“You’ll be seeing a lot of Miss Hickok,” Mrs. Roosevelt leaned down and told her husband over the din, “now that she has been assigned to write about me.”
I looked at her in surprise. I hadn’t said anything like that on the train. After I finished the feature on her, I wasn’t sure there would be much else to write. My focus was supposed to be on the candidate himself, what he would say tonight in his victory speech. She met my eyes for a fluttering moment.
“If I might,” Governor Roosevelt said to me, “let me give you a piece of advice: you must never get into an argument with my wife.” Mrs. Roosevelt rolled her eyes as FDR’s grin broke out like a sunrise. “I mean it. You can’t win. You think you’ve got her pinned down over here,” he said, pressing his finger on the tabletop, “and she pops up over there”—he moved his finger to the other side of the table and smacked his palm flat—“and deals you the death blow. Take it from one who knows, Miss Hickok.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
Mrs. Roosevelt gave a little laugh and then stood up and we got the picture that the exchange was over.
“Good luck tonight, sir,” John said, the earnestness making him seem much younger than his thirty years.
Roosevelt folded his hands across his chest, as if he were relaxing in a club chair at the Knickerbocker, just waiting for his brandy. “Don’t need luck. I’ve got the votes.”
Mrs. Roosevelt grasped the back of his chair to wheel him toward the kitchen door. I waited for her to turn back to look at me again; she didn’t.
“I guess that means we’re moving over to the hotel,” John said, still a little stunned by his contact with the candidate.
I threw back the rest of my poor excuse for a drink, and then John and I hurried down the front steps with the other news hawks. If we were quick, we could beat the limo to the hotel and get a feel for the room before Roosevelt arrived. Hundreds of campaign volunteers had already amassed there to celebrate what they’d spent months working to achieve, and they’d be clamoring to get a glimpse of the man it was all for.
John limped beside me on account of an old football injury to his right knee. He offered me a shrimp; he had grabbed a fistful of them as we’d left the town house. It dangled from his hand like a sad pink comma.
“John, are you really that hard up? Next thing I know I’ll find you eating out of the trash. Doesn’t Bill pay you anything these days?”
“Easy come, easy go,” he said, trying to be casual, but I had a feeling his debts were even worse than I knew. I lit a cigarette without breaking my stride and tried to change the subject.
“Did you get anything on FDR’s speech?” I asked.
He laughed and wiped his buttery hands on his jacket. “And you think I’d tell you if I did?”
“But, John,” I said, feigning shock, “aren’t we colleagues?”
“I’ve seen you scoop far better men than me,” he said.
“Than I.”
“Ha! Point to Hick. See—everything’s a competition with you. I don’t trust you any further than I could throw you.”
That was a fat joke, but I didn’t mind. As my stepmother had liked to tell me, I’d be the perfect wife for a blind man, except I talked too much. Anyway, John and I were about even now, after all the money I’d taken from him at the poker table.
“What do you think of Mrs. Roosevelt?” I asked next, trying to slip the question in as casually as I could. First she had revealed herself to me on the train; then she had pinched closed like a morning glory at night. And, just now, she’d made some kind of play I couldn’t quite interpret. Was I the only one who’d noticed it?
As we walked, he flipped through his notes and frowned. “What do you mean what do I think of her?”
“I mean … what kind of first lady do you think she’ll be?”
John shrugged, looking at me like I had a screw loose. “I guess this is your department, Hick, but how many kinds are there? She can pour a teapot, can’t she? Tie on a bonnet for the Easter Egg Roll on the White House lawn?”
I liked John a lot, but this made me so mad I couldn’t even speak for a moment. I thought back to what Mrs. Roosevelt had said on the train about the great interruption of becoming first lady, and I understood more than ever her dread about life in the White House. It had never occurred to John to think about a woman as anything other than a droopy piece of wallpaper behind her husband. Here was a woman who understood the nuance of law, the complexity of economic policy, the checkered history of the government’s service to the poor. She had founded a school, published magazines, organized women to get out to vote, spoke impeccable French. And now she would be selecting table linens. I felt despair by proxy.
