The Wronged Wives Club

The scene of the Spitzers was slightly reminiscent of the one four years ago, next door in New Jersey, when Dina McGreevey stood, with what looked like a frozen smile, next to her man, as then-Gov. James McGreevey, tangled in a blackmail case involving a former aide, announced that he was a "gay American." Unlike most political couples, who either hold their marriages together or quietly disintegrate, the McGreeveys went on to a spectacular divorce and custody battle, and published dueling memoirs of their ordeal.

The McGreevey's public feud afforded one of those rare journalistic opportunities to ask direct questions. Just what, I asked Dina Matos McGreevey, was she thinking as the shutters clicked? "Well, you know, it wasn't a smile," she said. "It was my attempt to keep it together and not fall apart in front of the cameras." Right up until the couple walked out onstage, McGreevey told me, her husband had given her the news of his affair with a male aide "in installments," and she hadn't had time to absorb the information. "I was literally in shock and in a fog. I had had less than three days to process what was happening." Looking back, McGreevey said, "I'm surprised I was able to stand there and not show any emotion, to keep it together. I was really at war with myself, feeling pain and anger and also trying to figure out how to respond or how not to respond. I am frankly surprised I was able to stand there and not fall apart."

Days later, as a grieving McGreevey huddled in the lonely governor's mansion with her two-year-old daughter, trying to figure out what steps to take next, she received a comforting call from someone who knew what it was like to be in her shoes. Get your own advisers, the caller said. Don't rely on your husband's. Look out for yourself and your daughter, because no one else will. The words from Hillary Clinton got her through some of her darkest hours, McGreevey said. As the spurned first wives club expands, McGreevey will no doubt have plenty of opportunity to pay her painfully earned knowledge forward.

© 2008