Undiscovered Country

by Kelly O'Connor McNees

  “Meaning … ?”

  She sighed at my dimwittedness. “Mr. Arthur is quite behind on his taxes.”

  My ears perked up then. “Is that right?”

  “Yes, indeed. And for about fifty thousand dollars, he will sell the government this farm, including all its buildings, to save himself from going into foreclosure.”

  “And what would the government want with this old farm?” I asked. But I had an idea. I felt a little shiver whisk up my spine.

  “I guess we’ll have to call it Arthurdale, since the poor man is practically giving his land away. Each family will get a few acres— maybe five at the most to keep things manageable. A cow, a pig, some chickens, and seed. And we’ll build them a house, which I’d like to find a way for them to make payments on, so that they will own it outright someday. We need a clinic and a school. There’s an awful lot to figure out.” She turned to me. “But, Hick, doesn’t it sound wonderful?”

  I thought of the terrible cases we’d seen on our tour and tried to imagine the undernourished children running in this fresh field, drinking milk and eating chicken, vegetables, bread thick with butter. I saw neat little houses with a lane winding among them, flags hanging from porches. “Yes. It does. But how will you do it?”

  “I already am,” she said, and her eyes were filled with more temerity than I’d ever seen. “I was on the phone most of the night. Franklin took a little convincing, though I can’t understand why. A place like Arthurdale fits perfectly with the subsistence farming initiative he has talked about for years. Around midnight, he got the secretary of the interior to release emergency funding, and Louis is drawing up the paperwork for the sale.”

  “Incredible,” I said.

  “What you really need to know, Hick, is that he was convinced to say yes because of you, because of your report. The homesteading idea is part Franklin’s and part mine, but the fact that we are going to try it here, with these people from the closed mines, that part is because of the work you have done. It’s very important to me that you see—it matters, this work. It’s not the AP, but it matters.”

  I stood there watching the grasshoppers fling themselves out of the grass like water dropped on a hot griddle and tried to let her words penetrate my mind. She knew I missed my old life, the job that meant everything to me. She knew I was despairing that I might have made a mistake.

  Nora took her hand out of the pocket of her skirt and reached for mine. I glanced over at her, my heart ever hopeful, but her gaze had turned back to the dilapidated Arthur house as she imagined what this land would become, at the way she could use her vision to change the fate of hundreds of people. In the face of an aim so grand, I could hardly ask her to attend to my trivial doubts by taking me into her arms, by kissing me hard and long in the safety of this place, with no one to see us but the grasshoppers. But how I wanted to slip into the car and feel her skin against mine. How I wanted her to whisper to me again about the cottage she had pledged to build for us—the lace curtains curling in the evening breeze, the table spread with chintz and a half-full decanter while we talked the night away, finally unhurried, finally just we two. I felt on that country road the words of my heart welling up and nearly spoke them aloud: Oh, Nora, say that you still love me—that you always will. But instead I said nothing, my hand in hers like an offering.

  Chapter Fifteen

  September 1, 1933

  Miss Hickok, what do you make of this duplicitous woman, giving all of us the slip?” Louis asked, grinning, as he rattled the ice and gin in his glass.

  I gave him my What can you do? smile and shrugged, while Nora feigned outrage. “Just because a person escapes in the middle of the night without telling anyone where she is going, I hardly think you could call that duplicitous.”

  Louis laughed. “I believe that’s the precise definition.”

  Nora held her ground with a smile. “And, anyway, look what I was able to accomplish.”

  It had been almost two weeks since our West Virginia jaunt. Nora, Louis, and I stood in the doorway of the private family dining room in the White House, about to head in for a working supper over which we planned to review preliminary documents for the creation of Nora’s homestead town, Arthurdale.

  “What I really can’t believe,” Louis said, “is that she managed to elude the press.”

  “Well, for a little while,” Nora said.

