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" Originally published in the August 2007 issue We were twenty miles outside of New Orleans when the storm fell upon us, a punishing spring monsoon that buffeted the little white minivan, turned the windshield a blurry opaque. Traveling in a three-vehicle convoy, our party was headed northwest on Interstate 10. Behind us was a house in the ravaged Ninth Ward with four brand-new pieces of primer-gray siding nailed to the facade, courtesy of the man on my right, John Edwards. Ahead was a gathering of black mayors in Baton Rouge, another in a series of seemingly endless stops along the slippery road to the Democratic nomination for president.  Edwards sat stoically, his palms pressed to the thighs of his lightweight slacks. &amp;quot;The weather&amp;#039;s not very good, is it, Kwame?&amp;quot; he said to the driver. His lilting drawl carried a hint of false nonchalance, like an airline pilot warning his passengers to expect a little turbulence. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re headed into a big storm system,&amp;quot; said Kwame Asante, thirty-six, the state director of the Louisiana NAACP. &amp;quot;We flew in during the middle of the night last night, and it was really bad,&amp;quot; Edwards said. He peered forward, trying to look through the windshield. &amp;quot;Are you sure you can see okay?&amp;quot;  Fifty-four years old, a trial lawyer and self-made millionaire (estimates put his fortune around $30 million), Edwards served one term as a U.S. senator, twelve seasons as a rec-league soccer coach. He reads the sports pages first every morning, calls his wife at least four times a day, eats Cobb salads with diet soda for lunch, runs four to five miles on a treadmill whenever he&amp;#039;s able, though he&amp;#039;d prefer to run outside. When he was growing up, he wanted to be Perry Mason. He majored in textiles in college in case he didn&amp;#039;t get into law school -- something practical to fall back on. He is well-known in legal circles for winning $25 million in compensatory damages from a company that sold a faulty wading-pool drain cover, resulting in the disembowelment of a five-year-old girl. She survived the loss of most of her small intestine and half of her large intestine, a medical miracle. Recently, on a late flight in a private jet through another hellacious storm, Edwards treated himself to the movie Talladega Nights. &amp;quot;I laughed so hard, I couldn&amp;#039;t breathe,&amp;quot; he will later say, tilting his head back with laughter at the memory, his perfect teeth gleaming. Exactly which part of the movie he&amp;#039;s referring to shall remain off the record. Suffice it to say it was near the beginning and that Edwards, a Methodist, has some sense of humor when it comes to baby Jesus.  His wingman this morning at the Habitat for Humanity project had been the actor Danny Glover. Dropped off at a corner on Congress Street, the candidate and the actor had walked casually down the sidewalk -- past piles of debris, past houses, some boarded, some reoccupied, past FEMA trailers with their distinctive postindustrial pipeworks connecting to city services -- giving the impression of two old friends, out for their morning constitutional, who just happened to come upon a construction project on a residential street crowded with neighbors and members of the press and also about thirty black high school kids in identical white T-shirts (EVERY CHILD MATTERS) that Kwame had handed out just before their arrival. The visiting dignitaries were each issued a hammer, a carpenter&amp;#039;s belt, and a pair of brown cloth work gloves. While the actor immediately donned his gloves, the candidate chose to stuff his into the empty pouches of the carpenter&amp;#039;s belt, an accessory that seemed to irk him a bit, you could tell, devoid as it was of any real utility in his present situation. With that, they were escorted up the front steps to the porch, which had been raised, along with the rest of the house, to a height of six feet, in consideration of future flooding. Forced to kneel uncomfortably on plywood to do their bit, both men, wearing jeans and work boots, set to their tasks rather grimly; a bevy of cameras of all sizes and types captured their movements from every angle beneath the darkening sky. From the start, it was clear that the actor was not quite as comfortable with a hammer as the candidate, employing the tool in a series of choked-up staccato taps, as opposed to Edwards&amp;#039;s longer, more confident strokes, the mark of a man who&amp;#039;d spent the summers of his youth mucking out looms, building mobile homes, painting markings on highways.  After the carpentry came the speeches. Last December, when Edwards announced his candidacy, he&amp;#039;d done so with the Ninth Ward as his backdrop. Now, upon his return, he &amp;quot;lambasted&amp;quot; President Bush (that was the word employed the next day in the lead sentences of stories in two different local newspapers) for turning away millions of dollars of post-Hurricane Katrina aid offered to the U.S. by foreign countries. Edwards also spoke of his vision of rebuilding the Ninth Ward using residents from the community -- giving them jobs, giving them pride, everyone working together.  