take Henry for his morning walk. The weather was warm, so I went into the living room and opened the windows. I turned on the morning news and the first thing I saw was Charlie Gibson on Good Morning America reporting about a fire at the World Trade Center. I looked up and the very next thing I saw was the second plane hit the second tower. I screamed and ran outside to get Peter, yelling, “They’re attacking the World Trade Center with planes!” He thought I meant with small planes and light weaponry. We rushed back and stood in our living room in front of the news while our tea got cold.

  We had friends in Washington and sat nervously watching the news with all of the false reports of planes hitting the Capitol and the Treasury Building. Then the plane hit the Pentagon and Flight 93 went down in Pennsylvania, and it felt like the beginning of the war my dad warned me about as a kid. Good versus evil. I wasn’t sure at that moment that we could win such a war.

  But it was President Bush’s reassurance, his steady demeanor, sense of purpose, and leadership that made me feel safe. After 9/11, I was more determined than ever to go back to Washington and serve in the administration, in whatever capacity they could use me. Years later in my office at the White House, I kept my favorite quote from him on the wall: “We will not tire, we will not falter, we will not fail. Peace and freedom will prevail.”

  A couple of days after 9/11, Mindy e-mailed me saying she needed another spokesperson on her team at the Justice Department because the amount of work for the public affairs team was overwhelming. The Justice Department bore all of the responsibility from the FBI to immigration se
rvices and prosecuting the terrorists. She asked if I would be willing to come back, and I started packing that night. I hated the circumstances that were propelling our move, but I was ready to go and thankful for the opportunity to contribute.

  Returning to Where I Once Belonged

  I flew to Washington in October 2001, leaving behind the palm trees of southern California in time to see the leaves of the Mid-Atlantic change color before winter. I moved into the same place I’d left—my old English basement apartment at Desiree and Stephen Sayle’s house on Capitol Hill had been converted into their family room and a guest bedroom. They had two little girls, Isabela (two) and Vivienne (four months).

  While I waited for my security clearance to start at the Justice Department, I worked with Desiree at the White House correspondence office. She was the director, and her office was swamped with letters of condolence and support after the terrorist attacks. She often had to work late, so I hurried home to help look after the girls. We watched Toy Story 2 over and over again. I hadn’t been around young children in years, and I caught several colds during the three months I lived there. By December that year, I started my job at DOJ and after the New Year, Peter arrived in D.C. with Henry. We rented a house of our own not far away from the Sayles in the Lincoln Park neighborhood.

  It didn’t take me long to readjust to being a government spokesperson and I immediately fit in with the public affairs team. Right away, I handled some of the non-terrorism-related Justice Department issues: Environment and Natural Resources, Anti-Trust, Tax, and personal feature stories about Department of Justice officials. We took a lot of calls at DOJ—it wasn’t unusual to get eighty messages a day from reporters asking for comment on different cases. After a few weeks of learning the ropes, I could write a book, 101 Ways to Say No Comment. Because so many of the press calls involved active litigation, it wasn’t possible to say anything beyond “Yes, the government plans to appeal,” and “We’ve received a copy of the filing and will respond in due course.” We had to be careful with what we said so that we didn’t compromise any of the cases. But in a repeated theme of my life, it didn’t take long for me to get bored again—not with the content, but with the mundane tactics of the job.