Undiscovered Country

by Kelly O'Connor McNees

  “Rest,” I said.

  She patted the bed. “Please, sit.”

  I tried not to stare at Ruth’s belly, but her current form seemed to defy physics. She had a petite frame—as fragile as a sparrow’s, her shoulders like featherless wings—but somehow her torso had swelled to accommodate an entire baby. She looked occupied. I knew she had done this before with her other children, but nevertheless, I wondered if she was afraid. What did it feel like to be wrenched open and then sewn back together and handed a mewling stranger?

  “You getting enough to eat and all that?” I asked.

  She nodded. She certainly seemed less agitated than she had the last time I’d seen her, and the rash on her chin had healed. “I have you to thank for getting us in here.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” I said. I brushed my hand across the red and blue stars on her quilt, which had been pieced, no doubt, by some industrious mountain woman sitting beside a dim fire.

  Ruth shook her head and leveled her eyes at me. “You are an instrument of the Lord, Miss Hickok. He worked through you.”

  I restrained the laugh this comment would have called up if I’d been in different company—as instruments go, I was probably something like a pocket knife rusted shut—but who was I to tell her what to think? “I’m just glad it worked out, Mrs. Johnson.”

  “I never would have believed I would have a real house,” she said. Her brown teeth showed when she smiled. “They’re saying we’re going to have bathtubs and hot running water!”

  “Well,” I said, feeling uneasy, “your men have to build the houses first. And we’ve got to get the government to appropriate enough money to make sure they can give you everything you’ve been promised.”

  She waved her hand. “They will.” She had lost the cynicism that she’d worn, like a beetle’s hard shell, back on the sweltering summer day when we’d first met. This both heartened and worried me.

  “And you’ve gotten to see the doctor? The baby’s doing all right?”

  Her jaw tightened at her temple. “He ain’t said nothing, but there’s been two babies born not right this year. From the chemicals, you know? So we just got to wait and see. ‘Play the odds’ is how he put it—a gambling man, I guess.”

  “Oh,” I said, but stopped, despair strangling my voice. So the damage might already be done. The poison was in everything; it leached into the potatoes they grew, the wildflowers that spilled unbidden across the hillside and dried to husks in the heat, scattering their seeds. And now that poison was slicing up the branches of their family tree like an ax blade.

  “It must be hard not to worry,” I said carefully. “But think of the healthy babies you’ve had. This one will be just fine too.”

  She peered at me as if I might actually be able to see the future, and she was wondering whether to trust what I’d said. In the end, she didn’t nod or shake her head, just shrugged a little. Ruth was practiced in helplessness, in surrender to forces outside her control. Those were the only kind of forces she’d ever known. What would happen with the baby was not up to her, and she would accept whatever came. It was hard to watch. One of the things I loved about opera was that, in those grand stories, people get what they deserve. Villains get punished. The wronged and misunderstood might die at the end, but they died redeemed. In real life, nothing was so certain.

  “So your job, Miss Hickok—it’s just to drive from place to place, checking on people?”

  I smiled. “That’s one way to put it. The nicest way I’ve heard, actually. I used to have a different job that I loved. But I like this one too.”

  “They don’t make you work on Christmas, do they? That don’t seem right.”

  “No, they don’t. I’m on my way home to Washington, actually, after a long time away.” Home, I thought. Where Nora waited. Where we could finally hold each other and make everything else disappear. If it wasn’t too late.

  Ruth gave me a knowing look, as if she too were acquainted with the soggy sandwiches and bleak diners that made up life on the road, though she’d likely never left Preston County, West Virginia. “Where abouts you coming from?”

  “The Dakotas. I spent part of my childhood there.”

  “No kidding. And that’s where your people are?”

  I shook my head. “No. I guess I don’t really have any more people. My parents died a long time ago. One of my sisters ran off and we never heard from her again. The other lives in New York.”