  The evening she and I returned to the Morgantown hotel after our trip out to the Arthur land, a photographer from the Morgantown Post was waiting for us and snapped a few pictures, and a reporter probed her about the reason for our visit. I’d felt annoyed with them for blowing our cover and a little worried they might be curious about why Nora and I were in her car alone together, why we were staying in the same hotel. But, as always, the notion of a romance between us was so preposterous, it couldn’t have occurred to them. That we would always be able to hide in plain sight was both a comfort and a disappointment.

  I’d watched as the reporter and photographer walked out of the hotel, and I was jealous that they were headed back to the camaraderie of a newsroom, however one-horse it might be. And that, of course, had made me think of John. We hadn’t spoken since the day I left the AP. I wondered if he was still angry with me. I thought of him sitting at his desk with a pencil over his ear and his boyish cowlick splayed on the top of his head, thought of us at Dom’s drinking our courage and decided maybe it was time to drop him a line. I hoped things were still going well with Marina, even though he didn’t really deserve it.

  The windows in the dining room were draped with voile curtains that billowed with the breeze coming off the South Lawn. We carried our drinks to the table and took our chairs.

  Nora looked at Louis. “I didn’t know he was in,” she said. He, of course, could refer to only one man. She seemed more irritated than alarmed, but my pulse lurched to top speed. After Morgantown, she had returned to Washington and I’d completed another leg of my assignment in Kentucky, where I wrote other reports and slept in other depressing motels. With a subletter in my apartment, I didn’t really have a place to stay between trips so, after some prodding, I’d accepted Nora’s invitation to stay in the White House. The servants had made up a bed for me in the sitting room adjacent to her bedroom. Nora had arranged for the violets from my kitchen to be transported to the White House solarium, and at the post office I’d changed my address to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. I even had a box of White House letterhead. I’d assumed she had cleared all this with the president, but now I wondered.

  Louis glanced at his watch. “Nor did I. Our man of mystery.”

  We remained standing, and, a moment later, President Roosevelt was propelled into the room by Missy LeHand, who steered his wheelchair to the head of the table, where the ornate dining chair had been removed.

  “Good evening, Franklin, Missy,” Nora said, her voice sunny. I plumbed her tone for acrimony, but if she felt any she hid it very well. I wondered what we’d stepped in.

  “Mrs. Roosevelt,” Missy said. She took the chair beside the president, and we all sat down. I exhaled a tiny stream of breath through my lips.

  The president clapped his hands. “Miss Hickok, I’ve read your excellent—and distressing—reports from the field. Now we really do have a healthy quorum to discuss this Appalachia business. I’m glad you could join us.”

  “Thank you for having me, sir,” I said, though if I had to guess I’d say he knew just as little about Nora’s plans and guests as she knew about his.

  With clammy hands, I unfolded my dinner napkin. I kept my eyes on the crystal vase in the center of the table. Louis updated the president on a few matters of business—announcement of new domestic oil production quotas and the trouble in Germany—and Nora chimed in with her own take on the Nazis’ bonfires of Jewish art and the newly signed pact between Italy and the Soviets.

  While they wrestled the affairs of the world, I stole a glance at Missy; she wore her blond hair in an elegant twist and
a chic blue dress with butterfly sleeves. The very tip of her elbow rested on the arm of the president’s chair. She was photogenic, curved in that solicitous posture like a parenthesis around the man she loved, and I wondered whether she ever indulged in a fantasy that it was she who was married to the president instead of Nora. How strange for me to wish her fantasy might come true, so that Nora and I might realize our own.

  “Now, let’s turn back to West Virginia,” Nora said. She seemed to feel there was nothing unusual about a husband, wife, and the two people with whom they were having affairs dining together. I, on the other hand, felt I was in the early stages of a stroke.

  “The survey has been completed and the paperwork is with the lawyers,” Louis said, combing his notes. “I expect the sale to close this week. And then we begin the planning.”

  “I’ve begun already,” Nora said. “I’ve met with the architects, and drawn up an idea of the selection process.”

  “I think it’s a marvelous plan,” the president said.

