She also realized that there were two kinds of women in the world: the Eleanors and the Lucys. Violet was an Eleanor and Slim a Lucy, but which one in this time and in this place was Claire? She blushed. Was it possible to be a little bit of both? Franklin was now telling the story about a weekend drive they had taken together, years ago, before she was even born. It kindled a hint of fire in Lucy's warm blue eyes, but it was a flame that sparked only for Franklin. And while she politely engaged her other dinner companions in conversation from time to time, her attention was on FDR and undivided.
Claire leaned over to Harrison to see if he too had fallen under Lucy's spell.
She had developed a sensitivity for reading his moods. But all she picked up tonight was the pleasure he was taking in seeing his great friend buoyant again and almost carefree. It made her smile.
Relieved, Claire picked up the coffeepot to refill Harrison's cup just as he reached over to fill it himself. Their fingers touched and one or the other let them linger lightly for a moment, although they didn't look at one another.
Their closeness to each other had become casual and familiar. But somehow the accidental contact seemed different in this candlelit setting. Tonight when Harrison had leaned over to speak quietly into her ear, a simple act he had done a thousand times before, she could feel his warm breath on the back of her neck and it disquieted her.
Their wineglasses refilled, an unusual occurrence at the White House, Franklin toasted his guest. Anna hesitated but for a moment before lifting her glass. Her eyes met Claire's in a look that said “I'll do whatever I have to do to keep my father well. Whatever it takes,” apparently even if it meant arranging lighthearted evenings with a woman her mother despised.
Claire felt ashamed that she had even questioned her friend's judgment. She appreciated the tremendous risk Anna took when she conspired to bring Lucy into her mother's house, and how crushed Eleanor would be if she knew.
“To bombs and liaisons!” said the president, and they all raised their glasses.
And anyway, Claire thought, sipping her wine, who was she to criticize? How many times had she run interference for Slim and Cyrus? Had she forgotten that it was Slim who had taught her to “take love where you find it”?
When Claire said good night to the president, he hugged even her in a rare embrace, his strong upper body enfolding her from his armless wheelchair, so great was his exuberance.
“It was lovely to meet you, my dear.” Lucy's handshake was wraithlike and fleeting, as if she were a merry ghost they had all dreamed up.
Franklin's gay mood was affecting them all like a third glass of champagne. The festive high accompanied Harrison and Claire out the door and down Roosevelt's private elevator. But when Harrison reached for her elbow to help her into the car, he took it with such force that she thought about making a wisecrack that escorting a lady home was not a contact sport. She didn't because that was a joking-Eleanor thing to say and she was still in the Lucy Mercer moment.
As they sat in the front seat together, Harrison at the wheel, it occurred to Claire that going back to the hotel alone, just the two of them, something they had done hundreds of times before, suddenly felt awkward. Ophelia seldom spent the night at the Willard anymore. She traveled a lot with Eleanor now. Tonight they were in New York for a meeting of the European Children's Refugee Fund along with Mr. Marshall Field IV, who was president of the organization. The two women would be staying over at the apartment Eleanor kept for herself in Greenwich Village.
Harrison seemed to be deep in thought. He drove almost too fast down Pennsylvania Avenue; for once the traffic was unusually light.
Claire broke the silence. “Anna told me tonight that it looks like Stalin will be bringing his daughter to Yalta, too.” The Yalta conference was in February, in less than a fortnight, and the allied leaders were meeting in Russia for crucial talks. Harrison had planned to take Ophelia, but with Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, and Averell Harriman all bringing their daughters, it was turning into a girls’ international slumber party. Ophelia complained that she wanted no part of it, and so Claire was substituted.
“I'm going to call State again tomorrow and see if I can get that itinerary out of them. As I understand it, the Russians keep changing the schedule. February in Russia. Whose idea was that? Do you suppose we'll be dressing for dinner or just dressing to stay warm?” Claire turned to Harrison and whimsically fought off an imaginary chill.