  “Huh,” she said and gave me a sympathetic smile. Suddenly we had switched places; now I was the impoverished one. “Well, I got people coming out my ears. And I can tell you you ain’t missing much.”

  Goddamn, she’s a good egg, I thought. I felt like I’d pay just about any price to make sure things came out all right for her. “I should let you rest,” I said and stood. “Now, you make sure to take good care of yourself. Take good care of that baby. All right?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” she said with her eyes closed, ready to slip off into sleep. “I’m going to dream about what I want to eat for Christmas dinner.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “I don’t care, as long as it has butter on it. I’m going to put butter on my butter. I’m going to eat every single thing but the bones.” She cracked one eye open. “Do you know, these little’uns are such fools. They never seen milk before, and when we poured it for them after we moved here, they said, ‘Momma, there’s something wrong with my water.’”

  “Oh, good heavens!” I said, just the way she wanted me to. But in my heart, I wondered which was worse—never having milk, or having it for a month and then never again.

  “They ain’t got the sense God gave a stump. But they liked the milk pretty well.”

  “Sweet dreams, Ruth,” I said from the doorway. “You take care.”

  In the hall, I put my palm on the wall and had to stand there for a moment before I could walk toward the stairwell. Out the big picture window, I could see the men working on the skeletons of their houses and hear the rhythmic pop, pop, pop of their hammers. If that article was to be believed, after the homes they planned to build a school and convert one of the outbuildings into a factory where they could bring in jobs. Next they wanted a clinic, and a hall where they could hold meetings and dances. They could already see all kinds of things that didn’t exist yet.

  I said my goodbyes and pulled out onto the winding lane back to Route 7, one hand on the wheel, one hand lighting my cigarette and holding it to my lips for the first long drag. I felt the crinkle of the paper snowflake in my pocket. We all wanted hope, but hope was a dangerous thing. It operated like the roots of an old tree that grew in all directions, bursting up through smooth concrete, muscling through a house’s brick foundation. Once you set hope loose, there was no telling. It made you sure that things could change, that you wanted them to change because anything was better than what you had now. But you might be wrong about that, and you were sure to find out, one way or another.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  December 22, 1933

  I crossed the Potomac at three in the morning and shuddered down the deserted streets to Pennsylvania Avenue. Bluette was a little worse for wear, having seen over the course of my journey drought, dust storms, coal smog, pine pitch, floods, and hail, not to mention a good deal of inebriated driving and a lifetime’s worth of cigarette burns on her upholstery. Her finish was pitted and chipped, and she was every inch of her absolutely filthy. It might have been easier just to melt her down and make a new car, but the capable White House mechanics would whisk her away and restore her, I knew, like a fallen woman taken in by a millionaire and passed off as a true lady. No one would know what she had seen; Bluette and I would keep our secrets just fine.

  When I cut her engine under the portico at the entrance to the East Wing, the machine seemed to cough its last breath. I must have looked awfully out of place in my old tweed coat and scuffed shoes, and I wouldn’t have blamed the Secret Service agents for barreling out
the door and tackling me as they would an intruder. But it seemed they were expecting me. A steward met me with a polite smile, relieved me of my luggage, and led me through the east colonnade to the stairs.

  At the open door to the Monroe Room, which Nora used as a parlor, I waited in the hallway while the steward stepped into the room to announce me.

  “Mrs. Roosevelt—”

  “Hick!” Nora cut him off and I heard a lapful of books and papers slide to the floor. “You made it!”

  The steward backed out of the way, and I stepped into the room to face Nora. To see her in the flesh, after these months of separation, of wondering and racking my beat-up heart over what love might be left for me, was a balm I could not have imagined. She wore a dark green dress and jacket with a white collar, and clusters of pearls at her ears. My eyes locked on hers.

  “Thank you, Anthony,” Nora said to the steward without looking away. I heard his footsteps retreat and she pulled the door closed partway.

  “We aren’t really alone,” she warned me as our fingers entwined, “but it’s quiet here today. Franklin and the children are away until the twenty-fourth.” She pulled my hand toward her waist and kissed both my cheeks. “Come and sit. You must be exhausted.”

