October 16, 1901
Diary—
Today I miss my Auntie Bye’s joyous home in New York City, right at the corner of 62nd and Madison, and the time we shared there. I miss it even though she and her husband, Cowles, now live nearby on N Street and I am often at their home, basking in Bye’s extensive and well-appointed library and drinking tea. Today I craved an afternoon tea, but when I went about getting a pot for myself, Stepmother insisted that I take it up to my room. Never mind that my room is a dreadful mess and no place for a proper English-style tea, taken like Bye taught me, with piping hot Earl Grey and plenty of buttery, paper-thin bread. I should have expected that the volume of rules surrounding me would only grow once we took up residence in the White House. I can’t stand for them, though. I am positively allergic to discipline. I think I have mentioned that my aim is to eat up the world. Having a decent tea is part of that.
Perhaps the slew of rules are partly because the last time the Roosevelts took Washington by storm, four years ago when Father became Assistant Secretary of the Navy, poor Alice proved to be too much storm for her family to handle. I would spend all day on my bicycle, riding the hills of Washington with my feet up on the handlebars. I broke my curfew more times than I could possibly count. I had my secret club of boys, and we ran riot all over and under and through. Usually I led them in the mischief, the little tomboy hellion that I was. Once I concocted a plan to get my friend Thomas in the house without my parents knowing. I gave him one of my old dresses, some girl’s shoes, a hat, and gloves. That evening he came to the door dressed in my cast-offs and tried to gain entry as a girl. He said his name was Estella. It was harmless fun, but the poor thing didn’t fool the housekeeper (who recognized the dress she’d laundered for years, of course—I’ve never had many of them) and then all hell broke loose. Father even called me a guttersnipe (the nerve!), which was a real slap in the face. So the day after my birthday he and Edith shipped me off to Bye’s house in New York, despite my pleas to stay. As much as I don’t like Father telling me what to do, I hated the idea of the rest of my family together without me—it validated, to me and the rest of the world, the notion that I’m only halfway part of the Roosevelt clan. There was no changing his mind, though, and poor Alice was cast out.
Life at Bye’s was wonderful, though. I am certain that if Bye were a man, she would be president and not my father. I have always felt warm and safe and loved in her home, which is hospitable, refined, and always full of great and lively minds. Bye always calls me “Alice” when the rest of my family will not. (To my father I’m never “Alice,” but “Sister” and “Sissy.” He’ll use any nickname to avoid uttering my name, which is also the name of my late mother, Alice Lee.) Bye took me in as an infant, and I know it broke her heart to give me back to my family at the tender age of three. I suppose it broke mine too, but I don’t remember it. Every time we’ve parted since, even for only a few days, I feel a wrenching in my chest. I keep a letter from Bye in my jewel box, which reads “Remember, my blue-eyed darling, if you are very unhappy you can always come back to me.” It gives me some comfort when I’m in the storm of a dark mood.
Now I must go, for I hear Eli Yale making a fuss in the Conservatory, and I want to make myself scarce in case the maids complain about his droppings again.
To Thine Own Self Be True,
Alice
I stopped reading for a second to think. Reading Alice’s diary did feel like talking to someone. It’ll be like having an imaginary older sister. I’d always wanted one; Harrison was as close as I got. Maybe Alice could be something like my First-Daughter mentor—even if she lived in the olden days so her diary would not be giving me tips on decoding flirty texts or jeans shopping. Alice seems supercool. I flipped back to the entry in which she sneaked in her friend, “Estella.” I laughed out loud, rereading it. Did Alice really think she could fool someone by making her guy friend wear a dress? Security must have been very different back then. I wonder if the Roosevelt White House had armed Marine sentries as doormen.
Sneaking in Thomas got Alice shipped off to her aunt’s house. I’ve been shipped off too—I spent much of the campaign living at Harrison’s. I love him and Max, and their house in Madison is always full of music and delicious food and happiness. Staying with them in Wisconsin wasn’t a bad way to live, but it was strange to be away from my parents so much. At least my dad made sure to call me every single night, and sometimes we Skyped while watching our favorite dance-competition show. Dad couldn’t help it that the grant meant he had to start up his new lab right away. But sometimes I wondered—why wasn’t I as important as the grant? I needed him then, especially as my mom closed in on the presidency.
