In college, she dated Clark Wadlow, who was at Dartmouth. In her senior year, she asked my dad if they could get married; he told her that if they did, she’d be paying her tuition. （In other words, no.）
After graduating, Emily taught biology at a girls’ school to help with Clark’s tuition at Harvard Law. As gifted and brilliant as Emily was, as encouraging as my parents were of her professional pursuits, they primarily wanted her to marry well. For most young women graduating college in 1969, a job was viewed as “something to fall back on,” not a lifelong career. When I left UVA in 1979, putting a husband’s aspirations before mine was the furthest thing from my mind. What a difference a decade made.
It turned out Emily would need “something to fall back on.” My first summer out of college, our family was having dinner at my parents’ house for Johnny’s birthday when Emily blurted out, “I’m getting divorced.” We were shocked. Dismayed. （And Johnny was pissed she ruined his birthday.） Divorce wasn’t something you really did in our family. It felt like we’d been marked with the scarlet letter D.
A few years later she was on a plane, seated next to a divorced doctor, the head of cardiology at my alma mater. What are the odds? They fell in love and got married—Emily and her sons, Ray and Jeff, moved to Charlottesville and started their new life with George Beller. Finally! A doctor in the family.
Public service suited her. She went from the school board to state senator to running for lieutenant governor. What a thrill for our family to see Virginians everywhere feeling the same way about her that we did.
She was on her way—on track, many thought, to become the first female governor of Virginia （I often fantasized about interviewing her on the TODAY show after she won）。 Then cancer struck and she had to drop out of the race. Tim Kaine, who would become Hillary Clinton’s running mate in 2016, stepped in.
And still, she focused on the future. The day Emily was diagnosed, she cleaned the house, took out the trash, and told her minister that she “was going to fight this thing.” At first a cocktail of drugs worked wonders, shrinking the tumors down to practically nothing. Everyone was elated. Except me—I’d looked in the eyes of this devil before; I knew its ability to shape-shift and raise false hope.
Sure enough, the tumors roared back a few months later. At least Emily was able to stay politically active a bit longer, as chair of the state Democratic Party.
I wanted to do something special for my sister, so I asked Hillary Clinton’s office if the First Lady might be willing to have us to tea at the White House. I knew how much Emily admired Hillary—early in their careers, both were especially dedicated to fixing public education—and I imagined the two would have plenty to talk about.
We were shown to the gold-trimmed neoclassical Red Room. I remember sipping my tea and watching these two smart, dynamic women dish about politics. Emily, in the throes of chemo, was wearing a brunette wig with bangs. Through it all she was so animated; Hillary was her kind of rock star, with her extraordinary mastery of public policy. I know that afternoon was a high point during a time of unthinkable lows.
We gathered at Emily’s house for her 54th birthday. Earlier in the day, with Emily sitting on the toilet seat in her bathroom, I carefully applied rose-colored lipstick and gently powdered her gaunt face. My amazing, ultra-competent big sister needing this kind of help crushed me.
The family sat around the dinner table telling raunchy stories—I loved watching Emily laugh as Jeff, who’d flown in from LA, regaled us with stories of his dating misadventures. I was grateful for the return to normalcy, however fleeting it would be.
The next day as we pulled out of the driveway, Emily, emaciated but still beautiful, smiled and waved goodbye. Then she turned and threw up in the bushes.
50
Churro’d
ALMOST WORSE THAN A cancer diagnosis is the period that follows: the tests, the scans, the agonizing uncertainty. It was hard enough on me and my parents, Kiki, Johnny, George, and Ray （in medical school at UVA）。 But I was especially worried about Jeff, just 24 and on the West Coast, far away from all of us.
When the girls and I were in LA visiting Tom, we wanted to come up with something fun and distracting. So we grabbed Jeff and took him to—where else?—Disneyland. He had stepped up in such a huge way for us when we were facing the aftermath of something similar; now we all wanted to be there for him.
We all piled into Tom’s BMW and headed to Anaheim. The girls loved every second of it—Carrie especially loved the churros. At 5 years old, she had never tasted anything quite like them before and demanded more. I indulged her. What could be the harm of mass-produced logs of deep-fried, sugar-coated dough piling up in the stomach of a 38-pound child before a rollicking ride down Splash Mountain?