Rodham

by Curtis Sittenfeld

My marriage to Bill Clinton was the most consequential decision of my life. I said no the first two times he asked me. But the third time, I said yes. And I’d do it again.

I liked being around other people during the day, and I was relieved to be alone late at night; it was the latter that made the former possible. In fact, setting up my nest often made me think of a Wordsworth phrase I’d learned in English class as a high school junior: emotion recollected in tranquillity.

“At times, I feel lonely because there’s only one of me. But the plus side is”—she was wearing bright red lipstick and a sleeveless, low-cut black blouse, and she leaned forward and smiled—“there’s only one of me. I was born with special abilities, special creativity, and if it was 1850, I’d be out of luck. But it’s 1997, and the sky’s the limit. I’ve been selling out stadiums for twenty years. I can do it, and I am doing it.”

“It’s weird you almost married Bill Clinton, because he seems so unworthy of you.”

“Every day, people beg me to run for president,” Donald said. “I think about it seriously, very seriously. I’d be the greatest president this country has ever seen. But do I want to? I don’t think I do.”

And really, wasn’t this endless ruminating over my own likability in itself a thing only a woman would do?