It was getting late—the White House was as quiet and still as it ever got—but I couldn’t put the diary away for the night. I flipped to the next entry.
November 14, 1901
Diary—
At long last I’ve settled into life as a First Daughter, and I find it quite to my liking. I’ve reacquainted myself with some old Washingtonian friends. Our gang is called the Gooey Brotherhood of Slimy Slopers, quite a juvenile nonsense name, but I am rather fond of it. We all gather at Bye’s for meetings. I’m lucky to have her, for it’s very difficult to entertain at the White House. I lack a sitting room, and I am only allowed to entertain in the Green or Red rooms. They are in full view of all of the staff, not to mention my five siblings and parents. It’s like throwing a party in a fishbowl. So we go to Bye’s refuge and meet in her parlor, where she holds such very intellectual salons for her friends. We Slopers do discuss literature and great ideas, but also try out all the new dances. The other day I taught my friends the hootchy-kootchy, which I first encountered when helping my father open the Buffalo Exposition. There I, totally transfixed, watched a troupe of female dancers swaying their hips in unison, as their arms moved in a serpentine manner above their heads. Edith clucked her tongue next to me, but I studied the scandalous steps and started practicing them in my bedroom when I got back home. I am quite the dancer, bum legs and all.
When I’m back at the White House, so much of my time now is spent with Stepmother making arrangements for my coming-out ball. I am enchanted by the prospect of a White House debut. It will be the most fabulous, glorious debutante ball Washington has ever seen, and loads better than any in New York. There may be many girls richer than I am, but none of them can have their debuts at the residence of the president. Stepmother just today arranged for Belle Hagner, party planner extraordinaire, to help us with all of the arrangements. Now I am about to make a list of all that I must have, so I can present her with a list of my essentials tomorrow. I know I am asking for the moon, but I am the First Daughter so quite frankly I do think that I am entitled to it.
To Thine Own Self Be True,
Alice
November 28, 1901
Diary—
I have an introduction to make to you! I have a new playmate in the White House. I’ve recently acquired a lovely little green garter snake, whom I have christened “Emily Spinach.” Emily in honor of my aunt Emily, because both are unusually long and thin, like string beans. Spinach, naturally, because of my dear snake’s bright green color. The endlessly entertaining Emily Spinach loves to wrap herself around my arm. She distinguishes me from your average girl, who would run away in fear of a snake and not wear it around her neck like a scarf or let its little flicking tongue lick her elbow gloves. I’ve had so much fun “introducing” her to guests of the White House. One visitor was so shocked and frightened upon seeing me wandering the White House with Emily looped over my shoulder that she fainted and had to be revived with smelling salts. How silly—Emily’s just a harmless snake! (You can imagine my stepmother’s reaction.) They tried to make me get rid of her, but I pitched a fit. I don’t see what the issue is. When I’m not bringing Emily around the house for socializing, she happily stays in a little stocking box in my room. It’s
not as though I let her slither free through the East Room or the dining areas. Well, sometimes I do bring her around to parties, but I keep her tucked in my purse.
Although my father disapproves of how I am “deliberately trying to shock with that little snake,” nobody is more of a champion of wildlife than him. Thanks to that, I know that there is little risk of me being forced to dispose of Emily Spinach. My father will even play with her too, on the rare occasions that he is home and not working. Then he’ll go on wild tangents and tell me tales of buffaloes and bears and elk and the other beasts he’s encountered out west. One day I wandered into his office with Emily on my arm as he was meeting with his journalist friend Mr. Wister. Mr. Wister was quite taken aback by my little snake and me, but my father simply said, “I can either run the country or I can control Alice, but I can’t possibly do both.” Emily and I laughed. Father picks his battles well.
