The Liberation of a Congressional Wife

since the abscam scandal derailed her husband's political career and her marriage headed for the rocks, rita jenrette has emerged with a mission of her own

I never looked like a Congressman's wife. Instead of wearing tailored gabardine suits and sensible pumps, I favored silky--some said clinging--dresses and high-heeled boots. I preferred mink to camel's hair. My blonde hair had never been shaped into one of those sculptured coiffures favored by well-turned-out Washington matrons. At the Congressional wives' luncheon for Mrs. Anwar Sadat, I was the only one in a gypsy outfit.

Five years ago, when I married John Wilson Jenrette, Democratic Congressman from South Carolina, I was 26, closer in age to his junior staffers than to the wives of his colleagues. As a result, I was often mistaken for his mistress or his secretary at political gatherings we attended together. Once, at a Capitol Hill reception honoring nurses attending a convention, a nurse pressed her hotel key into John's hand, apparently oblivious of me standing at his side. "You're the best-looking thing I've seen all day," she told my husband. And Strom Thurmond, the senior Senator from John's home state, never did bother to learn my name. Meeting me, he'd turn to my husband and say, "Well, John, every time I see you, you're with a pretty little blonde."

I didn't fit the small-town Southern definition of a political wife any better. One well-meaning Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, matron took me aside shortly after I married John to advise me: "Now that you're a Congressman's wife, you have to look like one." Partly out of insecurity, partly out of curiosity, I submitted to her makeover. That night, I made my political debut in the Sixth Congressional District looking like a stand-in for Laverne or Shirley, with a beehive hairdo and Cleopatra-style eye make-up. Rather than offend the woman, I grinned and bore it.

Now, as I look back on my life as Mrs. Congressman Jenrette, I realize that long before my husband was convicted of bribery and conspiracy last October in an ABSCAM case, I had, by Washington political standards, already been found guilty of an equally serious offense: not fitting in.

At first, I desperately wanted to be accepted. But I failed to appreciate the fact that appearances are everything in Washington. I was naïve enough, or stubborn enough, to think I could wear my gypsy outfit, speak frankly and still win out over my detractors. Too flashy, too blonde, too outspoken, they said. I was ten points down before I even knew it. For five years, though, I gave it my best shot. I shook hands in the Bi-Lo shopping-center parking lot, hit tennis balls during American Cancer Society benefits, helped write my husband's speeches, licked fund-raising envelopes and attended Rotary Club testimonials, greased-pig contests and church suppers. And I struggled to keep his career together as his drinking grew worse, even as some of his political supporters gossiped that I was a gold digger who had married John for his position.

Then, in February 1980, ABSCAM hit. I recalled a passage I'd read in Myra MacPherson's book about political marriages, The Power Lovers: "If these political wives are to have any defenders, it is up to them to show that they are fed up with the confinement and hypocrisy of their second-class roles." With John's political fortunes plummeting as his trial dragged into his re-election campaign, I felt I had little to lose by accepting that challenge. After his conviction and election defeat last November, I decided to hell with the critics who considered prestige adequate compensation for lonely nights, forced social relationships and the pressure of life in a fish bowl. After all, I reasoned, if you are living a public life and you don't speak out openly and honestly, then what have you lived for?

But I wasn't prepared for the firestorm that resulted from the article I wrote, "Diary of a Mad Congresswife," which appeared in The Washington Post Magazine and in other newspapers around the country last December.

In South Carolina, Rita Jenrette suddenly became Public Enemy Number One. My deprecation became a thriving cottage industry. One woman, I'm told, bought up all 20 copies of The Washington Post that Sunday in Myrtle Beach and scalped them for $20 each. Rita and John who? bumper stickers appeared throughout Horry County, and Ode to Rita, a country-and-western song recorded by a local disc jockey, made the play list of WNMB. "You think you're so pretty and you think you've got so much class," the lyrics said, "but, Rita, you ain't nothing but a pain in the--"

The Darlington Moose Lodge, one of whose meetings I had described in the article, took umbrage at my account of the members' parading around the room with antlers on their heads and revoked my honorary Moosette status. A letter from one Moose scolded me for failing to mention the organization's other distinctions, such as Moose-haven, a Florida retirement home for old bucks. "Give the Moose a break," he wrote.