That is his message as he stumps across the country eighteen months before Election Day 2008, from a women&amp;#039;s town-hall meeting in Des Moines to the machinists&amp;#039; annual legislative conference in D. C. to a wine-and-cheese fundraiser in Baton Rouge to a national-teachers&amp;#039;-federation meeting in suburban Maryland. It is a traditional sort of grassroots populism, updated slightly to accommodate the fraught conditions of the present day: universal health care (paid for by eliminating Bush&amp;#039;s tax cuts), meaningful public education, a reduction of carbon emissions and fossil-fuel dependence, a restoration of the middle class through increased union membership and a higher minimum wage, a more compassionate face for America around the world. On abortion: He is pro-choice. On Iraq: It was a mistake; we were misled; U.S. out. Like Al Gore, who came within a breath of choosing Edwards instead of Joseph Lieberman as his running mate in the hanging-chad election of 2000, Edwards has, over the last few years, added a wonkish/activist component to his package (during the 2004 contest, his first run for the presidency, he was sometimes derided as an empty suit) with the founding of a poverty institute at the University of North Carolina and the publication of his third book, Ending Poverty in America: How to Restore the American Dream. Though he is considered by many to be an afterthought in the Democratic contest, in late May he was leading the polls in the crucial bellwether state of Iowa. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t think anybody needs to stumble for me to win,&amp;quot; Edwards will say of the early handicapping. &amp;quot;I think we could stay on the track we&amp;#039;re on, and I could win this nomination.&amp;quot;   Now, as we were heading toward Baton Rouge, toward the meeting of the black mayors, the wind gusted to speeds of thirty-five miles per hour, the minivan shimmied on the flooded highway. Out the side window, to the northeast, great bolts of lightning could be seen striking the surface of Lake Pontchartrain, the muddy waters of which had contributed to the devastation caused by Katrina. Edwards was belted into the middle bench of the minivan, wearing a dress shirt that matched his winsome, Tar Heel-blue eyes, which at that moment revealed a shade of unease, a memory perhaps of his eldest son, Wade, who was killed at sixteen by a tragic gust of wind that blew his Jeep Cherokee off the road. Up until 1996, Edwards had gone through a lot of his life &amp;quot;thinking, you know, that if you work hard and you do what&amp;#039;s right, things will work out.&amp;quot; And it had always been true for him -- until his perfect boy was killed. &amp;quot;That plus Elizabeth&amp;#039;s diagnosis in 2004, and now her cancer coming back, well, the point I&amp;#039;m trying to make is this: The idea that we have control is a fantasy. You just have to do the best you can and whatever happens, happens.&amp;quot; Edwards is smallish in scale, distinctly life-sized, affable, courtly in the Southern manner, able to share the air in a small space with others. Overall, he is preternaturally youthful in appearance -- another source of some public derision; the Faustian undertones. His skin is relatively unlined, his jaw is taut, his complexion is rosy; there is not a hint of gray in his much-discussed hair, which does indeed exhibit a great amount of luster and body, combed as it is into a perfect forelock. Despite the miles on the treadmill, the hours shooting hoops on his indoor full court -- an ultimate toy feature of his much-discussed 28,800-square-foot house -- he has the hint of a middle-aged paunch that seems to catch him surprised when he notices it, standing somewhere in his jockish stance, feet splayed, hands on hips, addressing a crowd so comfortably.  Kwame drove hunched forward, doing his best to see. He was worried about the storm. He was worried about the safety of his passenger. He&amp;#039;s not usually a driver. He is a former middle-school teacher who went back to school himself to become an attorney. Since they first met, four days after Katrina, whenever Edwards is in town, Kwame drops everything and drives. Riding shotgun is Edwards&amp;#039;s senior advisor for communications, Mark Kornblau. A native of New York City&amp;#039;s Upper East Side, Kornblau is a veteran of Edwards&amp;#039;s 2004 campaign as running mate to John Kerry, the mention of whom brings an involuntary wince to Edwards&amp;#039;s handsome countenance. At thirty-two, Kornblau is one of the elders on Edwards&amp;#039;s staff. The campaign headquarters, in the Southern Village section of Chapel Hill, North Carolina -- a planned community built around a quaint repro town square with a gym and plenty of small apartments for the staffers -- has the feel of a student union, with twenty-somethings sprawled in every corner and cubicle, playing with their BlackBerrys. Behind Edwards in the minivan was a pile of roll-aboards and suit bags, computer totes, a pallet of water bottles. Farther back still were the two other vehicles in our caravan -- another white minivan, peopled with Edwards&amp;#039;s staff, and a bronze-colored SUV containing members of the press, one of whom was near mutiny: &amp;quot;If they&amp;#039;re gonna keep you in the bubble, they have to fuckin&amp;#039; feed you!