I groaned. “You must have been devastated.”
She tipped her head from side to side, weighing whether that word described what she had felt. “I certainly was shocked—foolishly. The hardest part was realizing that not only had Franklin betrayed me, but so had my friends. She had gone with him to dinners that I could not attend, sat next to him as if she were his wife, and they said nothing. My real fear was that they all liked her better than me.”
I didn’t know a thing about Lucy Mercer, but she must have been quite young and was likely docile as a cow. She probably petted and pleased him, but what a meager offering compared with the qualities of the woman sitting before me.
“So I offered him a divorce.”
“Really.” Now that did shock me. It was an unthinkable word in her circle. For a moment, I thought of what a scoop that would be for a reporter who wanted to hurt the Roosevelts. The truth was a dangerous thing in the wrong hands, and yet she was trusting me with it.
“His affections clearly lay elsewhere. Why shouldn’t he be able to pursue them out in the open?”
I took a sip of wine. “I can think of a few reasons.”
“Yes, well, so could he. Even then, he and Louis had a plan to put him up for president someday, and a divorce would make that impossible. Add to that the fact that his mother—who controlled the purse strings—expressly forbade it, and, well …”
“So you forgave him.” Out in the hall I could hear Mrs. Jansen talking on the telephone, and in the unit above, children thundering down the hallway. None of it seemed to faze her.
“I forgave him. Conditionally. We would remain married, but I no longer asked for his fidelity. I was tired of his insulting my intelligence by lying. We really always have been great friends, and I didn’t want to lose that. I would be the political wife. I would continue with my writing and organizing, so long as it didn’t conflict with his policy work. I would take care of the children.”
“I fail to see how this arrangement offered any benefit to you,” I said.
“As I said, I told him that he would have his freedom.” Her soft eyes locked on mine then, belying the plan that was behind them, what she had already made up her mind to do. “But I would also have mine.”
She was watching me carefully. I thought of Marcus, supposedly down in the car. What if he had decided to stay in the hallway; what if he walked in now? Something thrilling or dangerous or both was happening here—something that had to be concealed. I could not look away from her eyes, and so I allowed myself to fall into them, like tipping forward to dive into the smooth surface of a swimming pool.
“I’d like you to write to me,” I said, trying not to come undone. “Dispatches of your new life as it is unfolding. Off the record, of course. Things you might not say in an interview, things you’ll have to trust me with.” The idea had come to me when John had shrugged at the draft of my feature. I hadn’t planned on writing more about her, but suddenly it was all I wanted to do.
She looked surprised. I was dodging the question she had all but come out and asked: did I want her as she wanted me?
“Letters? To what end?”
“Someone will write your biography someday. Why not me?”
We had finished the bottle of wine by then and she seemed a little tipsy, emboldened. Beneath the table, her shoe hung off the back of her foot and I felt the smooth block of its heel grace my ankle. “And what shall I have in return for bringing you into my confidence?”
“I’ll never write anything that could hurt you,” I said. I tried to catch my breath. “You can read my drafts.” The words shocked me as they bolted from my mouth—what a promise! The cardinal rule of reporting, objectivity, abandoned in a heartbeat. “I’ll help people see who you really are.” She nodded patiently, as if waiting for more. I twisted my lips sideways. “And I’ll give you a nickname. Nora.”
She threw her head back and laughed, and I saw her beauty then, the beauty of a gleaming mare that knows she can leap a fence without effort, that knows down the whole length of her body what she is.
“I would like it very much,” she said, “if you would call me Nora. And only you.”
And then she pressed both palms on the table, rose up, and kissed me on the mouth. I remained inert for a moment, stunned and yet not stunned at all because I had known that this would happen from the moment we had lain side by side in the Pullman car as it raced to Manhattan. My mouth awakened to her soft lips on mine, the hunger rising up, and we slid out of our chairs and stood. The space between us disappeared into fingertips, the coiled promise of our bodies. And if you think I am going to tell you what happened after that—remember, I had promised to protect her, and later I would lose the most important thing in my life trying to do just that—well, I guess you haven’t been paying attention.