And a few Myrtle Beach husbands found they had some explaining to do after my description of Sandy Island, a weekend retreat for local businessmen. I described it as "a refuge for some men who would pack their tackle boxes or rifles, tell their wives they were going off for a little hunting or fishing and shack up with their girlfriends in one of the dirty, unheated cabins." The former mayor of North Myrtle Beach, a Sandy Island property owner, told a local newspaper, "We in Horry County are right proud of our unheated shacks there."

After reading my account of my husband's womanizing and drinking, some men accused me of taking cheap shots. Many women, on the other hand, applauded and offered their support. "It took a lot of guts to tell it like it is," wrote the wife of an Army colonel who has been married 30 years. "Marriage has a lot of ups and downs and I think you are great to hang in there."

A few critics implied that I was acting out of vengeance or a need for money. One friend of John's who owes us $55,000 told a newspaper reporter that if we needed money so badly, we could have come to him. During the trial, we had, but he said he couldn't repay the overdue loan then.

While a Myrtle Beach radio station asked listeners whom I would blow the whistle on next, some Washington politicians were apparently asking themselves the same question. Perhaps worried that he might be next, an old Congressional pal of John's with a few skeletons in his closet sprang to offer his help in John's battle against expulsion by the House of Representatives. I wondered where he had been during John's trial and reelection campaign. An aide to a powerful House committee chairman, who had been peripherally involved in ABSCAM, circulated the rumor that I had a serious drinking problem. Others wondered--usually within earshot of reporters--whether my recollections were the ravings of a madwoman. I appreciated their concern.

But it was not my intent to be vindictive or to send anyone scurrying for cover. I did not, for example, mention in my Post story the governor who barged in on me in the shower when John and I were guests in his house. I didn't write about the politician who kept a mistress on his payroll (text continued on page 200)Congressional Wife(continued from page 125) even as he complained that he didn't have enough time to spend with his family. Nor did I name the lobbyist who used to ply my husband with liquor and set him up with other women. In fact, although Moose lodge members and Washington politicians felt I'd spoken out of turn, I thought I had been the model of discretion.

•

John and I were born on opposite sides of the tracks. He grew up the son of a carpenter and a nurse in Loris, a hard-scrabble hamlet snuggled in the tidewater palmetto marshes and overgrown plantations of rural Horry County, South Carolina. I grew up the pampered youngest daughter of a Texas cattle rancher and businessman in a horseshoe-shaped mansion in San Antonio. When I was ten, my father consolidated his failing, far-flung business interests by moving to Austin, where we settled into a more modest three-bedroom home with maid's quarters.

John hustled his way from his parents' tiny frame home (with an outhouse in back) through law school at the University of South Carolina. By his mid-30s, he was living the American dream with a beautiful wife and two children in a white, pillared, six-bedroom mansion with swimming pool in North Myrtle Beach, a few miles up the road from Loris. John's fortune, thanks to a few go-for-broke real-estate deals, had increased with Myrtle Beach land values. The once tacky coastal strip of firecracker stands, no-tell motels and plastic-tabletop restaurants had become a booming resort.

I graduated from the University of Texas in 1971 with honors, a degree in history, a fluency in Russian and no job prospects. What I lacked in practical skills, however, I made up for in youthful idealism. I joined the Peace Corps and shipped out for Micronesia; I made it as far as Hawaii. Two weeks of living in a hut in the middle of sugar-cane fields, an experience supposed to train me for life in Micronesia, convinced me I could better help the world's suffering by returning to Texas and enrolling in graduate school. During graduate school, I met my first husband, an Army Mohawk pilot. I married him for the wrong reasons: He was handsome, drove a Morgan, had a nice tennis serve and short hair. The last endeared him to my parents, but we had the good sense to end the marriage after a year.