&amp;quot; His photographer, a young hotshot with twin hoop earrings, freshly stateside from Afghanistan, snored meanwhile in the middle seat, sleeping off his jet lag. (The celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz had elected to go ahead in her own SUV, huge and black with tinted windows, accompanied by her three young male assistants, none of whom was ever seen outside of the truck.)  Just then, a bolt of lightning appeared to strike the swampland just to the right of the highway. The inside of the van lit up. A thunderclap followed almost immediately. We were in the heart of the storm.  The rain beat harder. Visibility was nil -- watery red headlights through the opaque windshield. Suddenly, the car in front of us pulled off the road, causing Kwame to swerve and hit the brakes.  &amp;quot;You don&amp;#039;t want a lot of fast braking on this stuff,&amp;quot; Edwards said.  &amp;quot;No, no, no,&amp;quot; said Kwame, in staunch agreement. &amp;quot;Sorry about that.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s okay,&amp;quot; said Edwards. &amp;quot;Man. This weather&amp;#039;s bad. Baaaad.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s these idiots who pull over,&amp;quot; said Kornblau. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s who causes the problems.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s true,&amp;quot; said Edwards. &amp;quot;Them and the ones that are braking constantly. You can slow down, but you shouldn&amp;#039;t be hitting your brakes all the time.&amp;quot; We rode a few minutes in alert silence, all of us vigilant, like sailors riding out a blow, all hands on deck. The air in the car was tense and cold.  &amp;quot;You play any sports?&amp;quot; I asked Edwards, seeking to lighten the mood.  &amp;quot;I played every sport known to man,&amp;quot; he drawled.  &amp;quot;What sports?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;In high school, I lettered in football, basketball, track, and tennis.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;Wow.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;I was a reasonable athlete.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;My son plays basketball.&amp;quot; Edwards&amp;#039;s face darkened for an instant, and then he leaned forward, suddenly animated, and addressed Kornblau: &amp;quot;Have you ever heard the story about me beating Raymond Felton in a game of horse?&amp;quot; Kornblau turned around, gave his boss an unsure look. &amp;quot;Do you know who Raymond Felton is?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Yeah,&amp;quot; Kornblau said, though without much conviction. &amp;quot;Do you really know, or are you just shakin&amp;#039; your head?&amp;quot; Edwards raised his eyebrows fatuously.  Kornblau smiled, busted. &amp;quot;He was the point guard on the University of North Carolina&amp;#039;s national championship basketball team,&amp;quot; Edwards said. &amp;quot;Now he&amp;#039;s the point guard for the Charlotte Bobcats in the NBA.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s right.&amp;quot; Kornblau knocked himself on the temple.  &amp;quot;You haven&amp;#039;t heard this story, have you, Kwame?&amp;quot; Edwards asked.  &amp;quot;Never,&amp;quot; Kwame confirmed, smiling broadly, both hands on the wheel.  Edwards rubbed his own hands together with exaggerated delight. &amp;quot;I loooove finding people who never heard this story!&amp;quot;  By the time the Ray Felton story had been told -- Edwards had beaten him h-o-r to h-o-r-s-e -- the rain had abated a bit; everyone in the car was feeling more relaxed.  &amp;quot;I hope this isn&amp;#039;t too personal,&amp;quot; I said to Edwards, &amp;quot;but I was reading about how Elizabeth discovered her cancer this second go-around. It was a broken rib, correct?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Yes,&amp;quot; Edwards said. &amp;quot;The papers said you were hugging her -- which is always nice to hear, a married guy hugging his wife. It must have been bizarre. What happened, you just hugged her and heard a snap?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Maybe it is a little personal,&amp;quot; Edwards said, laughing self-consciously.  &amp;quot;Maybe I don&amp;#039;t want to know?&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;It was a perfectly reasonable question,&amp;quot; he said, bailing me out. &amp;quot;So hugging was perhaps a euphemism?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s my story, and I&amp;#039;m stickin&amp;#039; to it,&amp;quot; he said, raking his forelock with his fingers.  At the next overpass, the caravan pulled over. My time in the minivan had run out.  If I told you that when I metEdwards&amp;#039;s parents, Bobbie and Wallace, they were sitting on an overstuffed sofa with a forest-green blanket folded over the back, and that into this blanket was woven a likeness of the painting American Gothic, and that Wallace, as in the painting, was sitting to Bobbie&amp;#039;s left, and that Bobbie and Wallace kind of resembled the subjects of the painting, in the sense that they seemed plain and honest and deeply genuine, you would probably think I was making it up. But there they were.  