“To tell you the truth,” John said as we ran up the steps to the Biltmore’s lobby and I threw my cigarette in the brass urn, “she looks a little dazed to me. Sometimes it seems like there isn’t any grain in the silo, if you know what I mean.”
We didn’t beat the limo there. When John and I walked into the suite on the second floor, Roosevelt and his aides were already seated at a long table dotted with telephones and radios. On either side of them were rows of telephone operators wearing pearls and red lipstick, plying their trade with manicured hands. You could hear their “good evenings” echo one on top of the other like the parts of a madrigal. In the center of the table, Roosevelt sat grinning like a king, the lamplight reflecting off his tanned forehead, as he took calls from his regional directors. New England was a lost cause. All that old money tended to follow the candidate who promised not to tax too much of it. But the calls from Ohio and everything to the west and south were full of good news.
Every time one of the men spoke to a delegate, he tallied the electoral votes on a little card. It seemed silly that there was any suspense in the room at all. We knew how things were going to turn out. Still, I couldn’t seem to take a full breath. My chest was tight, my heart pounding. Finally the people had made a move to take their country back from the top-hatted thieves who had reduced them to ruin. Roosevelt had pledged it: a new deal. And it was thrilling. But I felt something else dogging me—I was worried about her, Mrs. Roosevelt. I was worried about what his winning was going to do to her. Whatever else had happened in that Pullman car, she’d been quite clear about her trepidation of the fate that awaited her. And for some reason she had trusted me with that fact.
Just then, she materialized at the other end of the table. She waved to me quickly and then turned to shake somebody’s hand with both of hers, the left one on top for good measure. She made her way from one bevy of reporters to the next, threading among the clusters of party bigwigs and donors who’d come to collect the flattery they’d paid for; she smiled and kissed cheeks and laughed at bad jokes and put everyone at ease. To look at her, you would think she was relaxed and happy, but it was like a picture painted on a window shade. If you rolled it up to let the light in, you would find an entirely different scene. Back in September, I had written a story about her husband’s campaign stop in Chicago, when the family went to see the Cubs play the Yankees in the World Series. While everyone around her heckled the umpire or leaped to their feet to urge a runner into base, she sat with her head tipped back and slept. No kidding. The woman slept through Babe Ruth’s two home runs. It just broke my heart right open to see how out of sync she was with everyone around her. But, again, I seemed to be the only one who noticed.
When a messenger ran down the stairs to the ballroom to announce that FDR had won Virginia, the volunteers cheered. You could hear the roar coming up through the floor. I scribbled some things down for the story I would file later. One of the telephone operators told me it was the most exciting night of her life, and that was saying something, considering how tight her sweater was.
In the chaotic room, I started to compose a lead in my head for the feature article. After hearing the way John had dismissed Mrs. Roosevelt on the walk over, my sense of duty about the piece surged; maybe I could try to help people und
erstand her. She had plenty of detractors, on the left and the right, who thought she was either a socialist or simply a failure at being an heiress. I would include as much as I thought readers could stomach about her vast accomplishments, but I’d need to sweeten it too, with anecdotes that showed she was a real person. She had a little Scottie dog named Meggy, which she loved and took everywhere with her. And she really did buy ten-dollar dresses off the rack, the way the gossip rags said. Maybe, if I handled the information just right, I could make my readers see how wonderful she was.
I nearly sounded like a publicity hack, I realized, but ushered the thought away.
