We have little time left in Cuba. I will tour another sugar plantation, attend another ball, and then back to the United States we shall go. I hope Carpenter’s favor travels with me.
To Thine Own Self Be True,
Alice
March 24, 1902
Diary—
I have left the magical island of Cuba in my wake, quite literally. As my ship prepared to leave the port, a crowd of friends that I had made on this bully fun trip came to see me off. After all the others had said their merry good-byes, Edward hung back. We had a few precious moments alone on the boat (I had to wait until Annabelle and the rest of our entourage were busy attending to the luggage). Carpenter seemed as melancholy as I felt, sighing and struggling to keep the lopsided corners of his delightfully masculine mouth from turning ever downward. We stood on a secluded part of the deck, the breeze whipping our hair and the sun shining in our faces. “Here, Miss Roosevelt,” he said, as he pressed a few photographs of himself (in his uniform!) into my palm. “I beg of you to write me, and often.” I said I would, and with “yearning.” I spoke in jest, but I still blushed and so did he. Then it was time for us to set sail, and he disembarked. I retreated to my compartment, where I sobbed pitifully. Janet and Annabelle bid me to come out on deck, but I staunchly refused. I even missed watching us leave the harbor, which I do somewhat regret now. It would’ve been nice to see Cuba fade away on the horizon.
Now, of course, we are near to America. Having been abroad and free, I imagine it won’t be easy to be back under my parents’ roof and abiding by their rules constantly. This trip, plus my excellent performance with the christening of the yacht, should show them that they should let me taste a little more of the world even whilst I’m at home.
To Thine Own Self Be True,
Alice
Chapter 8
I’d been ready to give up on the New York trip—my mom doesn’t flip-flop on saying no to something. Two things made me decide to keep trying: Alice’s diary and a heart-to-heart with Debra. At first, the entry in which Alice bemoaned not being able to go to the coronation had me convinced that so long as I was a First Kid, I wouldn’t be doing much solo travel. But just as Alice’s spirits “rose like a phoenix” (and I knew what that meant, thanks to Harry Potter), so did mine as I read on. Alice managed to get her parents to send her all the way to Cuba! I was not surprised that a First Daughter found love only while she was away from the White House. Quint would be on the New York trip; maybe travel would work the same magic for me. Chugging out of New York Harbor invigorated Alice, and I wanted to chug into it. Or drive, I guess, because you can’t take a boat there from D.C.
Then one night I found myself sitting at the kitchen counter, working on my homework while watching Debra make pancakes for my dinner. Except I couldn’t focus on my French verbs because I was obsessing about two things: the trip and Quint.
“Sweetness, you don’t seem yourself today.” Debra didn’t look up at me but kept stirring a bowl of batter furiously. She poured a cupful onto a sizzling-hot griddle.
At that point, I hadn’t told anyone about my crush on Quint. Which had only been growing. I felt like it was a balloon blowing up inside me, and if it got much bigger, it would cause me to burst. But I shrugged off her question.
“Nuh-uh. Something’s on your mind. I need to hear all about it.” Debra looked up at me and smiled, her twinkling blue eyes full of understanding.
Debra actually listens. “Okay, I’ve got a huge secret, and it’s eating me up inside,” I exclaimed, throwing my arms across the countertop and laying my head down on them in mock exhaustion. “You promise you won’t tell anyone?”
Debra wiped the edge of the bowl on a towel and set both down. “It’s like I went to the other CIA. I know how to keep mum.”
I couldn’t help but grin. “Where to start? Two things are driving me crazy. One, I need to get permission to go on the class trip. And two, I have…” I paused, then squeezed my eyes shut and blurted it out in one breath. “A-massive-crush-on-this-guy-Quint.” It felt so great to tell someone that.
I opened my eyes and looked up at Debra. Her hands were clasped in glee. “Pictures! I need to see some pictures.” So I ran upstairs to grab First Friend Laptop, then pulled up photos of Quint on Facebook to show her.
“Such a cutie! This is so exciting. I bet he likes you too. What boy wouldn’t?” She winked and flipped a few pancakes onto a plate.