Bobbie and Wallace Edwards, seventy-three and seventy-five years old, sat on the overstuffed couch in the living room of their house in Robbins, North Carolina -- population 1,195, median family income $33,500 -- their hometown since John was twelve. Thickly forested with rolling hills, Robbins was first settled in the early 1700s as Hazel Neck. During the Revolutionary War, it was renowned for the Kennedy gun works, which made rifles for George Washington&amp;#039;s Continental Army. The discovery of gold brought the railroad, followed by textile mills. The town is also home to the Standard Mineral Company, which mines talc, an amazingly versatile mineral, used in cosmetics and paper manufacturing and also as a lubricant and a food additive; it has also been linked to cancer and pulmonary problems. Today, many of the stores at Robbins&amp;#039;s main-street crossroads (a classic, if run-down, set piece of the type that inspired Southern Village) have window signs in Spanish. Edwards says that Robbins is a perfect distance from his home in Chapel Hill. &amp;quot;Close enough so you can see &amp;#039;em regularly, but far enough away that they&amp;#039;re not stopping by every fifteen minutes.&amp;quot; The senior Edwardses live in a modest brick cottage renovated with neo-Victorian windows. In the back is an unstained pine deck and a screened-in gazebo; in the front, on the wall near the door where the address usually goes, there&amp;#039;s a big letter E. Inside are lots of family pictures. John has a younger brother and sister, an electrician and a hospital administrator. Along with John and Elizabeth&amp;#039;s four, there are three other grandkids, one of whom, Wallace proudly reported, had recently won a scholarship to play girls&amp;#039; basketball at Elon University. Though Wallace has always been a big football guy -- his years of playing catch in the front yard were instrumental in John&amp;#039;s successful campaign as a walk-on DB and flanker at Clemson, an adventure that lasted one semester, before he transferred to N. C. State -- the Edwards sports gene is generally considered to trace back through Bobbie, who was herself an outstanding high school basketball player in the days when girls wore dresses to play sports and weren&amp;#039;t supposed to sweat. As recently as John&amp;#039;s high school years, she was still playing with John and his friends on the crude red-clay court behind their house. Bobbie&amp;#039;s baptismal name, by the way, is Catherine Wade. From her name came the names of John and Elizabeth&amp;#039;s first two children, Wade and Catharine, known as Cate, a second-year law student at Harvard. Cate is spending the summer working for NPR&amp;#039;s Nina Totenberg, who says she selected the pretty, long-legged, and reportedly very smart young woman before knowing &amp;quot;who she was.&amp;quot; After Wade&amp;#039;s death, both John and Elizabeth say in their autobiographies, it was the then-fourteen-year-old Cate who helped them pick up the pieces of their lives, sleeping next to them in a &amp;quot;two-chairs-and-an-ottoman&amp;quot; bed, begging John to coach her soccer team. Writes Elizabeth, &amp;quot;She was there for me.... I always had the feeling that the support I gave her was the support she thought was good for me to give, rather than what she needed.&amp;quot;  In between Bobbie and Wallace, on the back of the sofa, was the American Gothic blanket. Overhead, the ceiling fan made a breeze. All around were antiques that Bobbie had hunted down, bought for a bargain, stripped, and restored. For a time, to help finance John&amp;#039;s college tuition (he was the first in the family to attend), she had operated a refinishing business, working out of an old filling station by the highway that they rented for the purpose. She also worked for many years in the mills and later as a postmistress. On a carved sideboard at the end of the room -- opposite the comfy his-and-hers lounging chairs; his larger than hers, as is custom -- was a huge flat-screen TV. &amp;quot;John bought that for us,&amp;quot; Wallace announced proudly.  Bobbie and Wallace met fifty-six years ago at a square dance at a state park. &amp;quot;He was eighteen and I was seventeen,&amp;quot; Bobbie said. She is a warm, tiny, fragile-seeming woman who will later fret about sounding &amp;quot;hickish&amp;quot; on my tape.  They dated all through her senior year, were married the February after her graduation. &amp;quot;Johnny was born four months before my twentieth birthday,&amp;quot; Bobbie said. &amp;quot;Wallace likes to say we grew up together, all three of us.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;When John was born, I had insurance, but it was lousy,&amp;quot; Wallace said. &amp;quot;I was working for Milliken mills. I had no money. I needed fifty dollars to get them out of the hospital.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;He had to take a loan to get us out of hock,&amp;quot; Bobbie added.  &amp;quot;I went to a loan company,&amp;quot; Wallace said. &amp;quot;It was a big risk for them. In six months I had to pay back sixty-five dollars.&amp;quot; Wallace rearranged himself on the sofa, pointed his index finger in my direction. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ll tell you a little funny story about when John was a baby.