by John Ettorre

The adoring spousal gaze is back in style.

I know this because I saw it in the newspaper not long ago, right there on page A12. One of those pitiable white-collar offenders from the Enron affair had emerged from the courthouse, where the judge only moments before had sentenced him to a long prison term. This soon-to-be jailbird was doing the best he could to affect a jaunty insouciance in the face of just learning that he’d be spending several years in the slammer, and that seemingly half of the American news media were now on hand to record his moment of maximum public humiliation.

The whole thing made me initially feel a little sad for the poor fellow, whatever corporate misdemeanor he might have committed.

A moment later, though, I stopped feeling sorry for him. It was the image of his wife standing next to him that did it for me. Not because she was attractive, though she was, but because of her seeming ignorance of the usual conventions of the post-sentencing march through the media gaggle.

Rather than the usual solemn look we’ve come to expect from spouses in moments such as these, she was actually beaming. She had locked her arms in his, as if to send the signal that the authorities might have to send them both to jail, because she was damn well going to continue to stand by her man, whatever he might have done. But her message of support wasn’t confined merely to body language. Her eyes were also locked on her hubby and her smile was radiant. It was as if she was ducking a rice shower while leaving the church rather than being subjected to shame before millions of people.

Now that’s marital affection, I thought. But my next thought was this: how, precisely, does one come to deserve something like that?

Ordinarily, you would have to be elected to high public office to receive this kind of treatment from your wife. The adoring spousal gaze, after all, is about the only thing found in the job description under "First Lady." There have been several prominent practitioners, but The Gaze was really made famous by Nancy Reagan, who practiced it with such devotion and intensity that it soon earned capital letters as a proper noun.

The Gaze, as raised to a high art by Mrs. Reagan, was an adoring look, frozen on her face as she watched her husband in action, giving a speech, offering jellybeans to Oval Office visitors or just joshing with members of his cabinet. Time Magazine once described The Gaze as "the frozen, doe-eyed stare of adoration that the First Lady would fix on the President whenever she watched him speak."

Okay, so she was a trained Hollywood actress, so you couldn’t be faulted for suspecting that it was all just an act, part of the stagecraft and artifice of a well-plotted presidency. Except that, everything else she did during her life with Ron Reagan proved that the gaze was legitimate. And later pretenders proved her authenticity even more. Hillary Clinton would do her best to feign her own loving gaze—in part because Mrs. Reagan had made it a routinely expected part of the job—but everyone immediately sensed she was faking. Her heart wasn’t really in it.

The spousal gaze is all the more impressive, I think, because of the well known valet effect of marriage. It’s been observed that no man is a hero to his valet—because he sees him warts and all, stripped down to his boxers—so imagine how stripped of spousal illusions most wives are after several years of marriage. They put valets to shame in seeing their man as he really is rather than as he would hope to be seen.

I think the late Mr. Reagan and that Enron jailbird are lucky men. Just once, I’d like to be on the receiving end of one of those loving gazes from my wife. But do I really have to become president or be carted off to jail to achieve it?

Perhaps the Enron guy earned that gaze the old-fashioned way. Maybe he was simply the most devoted husband and father the world has ever seen, the steadiest provider, a constant source of love, affection and encouragement to his wife. Perhaps, despite his unfortunate boo-boo in business, this fellow was a stand-up guy. Maybe that’s what that gaze was really all about. Maybe it was nothing more than spousal payback for years of dutifulness in small matters of the heart.

If so, maybe, just maybe, there’s a lesson in there somewhere for all of us.

John Ettorre is a Cleveland-based writer and editor whose writing has appeared in more than 70 publications. To reach John, send e-mail to: jettorre@voyager.net or call him at (216) 382-6548.