“So how do I get permission to go on the trip? That’s my big chance to hang out with Quint. My parents are treating me like I’m a thirteen-year-old baby.”
Debra put the plate in front of me and sat down on her stool across the counter. She furrowed her eyebrows. “Be honest and explain to your parents how important this trip is to you. Promise them that you’ll play by all the rules. I know you’d do that anyway, but they need reassurance. They’re your parents, and they can’t help but worry about their little girl. Even if you’re not so little anymore.”
Debra understood that I wasn’t a kid anymore, at least. I jumped up and ran around the counter to give her a huge hug.
I tried selling my dad on the trip, without success. “It’s too difficult in terms of the security logistics,” he explained. “You’d need more than two agents to go with you, and there would be so many press and paparazzi restrictions. We’re already under fire from Mom’s opponents for travel expenses. It wouldn’t look good.” He suggested we go to Camp David the week of the class trip, if I didn’t want to stay behind in D.C. A consolation trip. Cuba was supposed to be one for Alice. Should I take this offer? Camp David’s nice, but a trip to the Big Apple with my classmates it’s not. Nope!
The following week, my dad needed to attend the opening of a new D.C. charter school and asked me if I’d mind missing classes for a day to come along. My first thought was that opening a school might be sort of like christening a yacht—both were ceremonies to celebrate something new. Although nobody would get to crack a bottle of champagne on a school wall, it could still be fun. And this was a rare opportunity. My dad spends little time in the Kitchen Garden staging First Gent photo ops, or writing children’s books, or even advising my mom. Denise and Susan Pierpont started urging him to take a more active role and amp up his platform: education. “It looks like you’re shirking your First Gentleman responsibilities. We definitely don’t want to start another gender debate,” Denise explained. Added Susan, “I can barely keep up with the requests. We need to start saying yes to at least some.” Dad agreed, begrudgingly, to a few appearances before the holidays, when our whole family would be celebrating on the national stage.
I reported to his official office (separate from his 1600 lab space) in the East Wing around 11:30. Although its name changed from “First Lady’s Office” once we moved in, people still screw up all the time and call it that. But my dad has a pretty good sense of humor about being called a First Lady. “Hi,” I said, stepping into the room. Staffers milled around, like always. They all nodded or waved hello to acknowledge me, then went back to pecking on their laptops.
My dad walked in a few seconds later. “What do I need to know for this event? Who’s running the school? Is it named after a figure I should be familiar with?” The aides circled around him with memos and clipboards. I plopped down in a leather chair and pulled out Great Expectations, which my English class was reading. I remembered Alice writing something about the White House looking like Miss Havisham’s, so she must’ve read it too. I liked thinking of us sharing a book.
“Ready to go, Audrey?” I looked up and saw Nick Appiah, the Director of Policy and Projects for the First Gentleman, standing near the door. My dad, Susan, and a few other aides were already on their way out to the motorcade. “Yeah, sorry.” I threw my book in my bag and headed out, feeling more like an afterthought than usual. When my dad had invited me, somehow I’d thought this visit would be a little more like quality fath
er-daughter time and less like another photo op for which I was the stock family prop.
• • •
The school was on 5th and Florida NE, in a part of D.C. that I had never been in—although I haven’t been in much of D.C., actually. I gazed out the SUV’s window as we rolled through the city, drinking in all the different neighborhoods. We sped down a street with no fewer than four Ethiopian restaurants. Whenever I visit them, Uncle Harrison and Max take me to their favorite place for injera and lentils and honey wine. Well, they have the honey wine and I have water, but Harrison let me take a sip once. The car turned off the restaurant row and onto a street with tons of shoppers picking through stuff lying out on folding tables. I felt jealous of the pedestrians walking around, despite the fact that there was a typical early December chill in the air. I only walk on the Friends campus or the White House grounds.
The redbrick school was shiny, modern, and had tons of windows and skylights. There was a sparse vegetable garden to its left and a playground to its right. “Is this an elementary school?” I asked, looking at the brightly colored play equipment.