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;He had some kind of rash,&amp;quot; Bobbie said, jumping right in. &amp;quot;The doctor gave him some drugs.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;And we couldn&amp;#039;t wake him up.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;We didn&amp;#039;t know it was a sedative.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;We thought something was wrong with him.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;We panicked,&amp;quot; Bobbie said.  &amp;quot;We rushed him over to the doctor&amp;#039;s house,&amp;quot; Wallace said. &amp;quot;He come out to the car, and he looks at us, and he says, &amp;#039;Do you want me to wake this baby up?&amp;#039; And I say, &amp;#039;Please,&amp;#039; you know, &amp;#039;cause I was just bawlin&amp;#039; I was so scared. And then the doctor just thumps him on the bottom of his foot, you know, flicked him with his finger, like &amp;#039;gat -- &amp;quot; And here Wallace demonstrated, flicking his middle finger, the nail striking against the meat of his thumb like a flint, the finger shooting out, the way they used to do to the earlobes of naughty children. &amp;quot;And boy,&amp;quot; exclaimed Wallace, &amp;quot;John started yellin&amp;#039;.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;We was pretty green with Johnny,&amp;quot; Bobbie said. &amp;quot;Like she said, we all three grew up together, &amp;quot; Wallace added. &amp;quot;Of course, then we had some others, too,&amp;quot; Bobbie reminded him. Through the years, as Wallace changed jobs and advanced up the ladder of seniority, the Edwards family moved from town to town. No matter how hard he worked, after a time, Wallace saw his career stall. &amp;quot;To be a supervisor, you had to have gone to college. That was never an option for either of us,&amp;quot; he said.  &amp;quot;Not an option,&amp;quot; Bobbie said.  &amp;quot;What they would do is bring in young college graduates. I would have to train them. They didn&amp;#039;t know beans. One time, I found out that this guy I was training was making $120 a week. And I was only making $100. That made me mad. I went to my supervisor and said, &amp;#039;Listen, this ain&amp;#039;t gonna work.&amp;#039; And they gave me a raise.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;We had a good life,&amp;quot; Bobbie said. &amp;quot;We ate well. Even when I was working the second shift, I always made sure they had dinner in the oven. We had fried chicken and fried pork chops and mashed potatoes and gravy. That&amp;#039;s what Johnny liked, the fried stuff. He doesn&amp;#039;t eat that anymore. He&amp;#039;s not into Southern cooking anymore, but he used to be. But the point I&amp;#039;m makin&amp;#039; is this: They always portray Johnny as being poor when he was growing up. That&amp;#039;s just not true.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Put it this way,&amp;quot; Wallace said. &amp;quot;We didn&amp;#039;t know we were poor.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;We weren&amp;#039;t poor,&amp;quot; insisted Bobbie, strident, wagging a crooked finger. &amp;quot;I just had to be verycareful with our money.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;There wasn&amp;#039;t as much stuff to buy back then, neither,&amp;quot; Wallace said, trying to make peace. &amp;quot;We lived in a nice house, and our children dressed nicely. I made sure that they were always clean. I feel a little resentment when I hear people saying that Johnny was poor. He wasn&amp;#039;t. He just came from a background where there was no extra money.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Modest,&amp;quot; clarified Wallace. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s right,&amp;quot; agreed Bobbie. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ll tell you a little story,&amp;quot; Wallace said. &amp;quot;One time we were in Georgia. We had a little money by then. I had started my own business with a partner, consulting at the mills. The family went into this restaurant, and we sat down and looked at the menu, and then I told them we had to leave. And Johnny didn&amp;#039;t understand that.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;He was a little embarrassed,&amp;quot; Bobbie said. &amp;quot;We looked at the menu, and we couldn&amp;#039;t afford the prices. So yes, we struggled a little. John, he struggled, too.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;He hasn&amp;#039;t always been the success he is now,&amp;quot; Bobbie said earnestly. Later, she would send me on my way with a homemade strawberry icebox pie. To get to Elizabeth andJohn Edwards&amp;#039;snew house, fifteen minutes outside of Chapel Hill, you take a rural road through the countryside -- past farms and cows and modest houses and also a couple of high-priced subdivisions -- until you get to Big Valley Auto Repair. Out front is the requisite collection of disabled vehicles. A big sign on the fence urges, GO RUDY GIULIANI 2008. Across the road is an ordinary mailbox. A new asphalt driveway winds through 102 wooded acres (which, according to a story this winter in the Raleigh News &amp;amp;amp; Observer, the Edwardses first spotted on the Internet, valued for tax purposes at $1.1 million in 2003), opening up at last into a large field of red clay and grass, and in the middle distance, the house that critics have called &amp;quot;Uncle John&amp;#039;s Cabin.