Undiscovered Country

by Kelly O'Connor McNees

  Nora didn’t say much, just murmured “thank heavens” and “that’s terrible.” A moment later, she said “All right, goodbye” and hung up.

  “Well? What the hell happened?” I asked.

  She sat back down. “He decided on a whim to go to a rally tonight in Miami—they had docked there this morning—and, outside the hall, he gave a speech from his car. He was talking about fishing and he had just reached over the side of the car to shake Tony Cermak’s hand when shots rang out. He said Tony fell instantly, and Gus threw his body over Franklin. The driver tried to pull off through the crowd, but Franklin made them wait to load Tony into the car so they could get him to the hospital.”

  Louis lit another cigarette. “So this nut tried to kill the president but hit the mayor of Chicago instead?”

  “That’s what Franklin said. That poor man. There must have been a lot of blood. My husband cannot stand the sight of blood,” she said, almost to herself. “Another bullet hit the back of the car and a handful of bystanders. But Franklin says the only thing that’s wrong with him is sore ribs, because Gus is no lightweight.”

  Louis sat down in a chair in the corner with his short legs sprawled out and unbuttoned his collar. “Well, I’ll be goddamned.” He pulled a flask out of his jacket.

  “I’ll take some of that,” I said with a little too much enthusiasm.

  Louis handed it to me. It was gin, which I hated, but I choked it down. “Will Cermak be all right?”

  Nora shook her head. “The doctors are working on him now. So we’ll wait for word.” She stood and straightened the front of her jacket. “What time is it?”

  “Time to take a breath,” I said. I glanced at the brass clock on the mantel. “Nine thirty.”

  “I have to call the children before they hear something and start to worry. My speech is in the morning and the overnight train to Cornell leaves at eleven. Hick, if you’re going to cover it, we’d better get a move on. I assume you’ll need to stop in at home before we head to the train?”

  “You still want to go?”

  “Why wouldn’t I? Franklin is fine. There’s nothing I can do for the mayor at the moment, and I won’t tie up the line calling his wife now. Why should I disappoint people who are counting on me to show up?”

  I laughed. “I think they’d understand.”

  “I’m going,” she said, and I knew there was no dissuading her. It was both impressive and a little frightening to see how deftly she could harness her emotions and pivot to the next item on the agenda.

  I took one last pull on the gin and handed the flask back to Louis. “All right,” I said to her. “Why don’t you make your calls, and I’ll take down some notes. I don’t need to stop at home—I have a toothbrush in my desk drawer at the office. And I need to stop there anyway to check in, or Bill will have my head.”

  Nora nodded. “Louis will call downstairs for the car,” she said, all business, and went down the hall to the telephone in her bedroom.

  I leaned against the wall and pulled my notepad and pencil from my pocket. Eager to preserve the details, I began writing down everything that had just happened. Without looking up, I asked, “All of this is up for grabs, right, Louis?”

  As soon as the words were out, I regretted them, but it was too late to retreat. I hoped he hadn’t heard me, but it was clear from his arched eyebrows that he had. No reporter worth her weight in steno pads would ask for approval before filing a story of this magnitude: the near assassination of the leader of the free world. I might not encounter a bigger story in my lifetime, and here I was giving him the chance to massage the facts. I could read the complex panoply of thoughts on his face. As a former reporter himself, it had to make him queasy to see my commitment to journalism go down in flames. And yet perhaps my failing could be useful to him.

  “Hick,” he began, but then stopped and appeared to change course. “How are things going for you over at the AP?”

  “Fine,” I said quickly. “Great.”

  “And Bill is happy with your coverage of Mrs. Roosevelt?”

  I wondered if he knew the answer to that and decided to keep my mouth shut.

  He took one last drag and stubbed his cigarette out in the overflowing ashtray next to the telephone. “Would you ever think about crossing over to our side, working for me in public relations for the Roosevelts? You could have a real hand in shaping her image.” He opened his cigarette case and offered it to me. I pulled out a Lucky Strike.

