When Audrey Met Alice

by Rebecca Behrens

  “I should go to class. See you in music history?”

  “But of course,” Quint bowed in a sarcastic chivalrous display (probably for Simpkins’s benefit), then turned and ran off down the hall.

  My heart pounded in my chest as I took my seat in science class. Mei, my benchmate, smiled as she pushed her notebooks to the side. She’d been hinting that her older brother wanted a West Wing internship for weeks. I tried to focus on my lab notebook, but I still felt amped up. I replayed the scene in my head: Quint grabbing my hands in his and pulling me toward him. I liked having his hands hold mine. I shivered as I pictured his face smiling down at me. Quint was pretty tall, and he towered over me. That was another thing that I liked. I couldn’t wipe the hint of a smile from my face.

  It reminded me of what life used to be like, in Minnesota, when I’d had plenty of friends, including a crush with serious potential. Paul Clausen of the sparkling blue eyes, few zits, and white-blond hair. He loved to hike at Itasca and wanted to become a large-animal vet. He had known me since kindergarten and didn’t care that my mom was a politician. I know Paul liked me too, and it seemed inevitable that we’d start going out. And then the campaign happened, and things got weird and then I moved.

  I hadn’t felt anything like what I used to feel around Paul until today. Somehow, Quint holding my hands…it was stupid, but I felt a sliver of that giddiness again. But what good could come of liking Quint? I couldn’t risk jeopardizing my one real friendship in D.C. with a crush. He’d get tired of all my First Daughter drama, and forget about me like Paul did. Plus, Denise would totally freak out about me dating because she tries to act like I am still a little kid. She even thought that my jazz dance involved too much “gyrating” and that I needed to switch to ballet. A First Boyfriend was totally not part of her perfect public image for my family. Conclusion: Boyfriends are what normal people with normal lives have—not Fidos.

  • • •

  After dinner I brought my nightly cookie fix to my room and settled in with a good book. After a couple of hours of reading, I glanced at the clock and saw that it was only 10:00 p.m. I had that itchy feeling I’d been getting a lot lately, like the walls of my room were slowly closing in and my clothes were too tight and there wasn’t enough air left for me to take a deep breath. Time for some tea. I shut my book and hopped up off the rug. I had a box of lavender chamomile somewhere in the Family Kitchen. I padded down the short hallway to the kitchen, pulled out the teapot, filled it up, and set it on the stovetop.

  While I waited for it to whistle, I wandered into the Family Residence Dining Room. Seriously, there are as many dining rooms in 1600 as members of my family: the State Dining Room, Family Dining Room, and the Family Residence Dining Room. Plus, in warm weather we can eat up on the Promenade or take breakfast in the Solarium. Whenever my family eats together we eat in this dining room, but I hadn’t poked around its nooks and crannies—even during the traditional scavenger hunt that the staff hosted for me and my Minnesota friends right after we moved in. I wandered around, stopping to open an ornately carved door, which to my disappointment only led to a closet. Once upon a time, this room had been a bedroom too. Another room type that 1600 has way too many of, at least for my family of three.

  The closet was empty but for some boxes, and I started to push them aside, wondering what was in them. Books, maybe? One got caught on a plank of wood that was raised higher than the rest. You’d think they’d have higher standards for carpentry in the White House. When the box finally came free, I noticed that the plank was a slightly different color than the others, lighter and smoother but not varnished. I bent down to look more closely at it. There was something written on the short end of the piece. I kneeled down and wiped the dust and crud off it, revealing a crude inscription. It looked like it said, EAT UP THE WORLD, 1903.

  I sat back on my heels, wondering why someone would use a written-on piece of wood to patch the floor in the White House. Unless that was intentional, duh. The way the plank was raised—I could pry it out, maybe. I slid my fingernails under the raised edges—So long, purple nail polish—and pulled. Nothing. I pushed down as hard as I could on the un-raised side of the plank, and voilà! The raised edge popped up a little higher. When I tried prying at it again, it grudgingly snapped up and away from the rest of the floor, releasing a little cloud of dust.