&amp;quot; It is an oddly constructed affair, more of a compound than a house, a series of attached buildings arranged into a straight line, like a strip mall in the middle of a forest clearing, anchored at one end by the five-bedroom, neoplantation-design house, and then a long, enclosed walkway constructed to look like a series of small outbuildings, leading at last to a huge red-barn-looking thing known to the family, appropriately, as &amp;quot;the Barn.&amp;quot; Inside is the full basketball court, an &amp;quot;in-law&amp;quot; apartment, a stage, a room designated &amp;quot;John&amp;#039;s Lounge,&amp;quot; and a squash court, this last touch a Valentine&amp;#039;s present to Elizabeth.  For the record, the main living section of the house, according to the News &amp;amp;amp; Observer, is 10,778 square feet and has a taxable value of $3.1 million. The rest -- the walkway, which is said to be lined with family and political photographs (2,200 square feet), the Barn (6,336 square feet), a roofed-in pool, and several garages -- probably doesn&amp;#039;t quite add up to the reported square footage. &amp;quot;There have been reports that there&amp;#039;s a guest cottage for Cate, which I&amp;#039;ve been looking for and haven&amp;#039;t found yet,&amp;quot; Elizabeth Edwards will later say. &amp;quot;The [28,800-square-foot] number is slightly wrong but not enough wrong that I&amp;#039;m going to quibble. I don&amp;#039;t gain anything by that argument. Whether it&amp;#039;s an error or not, the gym is something we could afford to do and that I really desperately wanted to do for John. He&amp;#039;s always wanted a basketball court. Every kid who ever grew up in North Carolina has exactly the same dream. So it&amp;#039;s just -- you let it go. We don&amp;#039;t have jewelry. We don&amp;#039;t have fancy cars. What matters to us is home. You hope people will concentrate on the stuff that&amp;#039;s important.&amp;quot;  The day was bright but not sunny, in the way of springtime in North Carolina. The air was heavy; another rainstorm was due. A lone workman blew grass cuttings off the porch. The front door to the house was unlocked.  Elizabeth Anania Edwards was in the kitchen, rinsing a glass in the sink. She&amp;#039;d just returned from tests at the doctor. Elizabeth was diagnosed with breast cancer the day after the general election of 2004; she has recently been diagnosed with a recurrence in the form of incurable cancer that has spread to her bones. After taking the time to find a vase for the lilies I&amp;#039;d brought, she ushered me over to the seating area. The Edwardses have been living here officially since last August; the house has retained its crisp and woody new-home smell. As is popular these days in American suburbs, it has an open-floor plan, with the kitchen and dining and living rooms arranged all together into a great room, this one blown up to fairy-tale proportions, with a three-story ceiling, a dinner table long enough to seat King Arthur&amp;#039;s court, and a massive but tasteful stone wall with an oddly small, ecoconscious fireplace. Long before they entered politics, the Edwardses&amp;#039; house was always the place where all the kids congregated; Elizabeth was the one who fed the neighborhood (except for Sundays, when John cooked pancakes). For more than a year after Wade died, a bunch of his friends from school continued to come to dinner every Tuesday night. And so it goes now with the multitude of friends of their second generation of kids, Emma Claire and Jack, nine and seven, to whom Elizabeth gave birth at the improbable ages of forty-eight and fifty. Elizabeth made herself comfortable on an overstuffed floral sofa. She wore no makeup; she was dressed in a lived-in sweater and comfy soccer-mom sweats. On her feet, which she pulled up beside herself on the cushion, were a pair of well-worn suede sandals that might have been Birkenstocks. Her toenails were unpedicured; her hair, unlike her husband&amp;#039;s, seemed brittle. &amp;quot;This period of time is actually the hardest,&amp;quot; she said. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t know yet whether the medication I&amp;#039;m taking is going to be effective for me. After I know, hopefully, that it&amp;#039;s effective, then I&amp;#039;ll be able to relax and just, you know, let it play its course.&amp;quot;  The first time John Edwards laid eyes on Elizabeth was in Civil Procedure, on his first day of law school at UNC Chapel Hill. &amp;quot;The teacher came in, and he called on some guy, starts quizzing him about a case,&amp;quot; Edwards will later recall. &amp;quot;None of us had any idea what was up. And the guy couldn&amp;#039;t answer any questions. And the teacher, like, humiliated him: &amp;#039;How can you not know that? Did you even read the case? Bla di bla di bla.&amp;#039; Finally, he let the guy sit down. And he was going in alphabetical order. The first guy&amp;#039;s name was Allen, I think. And Elizabeth was second, Elizabeth Anania.  &amp;quot;And she was a star. He called on her, and she answered all the questions. He loved her. She went on for a few minutes, what have you. And then the teacher, he says, &amp;#039;All right, since Anania and I understand it, I&amp;#039;m gonna go to the board now and explain this case to the rest of you.