To Thine Own Self Be True,
Alice
Chapter 5
Reading Alice’s weird, old-timey cursive was a challenge, so I only made it through two more entries before I decided to stop for the night. Alice was incredible. How come I haven’t heard more about her before this? The book I’d read on First Kids never talked about Alice, but I guess that’s because it started with the Kennedys. I slid from my bedspread to my rug, where the handkerchief, cigarettes, and postcards were strewn, to examine the pictures again. One more time, I reread the entry about sliding down the stairways on tray tables from the kitchen. Inauguration of Fun. Picturing that scene made me giggle. 1600 probably would be more fun if I had siblings, like Alice had, or at least some cousins. My whole life I’ve felt cheated that I’m an only child. There has never been a kid table at Calloway/Rhodes family holiday meals because I’m the only kid in the clan. Period. Harrison tried to make me feel better once by saying, “It’s okay—your dad and I are immature, anyway. Remember this, Audrey: You’re only young once, but you can be immature forever.” Reminds me of Alice’s comment about eternal youth and arrested development.
It was almost midnight, but I was too wired to sleep. I opened the door to my room slowly. Maybe I don’t need to feel like a prisoner in my room. Alice certainly didn’t. I strolled through the quiet, dark halls, triggering on lights wherever I went—1600 has motion sensors to turn off lights in unused rooms as part of its green initiative. I passed a guard or two as I made my way to the lower level, waving and hurrying ahead before they could ask me where I was going. I bet they thought it was a midnight cookie run.
I skipped the halls as I headed downstairs, crossing my fingers that the door to the bowling alley wasn’t locked. It wasn’t, so I walked in and plopped down on the floor to unlace my sneakers. “This is my version of tray sledding, I guess,” I muttered. The pins were all lined up at the far end of the lane, as if they’d been waiting for me to wander in to play. I grabbed a ball and sent it rumbling toward the pins. I slid around on the waxed wood floor in my socks, watching as the ball inched down the lane. Gutter ball.
“I’m just warming up!” I called to the empty room. I threw another ball and managed to hit three. I slid down the lane to the pins and reset them (if the lane had an automatic resetting thing like Elsie’s Bowling back home, it wasn’t turned on). Some security guy was probably watching me via closed-circuit TV somewhere, laughing hysterically. I craned my neck to look around for a security camera. Not finding one, I twirled around, waving at all corners. I danced around in what I felt the hootchy-kootchy should be as I made my way back to the start of the lane. “This one’s for you, overnight-shift guard!” I took a running start and lobbed another ball down the lane. It struck five pins with a satisfying thwack. “Sweet!” I jumped up and thrust my fist in the air. I dedicated my next attempt to Nixon, since he was the president who put in a bowling alley.
I kept bowling until my right arm and wrist ached. I plopped down in the middle of the single lane and stretched out, staring at the ceiling. I checked my watch, and it was almost two in the morning. I reset the pins one last time, because I felt bad leaving the alley in disarray for the cleaning people.
I headed up to the third floor, to the game room. I flipped on the lights and walked over to the foosball table, figuring out pretty quickly that it’s awfully hard to play foosball alone. I spun the knob on one side and tried running over to the opposite, but all I succeeded in was jabbing myself in the ribs with a handle. I decided to pass on table hockey. Disappointed, I left and walked into the Solarium. I approached the outside door, wanting to step out on the Promenade and take in the Washington night sky. But I wasn’t allowed to go out there at night, and I’d started to get sleepy. Skipping back to my room, I thought it wasn’t quite racing stilts and bicycles through the first floor, but Alice would’ve approved if she could’ve seen me having fun tonight. If I wasn’t eating up the world at least I was nibbling it.
After breakfast the next morning, I settled in the Solarium with the journal, my laptop, and a fresh thermos of tea. I started researching Teddy Roosevelt online. He was the twenty-sixth president, known for something called progressive reform and conservation. And teddy bears were named after him. Alice was his oldest daughter, a wild child who moved into the White House as a teenager. That surprised me—given the way Alice talked and her stunts like tray-sliding and pet-snake wrangling, she seemed a little younger. But, she was living in a different era. Or maybe Alice was on to something? Maybe when you find yourself cooped up in “the crown jewel of the Federal prison system,” as President Truman had called it (Harrison told me that in an e-mail), the only way to stay sane and entertained is by being a little crazy. Eccentric. Alice’s life in the White House didn’t sound boring at all so far, unlike mine.