November 14, 1932
Dear Hick,
Well, here it is, my first dispatch. Ask and ye shall receive—I hope you won’t be bored to tears.
Now that the election is settled, one would think that the hubbub might have died down, but it has not, not in the slightest. Franklin has been in Albany tying up loose ends, and I am here in Manhattan packing the boys up to get back to school and writing letters with sincere gratitude to all the people who helped on the campaign, so many my hand may never uncurl. Likewise, we skate across the front hall on all the mail. Every man, woman, and child promised a favor has written to remind Franklin of it, and the savvier among them are calling on the telephone to arrange dinners, lunches, and fishing trips. But this is the way of the world, and we are happy to help supporters.
I am keen to get him my suggestions for his cabinet before the cavalry of new advisers come thundering across the drawbridge. I hope it will not be too scandalous to say that he does listen to me, and if not me then surely Louis, and, thank heavens, Louis listens to me. We must have Frances Perkins for labor, without question. She is the most qualified, and can you imagine how much more efficient she would be than any man? No drink, no dalliances, no bombast. Just solid policy, step by step, until we can look working people in the eye again. Good governance should be boring but steadfast as the moon.
And of course we face going to housekeeping in that drafty white barn in the middle of the swamp. Many decisions await, and a role that has doomed far better women than I. We all know about poor Mrs. Lincoln’s temperament, but did you know that Ida McKinley transformed into an invalid when she walked through the White House’s doors and was miraculously healed when her husband died and she got to go home?
I rose early to write this so that you could reply today. Let me have your letter by tonight—please, darling. I miss you and long to be near you.
Nora
Diary of L.A. Hickok — 1932
November
14
15
16 Saw Grand Hotel with N
17 New suits to tailor
18
19 Met N, NYPL
20
21 N over for a nightcap
22 Took Prinz to vet—poor boy!
23
24 Turkey Day
25 Saw Andrea Chénier at Met (soprano disappointing!)
26 Bosco’s b-day party at Dom’s
27 Hung over!
28 Recovered for nightcap with N
29
30 Saw the Benton murals at the Whitney w/N. Wish he’d do Mitchell Pl for me!
December
1 Rent paid—reserves lean
2
3 Saw Stanwyck in The Purchase Price and N came for a n.c.
4
5 Heard Jane Addams speak at NYPL. I go to too many movies.
6
7
Chapter Four
December 18, 1932
The weeks went by, and my days were filled with work and Nora, Nora and work. Whenever I was engaged with one, I was thinking about the other. One Saturday, we sat in Nora’s third-floor sitting room at the Roosevelt town house, a fire crackling and Nora’s terrie
r Meggy snoring on the rug. I was admiring a piece John had written on a high-profile murder in the Hamptons and my eye wandered to Nora, where she sat scribbling at her escritoire with her reading glasses on the end of her nose. She wrote hundreds of pages of correspondence each week, keeping up with dozens of issues. There were committees, boards, agencies, clubs. I had never known that so much of helping people was in the paperwork. The sleeves of her dress were threadbare from the hours she spent at the desk.
“You’re going to need a patch,” I said, pointing to her right arm where I could see a little skin exposed. “You are quite literally out at the elbows.”
“These?” she said, crossing her arms to touch her elbows. “I like the holes. They’re my badges of honor.”
I laughed, and Nora moved from her chair to the couch beside me. She handed me the letter she had been writing. Over the last few weeks, in our “working” evenings together, she sometimes asked me to proof her work, but this one, I saw, was for me. She folded her hands to wait while I read it.