&amp;#039; And he goes to the board and starts writing all this stuff up. And I couldn&amp;#039;t make any sense out of what he was saying. I&amp;#039;m just looking up at him, thinking, Am I this stupid? How can I not understand what this guy is talking about?Finally he finished. And he turns around, like, belligerently, and he says, &amp;#039;All right, I&amp;#039;m ready to go to the next case. Any more questions about this one?&amp;#039; And of course nobody would dare ask a question. Except Elizabeth. She raised her hand. And he said, &amp;#039;Yes, Anania?&amp;#039;  &amp;quot;And she said, &amp;#039;I just think you should know that all that stuff you wrote on the board -- it&amp;#039;s about as clear as mud.&amp;#039;  &amp;quot;At that moment, Elizabeth attained hero status in that class. That&amp;#039;s all anybody could talk about.&amp;quot; Sitting in her place at home on the sofa, Elizabeth seemed very much that woman -- a no-nonsense Navy brat with sparkling blue eyes who grew up all over the world, who went to grad school to study literature before turning to the law because jobs were easier to find. She is a woman who prefers to celebrate her wedding anniversary every year at a Wendy&amp;#039;s, just as she did the first. A woman who notes, without prompting, that she is four years older than her husband. A woman who, in the mode of the classic housewife, one evening opened the front door to her house in Washington, D. C., to find Hillary Clinton on the front stoop, having been invited by John for dinner, something he had neglected to mention. (They&amp;#039;d been traveling. She pulled out the only fresh food she had, a piece of salmon, a lemon, and a head of cabbage. &amp;quot;A whole head of cabbage for three people. An immense amount of cabbage,&amp;quot; she laughed.)  Upon meeting John for the first time, Elizabeth said, &amp;quot;My impression was that he was quiet and that he was clearly country. He wore shirts that had this sort of western yoking on them and those little pearlized buttons.&amp;quot; John persisted; it helped when she came down with a contagious rash on her face and couldn&amp;#039;t go to school. He brought her the class notes and also flowers and little presents. In time, a romance grew. &amp;quot;I was sitting at a table in the library, and this guy said something about John, sort of how he was a bumpkin or something. And I thought, You have no idea. You don&amp;#039;t see him. At all. I remember he went to Mardi Gras right after exams, right before we started really dating. And it was clear, everything he was doing was the first time he&amp;#039;d done it. There was a wonder about him. The fact that he could still hold on to wonder, that he was smart as a whip, that&amp;#039;s what I found amazing. He was and is one of the most focused human beings I&amp;#039;ve ever met. It&amp;#039;s what allowed him to learn. Like in his cases, for instance, he had to learn medicine, basically, in order to cross-examine doctors. He had to learn engineering to cross-examine engineers. You could see back then that he had all the skills he needed to be able to do whatever he wanted to do in life. The question was, for him, just being able to see big enough. Because the world from which he&amp;#039;d come, you know -- at first, he thought going to law school was the biggest thing that he was ever going to accomplish. After that, each step he took was a step farther than he ever thought he could go. And I just thought, you know, as a partner, as a life partner, my job should be to make certain that whatever he could do, he did do.&amp;quot; Sitting across from her, in my own large and comfy overstuffed chair, I told her what I&amp;#039;d heard a lot, especially from my own wife. &amp;quot;People don&amp;#039;t understand, with your health the way it is, how John could keep running for president.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;You don&amp;#039;t hear that from people who have cancer, or have someone close to them with cancer,&amp;quot; Elizabeth said. &amp;quot;They say, My mother had cancer or my husband had cancer or I have cancer, and I would do the same thing you&amp;#039;re doing. It&amp;#039;s almost universal. John listened to me. He waited for me to tell him what I wanted. I think he was probably relieved that I said what I said, honestly, but he waited for me to say it. He is respecting my wishes by staying in the race. &amp;quot;I read something posted online,&amp;quot; she continued. &amp;quot;It said, &amp;#039;Live until you die.&amp;#039; That&amp;#039;s what we&amp;#039;re choosing to do. Both of us are probably more somber, at least in this intervening period where we just don&amp;#039;t know yet about how well the medicines are working. We&amp;#039;re more serious, you know. If he&amp;#039;s prone to cry, he doesn&amp;#039;t do it when I&amp;#039;m around. But I sometimes do it when he&amp;#039;s around, because it&amp;#039;s scary. But he&amp;#039;s, you know, he&amp;#039;s really supportive, and that does make it easier for me. The last bout, when we were at Sloan-Kettering getting a checkup, John started quizzing the doctor about things. And the doctor told John, &amp;#039;You have the mind of a medical researcher.