A commotion at the table with all the telephones claimed my attention. Louis Howe and another man were helping Roosevelt to his feet. You could see the outline of the braces he wore beneath his baggy trousers, two long pieces of steel that ran on either side of each leg and hinged at the knee. The apparatus was secured around his waist and beneath the sole of each foot with leather straps. Once he hoisted himself upright, he could stand with the help of a cane. The whole process took about fifteen long seconds, and the room was full of the nervous anxiety of people trying to steal glances and yet seem like they weren’t looking. Louis saw over his shoulder one of our men from the AP with a camera ready to go, but he held up his hand. He lowered it only once Roosevelt was up and steady. The president-to-be flashed a broad smile. His good looks were wasted on politics—he could have been a film star. He used his handkerchief to wipe a thin layer of sweat from his brow and then he shoved it back into his pocket.
“Congratulations, Mr. President,” Louis said. He shook FDR’s left hand; the right one was on the cane. The photographer’s flashbulb flared and a rumble of voices surged through the room like a wave crashing to the shore. He’s done it! They’ve called it! Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on the way out, Hoover!
A crowd of people lined up to shake his hand. The telephone operators were flinging their arms around one another, and a trio of musicians started to play the campaign song. As disappointed as I was for the future first lady, I was happy for the rest of the country. And yet still I knew: these people thought they had found a savior, but they were wrong. He was just a man. They believed in their hearts that FDR could snap his fingers and put everyone back to work, put all the residents of Hoovervilles in brand-new homes tomorrow. It wasn’t going to happen, not without a long, painful slog—one that felt a little like the process a man with useless legs had to endure in order to balance on sharp pieces of steel so that he could pretend to stand. The hope that was in this room was going to turn inside out into disappointment, guaranteed. But I suppose this kind of foresight was just the sort of thing that kept me from being able to have a good time. Who was I to rain on their parade?
American flags appeared out of thin air, and dozens of bottles of illegal whiskey started making the rounds. Waiters came in with trays full of empty glasses and distributed them. Louis Howe gave himself a few minutes to soak it in and down a couple of large glasses of booze before he became the preoccupied tactician once more, assessing what needed to be done next. FDR would wait for Hoover to concede, and then he would make his acceptance speech and go downstairs to the ballroom to thank the volunteers who, at the moment, sounded a little like rioters locked in a pen. Louis felt at his pocket for his cigarettes and extracted one from the packet. With a smoke bobbing on his lips, he began corralling the reporters to one corner of the room, where they could take a statement from the president-elect.
I let myself be ushered with the others but not before glancing back at the new first lady. She stood just a few feet away at the window, staring out at Madison Avenue. Her palm was pressed to her diaphragm as if she couldn’t quite take a breath. The look on her face was like a hunted animal’s fear, but it passed away in an instant and she turned to the reporters.
Somebody shouted, “Are you glad, Mrs. Roosevelt?”
She didn’t hesitate for a second. “Of course I am,” she said, and I alone in the room knew it was a lie. “You’re always pleased to have someone you’re very devoted to have what he wants.”
Those were her exact words, and all the reporters wrote them down.
Chapter Three
November 9–11, 1932
I was fairly pickled by the time I stumbled down Madison to the AP’s offices, but that didn’t stop me from unlocking the tin box labeled first aid that sat on Bill’s desk. That was where we kept the newsroom reserves. (The previous year, one of the higher-ups had called Bill to ask about this line item in the budget, curious about how in the hell our bureau spent so much on bandages and iodine.) With my drink beside me, I typed up my straight news piece on the outcome of the election and filed it. Then I worked on my feature on the new first lady. I also took time to call over to the Post and place a classified ad announcing a charity drive for down-on-their-luck farmers upstate. All donations of feed corn and oats should be directed to John Bosco, Office of the Associated Press, New York, NY. John had said he thought Mrs. Roosevelt didn’t have any grain in her silo. Well, we’d see about that.
I returned home at dawn to find that poor old Prinz had just about given me up for dead. I opened the bathroom door and he raced out, knocked me clean over with joy at our reunion. After a quick walk, I brought him back inside and filled his bowl with cold water. He crouched in the kitchen, lapping it up, while I sat on the day bed with my feet on a pillow, smoking like a barn on fire.