Hick,
You asked me to write some notes on the League of Women Voters and our outreach. You know it has been a long slog—at times our greatest hindrance is these women themselves. No longer is anyone blocking their path to the ballot box, but they are not convinced they are smart enough, qualified enough, to have a say. “I let my husband speak for the family” is what I hear again and again, as if that has done them much good so far. Still, I believe we made great strides in turnout this time, though of course there is always more to do.
Ho hum … I am writing this as we sit across from one another and you are reading the evening edition of the paper. You look quite serious, dear, and I long to reach over with my thumb and press the crease out of your forehead. Darling, I am undone by the sweet corner of your lovely mouth. When will I have all of you again?
N
I looked up at her. “Nora. Don’t you think we had better be careful? Putting things like this in writing?”
She sat back, looking a little wounded. “I just wanted you to know that I was thinking of you.”
I squeezed her hand and then stepped over to the fire. The paper flared when I dropped it into the flames, and I felt both reassured and miserable at destroying her lovely words. “That’s for your own good,” I said.
Back on the couch, she touched the edge of my ear with her finger and I looked to the door behind her, half open to the third-floor hallway. Servants, campaign volunteers, and friends came and went throughout the day. Louis had an office downstairs. Nora’s daughter, Anna, often came for dinner. We were never truly alone, yet each time she was in town, she invited me over. It was easier to explain my presence at the town house than to make up a reason to meet with me at my apartment, especially since she was supposed to report everything on her schedule to Marcus. We did find time to steal away, but those moments were few and far between.
“When we’re at my place, it’s different,” I whispered. And it was. It was nearly possible on those nights to imagine that she was just a regular person, a gal from New Jersey, say, about whom nobody gave a hoot. And I was me and Prinz was Prinz and 10 Mitchell Place was our cozy little home. For days after her visits, I would find scribbled notes hidden around my apartment. “Je t’aime,” read the one under the milk bottle. Another, tucked inside the medicine cabinet: “Je t’adore.”
“But here, Nora, we can’t be reckless. Maybe … it’s because you haven’t been through this before? Well, I have. You should listen to me.”
Nora rolled her eyes. She was in a funny mood, more relaxed than I could imagine feeling. “Darling, you worry too much. What can anyone do to us?”
I pulled back from her hand. “Is that a serious question?”
“Franklin and I have our freedom—I told you.”
“Surely this is not what he imagined when he granted it.”
She smiled, thinking it over. “I am not sure he is even capable of imagining what goes on between two women. If I were carrying on with a man, it would be something else, something threatening. But this, we can explain it all away. You and I are new friends, the best of friends, and friends are affectionate. We can hide in plain sight.”
“It’s one thing to look the other way,” I said. “It’s another to have something brazen shoved in your face.” Everything was happening so fast. But that was how she was when she made up her mind about something. God help you if you tried to slow her down. And we both knew that once the president-elect was sworn in in March, she would be off to Washington and the White House. We had to make the most of every second.
I might be afraid of being found out, but Nora wasn’t. She set her jaw. “I won’t let anyone try to control me.”
“And what about me?” My voice grew shrill. “You are at once the smartest woman I’ve ever known and as naive as a child. What do you think would happen to me if we were found out?”
“We won’t be.”
“I could be fired, Nora. They could keep us apart.”
She gave me a skeptical look. “Who? Who is ‘they’?”
“You don’t think Louis will do whatever he has to do in order to protect your husband? To protect his office? He would dispense with me in a heartbeat.”
A change came over her face as she thought about this, and I saw that I was getting through to her, if only a little. For my part, it was all too clear. Without my job, I would be nothing again, nobody. I might as well hop on the train back to Bowdle. If this were a poker game, I had all my chips on the table.
Meanwhile, the threat of discovery seemed only to embolden Nora. So much had been denied to her over the years—there was a brief chaste romance with another girl back in boarding school, but she had been a faithful wife in a marriage enlivened by intellectual connection but not passion—and it was as if, to butcher Whitman, she had unscrewed the door from its jamb.