“For now. It’ll be K–12 eventually, and already has high-tech science labs and athletic facilities,” Nick answered. “Your dad has such an inspiring science career. We want to highlight that this school will produce future scholars of his level.” Nick always works what sound like campaign talking points into ordinary conversation. Total politician-in-training.
We sat and waited to exit the vehicle. Some members of the press congregated outside, along with school officials and some tiny kids in school uniforms. Finally, we got the go-ahead, and my dad reluctantly put away his tablet. “Let’s go open a school, Audrey.”
As soon as we stepped out, the crowd became a mess of handshakes and introductions and people fawning over the First Gent. I stood off to the side, awkwardly, having total déjà vu of standing outside the circle of Quint and his friends after the assembly. For the longest time, everyone ignored me. I looked down at my pale arms, examining all my freckles. Sometimes the world seemed so far away from me that I needed to do that—stare at my arms, or something—to reassure myself that I was still a part of it. That I hadn’t somehow morphed into a ghost overnight and the reason I float through life by myself isn’t that I’m dead or something. I pinched my forearm, and the skin flashed white, then red. Just checking. Finally Nick must’ve remembered me, and he called me over to meet the school principal.
The small crowd quieted down so my father could give a few opening remarks—“Schools like this are what make our country great, because we invest in our children and the lives of their minds.” I watched my dad, noticing how different it was to see him shmooze a group. His eye contact needed work. My mom’s eyes seem to recognize people even if she’s never laid eyes on them before; she’s a natural crowd-pleaser. Like my dad, I have to work at winning people over or getting their attention.
After Dad raced through his prepared remarks, we headed off on the grand tour. Susan and the principal were in the middle of a passive-aggressive battle of who would lead the group, one constantly stepping in front of the other. My father trailed them with Nick, who was whispering in his ear pertinent information about the school’s features so Dad could compliment them. A couple of reporters and a photographer hovered near them. I lagged behind. The staffer assigned to monitor me obsessively scrolled to read something on her phone whenever we weren’t moving from room to room. I crossed and recrossed my arms over my chest and huffed. I couldn’t imagine Alice being in a situation like this, being ignored by a room full of people.
We headed into the bright and airy new library. A bunch of adorable little kids in spotless uniforms gathered around a young librarian. She was holding a copy of some picture book and smiling nervously. The kids’ eyes widened as our group filed into the room. They were so young that one girl was even sucking on her thumb as she sat cross-legged on the story-time rug.
“I think it’s time for a reading.” Susan grinned at me. “Go ahead, Audrey.” She motioned me toward the seated kids. I’m doing the reading? I was startled for a minute, but another look at the cute kids reassured me. It would be like reading to the kids I used to babysit in St. Paul. They always loved the voices I did for different characters. I bet these kids will love them too. Then all the journalists can go home and write a glowing piece about the charming and poised First Daughter and how much the children of the charter school loved her story-reading skills. Alice visited schools in Cuba as part of her tour, and I bet that was one of the things that convinced her parents that her trips were useful.
Grinning, I walked right up to the librarian and reached for the book. She kept it pressed firmly against her trembling knees. I guess she’s so nervous that she’s freezing up? Poor lady. It must be pretty intimidating to have people from the White House in your workplace. To help her out, I grabbed hold of the book and tried to gently pry it away. She shot me a confused look and held tight to the opposite side. Both still smiling, we started the world’s weirdest book tug-of-war. Everyone stood silently, watching us. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nick whisper to Susan and then quietly start walking over toward me.
“Audrey!” he hissed. “Sit down and let her read!” He motioned to the floor, as though I’m too dumb to understand what “sit down” means.
I clenched my teeth and hissed back, “But then what am I here for?”
Nick softly pleaded, “To listen to the story!”
Shocked, I dropped my half of the book, and the poor librarian almost toppled over. My face burned with irritation, and I sunk to the floor without making eye contact with anyone in the crowd. The librarian started reading in a shaky voice. “Once upon a time, there was a little girl. Her mother told her she could be whatever she dreamed of when she grew up. A dancer. An artist. A doctor. Even the president. That sounded best to the little girl. But when she told all her friends that she wanted to run the country some day, they just laughed and laughed…” Of course they were reading a picture book about my mom. To me.