  “We have to think about how to make it as fair as possible, because there won’t be enough houses for everyone, not at first.” Nora pursed her lips in thought. “Clarence and I spoke about a few different ways we could approach a lottery, maybe reserve a certain number of houses for people from each camp.”

  Louis swallowed a sip of his drink. “Each of the ethnic camps?”

  “Yes,” Nora said, “it’s crucial that the residents reflect the population of the region as a whole—crucial that the help extends to everyone.”

  “Have you asked the people what they think about that?” the president asked. He glanced at Louis, and I considered his point. It was ambitious to imagine that people who preferred to live with their own kind would happily integrate themselves in this new town. But Nora gave the president a chilly look. Woe unto any man who suggested she scale back her vision for this utopia.

  We were saved by servants then. They came into the breakfast room, followed by the family’s head cook, and brought our plates—chicken in a white sauce, steamed vegetables, and rolls. It struck me that Nora seemed to move effortlessly from a place so derelict as the mining camps to a room so fine as this. All dining tables were the same to her, each person worthy of the dignity of a place there. My heart swelled with admiration, and I waited for Nora to thank the cook first, so the rest of us could follow.

  But it was Missy, who until that moment had been completely silent, who said, “Thank you, Mrs. Nesbitt. This looks lovely.”

  I felt my eyebrows climb and glanced at Nora to see what she thought about Missy slipping so easily into the role of mistress of the house, but she was busy asking after Louis’s wife, Grace, who had had bronchitis.

  The president echoed his mistress—“Yes, wonderful!”—and there was the merest edge in his voice that revealed his unease.

  Mrs. Nesbitt bowed her head in formal deference. “Thank you, sir. We do our best,” she said, and went back through the door to the kitchen.

  Roosevelt’s smile faded as she left. He sniffed at his plate. “It smells a little … odd,” he said. He sniffed again. “Well, it smells like nothing at all.”

  Nora dipped the tines of her fork in the sauce and tasted it. “I believe she has left out the butter.”

  “And the cream,” Louis said, his lips pursed.

  “So that would make this, let’s see—flour, water, and … salt?” Missy said to the president. He shook his head in irritation, and it was clear the two of them had discussed the matter of Mrs. Nesbitt’s failed dishes before.

  The president set down his fork. “It’s dreadful.” He looked at his wife. “Eleanor, have you told her to ration?”

  Nora, I noticed, wouldn’t meet his eye. “Most people in this country are making do without rich foods. It sets an excellent example if we embrace the same prudence.”

  “Oh, it’s not so bad,” I blurted, sensing that there were sides to be taken, and I wanted to be on hers. “The vegetables are fine.”

  “Yes, they are,” Nora said, and took a bite of green beans. “We should be grateful for simple, nutritious food.”

  “You and your crusades, Eleanor,” the president said. Missy shifted in her chair and took a sip of her drink. “Even with decent ingredients at her disposal, Mrs. Nesbitt is no cook, and you know it.”

  Nora sighed. “It’s true that she does not have much experience, but, Franklin, she has done so much for us over the years. And you know her husband is not well—she needs the income.”

  The president closed his eyes and tipped his head back in exasperation. “Well, can’t you give her some other kind of work and hire a decent chef? I don’t know how much more of this I can take. International diplomacy may be at risk if she continues to serve this sludge at state dinners!”

  Missy chortled at her lover’s joke. “Really, Effdee, this meal is just not dignified,” she said.

  And then I saw I had been wrong to assume Missy’s attempted coup a few moments before had gone over Nora’s head. The first lady fixed her with a stare so cold I glanced at Missy’s water goblet to see if frost had bloomed around the edges. Missy, going a little pale, moved her elbow an inch closer to her torso so that it no longer touched the president’s chair. Beneath the table, I tipped my knee against Nora’s and silently urged her to breathe. I myself felt both riled and confused—indignant on Nora’s behalf, but also unsure of my place in the table’s pecking order. If Nora was the first wife and Missy was the second, what was I? At least Missy was afforded the dignity of causing tempers to flare, but I doubted FDR felt anything like jealousy when it came to me. Back at Christmas, Nora and I had been so worried that we’d be exposed, but I saw that something worse had happened: it didn’t matter to him enough to wonder. He didn’t care what was going on between us. Somehow, our love felt less powerful when I knew it held no threat.

