In one, John Edwards is little more than a late-night TV punch line.

But in the other America, inhabited by North Carolinians such as Claude Neville, the philandering politician and his beleaguered family are not celebrity abstractions but flesh-and-blood neighbors.

"If I see him again, I'll speak nice," said Neville, who lives around the corner from Edwards' $6.7 million compound. "The Bible says you're supposed to forgive."

Edwards famously spoke of two Americans when denouncing the divide between rich and poor. Here there's a different divide - those willing to forgive and those who remain angry at Edwards, 56, for cheating on his cancer-stricken wife, Elizabeth, 60, and putting the Democratic Party's 2008 aspirations at risk. James Protzman, a local liberal blogger and acquaintance of John Edwards', noted another, understandable sentiment: "A lot of people have been saying, 'Can we please move on?' "

That seems unlikely.

The National Enquirer and others have reported that a federal grand jury in Raleigh has convened to weigh whether campaign laws were violated when wealthy Edwards supporters made payments to his lover, Rielle Hunter, to keep her out of the spotlight. The New York Times reported that Edwards is considering acknowledging that he is the father of Hunter's young daughter. The paper also reported that Hunter and the child might be moving to Wilmington, N.C., where the Edwardses have another house.

A letdown

Now, Neville said, he feels betrayed.

"I guess that's the way a lot of people in the neighborhood feel," he said.

Before the sex scandal, there was no North Carolina family quite like the Edwardses, and there is no family quite like them now. No other family, it seems, has been so blessed and so cursed, so loved and shunned. He was the mill-town boy made good, with an intellect that helped him become the state's most dominant trial lawyer.

Some here credit Elizabeth Edwards with ironing out his rough country edges and grooming him for the enviable life they would build together in Country Club Hills, one of Raleigh's toniest neighborhoods.

The idyllic picture would crack in 1996, when their 16-year-old son Wade was killed in a car accident.

Two years later, John Edwards, seeking a higher purpose, triumphed in an out-of-nowhere campaign for the Senate. In 2004, he lost a bid for vice president as John Kerry's running mate. Then Elizabeth Edwards was diagnosed with cancer.

And now, this: a betrayal, and an increasingly messy one, eliciting both fascination and revulsion among the locals - that is, if they still have a stomach for the prurience.

'Icky' business

Said Gary Pearce, a strategist for Edwards' successful Senate run, "A lot of people who didn't like him said, 'I told you so.' And most of the people who were with him have fallen away out of disgust and disappointment."

The feelings of betrayal are particularly prominent in Chapel Hill, the college town where the family moved after Edwards left the Senate in 2005. In some quarters, John and Elizabeth are both being blamed for pressing ahead with his presidential run despite their shared knowledge of the affair: If Edwards had secured the Democratic nomination, they say, the revelation might have meant Republican victory.

Despite the overwhelming atmosphere of social awkwardness, the Edwardses continue to manage their lives and their image here. Much of that life is hidden behind the dense trees and "No Trespassing" signs on their property west of downtown where they live with their two school-age children, Emma Claire and Jack. Cate, the oldest surviving child, graduated last year from Harvard Law School.

Hal Crowther, a local columnist, noted that two Edwards dramas are unfolding. Elizabeth, he said, remains "extremely popular" in town. In May, she released a self-help book and memoir, Resilience, in which she described her spreading cancer and her husband's admission of the affair. She wrote that she was trying to "make room" for her husband to "earn the trust that he squandered."

In August, she opened a 700-square-foot furniture store, Red Window. In the book, she said it was an attempt to gain a little independence. "In this world, I am not John's wife," she wrote. "My name is not in a tabloid. I am Elizabeth buying for a small store in Chapel Hill."

At North Carolina's law school, second-year student Jonathan Jones said he couldn't imagine what John Edwards would do from here.

"I've wondered a couple of times if he could come back to the school," said Jones, 31. "But even going back and being a law professor, there's a certain aspect of being a public figure, and I don't know if he could weather it."