As the car pulled under the canopy of the hotel, the light illuminated Claire's face in the darkness. Harrison was staring at her as if he were seeing her for the first time.
Claire shifted in her seat self-consciously and then moved to her side of the door.
He stiffly handed the keys to the doorman, letting Claire fend for herself, and as they walked to the elevator, he stopped at the desk to check his messages. There were half a dozen. Harrison flipped through them as they rode up in silence. Turning the key in the door to their room, he switched on the ceiling lights as she crossed the living room to relight the fire. Having stirred the flame, she stood warming her back, ready to fix him a nightcap, or take dictation, or whatever would drive away the problem that was obviously distracting him. He hadn't said a word to her since they'd left the White House.
“Shall I put up some coffee for us?” She let her overcoat fall to the couch as she knelt down to pick up the new message that had been slipped under the door. She was unprepared for what happened next. Harrison stepped between her and the door and lifted her by her shoulders. For a crazy minute she couldn't tell if he was drawing her closer or pushing her away.
“I'm going back to the White House. Now.” She wondered what he could have left behind that was making him so upset. “And I'll be working late so I'll just sleep over in the Lincoln Bedroom. Do you understand?”
No, she didn't.
“Anna's sleeping in the Lincoln Bedroom.” Her mouth was inches away from his. She was nodding her head and simultaneously starting to tremble.
“Then I'll take the Rose Room!” His mouth was so close to hers that Claire could almost taste the oysters and bourbon on his lips.
“Good idea. You can keep Mrs. Rutherfurd company,” her voice was as soft as the quiet draft at the whining window. Perhaps if she made light of his unexpected flash of temper, she could put things back together again.
“Are you ill, Harrison? Or is there some danger?”
“Claire.” He released her only to take her face in his hands. The feel of his elegant fingers against her skin made her instinctively want to close her eyes, to relinquish her face to his fingers. She fought an overwhelming urge to let him cradle her face in those hands. She could feel his need like a jolt to her body. She had always thought of him as a patrician tower of strength, something noble and marble. Why was he suddenly acting so human?
And worse, why did she yearn to respond?
She opened her eyes wider to make the room stop spinning.
“I'm not taking you to Yalta!” Harrison had never raised his voice to her. She opened her mouth to speak, bewildered. What was it about tonight that had unleashed this surge of feelings? Claire pedaled back over the entire evening but shook her head blankly.
“Do you understand? I can't.” He released her abruptly.
She tried to read his face for an explanation, but the terrain of his handsome features was as unrevealing as the outside of his diplomatic pouch. He started toward her again, composed himself resolutely, turned, and left. Stunned, she waited until the door closed behind him before she exhaled.
She stood there feeling like a stranded soldier on a battlefield after everyone else had gone home. What had just happened? Numb, Claire walked from the living room into Harrison's bedroom. The gold brushes and combs from his travel set were neatly lined up on top of the highboy, winking at her from the shadows like the old friends they were. She gently fondled the gold handle and boar's bristle. In his haste to leave, he had left them behind.
Claire's head was beginning to pound. She suddenly acknowledged to herself that she longed to reach out for him, smooth away the tight lines in his face and soothe him in his obvious distress. After all, this was the man she worshiped. While she had been with Harry for only three months, she had been by Harrison's side for nearly three years.
Having been through everything together, they had developed their own private telepathy, a shorthand with which they read each other's mind. Why couldn't she read his now? Claire sat down on Harrison's bed, hugging herself with her hands. She was feeling so cold and alone. When the first blue lights of a winter dawn peeked into the room, she was still sitting on the bedspread, puzzling. What was she supposed to do? Maybe she should take Sara back to Chicago and wait for Harry mere.
Harry was her far-away husband, Sara the child she had borne for them all, but Harrison, what was he to her? It finally dawned on her in the glare of clear morning as the alarm-clock buzzer sounded.
He had become her life.