Meanwhile, John's practiced eye for the main chance had propelled him into South Carolina politics. He built the region's first coalition of poor blacks and blue-collar workers, which, along with a few liberals, launched him into the state legislature in 1964, at the age of 28. He was one of the youngest men ever to be elected to that body.

In 1972, John lost his first bid for Congress, but he ran again two years later and won.

My path to Washington was more winding. In early 1974, while I was selling cosmetics at an Austin department store, a want ad for a job with the Republican Party of Texas caught my eye. I figured that had to be more interesting than discussing the latest shades of nail polish, so I switched jobs. My work writing and editing a pamphlet titled The Primary System in America apparently impressed Republican National Committee officials, who offered me a job in the party's national office in Washington in the summer of 1975.

On my first day in Washington, I met John. I was leaving the Longworth House office building when I saw him from the corner of my eye, standing by an elevator and wearing an electric green, orange and yellow plaid jacket.

As I headed down the marble stairs, I heard someone behind me call, "Hey, wait a minute." I turned to see the stranger in the flashy coat grinning a country-boy grin. He assumed I was a Capitol Hill secretary and asked where I worked. I explained I had just arrived in Washington and he invited me to go along with him on an errand to the Capitol, across the street.

At first, he told me he was a Capitol Hill elevator operator, a position usually filled by law students. I believed him--his square-jawed, boyish good looks and earnest manner made him appear far younger than his 39 years. But when he ushered me through a door in the Capitol marked Members Only--a breach of protocol that could cost any elevator operator his job--I was impressed by his gall and told him so. He laughed and told me he was a Congressman. When I told him I didn't believe him, he invited me to his office to prove it. There he introduced me to his staff and led me into an inner office, closing the door.

"How would you like to go out with me tonight?" he asked.

"No, thanks," I replied.

"Well, then, how would you like to go to the Virgin Islands with me? We'll lie in the sand nude all day long and make love all night."

"No," I said, reaching for the door.

I should have known then that this recently divorced country boy had more moves than a riverboat gambler.

About a month or so later, we met again and he asked me to accompany him to a party at the Romanian embassy. I accepted. To him, it was a cheap date. To this Texas girl, bored by dinner dates with men who talked precinct tallies, it was the social event of the year. And just to prove that I was no slouch, I chatted away in Russian with the Romanian ambassador. John wandered over to the other side of the room.

The ambassador smiled, nodded his head a lot and clearly did not understand a word I had said. By the time I realized that, John was surrounded by a bevy of elegantly dressed women and dark-suited men, who were listening, enrapt, while he discussed nuclear-armament treaties and NATO alliances.

I was beginning to see that being a Congressman was heady stuff. And I was also beginning to fall in love with an irrepressible hustler named John Jenrette.

Shortly after that, I moved into John's Capitol Hill town house and we began a passionate affair against a glittering backdrop of glamorous parties and political receptions where national newsmakers hobnobbed with media stars. John was the most romantic man I had ever known. He would telephone me at the office half a dozen times a day just to say he was thinking of me, leave love notes around the house, send flowers for no special reason. One evening, when the House was in an all-night session, he called to say he missed me and had to see me. I threw on a coat and walked up to the Capitol portico where John was waiting. He took my hand and led me into the shadows, and we made love on the marble steps that overlook the monuments and city below.

At Republican headquarters, word spread that I was living with a Democratic Congressman. My boss called me in and gave me an ultimatum: Either stop seeing John or quit my job.

I quit. Nobody, I said, was going to tell me how to run my private life.

"Rita," my boss said, "you should see the file I have on this guy. You don't know what you're getting yourself into."

And I admit now that there have been times when his words haunted me.

Our marriage in September 1976 coincided with John's rise in national politics. Washington pundits were hailing him as a magnetic, energetic son of the New South and predicting big things for him. House Speaker Tip O'Neill singled him out as a possible candidate for the Speaker's job someday.

