White Houses

by Amy Bloom

  He smiled. He stood up and paced.

  “You’re not making this easy. Very soon, I’m going to be at the center of a hideous scandal. All sorts of virtuous nonsense in bold type, about my perverse predilections. I’ll have to resign. Franklin will have to accept my resignation. You know how it is. You can raise your baby as your sister, knock up the housemaid and deny your own son, lie to your sterile husband about your bouncing baby boy, bring smallpox to the New World and sell opium from sea to sea, but…”

  I said I agreed with him. I liked his patter. I even liked our lunch and I forgave him, even while he was threatening me. I hadn’t had a pal like him in years. In the White House, we did good and we talked nice.

  “I am making a terrible mess of this,” he said. “Let me try again: Wouldn’t it be something if the scandal that pushes mine off the front page is you and Eleanor, with a nasty quote from Cousin Alice, and maybe some photos of your little judge, just to show that not only are you Eleanor’s lesbian lover, but you are a serpent of unnatural desire, spreading your poison everywhere. You know. And if your story gets rolled out right away, and I think I can manage that, the lesbian rumpus will overshadow mine entirely. I mean, I’m an underling. Eleanor is First Lady. You see.”

  He said this all in the most cheerful, instructive way, like a friendly schoolteacher.

  I finished my drink and stood up. He took my hand.

  “That’s the worse-case scenario, as Mr. Hoover likes to put it. And I’m sorry to even bring it up. But if you help me,” he said, “if you and Eleanor could get Franklin to stand by me, no one has to suffer. No stories of any kind. You see? What I want is that none of us suffer. Even J. Edgar is not inclined to put his big Mary Jane into it.”

  Twenty years ago, I would have broken some dishes and blacked his eye. Even now, it was no trouble to stand up to him and say, Don’t pull this blackmail bullshit on me, buster, but I didn’t see the reason for it. He was neck-deep in trouble and reaching for the nearest branch. It could have been me begging him for help, if it had all gone the other way. Eleanor’d known Parker Fiske since he was born. She’d stand by him and she’d tell Franklin to stand by him. And Franklin would want to. It’d be good, clean fun for him, thwarting the State Department. And there was no reason for me not to back Parker Fiske and no one cared, really, what I did. It was flattering that Parker didn’t seem to grasp that.

  “All right,” I said. “No suffering. There’s enough. Eleanor and Franklin will back you. One hundred percent. I’m sure of it. And me. We all will.”

  He smiled and exhaled.

  “And, please, don’t tell her I asked you, unless you must. She wouldn’t like it. Just work your magic. Emphasize the good I have done. Next time,” he said, “you girls come out together and there’ll be a beautiful lunch and we’ll spend a lovely afternoon.”

  I said that he might change his ways, going forward, and he smiled tightly. Like you, he said. I said that frankly, I’d been exactly who I was since I was fourteen only now I dressed a little better and kept my temper.

  “Well, I have always dressed impeccably,” he said. “She’s the love of your life, I gather.”

  I smiled. “She seems to be.”

  “And are you hers?” he said.

  “Close enough,” I said.

  He leaned toward me.

  “Really, Hick,” he said. “We could be friends. Of a kind.”

  “We can,” I said.

  He raised his elegant hand and the car rolled forward and the chauffeur came out to open the door for me, tipping his hat.

  * * *

  —

  I went to Eleanor about Parker Fiske, without saying anything about the scrambled eggs or White Horse Hill. I said I admired his devotion to this country and that he was a great public servant. She looked at me and said he certainly was. She backed him. Franklin backed him. Even J. Edgar Hoover, in his odd, weaselly way, backed Parker Fiske, and he had read the files and the files, Franklin said, were scorching. And then the Republican senators piled on and Hoover changed his mind and smart money said that Parker Fiske was on his way out. Franklin wrestled and argued and swore that he would kill the secretary of state before he’d lose Parker Fiske (he said that he’d rather be in hell with Parker than in heaven with Republicans). Franklin said just what you’d want your boss to say, up and down the Eastern Seaboard, and then he made himself a martini and accepted Parker’s resignation. Too many incidents, Franklin said, for too many years, in too many countries. Too many reports, read by too many enemies. I read the speech Parker gave at Harvard, after he resigned, and it was a barn burner. Eleanor would have been proud to give it. Parker said all people, of all colors, had inalienable human rights and that all colonial rule represented a moral wrong. Franklin never mentioned it.