  I balked at this suggestion—my training had taught me to consider working in the city dump before I resorted to public relations— even though building Nora’s image was precisely what I’d been doing with my less-than-objective articles about her. I rolled the cigarette between my thumb and forefinger. “I don’t think so, Louis. I’m a reporter to the bone. Can’t say I’d be very good at toeing the line.”

  Louis nodded, weighing my answer. He wore his thin hair slicked to his scalp with oil, and the trying day had pried a few strands loose. They’d migrated to his forehead, making him look a little off-kilter. “You two spend an awful lot of time together,” he said. “I wonder— are you sure you’ll still be able to do the job when the time comes? Call her out when she makes a mistake? Dig around for dirt?”

  I knew the answer was no, but I couldn’t say it.

  He looked at the end of his cigarette as he lit it, not at me, as he spoke out of the side of his mouth. “There’s a reason why editors tell you to keep a healthy distance from a source, don’t you think?”

  That remark contained the shadow of a threat, and I snapped to attention.

  Finally he met my eyes. “Like I said, you’ve been spending a lot of

  time with the incoming first lady.”

  In that moment, I understood that he knew. Either Marcus had reported what he had seen, or Louis had discerned it himself. He was certainly no dummy and had nearly worked himself to death to secure a Roosevelt presidency. He was not in the business of leaving anything up to chance.

  Louis could have told me right then to stay away from her and put the whole thing to bed, but instead he said nothing, only rolled his thumb on the striker of the crystal lighter so that I could finally light the cigarette I’d nearly pressed flat in my fingers.

  At the other end of the hallway, Nora’s door swung open and she stalked toward us. “Are you all set here, Hick? We can’t miss that train.”

  “She’s ready,” Louis said with a disingenuous smile that came off like a wince. “And she’s got a pretty big scoop on her hands, so you’d better get her over to the AP.” He wasn’t going to tell me what to write. The phone call, Nora’s reaction to it, and the details of what had transpired in Miami—all of it was fair game. And he wasn’t going to tell me to stay away from Nora, not today, anyway. Though I almost wished he would.

  We emerged from the front door to find it flanked with more Secret Service men than I’d ever seen at once. As they scanned Sixty-Fifth Street, I tried to imagine how they would react if some evildoer came barreling out of the shadows and tried to tackle Nora. Did they have guns at the ready? Across the street was an apartment building ten stories tall, and each window was a tableau of some private existence—a man with a late-night ham sandwich, drawn curtains in another concealing lovers, a lonely dog waiting for its owner to come home. Behind any of those windows could be a man with a rifle, waiting for Nora to step outside. I put my hand on her lower back and ushered her toward the waiting car. For once she didn’t complain about not being able to walk to the train station.

  “Would you rather go on to Cornell alone, Nora?” I whispered. I wondered if I should tell her that I thought Louis was onto us, but it seemed cruel to add to her troubles.

  She gave me a severe look. “Don’t you dare leave me right now, Hick.” She swallowed, and when she spoke again her voice was faint. “Please.”

  It took me only ten minutes to type up my piece at the office. Someone else would write the lead story on the assassination at
tempt, with help from a reporter in the Miami bureau. My contribution was the reaction on the home front.

  At Grand Central, more Secret Service agents sprouted like black cornstalks, and they kept the throng away from her path between the entrance and the track. Our footsteps echoed through the hall. We boarded a special car that had been cleared by agents; once we entered, it was sealed off from other passengers.

  In the darkness of the tunnel, as we waited for the train to move, she held my hand and finally her erect shoulders slumped forward; she let her head hang down and cried. I swept my palm in slow circles over her back.

  “It has been a terrible night,” I said.

  She shook her head and wept for another minute before she could take a breath and speak. “If only you knew some of the thoughts that went through my head.”