Claire had thought her feelings for him were admiration for one of the world's great leaders. When had it changed? Somewhere after a late-night planning session when she had shed tears on his shoulder over boys lost in battle or another time when they had shared a victory of their own together, a line had been crossed. A forbidden border. If she even thought about what was happening, she had tried to hide it. Even from herself. Evidently he had thought about it too. That would explain tonight. Fuzzily, she rose and walked over to Harrison's mirror, to see herself as he saw her. The statuesque young beauty staring back at her was someone she hardly recognized. In this light, in this mirror, she wasn't Harrison's daughter-in-law, nor was she merely the “other” Mrs. Harrison; she was a sensuous woman in love. Just how long could they both go on pretending?
She heard the key unlock the latch and turned toward the door, half hoping it was the hotel maid, half hoping it wasn't. When a haggard Harrison stood in the door, need and despair etched on his face, her first impulse was to go to him. She stopped herself at the foot of the bed. She had to think. Whatever she did now would change the rest of their lives. All of their lives. The pounding in her head was unrelenting. It was in the middle of the room that they met, each taking a few hesitant steps in order to comfort the other. The love they felt for one another was so intense, it wavered there like a third person in the room. And when she stumbled, exhausted, he did what any gentleman would do. He took her in his arms.
Chapter Ten
Bombs and Liaisons
“To hell with public opinion.”
—Clare Boothe Luce
Their world turned upside down overnight. Roosevelt was dead. The nation fell into such a deep mourning for the man who had led them through three presidential terms and was its Sunday fatherly voice of hope that a communal wail began to rise from one end of the country to the other. The president died in Warm Springs, Georgia, with Lucy Mercer by his side. Eleanor had been elsewhere and unaware.
But as Claire well knew, secrets could be kept even about the most visible men on earth. Lucy's presence would be eliminated in the lore that would surround his legend as soon as Eleanor rushed to the cottage in Warm Springs to learn the truth. By the time the draped funeral train rolled slowly back to the capital, a new version of his death would be invented.
Claire had been sent by Ophelia to pick up Harrison at the airport. Harrison looked bereft as he climbed down the metal steps of the Sacred Cow, the president's private plane, until he saw her standing alone and off to one side of the tarmac. He caught a whiff of her light fragrance even before he was close enough to touch her. His pace picked up as he rushed to her side and they embraced like the hundreds of other couples hearing the news that the president was gone.
They hugged, her windblown hair brushing against the black armband he wore out of respect for his friend. It was the first time they'd seen each other since that dangerous night when passion had separated them from all their good instincts, three months earlier.
“I didn't want you to come home to strangers.”
She held out a handkerchief in case, a lace extravagance from Slim; even a leader could cry.
“The embassy called us a few minutes after it happened and flew us back.” There was a tremor in his voice.
Claire looked closely at him and drought: ashes. His face is the color of cold ashes. With heartfelt worry she lifted a hand to touch his forehead. He gently removed it and placed it in his own, folding his fingers over hers.
“I've missed you.” His whispered words made her use the handkerchief herself. The husband and wife a few feet away wept openly. A quiet darkness enveloped them all. Even the cherry blossoms and dogwood coming into their April bloom seemed to hush and fold.
“How is Eleanor?” The statesman's usual voice returned to its owner. For Claire, it was like the temperature had dropped ten degrees.
“Distraught. She's on her way to …” she hesitated for the correct words, “bring the president home.” The next question she answered before it was asked, as she hadn't lost her knack for reading his mind. Not even after their long absence from each other, a self-imposed interval in which she'd dreamed about him every night.
“Eleanor was at the Sulgrave Club when he died. She was speaking to a women's group.” Claire's eyes flickered over Harrison's tall frame. She had never seen him look so haggard. Or so handsome. The gray at his temples had spread like silver moon rays through his thick hair in the time they'd been apart.
He pulled a leather cigar tube out of his inside suit pocket.
“We all knew he wasn't well. Eleanor should have been with him.” Harrison's voice splayed indignation as he flipped up the lid and removed the hand-rolled Havana. He pointed the cigar holder outward as if looking for someone to blame. “I don't like to think of Franklin dying alone.”