I glanced up at my dad, to see if he found this whole thing as absurd as I did. He smiled back at me, and the worst part was he looked reassuring. Like he thought I might feel embarrassed by mistakenly thinking that I should be the one reading the book. The people running this thing should be embarrassed, not me! In what universe would treating a thirteen-year-old like a kindergartener not be obnoxious? I sat on the rug and fumed. Every time I heard a camera shutter snap, my mouth set deeper in a frown.
The instant story time was over, I hopped on my feet and made a beeline for the door, even as the rest of the entourage stood around admiring the skylights and lofted reading nooks. “Where are you going?” the phone-obsessed aide asked me.
“None of your business,” I snapped, brushing past her. The reporter looked up from her notepad and watched as I stomped out of the room, still scowling.
“Audrey!” The aide trailed after me into the hallway. “Hold up!” I kept walking down the hallway, breaking into a run as soon as I turned a corner. I pushed open the first door I saw. It led to the pool.
It was a fantastic space—more like an atrium and less like the basement YMCA pool deck where I had taken swimming lessons in Minnesota. The tiles glittered and plantings lined the walls like it was a greenhouse. The humid air smelled fresh and slightly like eucalyptus, with undertones of chlorine. I paused for a moment and inhaled deeply, closing my eyes. The only sound in the room was the soft echo of the waves hitting the pool’s ledge and the slurp of the drain. The sound of the water reminded me of the ocean and Alice’s comment about standing on the deck and feeling so invigorated. Why was Alice’s life so different from mine? She lived at a time when women couldn’t vote but in some ways she seemed so much freer than me. I couldn’t wear a two-piece swimsuit. I couldn’t pick out my own clothes. I couldn’t go on awesome trips. Alice got to grow up in the White House, but I felt like I was
growing back toward the kids on the story-time rug. No—I wasn’t growing backward, but the people in charge of my life were trying to freeze me in childhood like a fly in amber. I had to find some way to stop them.
The staffer who’d been chasing after me barged in. “Audrey! What’s going on?”
I turned toward her and away from the pool. “I needed some space.”
She nodded, not unsympathetically. “Are you okay to go back?”
“Sure.”
“The art room is next.” They better not try to make me finger paint.
• • •
April 13, 1902
Diary—
Life has been a bore since I returned from Cuba. Yet I must have learned something while I was abroad because I am much more willing now to “fulfill my role” as the First Daughter. My father wrote me, saying, “You were of real service down there because you made those people feel that you liked them and took an interest in them, and your presence was accepted as a great compliment.” I think my stepmother worries a smidgen less about my wild behavior. Thus far, it is making daily life in the White House a little more harmonious.
Adding some heft to the idea of Alice as an asset and not a liability, the Ladies’ Home Journal published a most flattering profile of me once I returned. It took up a full page and even featured an illustration of me, which I imagine might be clipped and tacked to the walls of many young girls’ bedrooms. “The typical American girl of good health and sane ideas” was one gushing compliment. Little do they know about my actual degree of sanity. At another point, they called me “gracefully slender.” I chuckle reading that, ruminating both on the gobs of Cuban food I stuffed myself with last month and also those hideous leg braces. After all these years, I swear I still feel them clasping my legs.
I read the article and pored over the illustration—which was beautiful, but really didn’t resemble me. It bore my features, for better or worse, but it was some other, more beautiful, more assured Alice. After I put it down, I took my Spanish white lace mantilla out of my trunk. At first just to run my fingers over the finery, but then something compelled me to put it on. I locked the door, because I would die of embarrassment if Ethel or one of the boys would barge in and see me playing dress-up like a little girl. But no one saw me. I struggled into my best dress (omitting my usual formal undergarments did not make it any easier) and sat in front of my vanity. I tamed my hair in some approximation of the Cuban styles I’d seen, and framed it with the lace dripping from my head onto my shoulders. Then I paraded in front of my mirror, watching the fabric move and marveling at how I looked wearing it.
When Audrey Met Alice Page 8