The last thing John needed was a troublesome wife, which is what some of his political supporters thought I might be. A People magazine story about my resignation from the Republican National Committee, headlined "It's Romance in Washington--A Sort of Romeo and Juliet Story Amid Big-Time Politics," didn't exactly provide a flattering introduction of me to John's Bible Belt constituency. Some voters read about our live-in relationship and assumed that I was the cause of John's divorce from his first wife. Actually, John was divorced when I met him.

My welcome to the Sixth Congressional District as Mrs. Congressman Jenrette came as I stood in the parking lot of a post office shaking hands. A grandfatherly, slightly crazed-looking white-haired man pushed his way to the front of the crowd. "You're nothing but a whore and your husband is a whoremonger," he shouted at me. I learned later that the man was a local preacher.

•

By the time most political wives reach Washington, they have weathered at least one campaign and are well schooled in the dicta of political life. But I plunged in unprepared. Before marrying John, I had thought campaigning was something I could do in my spare time while I pursued my own life. I had also assumed that my opinions were just that--mine--and they did not necessarily have to reflect my husband's views. I soon learned that a political wife is trotted out like a Barbie doll when it is suitable but is never permitted to be herself or, heaven forbid, hold an opinion.

My first lesson was that there are no honeymoons in an election year. I spent my wedding night alone in Washington while John campaigned in South Carolina. Traveling with him on those four-day weekends he had to spend in the district became the only way to see him. That, of course, made it impossible for me to work at a regular job, so I quit the job I'd gotten as researcher with a Senate subcommittee and traded my dreams of a singing career for the reality of passing out leaflets at factory gates during shift changes, presenting Washington Redskins footballs at high school pep rallies and judging at county fairs.

Our life in Washington was no more private. Every constituent in town for a convention thinks his Congressman owes him a dinner. And those glamorous embassy parties and star-studded political receptions grew old very quickly. It was not unusual for us to attend two or three such events in one night--with drinks pressed on us at each stop--before joining a lobbyist for dinner and more drinks.

It was in this world of nonstop partying that John's drinking problem began. And I came to understand the special price paid by those who live public lives.

I was beginning to comprehend why the marriages of my two best friends, both Congressional wives, were crumbling. One of them, whom I had known as a cheerful young woman with a ready laugh, had grown anxious and bitter whenever she spoke of her husband. I knew--and she knew I knew--that he was cheating on her. And yet she always seemed to be looking for reassurance from me that he was still a faithful husband and father of four. The last time I saw her, just before the election, she told me she was preparing to leave him if he didn't win his race. She said she had resigned herself to living her life apart and that she couldn't bear having him around the house again.

Another young Congressional wife, who was estranged from her husband, seemed determined to establish her identity by throwing herself into a new love affair and a more hip circle of friends. She invited me to her Capitol Hill town house one night for cocktails and to meet those new friends--a university professor, a couple of artists and a couple of Government bureaucrats. I would like them, she assured me; they were "fascinating."

An hour or so after I arrived, this fascinating group started to take off their clothes in the middle of the kitchen to go for a dip in a hot tub. Not wanting to appear unhip, I slipped into the bathroom to consider whether to play out this Marin County fantasy on Capitol Hill or leave right then. A terry-cloth robe hanging in the bathroom provided a ready answer. I undressed, wrapped myself in the robe and ventured out to the hot tub, where I gradually removed the robe while submerging myself in the warm, gurgling water.

"Hey, this is great," I said, trying to sound mellow enough to explain why I was content to sit there and let everyone else get out first.

"Listen, any time. Drop by and we'll do it again," my hostess told me as I was leaving that night. But even as I lied and told her I'd be back, I knew I didn't fit into Washington's hot-tub scene any better than I fit into its political receptions.

But social life is an important part of the Washington scene. And ours often became complicated. John, a born politician, never liked to tell people what they didn't want to hear. So rather than say no to someone, he would accept or extend conflicting invitations for the same night, leaving me to sort them out.