I went online to start researching more about Alice’s life, but my fingers froze in midair as I was about to type in her name. What will the fun be of reading Alice’s diary if I already know what happened to her? That would spoil all the secrets, and Alice already seemed like the kind of girl who’d have loads of juicy secrets. I decided right then that I wasn’t going to do any more Alice research—at least not until I’d read the whole journal.
I shut my laptop. I was dying to know what happened with Alice’s big debutante ball thingy. Did she get everything she wanted? I picked up the journal to find out firsthand.
December 13, 1901
Diary—
I took a break from the debut planning today for a lengthy pillow fight with my siblings. Kermit started it, whacking Ethel with a heavy down pillow as she came out of her bedroom. Those two tend to be at each other’s throats. Soon we were all in the fray, winding up in the attic wing with feathers raining down on us. When the fat pillows had turned thin, Ethel suggested that we settle scores by racing stilts and bicycles. I beat them all on my trusty stilts. I had a leg up, literally, because of my years with those braces.
It felt strange to wander down to the first floor after those activities and make debut arrangements. Of course I am excited to enter society. Yet it’s tinged bittersweet, especially for me as the oldest in the family. I certainly hope a debuted young lady can still partake in an attic pillow fight, now and then. Then again, when have I ever concerned myself with the rules?
I was still flushed, with my hair falling out of my bun, and Belle Hagner asked if I intended to appear like such a “ragamuffin” in society. I rolled my eyes until Edith reprimanded me for my attitude. She and I have been battling about the specific plans for my party. Despite being the child of a World Leader, Rough Rider, Master of the Bully Pulpit, I shall not get everything I want. For example: the dance floor. I was told that I had to seek the approval of Congress to get the renovations necessary to make the White House ballroom presentable. I cornered a few congressmen and gave them my very best Auntie Corinne “elbow-in-the-soup” treatment—feigning interest in every boring detail that they told me about their legislation, nodding and blinking my big blue eyes and exclaiming, “Oh!
How absolutely fascinating!” and “Aren’t you just the cleverest chap,” at every chance. (Auntie Corinne was and is the master of faking enthusiasm in otherwise dull social settings. She leans in so close to whomever she is speaking to that her elbow tends to be precariously positioned next to, and almost in, her soup bowl. Hence the term “elbow-in-the-soup” treatment.) Perhaps that sly fox Corinne could have won where I lost, but sadly no money came through for poor Alice’s ball, and we will be having a slapdash linen-crash floor because the ballroom is without a hardwood floor. I find this personally humiliating.
Then there is the issue of refreshments. I begged and pleaded with Stepmother for champagne, which is the drink in fashion. All the girls having their debuts in New York City are serving it. But apparently those stuffy Women’s Christian Temperance Union biddies would drown in disapproval, so we will be serving punch. If they only knew that I have taken to smuggling bottles of whiskey (which I sneak out of the White House stock) into boring dinner parties at teetotaling houses—I hide them in my elbow-length gloves. It’s a great way to garner the attention of my male dinner companions, who are always so very grateful for a surreptitious sip.
My gown makes me excited, though. It’s achingly beautiful: made of pure white taffeta, with a white chiffon overskirt. The bodice is appliquéd with tiny white rosebuds, scores and scores of them embracing my torso. I have a very elegant, very simple diamond pendant necklace. When the light catches it, it takes my breath away. (I will have to stash smelling salts in my elbow gloves, instead of a flask, for that reason.) After the alterations finally were finished, I sneaked the dress up to my room and put it on. Standing in front of my mirror, I got chills. For the first time in ages I didn’t see a homely little tomboy, a knock-kneed girl who spent years of her life in ugly metal braces, but a slender young woman. I looked beautiful, and whether I actually am or it’s simply the magic of this lovely, breathtaking dress—I don’t care. I will always know what I looked like in the mirror right then.
When Audrey Met Alice Page 4