D R A M A++Q U E E N

Are you a slut, a slob or a sleazebag? Share your shame in Drama Queen for a Day
(04/14/98)

T A B L E++T A L K

Is there such a thing as Middle Child Syndrome? Share your thoughts on being or raising a middle child in Table Talk

R E C E N T L Y

A death in the family
By Joyce Millman
Linda McCartney, 1941-1998
(04/20/98)

Paving the road to Yale -- or Palookaville
By Albert Mobilio
Public vs. private school
(04/20/98)

Scenes from a Shake 'N Bake life
By Jennifer Reese
In "The Lunch-Box Chronicles," former bad girl Marion Winik is so blissed out on momhood she makes Erma Bombeck seem cynical
(04/17/98)

Second Thoughts
By Sallie Tisdale
Awaiting surgery to remove a lump, I'm thinking not about losing a breast but about having them
(04/16/98)

Unspeakable losses
By Dayna Macy
Why are Americans so afraid to talk about their lost pregnancies?
(04/15/98)

BROWSE THE MOTHERS WHO THINK ARCHIVES

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

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THE HAPPY PRISONER | PAGE 2 OF 3

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How much do you think your husband's manic depression contributed to these decisions you say he made?

His illness absolutely contributed. I mean, I have always championed him. But I know in the end, he was not what I thought he was. I know that he was a liar, he loved the attention that he was getting. This was not the man who I had married.

Was it that he was not taking his medications?

He wasn't taking the lithium for the manic depression at all because it made him too calm, and he didn't like it. And he was taking anti-depressants to kick up the high end of the manic phase. He was going a thousand miles an hour. The morning he testified at the trial, I went to his attorney, and I said, "Please don't put Jim on the stand today. He is drugged out. I talked to him at breakfast and he was talking so fast, I couldn't even hear the words he was saying." I said, "He isn't capable today." And they put him on the stand anyway. I mean his illness was a huge contributor.

How did you feel when you heard that he died?

It was awful. I don't have the words to describe it and I am usually pretty descriptive. There is no closure and it hurts that I will never get to talk to him again. In one sense, I think he was always lost to me because he was ill; he wouldn't be sane again -- not in his lifetime. But in this other way, I had always hoped I'd be able to talk with him. And the last words that he said to me were very angry. That doesn't make me feel very good.

What were those last words?

Jim said, "This is going to be fun. You and I are going to be witnesses against the Clintons, we're going to hang out together, we'll go to all these hearings and we'll slaughter them. This will be a good thing for the two of us to be back together again as a team." He was just trying to make it seem like it would be a fun thing. Then he started saying, "If you don't do this, you're going to go to jail for a long time. And they are going to get you."

I put him off for a while. It was very hard for me to say no to him. I would say, "Let me think about it." Finally, he called me and I told him I couldn't do it. He said, "You're going to pay for this! And I don't want to hear any more! I'm tired of your Pollyanna ways and your Pollyanna thinking!" That made me mad. I said, "Well, I'm sorry, I just can't do it." Then he yelled, "Well then I don't ever want to speak to you again!" Then he hung up.

In a New Yorker article before he died, Jim hinted that you had an affair with President Clinton.

It is absolutely untrue.

Twenty years ago you were doing commercials for your husband's land developments in Arkansas. At the time, he was quite a political player. Did you consider yourself a political person?

I was always a political person. In the fourth grade I got in a terrible argument with my teacher about communism because I really thought it was a great thing. I thought everybody should turn in everything they owned and we should share. And my teacher, at this little public school in Camden, Ark., was appalled. She said, "I work hard for my money. I'm not turning my things in!" Then a group of girls came to me at school one day and said they'd prayed for me at church. And I said, "Why?" And they said, "We know you have these communist tendencies and we consider that ungodly." It started early for me -- this idea of trying to fix everything.

N E X T__P A G E: Fighting Kenneth Starr

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