  Eleanor told me she’d written to Parker and Cybele, inviting them to dinner in New York sometime, but she did say she had a lot of other people to see. She saw young people, she saw veterans. She saw socialists. She saw sharecroppers. She walked picket lines and gave her speaking fees to the International Garment Workers. She was famous for going everywhere and seeing everyone, from the soldiers to the coal miners, to the women working lines at the factories. She was ridiculed for caring and she doubled down. She joined the NAACP when white people didn’t and she stared down Bull Connor in Birmingham and said that few things had given her as much satisfaction. In this war, our world was changing and people were frightened and they were angry. For every woman working in a factory, thrilled to have a decent job, there were ten men cursing her and another ten making sure that none of the people whom Hitler failed to murder would wind up on our shores, eating at our table. She never stopped. She never read her own press. She never forgot anyone’s birthday and she never left anyone off the Christmas list and it was the giving that was the real pleasure, even when the relationship was not what it was. (See: me.) She didn’t talk to women about leading by their fine moral example anymore. She didn’t talk to anyone about quiet virtue anymore. She went wherever she was invited, and some places she wasn’t, and she talked until she was hoarse about the basic rights of every citizen: equal education, equal pay, equal representation, and equal participation. Everyone quoted her and lots of people hated her, and when she said she didn’t mind anymore, that she was honored to have an FBI file the size of the Manhattan phone book, she meant it. A lot of Republicans preferred Adolf Hitler to Eleanor Roosevelt, and not because they’d heard that Eleanor and I were lovers ten years ago.

  I felt bad for Parker and for the country and I sent him a note, saying so, expressing my admiration and saying his resignation was a loss for the country.

  He wrote back.

  My dear Hick,

  It was very kind of you to write and I hope it has cost you nothing. My friendship has been so difficult, for so many. I spend my days with new friends, the fly fishermen of Maine, and it has been the rest cure everyone said it would be.

  My wife has been a great support and never complains. She has made a very large scrapbook of my positive “press,” since my resignation. I no longer have to wonder what my funeral will be like.

  I’ll be returning to White Horse Hill soon. Although I won’t pretend our paths are likely to cross, I hope you know that I will be delighted if they do.

  With kindest regards,

  Parker Fiske

  No one ever wrote a story about Eleanor and me.

  Between You and Me

  VERY EARLY MONDAY MORNING, APRIL 30, 1945

  29 Washington Square West

  New York, New York

  It’s two A.M. The streetlamp cuts through the curtains. We sleep under a shelf of Roosevelt family photographs. All of the children, her handsome, fraying father, her brother Hall when he was beautiful, Franklin and Eleanor laughing on the lawn, giddy and young.

  The last time I saw Franklin, it was two months ago and I was still sleeping in the White House. I’d gone looking for a pen. The ones in my room were dry
or broken. Eleanor was asleep and mostly long gone from me. Sometimes, we’d breakfast together and gossip over a stack of newspapers like an old, married couple or we’d spend the afternoon with Tommie typing and Eleanor dictating, just in case I could lend a hand, and once I came upon her crying a little, after a run-in with Franklin Junior, but mostly, we were fond and distant ships passing on the second floor of the White House. I had a very small bedroom and my photograph wasn’t on Eleanor’s mantel anymore but I had my meals, and very few bills, and I had Marion. I still liked prowling the halls late at night. No one but the Secret Service was around. They nodded, I nodded. I’d go into the kitchen, hoping to find a muffin, then I’d walk back upstairs and look for a pen. When you are waiting for the sun to rise, for the world to join you, any activity seems promising. I walked through the second floor, past all the closed doors, and took the stairs back down.