Shortly after we moved into our Capitol Hill town house two years ago, we invited many of John's Congressional colleagues and several of his political friends from South Carolina to a house-warming. I planned to have the affair catered, but a few days before the party, I received a phone call from one of John's constituents. "Now, you tell John," he said, "not only are we coming but we're bringing the chicken bog."

I didn't want to make my debut as a Washington hostess ladling plates of chicken bog, a stewlike concoction of rice, sausage and chicken. I frantically phoned John at the office. "Do something," I demanded.

"Honey, I'll take care of it," he promised.

The night before the party, while we were reading in bed, we heard a banging at the front door. Standing on the porch were four men carrying kettlelike drums and bags of groceries. "Which way to the garage?" one of them asked John.

The next morning, we awakened to billows of black smoke pouring out of our garage. But the back-yard chefs assured me that it was just the chicken bog simmering. "Now, don't you worry," one of them said. "This is one party you'll never forget."

I haven't, because I still have a freezer full of chicken bog to remind me. By the time the chicken bog had finished cooking, the last of my guests had left.

Our vacations were Congressional junkets. And while it's true that those official fact-finding missions are royal-carpet tours for visiting Congressmen, I would have gladly traded the whirlwind sight-seeing limousine tours, the five-star hotels and the lavish banquets for a leisurely holiday with my husband, motor-scootering through the countryside, staying in pensions and dining at sidewalk cafés. Instead, I cooled my heels in hotel rooms or bided my time shopping for gewgaws with other wives, while John and his colleagues discussed the balance of payments with foreign dignitaries. Any attempt to stray from the pack was greeted by stern lectures from official escorts about the dangers to ladies who ventured out alone.

During one official trip, we did manage to squeeze in a relaxing week alone before our host, a governor, decided to make it a threesome. He seemed to think that trying to seduce me was an acceptable way of showing his appreciation for John's guiding a multimillion-dollar Federal project through the House Appropriations Committee.

The day before we were to leave, the governor invited us to lunch on the terrace of his weekend home, which adjoined our guesthouse. He was a charming host who bore a striking resemblance to Cesar Romero, and I was initially flattered by his attention.

After lunch, we were joined by the governor's little daughter for a cruise aboard his yacht. John took it upon himself to entertain the little girl by following her on a tour of the boat's upper deck. I stayed below, settling into a deck chair and closing my eyes against the sun's glare. Suddenly, I felt a hand on my leg. I looked up at the governor, who winked at me. I smiled tightly, rose from the chair and announced, "I think I'll go up top."

Later, back on the beach, John again played dutiful uncle to the governor's little girl, building a sand castle, running in the surf, climbing a tree for coconuts and walking the beach in search of shells. I played musical beach chairs with the governor. Each time I moved, he moved next to me. "I'll go anywhere to meet you," he whispered.

Finally, John and the daughter returned from their walk. She went into the house and John, exhausted, flopped into a chair on the opposite side of me from the governor, whose eyes were closed. I flashed John a desperate look, rolled my eyes, nodded my head in the direction of the governor and tried every SOS signal I knew. "Sure, honey," John said, rolling over. "Go on back to the house, if you want. I think I'll just take a little nap right here."

I lay there in the broiling sun for what seemed like an hour, my skin turning pinker by the minute, while John snored on. The governor seemed to be asleep, too. I stole away to the guesthouse.

I was lathering up in the shower when I heard a knock at the bathroom door. Figuring it was John, I wrapped a towel around me and opened the door. There, in his swim trunks, was the governor.

"Rita," he said with a sigh, reaching for me as I reached for the shower curtain, the last concession to modesty.

"Rita," he said again, locking me in a viselike embrace.

I tried to push him away. "Later," I said, mumbling something about my husband's finding us.

"I'll go anywhere," he said. "New York, Washington...."

"Sure, sure," I said. "Later, later."