  I was. And elated. And ashamed. We sat down on the flowered sofa beneath an enormous painting in a gilded frame, and I couldn’t help but think of Mae standing on the ladder beside her provocative work. Next I saw our glasses of gin and orange juice clink and slosh; I saw her fingers unhooking my garters. I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment and tried to shake the thoughts of the depth of my betrayal away.

  “I can’t believe you waited up for me,” I said.

  “Darling, I have been counting the hours. We have so much to catch up on. Arthurdale, Minnesota. And I want to hear about Bowdle— really, I do. I can only imagine what it must have been like for you to go back there.”

  I wanted to confess so badly to what I had done, but I knew it would be a selfish act meant only to relieve myself of guilt. Nora had been through betrayal before, with her husband—the thick stack of letters tied with red cord, the handwriting that filled the page and crawled up the margins with passion unrestrained, unseemly. I wouldn’t make her go through it again. We had waited so long to be together. I couldn’t bear to puncture this bubble of happiness.

  Nora gave me the airy smile of an unburdened conscience. “Is there anything you want, dear? Are you hungry? I can call for a tray.”

  “I just want you,” I said, and leaned forward to kiss her. She indulged me for a moment but then hunched her shoulders and pulled her head away. “Now, now,” she whispered. “We must be good.”

  I sighed. “Of course. You’re right. Well, it’s the middle of the night. We have to get some sleep, don’t we? Or we will be wrecks tomorrow.”

  “Yes, and I have a busy day.” She stood and stretched, and I followed her out into the hall as she lowered her voice. “But we can have breakfast together. And we’ll have our Christmas together at three. I’ve cleared the evening. I have you set up in the drawing room just like before. We’ll be near each other all the time.”

  I felt a yawn creeping up my ears as we settled in our adjoining rooms and Nora pulled off her earrings and kissed me good night. Then she closed the door that kept our arrangement proper to anyone who might take notice. This yawn was as much a sign of relief as exhaustion. My whole body felt calmer. Even my aching molar seemed improved. The proof I needed—that I had not imagined Nora—was taking hold. I could rest easy knowing I had not deluded myself into believing that we shared the kind of love that kept the poets in business. It was real. Whatever happened next, whatever people might say about us someday, whether they ever said anything about me at all, I knew that our love was real.

  I opened my eyes the next morning to searing sunlight and the realization that I had overslept. Through the open door to Nora’s room, I could see that her bed was made; she had probably been up for hours, planned a state dinner, and spurred three new pieces of legislation in the time that I’d been drooling into my pillow. Her lilac perfume lingered in the air.

  In the bathroom, I dressed and splashed water onto my face. With the soft towel pressed to my cheek, I stared at my reflection in the gilded mirror. I looked old and tired, I thought, like someone’s spinster aunt. One would never guess I had bird-dogged crooked cops and searched for a kidnapped baby, typing at the speed of light to get the truth out into the world, that I had swallowed operas whole until their melodies streamed out of the ends of my frizzy hair, that I had loved and been loved like Aphrodite. You’d never know any of that to look at me. There’s the story we know, and the story the world wants to tell about us, stubbornly, based solely on a glance. How looks could deceive.

  I hung the peach-colored towel and snapped off the light. In the hall, an usher found me wandering and led me to the family dining room, where a single place setting waited for me. Another servant entered and poured orange juice from a carafe into a slender cut crystal glass.

  “Will Mrs. Roosevelt be able to join me?” I asked.

  “I believe the first lady is occupied with meetings all morning,” she said, “but I can take her a message if you like.”

  I shook my head. “That’s all right. I don’t want to bother her.” Hadn’t Nora said we’d eat breakfast together? I couldn’t be sure. Maybe I had slept through the time she had reserved for us—I certainly couldn’t blame her for that.