  Franklin was asleep in his wheelchair, head back against the wood frame.

  I’d caught him like that once before, years ago, in his first term, with Missy sitting on the couch next to him, in her pink wool robe, holding his hand. She’d seen me and coughed. He opened his tired eyes and waved a hand.

  “Well, look here. Hick, couldn’t sleep? Come to join the insomniacs club?”

  “I guess so. I was looking for a pen, but if you two are having a nightcap, I wouldn’t mind.”

  Missy pursed her lips and shook her head. He grinned. I was still a fresh face. I was an interesting adversary, I knew some good jokes and I could hold my liquor. It was a third-act twist to have drinks with Missy, showing me that he had his woman and he’d also had mine and plenty of minor tail in between. And, he was running the United States, like his very own fiefdom. And, oh, this chair, this minor impediment, nothing to it. I stood my ground. Missy held on to his hand.

  “Oh no,” she said. “F.D., it’s so late.”

  I don’t think people can help it. We play with fire and tell ourselves we’re just lighting a modest, necessary candle. We know discretion is called for and everything in us cries out to be seen, to spread our feathers. You’re in a bar on West Nineteenth Street, filled with Italians and romantic tourists, and you put your hand over hers, in an unmistakable way, right between the martini glass and the antipasto and you don’t move it until the waiter comes and clears his throat to announce the specials. You’re at a gathering of people, who are not your friends, and no one has twigged about the two of you and you hear yourself call her Darling, in front of a roomful. I was not someone Missy should have showed off to. I was a pervert. I was madly in love with Eleanor, which I didn’t have the decency to hide, being a pervert, and Eleanor seemed to be crazy in love with me, which baffled everyone, since everyone knew passion and romance—and perversion—were not Eleanor Roosevelt’s cup of tea. And I’d only just stopped being a reporter. If things went south with Eleanor, who knows what terrible story I might sell to the Enquirer. Missy knew all that. And still, she danced her fingers along his arm, up to his broad shoulder. She leaned so close her breast grazed his chest and still leaning in, she kissed him, closer to the lips than the cheek. He patted her hand.

  She stood up and straightened her robe. She wanted me to walk out with her. I sat down on the arm of the old leather chair across from Franklin.

  “Mr. President,” I said. “Missy needs her beauty sleep. You know I don’t.”

  He laughed.

  “My dear,” he said to her. “Hick’ll keep me company for a little while.”

  She stood in the doorway, grinding her teeth.

  “Really, my dear,” he said. “Good night.”

  Oh, I knew that voice. Light and charming and the sun would set on you before you’d even reached the door. And in the face of Franklin’s deep freeze, everyone backed down. I sulked. I pretended it was a dignified retreat but it was just lumbering backward, in shame. A few times, when there’d been too much Scotch going around, shame propelled me forward instead, until I was out of my chair, facing him down, with nothing to say. I stood over him, furious with both of us, opening and closing my fists. He puffed on a cigarette and his eyes wandered from my face to my bosom and back, assessing out of habit, just letting me know. I sat back down and pretended to read. Franklin called for another round. I couldn’t scold the President of the United States, whom I admired with all my heart, and I didn’t have it in me to fight with the cripple I was cuckolding every night I had the chance.

  We sat in the near dark, that first night. All I could see was his silver hair, the steel rims of his glasses, his snowy white cuffs, and his elegant hands.

  “Well,” he said. “Pour us something.”

  I poured us what I could find without turning on a light.

  “This feels like rum. I found some lime slices,” I said.

  “Oh, like we’re in Cuba,” he said. “Salud.”

  “I hope we shall drink down all unkindness,” I said. I hoped he’d ask me what that was from and I would say The Merry Wives of Windsor and he’d express admiration and surprise. He lifted his glass to me and took a long swallow.

  “You’re on the road a lot,” he said. “Making a point?”

  “That Harry Hopkins is a demanding fella.”

  “Sure. You’re a very good reporter,” he said, and I was so pleased I blushed.

  “So, you’re not making a point.”