He smiled. Apparently satisfied that his patience would eventually be rewarded, he turned and left.

When he called me in Washington, I referred the call to John.

•

When two FBI agents visited our home one Saturday morning a year ago, I knew John's political career was in jeopardy. The agents indicated John was under investigation for accepting a bribe, and when I read the newspaper account of ABSCAM the next morning, I knew John's career was over.

For months, he plotted his defense as he struggled with his alcoholism. Two weeks after John was implicated in the scandal, he stopped drinking and entered Bethesda's National Naval Medical Center for treatment. Until the guilty verdict was delivered by the jury in the fall, John never stopped believing that he would be vindicated.

Even the slightest thread of hope intrigued him. Once, just before his trial was set to begin, his attorney, Kenneth Michael Robinson, brought him together with another client named Frank Terpil. A fast-talking international arms merchant, Terpil faced trial on charges of illegally selling machine guns to undercover New York law-enforcement agents. When that trial was over, he was to face charges of having conspired to assassinate a rival of Libyan strong man Muammar el-Qaddafi.

In the course of his career as an arms merchant, Terpil claimed to have earned the friendship of not only Qaddafi but also Uganda's ex-dictator Idi Amin. On several autumn days, John huddled with Terpil at his home in McLean, Virginia. Terpil's home featured a firing range in the basement and a false wall that opened to reveal a hidden passageway. In this atmosphere of intrigue, John and Terpil concocted a plan so bizarre that, had it worked, it might have saved them both. At least that's what they hoped. They plotted to ask Amin to intercede with the Ayatollah to secure the freedom of the American hostages in Iran.

I sat in Robinson's law office one morning as Terpil telephoned Amin in his penthouse hotel suite in Jidda, Saudi Arabia. Amin seemed delighted to hear from Terpil, and he expressed a willingness to talk with the Ayatollah if he had the go-ahead of the U.S. Government. It seems that the Butcher of Kampala, as Amin is known in some circles, didn't understand the loathing some Americans felt for him. He seemed delighted to assist, perhaps, Terpil said, because he thought so many Americans held him in such high regard. Terpil claimed Amin treasured a T-shirt that Terpil had given him, featuring Amin's smiling mug and the words Idi Amin, Emperor of Africa.

At any rate, Amin seemed to want only one favor in return: The education of a couple dozen of his children in a Kampala parochial school had been interrupted when he was overthrown, and he wondered if perhaps Terpil could arrange for their education in a Catholic school in the United States. Ever helpful, Terpil assured him that he'd look into it, and promptly turned the matter over to John. John made some discreet inquiries at the State Department but was not encouraged.

Before the farfetched plan could go much further, Terpil fled the country. If John was to be vindicated, it would not be by freeing the hostages in Iran.

•

As John Dean, G. Gordon Liddy, John Ehrlichman and Richard Nixon proved, nobody has ever gone broke overestimating the value of notoriety in Washington. But even while members of the Watergate gang, who conspired to subvert the U.S. Government, live comfortably off the profits of scandal, I am criticized for speaking out of turn, exploiting myself and cashing in on my husband's misfortune. It seems that a man's memoir is a woman's indiscretion.

Gender may preclude candor in the eyes of some; I want to believe my husband is not one of them. Although I know there are some things he would prefer that I leave unsaid, John understands that telling our story is my way of purging the last political demons from my life, just as attending the last White House Christmas ball was a way of closing the last chapter of our political lives.

Understandably, we were reluctant to attend the ball, given at the White House for the 96th Congress, coming as it did on the heels of his resignation and my own widely publicized denunciation of Washington politics.

But I figured that if you're going to pan the orchestra, sooner or later you have to face the music. I also figured that this was probably the last invitation to the White House we would ever receive. So John donned a tuxedo and I slipped into a long black halter-topped silk gown and my mink coat and we drove to the White House, uncertain of how we'd be received but determined to go out in style and laughing.

Predictably, there were some who turned away and headed for the other side of the East Room when our eyes met theirs. Was it us they were fleeing, I wondered, or was it perhaps themselves?

