OH! MADAME FIRST LADY!

By LEON JAROFF

"Gaston was different. When she tried slipping into bed wearing underpants, a T shirt, socks and a sweatshirt with a hood, he clicked on the light and gently told her she could not come to bed like that. He loved her body, she had beautiful breasts, he told her softly while she cried. He wanted to please her."

In any steamy romance novel, these slightly titillating words would cause scarcely a ripple. But in West Virginia last week, they and other passages in a newly published book created a political tsunami. For "Gaston" is Democratic Governor Gaston Caperton; and the object of his beneficence was his wife Rachael Worby, conductor of the Wheeling Symphony Orchestra, leader of Carnegie Hall's young people's concerts and, beyond any doubt, the most controversial first lady in the state's history.

The disclosures appear in Divided Lives (Simon & Schuster; $23), by a close friend of Worby's, Washington Post reporter Elsa Walsh, who set out to penetrate the ambivalences of three accomplished women as they struggle to balance their professional and private lives. Besides conductor Worby, the book includes chapters on ABC television personality Meredith Vieira and Dr. Alison Estabrook, chief of breast surgery at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in Manhattan. But it was the Worby chapter that provoked its own backlash last week, not only because of Worby's frank discussion of her sexual history (and the tattoo emblazoned on her upper right thigh), but because she demystifies the role of first lady for women of ambition in the late 20th century. "I can only assume that the laying bare of my own life will ... help open doors to other women which might otherwise remain closed,'' Worby told reporters last week.

At least publicly, the Governor has stoutly -- and apparently joyously -- defended his wife. "Rachael has always been what she is, and that's what I love about her," he told reporters. "She is a gutsy, courageous, outspoken person." Some of his constituents took a different view. "She's a disgrace to West Virginia," huffed a woman during a lunch break in Huntington last week. "She should leave her sex life private. Everything she has done is just to draw attention to her."

Married to Caperton in 1990, Worby seemed ill-fitted to the role from the start. An outsider from New York in a rural state, distressed that her new role was hobbling her career in music, she pined for the cultural environment of Manhattan, where she maintains an apartment. She sought a conducting job in Little Rock, Arkansas, but lost out when some board members attributed her success with the Wheeling Symphony to her marriage to the Governor. Walsh recounts how Worby "insisted to me for nearly a year that she felt loved and embraced as the first lady of West Virginia before breaking down and admitting that she actually cried half the time during that period, almost bereft, feeling deeply alone and friendless ... Even after she acknowledged her life was less than the fairy tale she presented to the public, Rachael worried that her comments might reflect negatively on Gaston.''

Worby brought many of her problems on herself. She raised eyebrows by sitting in the Governor's lap at a West Virginia football game; she was accused (perhaps unfairly) of kicking a state trooper during a helicopter trip and of cursing another when she missed a phone call. Speaking before a group of gifted high school students, she called Bob Dole "an idiot on every subject.'' At political appearances she looked-and was-unhappy, eager to get back to her musical activities and seemingly unconcerned that she was fast becoming a political liability.

Kicking off a well-intended literacy drive, she offended West Virginians' pride by stating that while shopping she often had to help others read food labels. She said that half a million of the state's residents are functionally illiterate; according to the Department of Education, only 200,000 fit that description. Her typical all-black attire, along with ponytail and multiple ear ornaments, seemed quite un-first ladylike.

Even Worby's accomplishments have aroused resentment. Although she was credited with making the Wheeling Symphony into a highly respected organization and drawing as many as 25,000 spectators to its annual Fourth of July concert, she was criticized for undiplomatically severing some local musicians and hiring others from out of state. And some residents griped that in a state with one of the highest unemployment rates and lowest per-capita incomes, it was difficult for many people to relate to her passion for classical music.

Yet Worby all along has had defenders who value what she brings to the state. "Like a bird,'' former Charleston Gazette columnist Don Marsh wrote in 1991, "she is too vivid; her color is too bright." Added a recent Gazette editorial: "In all her plumage, she's a conspicuous member of West Virginia's ornithology ... Undoubtedly, she will continue to draw barrages. But wouldn't it be dull without her?"

--Reported by Dave Foertsch/Huntington and Julie Grace/Chicago

With reporting by DAVE FOERTSCH/HUNTINGTON AND JULIE GRACE/CHICAGO