  I consumed the platonic ideal of an omelet and then returned to my room to find a basket full of the mail that had arrived in my absence. There were bills, solicitations, letters forwarded by the AP. Those were mainly pleas from the crackpots who wrote to every reporter with a byline, begging us to investigate alien abductions and shadowy government conspiracies. The Long Island kennel where Prinz was staying had forwarded a bill from the veterinarian. And I had about fifty envelopes labeled PROSPERITY CLUB CHAIN LETTER, each one instructing me to send a dime to the name at the top of the list of recipients. I smiled. John Bosco was finally getting me back for my feed corn prank. I felt a pang of longing for my newsroom days—and the utter peculiarity of the brass letter opener in my hand, my current location at a table in the White House.

  My most pressing task, now that I had returned to civilization, was the need to organize the jumble of receipts in the bottom of my handbag and submit them to my office for reimbursement. I was down to my last few dollars. In search of a pen to begin my calculations, I stepped over to Nora’s escritoire by the window.

  I plucked an ink pen from the drawer and noted the stack of memos and file folders that leaned dangerously toward the edge of the desk. Nora had never been a neat freak; she was too busy for that. When I closed the drawer, the top-heavy pile shifted, and I nudged it with my palm so that it leaned back toward the wall. Though I had no intention of snooping, a clipped newspaper article on the very top caught my eye. BUDGET OVERRUNS DOG …

  It was the same article I had seen in the diner the day before yesterday. It was clipped to a folder labeled ARTHURDALE—TEMPORARY ACCOMMODATIONS. There was a memo sticking out beneath the article and, though I knew I shouldn’t touch it, I couldn’t resist lifting the square of newsprint to see what it said.

  Mrs. R:

  I think you will agree that we are in a delicate phase with Adale and cannot risk losing POTUS support. Ickes has his ear right now. Won’t you budge on LH accommodation?

  —Louis

  So Louis was on Nora’s case about Arthurdale too. The project was bleeding money on construction of the homes, and now it seemed even the temporary housing was ruffling feathers. Were the men really complaining about having to bunk separately from their wives? Having met some of those women, I’d imagined their husbands would be thanking their lucky stars for a nightly respite from the henpecking.

  Then I considered Louis’s words further and grew more concerned. No one in the White House was more in the know than Louis, and if he had decided to warn Nora—in
writing no less—that she must not lose her husband’s support for Arthurdale, that meant the shift was already underway. Secretary Ickes’s doubts had begun to infect his boss. Just as Clarence had said, so many people wanted Arthurdale to fail, and without President Roosevelt’s backing, that’s exactly what would happen.

  I set the memo back on the pile and shrugged into my coat, eager to get some air. Harry Hopkins’s office was just a few blocks away, so I decided to walk there to file my expense report and kill time until the early dinner Nora and I had planned for our private Christmas celebration. As I went out the east entrance, Louis Howe came in, wearing one of the unfortunate brown suits he favored, a cigarette at his lips. A brief look passed over his face when he saw me—surprise, concern—and then it was gone.

  “Miss Hickok,” he said, and shook my hand with both his as his smoke dangled. “How nice to see you back in Washington.”

  It was a sunny day and I squinted, trying to see him in the glare. “Thank you, Mr. Howe. It’s nice to be back. Life on the road takes its toll.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” he said. “And when do you ship out again?”

  “You know, I’m not sure. After the holidays, I imagine, but I need to talk to Mr. Hopkins. Here’s hoping he sends me somewhere warm.”

  “Well, wherever he sends you, I know you’ll serve your country well. Merry Christmas, Miss Hickok. I hope Santa brings you a big bottle of bourbon.”

  And then he set off toward the West Wing, with that tense walk that made him look almost crippled. I tried to brush off the odd feeling the exchange had left me with. Louis was a behind-the-scenes man, a broker of deals and counterdeals, and he lived for his work. The interruption of the holidays probably drove him crazy, I assured myself. Too many cocktail parties and tree lightings getting in the way of his machinations.