&amp;#039; And that gave me great comfort. It meant that I did not have to let all that stuff fill up my own head. I could let it fill up his head -- somebody else to carry the burden. &amp;quot;The kids have twenty more days until vacation, and then we&amp;#039;ll start doing more things this summer. We&amp;#039;re going to take them out of school next year, and they&amp;#039;ll go with us as we campaign. They&amp;#039;ll have a tutor. We&amp;#039;ll be together. I&amp;#039;m gonna mix it up. I&amp;#039;m going to do some campaigning, and we&amp;#039;re going to have some fun, too. The kids want to go to Disney World, and I&amp;#039;m going to do that because, you know, I&amp;#039;m liable to die before I want to, before they want me to. One of the bad things about this disease is I have a lot planned I want to do, and I&amp;#039;m not going to get to do it all. I want them to think back on the times we had as magical.&amp;quot;  Another day, another white minivan. Edwards and I were in our same seats.  Our party was traveling northeast on New York Avenue in Washington, D. C., going from a gathering of machinists near the Capitol dome to a gathering of teachers in the Maryland suburb of Silver Spring. Kornblau, the communications guy, was in the way back, along with Dave Medina, thirty-eight, Edwards&amp;#039;s political director. John Davis, thirty, the traveling chief of staff, was riding shotgun. At one point, Davis looked out the window wistfully and said, &amp;quot;If you go down that street about ten blocks, that&amp;#039;s where I live.&amp;quot;  Late May, and Edwards was leading all Democrats in Iowa. Yet even as he was lauded for having the most concrete ideas in the race (his detailed plans for universal health care have nudged Clinton and Obama to unveil their own, with lesser success), Edwards was taking a beating in the press. The two $400 Beverly Hills haircuts that were mistakenly charged to the campaign, his yearlong employment at a New York hedge fund, the revelation that he took large fees for speaking engagements -- all of it has been drowning out his message.  &amp;quot;They&amp;#039;re calling you a hypocrite,&amp;quot; I said. Edwards looked at me, kind of annoyed, kind of resigned. &amp;quot;The truth about me is that I come from a very normal background. Early in our marriage, Elizabeth and I had very normal lives. We got financially successful because I won a bunch of cases. So we had money far beyond what we would ever have expected to have. And I think that part of our life, the financial life, is pretty privileged. You know, that house you went to is a really nice house. But I don&amp;#039;t think either one of us has believed that anything&amp;#039;s changed about us.  &amp;quot;Yes, of course, having money, having people around me, being able to buy a nicer shirt or whatever without having to worry about it, or going to dinner and not having to worry about it, that&amp;#039;s all true, that has changed. But I don&amp;#039;t think it changes anything about me as a person. The people who are critical, well, they don&amp;#039;t know me, they&amp;#039;ve never been around me. They don&amp;#039;t know me personally. That&amp;#039;s what I really believe is the truth.  &amp;quot;Because of the background I come from, I always feel a personal connection with people who are struggling. How can I not? I think if you were to look at the arc of my life, and everyone&amp;#039;s life has an arc, we all have our arcs, you would find that mine has been about -- at least, I like to think it&amp;#039;s been about -- standing up for the little guy. And that obviously includes the poor and disenfranchised. I think that&amp;#039;s always been with me. Even as a child I wanted to be a lawyer to help people. My mother&amp;#039;s got an essay I wrote when I was in elementary school. It&amp;#039;s all about that, however naive. &amp;quot;After the election of 2004, you know, when Elizabeth got diagnosed with cancer, I spent a lot of time sitting beside her in hospital rooms while she got chemo. She was largely out of it, &amp;#039;cause they would also sedate her, so I had a lot of time to think. I thought a lot about what I would want to do: Did I really want to be president? What would I do if I were elected? And I finally came to the conclusion that, you know, that we&amp;#039;d been really fortunate so far, that I wanted the rest of my life to be about service. Probably the best way to do it was to try to become president.&amp;quot; With that, the minivan entered the driveway of the National Labor College, and Edwards buttoned the top button of his shirt, tightened his tie.  &amp;quot;So David,&amp;quot; he said to Medina, &amp;quot;you&amp;#039;re suggesting a shorter speech here?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Dodd and Biden spoke yesterday. People said they went too long.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;The problem is, they have lots of reps from New York and Chicago,&amp;quot; Edwards said.  &amp;quot;Lots of fans of Hillary and Obama,&amp;quot; David said gravely. Then Edwards stepped down from the protective bubble of the white minivan and headed for the next speech. He had a lot more people to win over. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a3201/edwardsgothic0807/>