I felt her fingertips slip north of my knee. A warmth spread in my belly, and I longed to give in to it, but I heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs, voices in the hall exclaiming over the driving rain outside.
I leaped to my feet. “Let’s go out.”
We decided to go to a matinee at the Met. I could tell she was angry as we walked because she was careless with the umbrella she held over both of us, and water dripped down my left cheek. Marcus didn’t know we had left, and I wondered whether we should stop in somewhere and call the town house to report in.
“We could take a taxi,” I said, wiping my cheek with my sleeve.
“No.”
Her shoes clacked against the pavement, and I had to rush to keep up with her. When we reached the corner of Sixty-Fifth and Fifth, we waited for the light to change. She would want to walk south along the park, I knew, even in the rain. I tried to understand her anger—had she felt I was rejecting her?
“Nora, everything you feel for me, I feel for you,” I said, touching her sleeve. “Probably more.”
Her jaw was tight. “I do not like to think someone could take it away.”
“They won’t—if we take care.”
After a few more miserable blocks, she consented to a taxi and we rode in silence. As the car crawled past the southeast corner of the park, I saw a group of women hanging long underwear to be rinsed by the rain. Behind them, near the pond, was a little shantytown that had grown up over the last year, with tin huts and fires in barrels. I saw that Nora too noticed the women, standing in the rain with their heads uncovered as they spread the stained, gray garments over the fence.
The driver seemed not to recognize Nora, but the day had made me paranoid, and I imagined him calling up a newspaper to tell someone he had seen us together. And yet what details could he report that would threaten us? When I was with her, I felt exposed, as though my face betrayed everything I felt, but perhaps Nora was right. Perhaps what was between us really was invisible.
Under the awning at the entrance to the opera house, Nora brushed her damp hair off her forehead. I could tell she was tr
ying to compose her public face before we stepped inside. There we would be among her set, wealthy Manhattanites, the cream of society, the powerful.
“Hick,” she sighed, closing the umbrella, “you have to understand. From the day I turned sixteen, my name has controlled my fate.” The women in furs rushed past us, foxes lunging for their dens. “My name has ordered my days. I am forty-eight years old now, and I’ve only just begun to see how I could make a life of my own. I’m not angry at you. I’m angry at them.” She pointed at the foxes. “At all that I have lost in taking such care to follow the rules.”
I didn’t know what to say. I had not faced the problem of enormous wealth and the ways it curtailed a woman’s freedom; in fact it was tempting to laugh at that problem, as a person who had not seen a bathtub with plumbing until she was fourteen years old. But the truth was, in running away from home, I really had gained my freedom once and for all, and I hadn’t needed to look back. I was haunted by other things in other ways, of course, but at least my life was my own.
I was grateful to see the lights inside flicker, calling us to our seats. The opera was Aida—fitting for us as a story of star-crossed lovers— and the music worked its usual magic on me. The tenor in the role of Radamès sang of the slave he loved: “Celeste Aida,” heavenly Aida. I marveled that a body could make such a sound; that a sound could become an entity, a physical thing. To experience an aria was to have your heart plucked from your chest, washed, shined, and reinstalled.
By the end of the second act, I was so thoroughly transported that I had forgotten Nora was sitting beside me.
But she had not been transported. When the house lights came on, she sprang from her seat and climbed the stairs to the stage.
“Good afternoon,” she called into the cavernous space, and there was a pause before the whispering began: Is that Eleanor Roosevelt? I stayed frozen in my seat, baffled.
She clasped her hands in front of her and called out in her signature warble, “I am here tonight as a representative of the Emergency Unemployment Relief Committee. As we enjoy this spectacular performance, we must remember that many citizens of our state are, at this moment, wanting for the most basic necessities of life. While we sit here in comfort and luxury, the unemployed go back to homes without food, without heat. I’m sure you will agree that when we see people in need, we absolutely must do something about it.”
Undiscovered Country Page 5