  “You are under a tremendous amount of stress.” It felt like something near treason, what we were skirting around, and I didn’t want her to give it voice. The train began to rumble and crawl through the tunnel below the streets.

  “When I heard what happened, I only wanted you, Hick. You know what I mean, don’t you?” She looked up at me. “What I was thinking?”

  I glanced around to confirm that we were still alone. “I do,” I said. That if he had died we could be together for good and without compromise—a notion as dangerous as an electrified rail. “But I don’t think we should talk about it anymore.”

  “You’re right. It will do us no good. It already seems impossible again—the world without Franklin.”

  She took a handkerchief out of her pocket and wiped her face; then she turned on the lamp beside her head and took out her papers and reading glasses. The car was flooded with light and it ushered all the invisible things—the unsayable, the impossible—back into hiding.

  The image of a man holding a rifle in the shadows appeared in my mind again. Brief contemplation of the world without Nora landed like a hard smack on my cheekbone, and I drew in a breath. I knew she didn’t belong to me, but before that night, I had not understood how fully she was owned by the world at large, how she had ceded her autonomy to the greater good, despite the dark elements it contained.

  I longed to take her in my arms to quell the anxious cells that vibrated in my chest. But a steward was coming into the car to ask whether we needed anything, and I felt the familiar dismay that our relationship had to be conducted in whispers and glances, that even in a matter of life and death I did not have the right to bring my grief into the open. What did it mean to be joined if we could never let anyone else know? Her blue satchel sat on her lap, and I remembered our sandwiches on that first train ride together, the checkered napkins and the way I’d laughed at her carrying the fine saltshaker. I wondered if at least a few crumbs of bread remained at the bottom of her bag.

  March 1

  My darling,

  Thank you for helping me with all the shopping. You know I dread it and hate to spend so very much on what seems to me so frivolous, but the calendar is full of events in the next few weeks and I suppose I would be ridiculed if I wore my old tweeds to them all. I especially like the dress you chose at the Milgrim shop, the camel cashmere with the flared hem. And the hats from Lilly Dache really are lovely. You are welcome to borrow them anytime!

  Please say you will come with me on the train to Washington. I will give you the exclusive interview in the W.H. Bill is asking for—but only for you. I rely on you, Hick, now more than ever. I feel so wretched when I think how we will be separated by the long miles. But we can talk on the telephone when I can slip away, and I promise to write all the time. You will just have to burn the letters if I am indiscreet.

  All my love to you, darling. It is your face I think of as I fall asleep, your hands in mine.

  Love,

  Nora

  Chapter Nine

  March 3, 1933

  The lobby of the Mayflower Hotel in Washington was empty when the Roosevelt family filed through a secure back entrance, followed by handlers and helpers carrying luggage, and Secret Service agents guarding each window and door.

  In the months since the jubilation of election night, the celebration had turned somber. Unemployment and homelessness were growing worse each week. Farmers were burning down their barns to collect insurance money and slaughtering their livestock to save the cost of feeding them. The tent village in Central Park had grown to a city. And an anarchist had nearly succeeded at assassinating the president-elect.

  “People are getting antsy as hell,” Bill said when I called in to the office from a phone in the Mayflower’s lavish lobby. “What kind of security will they have at the Capitol tomorrow?”

  “A whole lot,” I said. “Snipers, armored cars, the whole gamut.” They were worried about more maniacs like the man in Miami, but they knew the greater threat was from the crowds of regular people who would gather around the East Portico. They were not unlike religious pilgrims who knelt before the pope—they were helpless and broken down, but they believed. FDR held a tremendous amount of power for them, but I had the sense that the wind could change direction at any moment. If he said the wrong thing, or if he didn’t go far enough in his promises of help, the supplicants might transform into a violent mob.

  “And when will they let reporters into the hotel?”