But I was relieved to find many old friends and acquaintances going out of their way to be gracious to and supportive of us. As we paused to thank the President and Mrs. Carter, he took my hand, hugged me and kissed me on the cheek. Turning to John, he said that he and Rosalynn pray for us every night. "Things are going to work out for both of you," he said. "God bless you."

I realized at that moment that this was probably the Carters' last White House ball, too.

Strangely, it seemed the right note on which to end our political interlude, for this was exactly where we had begun it together: at a glamorous Washington party. And I thought John and I were off to a fresh start, free of the constraints of political life. I even thought we might be starting off better this time, not only because John was sober but because our marriage was becoming a more equal partnership.

While I embarked on an around-the-country tour of talk-show appearances and meetings with record and movie producers, agents and book publishers, John worked on his appeal. At times, I know he felt threatened by my attempting to be the breadwinner while he stayed home tending to the house, for the same reason I used to feel threatened by all the political advisors who used to surround him and seemed always to be telling him what to do. And there were times when my on-the-road pursuit of a career took me away when I would have preferred to be with him. The day that John resigned from Congress, I had to be in Los Angeles. I reasoned that going to L.A. was important, just as in the past he must have rationalized his leaving me behind to attend political functions during my moments of need. But John seemed to understand that just as our first five years together had not been easy for me, our next five would not be easy for him.

Then late one Thursday night in January, my hope of building a future with John was finally shattered. I had returned to Washington after a two-week Christmas holiday with John and my parents in Texas, followed by two more weeks of public appearances. A few hours after I had walked in the door of our home, a friend phoned to ask if I knew where John was. "Sure," I told him. Earlier that day, John and I had met in Chicago, where we taped a television talk show together. He told me he was flying to Miami to relax for a few days.

But the telephone call made me suspicious, so I dialed the Miami number John had given me. It was a wrong number. I thought there must be some mistake, so I called the person in whose apartment John had said he would be staying. The friend said he didn't know where John was, but he added when I pressed him on it that a few days earlier, John had called him to ask him to "cover" for him because he would be staying with a married couple whom "Rita doesn't like."

I knew no such couple in Miami and the only acquaintance of John's there I did know was his old lover. Suddenly, all the pain of all the lies he had told before when I had caught him cheating on me came rushing back. I knew then that I would never be able to trust him again. In tears, I picked up the phone and dialed my friends Rudy and Kathy Maxa to tell them I was divorcing John. Rudy answered and I poured it all out. "He lied to me," I said, sobbing.

Knowing that we were financially strapped, Rudy, a reporter with The Washington Post, asked me where John was getting the money for a vacation in Miami. I recalled seeing John take several $100 bills out of his closet a few weeks earlier. I had asked him where he'd gotten the money and he told me he had put it aside some time ago, in case we needed cash on short notice. I told Rudy about it. "How do you know he's telling the truth?" he asked.

I don't, I thought. John had lied to me about his whereabouts in Miami. I figured he could have lied just as easily about the money. My mind began racing as I thought about the emerald-and-diamond ring he had given me for Christmas and the new gold Rolex watch he had purchased for himself.

"Rita," Rudy said, "go see if there is any more money in the closet." I knew we were thinking the same thought. Was it possible that John had also lied about not taking the ABSCAM bribe money?

It took only a few minutes to find the soft red-cloth shoe bag snuggled inside a brown-suede shoe on the floor of John's closet. I opened it to find two packets of $100 bills and a third packet containing $100, $50 and $20 bills, each secured with a rubber band. I removed the rubber bands and counted out $25,000.

I called Rudy back. "This is it, isn't it?" I said. "I'm sick. I might as well just kill myself. This is my husband. Why did I look?"

I didn't know what to do about the money. There was no way to reach John to find out if there were another explanation for it. And because I paid all the bills and was in charge of our personal finances, I couldn't imagine where the money could have come from if it weren't tainted. And, my God, if it were tainted money, did this mean I would have to turn my husband in? And if I just put it back in the shoe and pretended I had never found it, would I be just as guilty?