  Louis cleared his throat—God bless that man—and said, “If we might turn back to West Virginia for a moment …” And I thought of Ruth Johnson standing with her bare feet in the dirt and felt ashamed of my chicken dinner, as unpleasant as it was. “The money for subsistence homestead projects was appropriated through the Recovery Act, but Secretary Ickes will need to approve a budget for this endeavor.”

  Nora looked at Franklin. The business with Missy and the dinner was forgotten; she had snapped into strategy mode, her boundless work ever her refuge from the volatility of home life. “Ickes will want to scrimp.”

  The president gave her a scolding look. “My dear, he’s balancing a whole host of projects. That is his job, to make the funds go as far as possible. To see the big picture.”

  “The big picture,” Nora said, “is that subsistence homesteads cannot succeed across the country unless we launch them with a bold, successful pilot program. And Arthurdale is the pilot program.”

  “It sounds like it’s a matter of degrees,” Louis chimed in. “Anything we do is going to be an improvement for these folks, right, Miss Hickok?” He and the president both turned to me.

  I cleared my throat, stalling. “Well, yes, that’s true. Their circumstances are fairly deplorable at the moment—”

  “So perhaps we do not need an architect,” Louis said quickly. He pulled a brochure from the folder on the table beside him and handed it to Nora. “These are prefabricated houses and can be delivered in a few pieces by truck. We’ll save thousands on labor if we don’t have to construct the homes from scratch.”

  Nora opened the brochure and I peered at it across her forearm. “Prefabricated Cape Cod–Style Homes,” it read. “Build It in No Time and Summer in Style.” A line drawing depicted a tidy cottage on what looked like the Maine coast.

  Nora slapped the brochure closed. “Louis, don’t be absurd. These are summer cottages. They have no heat! What will these people do in the winter? And no plumbing? You can’t be serious.”

  He signaled to the servant standing by the door for another drink. “We could install woodstoves. After all, that’s the way mo
st people in this part of the country heat their homes. As for plumbing—wells, outhouses …”

  “Absolutely not,” Nora said. “It is 1933, for goodness’ sake. If we want to lift people out of poverty, they must have decent accommodations. Franklin, are you listening to this?”

  Both Nora and Louis looked at the president, who had been watching with some amusement as they volleyed back and forth like tennis players. He flashed one of his signature smiles. I was starting to understand that he used them the way some men used a raised voice, to take control of a conversation, to bring it back in hand.

  “I have faith in the two of you to hammer out a plan that will maximize the benefits to these miners and their families,” FDR said. “And I know you can put this initiative in the best possible light so that we may replicate it elsewhere, within the confines of the legislation—and the funding.” He pushed his untouched plate away. “Now, Missy has agreed to help me with some reports. Miss Hickok, it’s wonderful to have you here. I hope you know that you are doing a great service to your country with these field investigations.”

  I had to admit that praise from the president himself was a pretty good consolation prize for the loss of my byline. But beside me Nora was tense, and I knew she was scheming about how to get her way on the matter of the Arthurdale houses, not congratulating herself on achievements already in the can.

  “Good evening,” Missy said to Louis and me and the space just to the left of Nora—she still couldn’t quite look at her—as she stood and smoothed her skirt. She pushed the president’s chair across the plush carpet and out through the door, and I heard her ask the servant to have a tray of sandwiches sent up to the president at his desk. Nora watched this exchange as she chewed the final bite of chicken on her plate, sopped up the last bit of sauce with a scrap of bread, and popped it into her mouth. She had eaten the entire wretched thing.