“Mrs. Rutherfurd was there.” Claire's voice was barely audible.
“And so Lucy made a back-door exit.” It was impossible to tell whether the frog that rolled with his words from the back of his throat was tragic or sarcastic.
Harrison chomped off the top of his cigar. “A rather shabby thank-you to a woman pinch-hitting for the wife.”
“Oh, Harrison. It's no one's fault. Eleanor had her job to do, too.” She pulled at the jacket of her neat tailored suit while they stared at one another awkwardly. She knew he kept his lighter in his left coat pocket so she reached in to retrieve the silver accessory. He took a few short puffs on his cigar as she held an unsteady flame.
What she had to say next was difficult.
“I've taken a room at the Fairfax. It seemed best … after everything that's happened.” They both knew she wasn't referring to the president's death, but to the eight hours of forbidden love at the Willard that had marked their last fateful evening together.
Afterwards she had bolted.
Claire had taken Sara and returned to the homing nest. There, the Aunties had hovered over her like warm breasted birds, feeding her and soothing her confusion, for it was evident that something had gone very wrong in Washington. But since Claire wasn't volunteering any information, the doting mothers wisely left her alone. The pattern had been set long ago. She protected them as much as they nurtured her.
Sara, bratty and demanding at first, had taken to the fourth floor of Field's like the mischievous toddler she was, grabbing at dolls and life-sized carousel horses the hugeness of which she'd never seen even at Charlotte Hall. Auntie Slim had opened her hat boxes and chock-full jewelry cases to her “girls” as play toys, and Violet had just opened her arms wide to love them both.
Finally after two months of unconditional love and warm reunions with old friends at Field's, Claire was feeling like she'd been given a healthy dose of homemade chicken soup. Some of the store folk made her feel self-conscious, treating her with the same adulation they gave Dorothy Lamour after she'd quit running her Field's elevator to star in the Road pictures with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby.
In her own mind Claire
had done nothing right but marry well, and for this she was being given a hero's welcome. Swept up in the ticker-tape mood, she had even allowed her old nemesis, Cilla Pettibone, to throw a cocktail reception in her honor at the Casino Club, the almost secretly private club downtown, co-hosted by Snookie Cuthbert, who now latched on to Claire like a long-lost best friend. The post-deb set had read about her with envy in the Washington columns and Town and Country and were woozy with curiosity. Cilla was deep into psychoanalysis and Snookie newly on the wagon after her latest “drying cure.” Daisy Armstrong Fitch, who still had the finest set of shoulder blades on the North Shore, now had the widest hips too, having given birth to a fine set of twins three years earlier. Pretty Lily Dunworth, divorced but gung-ho on remarriage, inquired earnestly about the man market back East.
“Claire, you got so lucky.” She threw her voice like a ventriloquist into the V-shaped glass of her Bombay gin martini, and it echoed throughout the marble-floored room as the other girls joined the chorus of “To Lucky Claire!” It reminded her that for all their noisy friendship, they still thought of her as the poor girl from behind the ribbon counter who'd cleverly tied one humdinger of a matrimonial knot.
Although she was the picture of refinement in a navy crepe de chine cocktail suit with a white rose in a tiny crystal vase pinned to her lapel, Claire was suddenly pulled down to her former station. It was painfully evident to her, 28 Shop graduate, that she'd need more than a new suit if she and Sara moved back to Chicago. Apparently it wasn't an option. She thought everyone here could see how much she'd changed. Weren't the pearls worn short at her neck real? Hadn't she gotten Field's to make parachutes out of pillowcases? Hadn't she earned their respect yet? For close to three years Claire had engaged in top-secret war work, been invited to join old-guard eastern clubs, and charmed bad-tempered generals, becoming a welcome fixture at the upstairs White House. Claire had taken pride in the way she had adapted to her new life, and the fact that this bunch could see only the old Claire was a bitter disappointment. They were applauding her all right, but only because they thought she'd slept with the right man.
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