The next day, Friday, I called Washington lawyer James Abourezk for help and turned the money over to him until he could determine to whom it belonged. I prayed that the money was not tainted and I stayed close to the phone, hoping John would call so I could ask him about the cash. While I waited, I packed up his clothes and belongings to send to his sister in Myrtle Beach. That's when I discovered several hundred dollars in a plain envelope in his jewelry box and a wad of $20, $50 and $100 bills totaling $1700 in the inside pocket of a three-piece pinstriped suit.

It wasn't until Sunday evening that John finally called home to check in, learned about my discovery of the $25,000 and calmly offered the explanation that he had cashed in some certificates of deposit, brought the money up from the safe in his South Carolina office and put it in the shoe for safekeeping. Stashing it there made perfect sense to John, as did his explanation that he had lied only to spare my feelings. I was relieved to hear his explanation for the money and fully expected that Tuesday morning, when I entered the bank where Abourezk had placed the money in a safe-deposit box, a check of serial numbers would prove the money was not ABSCAM cash. Instead, I watched in horror the two FBI agents match the very first bill in the box with serial numbers of the ABSCAM bribe money. In fact, $1300 of the $1700 from the suit pocket matched. I thought my heart would break. "Oh, no, John, no!" I said.

For now, our future together is uncertain. We need some time apart. But I am hopeful that John will pull his life together--even though he still faces the prospect of prison if his appeal should fail--and that his best years are yet to come. And I am confident that the opportunities of the past few months will enable me to put my sputtering singing career on the track. My impromptu national television singing appearance on the Tom Snyder Tomorrow show last December proved to me--and, I hope, to the skeptics who think my singing ranks with Liz Ray's acting--that I have the training, talent and determination to succeed. I don't know many show-business veterans who would risk performing with an unfamiliar accompanist after half an hour of practice and pull it off.

I intend now to prove myself as a recording artist. Beyond that, I don't know what the next few years hold for me. My life, it seems, has always been unpredictable--now more than ever. Four months ago, I never would have guessed that I would be fielding interview requests from news organizations around the world, considering offers from book publishers and movie producers who want me to tell my life story, juggling appearances on television talk shows or meeting with an agent.

But then, four months ago, I never would have imagined writing for Playboy--let alone posing for it.

The idea for this feature was born last November, when Washington Contributing Editor Peter Ross Range approached me about writing an article for the magazine. During a meeting in our home to discuss the project, my husband wandered into the living room. When Range introduced himself, John joked, "I always thought Rita was Playboy material." I laughed.

The next day, Range called to ask if I would consider posing for photographs to accompany the article. I laughed again. At 31, I had my unfulfilled ambitions, but following in Bo Derek's footsteps wasn't one of them. Dubious, I flew to Chicago to meet with Associate Photography Editor Jeff Cohen and Staff Photographer Pompeo Posar, sure that they would take one look at me and conclude that I should stick to writing.

Instead, both said they would like to pursue the photo feature. I was flattered. John was shocked. But I reminded him of those bikini-underwear ads featuring Jim Palmer of the Baltimore Orioles. Palmer once said those ads had done more to enhance his image than his pitching ever had. Reluctantly, John agreed.

As for me, I knew that Playboy had long been a showcase for female entertainers--Raquel Welch, Barbara Bach and, of course, Bo Derek came to mind. I reasoned that I'd be in good company.

So I decided to give it a try. I'm sure my friends will be surprised by my revelations. I've heard that one high school girlfriend, who remembers me as the one who always wore a towel in the locker room, gasped, "Not Rita," when told about the Playboy photos. I know that some will criticize me. But I no longer intend to live my life worried about what others say. During my five years as a Congressional wife, everyone else made much of my looks. Now it's my turn.

"John took my hand and led me into the shadows, and we made love on the marble steps."