Train Wrecks: McGreevey v. McGreevey
His wife is quite another story. Circumspect and aloof, she almost invariably arrives in court after McGreevey, and unless it’s Oprah or Larry King, she doesn’t utter a word to the press. With a helmet of anchorwoman hair the color of a school bus and a penchant for tailored suits of the Nancy Reagan era, she has spent most days at the trial with her head down, looking alternately bored and peeved.
Rounding out the drama are the supporting cast: John Post, Dina’s patrician, white-haired, mannerly counsel; the theatrical Stephen Haller, the third attorney who has handled McGreevey’s case (Jim parted ways with the first two) and a man who, in the words of one courthouse regular, “can be found in any room where there’s a camera”; and the aforementioned Judge Cassidy, whose general demeanor suggests a ninth-grade social studies teacher continually exasperated by her students’ failure to hand in their book reports on time. Post and Haller have known one another professionally for years. At times, the matchup has taken on the vague air of a vaudeville act. One morning before testimony began, Haller declared his love for Post, and they hugged. “If you hadn’t said you had a cold, I’d have kissed you,” Haller said as they broke apart. “That’s what I was afraid of,” Post replied drolly. (Ba-dum-bum.) Another day, Haller slipped his hand onto Post’s right thigh. Post almost leapt out of his skin. “Better look out, John,” McGreevey smirked from his seat. “It’s catching.”
Of course, not everyone finds the sideshow so appealing. “It’s all just totally unbelievable,” says Arlene Lauer, whose job it is to organize civil cases filed in the courthouse every year. Arlene is one of several gossipy, pillowy women I’ve come to dub The Girls of Civil Procedure during my days wading through the morass that is McGreevey v. McGreevey. Since the case began, more than 18 months ago, the Girls have seen the courthouse turned upside down by the circus playing out inside the courtroom on the ninth floor. At one point the Girls had a pool going over how long the trial would last, but in the end there was no winner: None of them had imagined the freak show would still be running.
“I don’t know,” Arlene remarks to me one day, sitting in her cramped corner cube, reading glasses perched atop her copper-colored bob. “I mean, don’t you think this is all ridiculous?” She shakes her head as she reaches for her ringing phone. “Some people,” she’s saying as she picks up the receiver, “just haven’t got any sense.”
Perhaps not. But what both Jim McGreevey and Dina Matos did have, from the beginning of their unorthodox courtship — he asked her out by having an aide call her to schedule a date — was ambition. And that may help explain how this mess got so, well, messy.