  I hesitated. In my pocket was the key to my own room, which Nora had reserved for me under her name. It was a floor below the suites where she and the president-elect would make final preparations for the next day’s ceremony. Bill, of course, had no idea where I was calling from. All the other reporters were cooling their heels across the street. “We are waiting to hear,” I lied. “Maybe this evening, but it could be hard to get very close.”

  “Well, now’s the time to call in all your favors, Hick. I’d sure like to know what they’re talking about in their suite right now. We’re hearing Hoover’s thinking of closing the banks. Hard to believe, after all these years of doing nothing.”

  That day, every newspaper in the country had run photos of the runs on the banks: close-ups of panicked faces, and wide shots of the lines stretching around the block, the fights breaking out.

  “I’ll try to get you something,” I said.

  Bill laughed. “You’d better do more than try, Hick. If you like your job.”

  Later that evening, Nora called my room and asked me to come up, and one of the agents brought me to her floor in the secure elevator. I had expected a quiet sanctum, but the hallway bustled with aides and advisers. A porter carrying a tray of sandwiches entered a door about halfway down, and I spotted Nora’s eldest son, James, wheeling a bar cart in behind him.

  “Miss Hickok.” I turned to the open door beside me to find Louis leaning on the frame.

  “Mr. Howe.” I shook his hand. “Looks like you’re running a tight ship up here.”

  He nodded. “I wondered if we might see you tonight. We let your colleagues into the hotel, but they’re still moping about being stuck downstairs. Pays to have access, I guess.”

  I gave him an uneasy smile. I had not seen him since the night at the town house, and Nora and I had been keeping a low profile. “N—” I stopped. “Mrs. Roosevelt invited me, and you know her: she doesn’t take no for an answer.”

  “Yes, I do know her,” Louis said. “And I work for her, so I am in the business of making sure she has what she wants. But also what she needs.”

  I was taking in that remark as the porter came out of the suite and passed between us on his way to the elevator. Before the door swung closed, I heard a snippet of energetic discussion, Roosevelt’s voice and then Nora’s. Without thinking, my reporter’s muscle memory engaged and I strained to decipher their words.

  Louis watched me for a moment. “Miss Hickok, we need to get something straight. You are here tonight as Mrs. Roosevelt’s guest— not as a reporter. Do we understand each other?”

  Bill had made his threat on the phone, and now Louis was chiming in with demands of his own. I saw that no m
atter what I did next, I would regret it.

  Louis pointed at me. “Whatever you might hear is off the record. We let the reporters into the lobby, but that’s as close as any of them are going to get. No one is coming up here. I won’t have any leaks.”

  He must have seen on my face that I was still torn. “If you can’t abide by that, you should go now,” he said. “Mrs. Roosevelt will understand—you have a job to do. And you can do it from the lobby.”

  I wish I could say that I stood my ground, but at that moment my career didn’t amount to a hill of beans compared with the chance to be in that room with Nora. The next day she would be off to the White House for four years, at least. It was our last chance to be together, our last chance to say goodbye, even if we had to do it through silent glances and a passed note or two.

  I held up my empty palms and tried to look relaxed. “I didn’t even bring my notebook,” I said. It was still in my suitcase, one floor down.

  “All right,” he nodded, looking a little surprised—and perhaps even a little disappointed—at how easily I’d acquiesced. “I’m glad we could settle that.”

  He went back into his room and I exhaled a long breath.

  I knocked softly on the suite door, half hoping I wouldn’t be heard over the noise within, but Nora answered.

  “Hick,” she said, her lips painted pale pink and her reading glasses pushed up on her hair. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

  Over her shoulder, I saw FDR sitting with his back to us, and James standing beside him.

  “I won’t do it,” the president-elect said, more irritated than I’d ever seen him.

  “It’s the right call, Father. He’s well out of line to ask.”

  I gave Nora a curious look. “Let’s go across the hall and leave them to it,” she whispered.

  We passed into an identical suite, this one empty except for her luggage and a rack of dresses. The dining table was cluttered with vases of flowers and bottles of champagne with cards taped to their necks.