What in the hell is wrong with me? I wondered, but I was beginning to have an inkling. I probably don’t have to explain by this point that I was not the typical single gal on the hunt for a husband. I never made any bones about who I was, not to my colleagues, not to my bosses.
And nobody seemed to care one way or the other, as long as I kept being good at my job. Which was just the way I liked it.
I had no plans to change; at nearly forty, I knew who I was and liked it just fine. Freud probably would have said that the whole thing had something to do with my father and what he had done to me, but that seems like a lot of horseshit. People are who they are. My whole life, I liked the things boys like—football, cowboys, trousers, cursing, and smoking. And every damned time I fell in love—and believe me, every time was damned, right from the start—it was with a woman.
Around one o’clock that afternoon, I took the Third Avenue train back to the office. The newsroom was a microcosm of America that day: jubilant and a little worse for wear.
“’Morning, John,” I said. He was in his chair a few desks over, skimming the crime bulletin.
“Did you get any sleep, Hick?”
“She who sleeps gets scooped, my friend.” I handed him the typed pages of my feature. “Would you look this over for me?”
“Sure thing.”
While I waited for him to read it, I listened to the most beautiful sound in the world: the clatter of dozens of typewriters. Chick-chick-chick-chicka-chick-chick-zing. Like the sound of the dancing feet of Fred Astaire.
I looked back at John to see if he had any reaction at all to the last part of the article. I’d included a version of Mrs. Roosevelt’s quote on not wanting to be first lady but altered it so that it sounded more like a deferential wife shying away from the spotlight than a restless woman eager for independence. He shrugged and handed the pages back.
“Looks good to me, Hick.”
“No big bombshells there,” I said.
“Same old, same old. Want to get a little hair of the dog in a bit?”
“Is the pope Catholic?”
I took my pages back to my desk. I was being true to the letter of the law, reporting what Mrs. Roosevelt had told me, while violating its spirit by bending the truth to cast her in the best light. I had never done anything like that before in my work, and I was surprised by how easy it was. A victimless crime, I supposed. I felt buoyed knowing that I had found a way to protect her and still do my job.
The following day, I was just returning from taking Prinz for a walk w
hen I heard the shared telephone ringing in the hallway. Assuming it was for Mrs. Jansen, the woman across the hall who was in constant contact with the members of her quilting circle, I went to the kitchen to fill Prinz’s bowl. Thanks to Mrs. Jansen’s piercing voice, I knew all about whose hair was dyed and whose slip was showing at the church supper and whose son had been seen lingering outside the window of a young woman known to walk around in her underwear. But now the phone continued to wail and she did not emerge. Could the call possibly be for me? I made plenty of outgoing calls from that phone, hunting down sources or calling in to my editor, Bill, but I didn’t receive many. The only family I had left were my sisters. Myrtle and I hadn’t spoken in more than ten years; I honestly didn’t even know whether she was still alive. And as for Ruby, she lived here in New York with Julian, a man whose name I could not utter without the italics, but they didn’t have a telephone of their own, and we rarely spoke.
I picked up a pad and a pencil, prepared to be supremely annoyed if I had to take a message for Mrs. Jansen.
I snatched up the receiver. “Yes?”
“Miss Hickok?”
“Speaking.”
“This is Eleanor Roosevelt.”
The pencil slipped from my hand and I watched it roll across the hallway tile. When I tried to speak, my tongue only shifted like wet cement.
“Hello?” she said. “Can you hear me?”
I finally jolted myself back to attention. “Mrs. Roosevelt. Good evening.” Had she called the office to get my number? Why hadn’t anyone warned me? I groped with my stockinged foot to pull the pencil back my way. I guessed she had to be calling about her schedule, upcoming lunches, speeches, ceremonies—something that I might want to cover.
Undiscovered Country Page 3