B

for women and their independence. Without needing to discuss it outright, I
knew he could handle a partner who had her own passions and voice. These
were things you couldn’t teach in a relationship, things that not even love could
really build or change. In opening up his world to me, Barack was showing me
everything I’d ever need to know about the kind of life partner he’d be.

One afternoon, we borrowed a car and drove to the North Shore of Oahu,
where we sat on a ribbon of soft beach and watched surfers rip across enormous
waves. We stayed for hours, just talking, as one wave tipped into the next, as the
sun dropped toward the horizon and the other beachgoers packed up to go
home. We talked as the sky turned pink and then purple and finally went dark, as
the bugs started to bite, as we began to get hungry. If I’d come to Hawaii to
sample something of Barack’s past, we were now sitting at the edge of a giant
ocean, trying on a version of the future, discussing what kind of house we’d want
to live in someday, what kind of parents we wanted to be. It felt speculative and a
little daring to talk like this, but it was also reassuring, because it seemed as if
maybe we’d never stop, that maybe this conversation between us could go on for
life.

ack in Chicago, separated again from Barack, I still sometimes went to my
old happy-hour gatherings, though I rarely stayed out late. Barack’s dedication to
reading had brought out a new bookishness in me. I was now content to spend a
Saturday night reading a good novel on the couch.

When I got bored, I called up old friends. Even now that I had a serious
boyfriend, my girlfriends were the ones who held me steady. Santita Jackson was
now traveling the country as a backup singer for Roberta Flack, but we spoke
when we could. A year or so earlier, I’d sat with my parents in their living room,
bursting with pride as we watched Santita and her siblings introduce their father
at the 1988 Democratic National Convention. Reverend Jackson had made a
respectable run for the presidency, winning about a dozen primaries before
ceding the nomination to Michael Dukakis. Along the way, he’d filled
households like ours with a new and profound level of hope and excitement,
even if in our hearts we understood that he was a long shot’s long shot.

I spoke regularly with Verna Williams, a close friend from law school, who
until recently had been living in Cambridge. She’d met Barack a couple of times
and liked him a lot but teased me that I’d let my insanely high standards slip,