  * * *

  —

  I was making a point. Eleanor was impossible: She’d make and break dates and weep to me because John or Elliott or Anna needed her just when we were supposed to be together. I’d say, Let’s just take one day off, go to the Mayflower and stay in bed and she’d act like I was stealing the silver.

  I spent the next four months traveling for work, making my point. My letters to her were straight out of the Sapphic Guide to Summer Travel. Gorgeous weather! Magnificent sunsets! My car’s running like a top and did I mention my rekindled friendship with darling Alicent Holt, my former teacher? Why, she’s just a little older than you, Dearest, sitting right beside me in the passenger seat, one hand on my knee or a little higher. She loves Emily Dickinson too. There are more charming guesthouses in Michigan, run by more charming spinsters, than you’d guess. I described the pretty rooms, and the heirloom comforters for the still cool nights and in the course of describing the pretty room, I indicated that there was only one comforter and only one bed. As with all good prose, it’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it. I made it clear that the only thing wrong with Alicent was the way she was, honestly, wearing me out. And at the end of the summer, I’d picked up the thread with dear Lottie, my schoolgirl pal, from South Dakota. (A good reporter can find anyone.) Lottie had raised her kids and after three bad years, her husband was just getting on his feet and if you don’t think my bringing a small ham, a bag of oranges, and a bottle of moonshine made me entirely welcome at Lottie’s house, you don’t know what hard times are like. Was Henry smacking me on the back after a few drinks? Yes, he was. Was Lottie glad to grab a small bag, her skivvies, and cold cream, and drive across the Dakotas and into Iowa, just for old times’ sake? Yes, she was and she did and didn’t we have fun, in the car and out of it. And, as it always was, she felt that no harm had been done to Henry or her marriage because we were just girls. There was, as Lottie put it, no thing.

  * * *

  —

  “Well, Mr. President…” I wondered what I was going to say.

  “Never mind. She hasn’t been herself.”

  I brought the bottle to his glass and he shook his head.

  “Call Wyatt,” he said.

  His Secret Service man came in from the hall and Franklin lifted his chin.

  “Good night, Miss Hickok. Good to see you again.”

  Wyatt nodded to me and wheeled Franklin out and to his bedroom. He’d undress the President and put him in pajamas, one thin, useless leg at a time, and Franklin’d slide himself from the chair to the bed, with Wyatt hovering. Wyatt, Secret Service through and through, made s
ure that the whole procedure was as businesslike as possible. I’d seen it a few times, the transition from the car up the stairs, Franklin carried like a tired child by a big man. It was impossible to find an elegant position. It was impossible for him to be anything but powerless and, because of that, foolish. When he was carried, all of his women looked away.

  They loved him. History should show him to be a great man, a great leader, a silver-tongued con man and a devil with women, but if it doesn’t show that they adored him, it’s not telling the truth. They loved him not despite being a cripple but for it. Before the polio, once he’d made himself assistant secretary to the Navy, women fell for the big smile, the flashing teeth against his beautiful tan, the dimple, the arrogant, defiant chin, the strong thrust of Roosevelt drive but I don’t think there’s a woman on earth who doesn’t like it when a big, strong man is brought a little low. Need is like a handful of salt on the fire for most of us. He was a hell of a man before the polio. Polio made him irresistible.

  * * *

  —

  I’d come back to the White House and found a note on my bed, suggesting we have dinner the next night, “if I wasn’t too tired.” I am goddamn exhausted, I wrote on the back of the note, but I’ll be very happy to have dinner and afterward.

  I slipped the note under her door then and thought, Salud.

  * * *

  —

  Six weeks ago, right before I packed up all my things one more time and thanked the kitchen staff and Mabel who ironed my skirts, I went for my last late-night wander to say goodbye to Franklin, if I saw him. Once I left the White House, our paths wouldn’t cross. Eleanor was visiting an airplane factory. Missy was dead and buried in Massachusetts. Princess Martha, who’d refused to take a hint, had stayed on weeks after the fourth inauguration and had finally taken her pretty, relentless self back to Norway to look after Cosmo and Cuckoo, or whatever her children were called.