A Public Servant

Meanwhile, Meri is struggling next door with what it means to be a grown-up. She resents the changes her husband's academic career have brought to her life, and when she accidentally becomes pregnant, she resents that, too. What, she wonders, is to become of her?

"She suspects there's trouble coming. But she feels if they can just hold on to the easy camaraderie and sexual heat of their early days, then they can find a way to keep talking about all this, a way of shaping their marriage to suit them both."

Meri is intrigued with Delia, whom she sees as "private" and "unknowable." Inexplicably, this same emotionally aloof woman hands Meri, still a virtual stranger, her house key and asks her to collect the mail and water her plants while she spends the winter in Paris. Almost immediately upon Delia's departure, Meri explores her drawers and cupboards and reads dozens of old letters that chronicle a challenging, often heartbreaking marriage.

While Delia's immediate, and misplaced, trust in Meri rings false, Miller conveys just how it is to be married to a politician who insists on holding center stage. The senator bows his head in church, wondering how many are watching. He insists on taking a cab home, rather than allowing a family member to pick him up at the airport. "He likes that solo, dramatic entrance," his son says.

"Plus, of course, there's the cabdriver," Delia answers. "One more vote to be gathered in."

Miller gets other details right, too. During campaigns, a staff member hands Delia her speech and orders her not to change a word. Every year, the annoying Christmas cards arrive, "only a few of them from what Delia thought of as real people-- the rest just politics."

One of the most devastating scenes in the book comes when Delia realizes what her husband's infidelities have cost her. She is alone in a Paris museum when she spots an erotic drawing of a nude woman splayed across a bed. In a breathtaking moment of clarity and heartbreak, she sees what her husband sees with every mistress, every affair: "The flesh, the youth, the beauty, the sex, of another woman as Tom would see her, as Tom would respond to her. The inevitability of his desire for someone else made visible." She stares at the sketch and sobs.

A final betrayal involves Meri and Tom in an implausible set of circumstances that leaves the reader disgusted with all four characters.

At story's end, one can imagine most wives shaking their heads and mumbling, "At least my marriage isn't that bad." Most real-life senators' wives would likely agree. *

Connie Schultz is a columnist for the Plain Dealer/Creators Syndicate and the author, most recently, of ". . . and His Lovely Wife."