  Coughing, I set the wood aside and peered into the small hole in the floor. I could see red-and-white checked fabric, some sort of little bundle. I hesitated before reaching into the gaping hole, hovering my hand above while summoning up the nerve. Then I quickly reached in before I could imagine what gross stuff could be lurking in between the floorboards. I grasped the bundle and pulled it out, shaking the dust off. It was tied tightly shut, so I had to pick at the knot until the edges of the fabric spilled onto the floor. What’s inside? It better not be bones or dried blood, or I will puke all over this room.

  In the middle of what looked like an old handkerchief laid a few old postcards, each with tinted pictures of the same girl; a small, fat leather book; and a pack of cigarettes, unopened. I grabbed the cigarettes, which were some brand I’d never heard of. “Murad.” Everything about the package looked old-timey, from the artwork to the script boasting “finest Turkish tobacco leaf.” I set the pack down and gingerly picked up the first hand-tinted postcard, being careful of the frayed scalloped edges. The lady on it had an old-fashioned hairstyle and beautiful, piercing blue eyes. She stood in the middle of a garden or a jungle, with lush plants sticking out all around her. Her hands were clasped behind her back, lips pursed, and she looked down at the camera in a formal pose, although her eyes twinkled like she was about to laugh. Her clothes were Victorian-ish. I flipped over the card. On the back, it read: Alice Roosevelt in the White House Conservatory, 1902. I quickly flipped through the other postcards; they were of her too, and one image was labeled “Princess Alice.” Holy crap, holy crap! I recognized the name—Alice was a former First Daughter. Really former. Teddy Roosevelt was POTUS back at the beginning of the 1900s. No. Freaking. Way. Is this Alice Roosevelt’s stuff? My hands trembled a little as I finally picked up the leather book. I had a suspicion that it wasn’t a book but a journal, and although I’m not sure why, I really wanted that hunch to be correct.

  I fiddled with the clasp, but the whistling of the teapot startled me. I cursed at it and hurried into the kitchen, filled my huge mug, and ran back to the closet, hot tea sloshing all around. While the tea cooled, I took another look at the contents of the bundle. Right away, I noticed the embroidery on the corner of the handkerchief. CONGRATULATIONS. YOU HAVE AN APPETITE FOR LIFE. YOUR REWARD? MY WORDS.

  “So I guess Alice Roosevelt, or whoever left this, wanted it to be found,” I murmured. Gingerly, I picked up the journal. The rusted metal clasp on it opened easily now, to my delight. I carefully flipped through and saw that all of the pages were filled with a cramped, slanted handwriting. How the heck does anyone read script like this? I could barely make out the dates for some entries—1901, 1902. Glancing at the inside cover, clearer handwriting said:

  The Diary of Alice Lee Roosevelt

  Intensely Private Contents. No Peeking.

  “Alice Lee! We have the same middle name and initials. So. Awesome,” I whispered. Then I ignored the “no peeking” part and started deciphering the first entry immediately.

  September 26, 1901

  Dear Diary,

  Now that I am the president’s daughter, it seems like I ought to keep a diary. For the sake of remembering these momentous years, even though I think diaries are rather silly things. They’re like writing letters to nobody, which seems like a waste of precious time. I have failed miserably at keeping a journal in the past. I will try better this time; perhaps more interesting things will happen to me now.

  The lot of us just arrived at the “White House,” which is the newly official name of this hulking whitewashed presidential sh
ack. I’m glad that we aren’t calling it the “Executive Mansion” anymore. That moniker takes on more airs than the building merits; I dare say it’s not a true mansion. When I first visited it as a little girl, grizzled President Benjamin Harrison bent down and told me it was his “jail.” Heh. This positively grim building somewhat resembles one—it’s far from lavish. Crumbling walls, leaks, peeling paint, and decrepit furnishings. There are not nearly enough bathrooms on the second floor, at least for a family of eight. My stepmother will have her hands full fixing up the place, as per her First Lady duties. As though she didn’t already have her hands full with my rambunctious siblings, and me!

  Now the White House is full of young people and overrun it we shall. Ted, Kermit, Ethel, Archie, Quentin, and I have already discovered endless possibilities for mischief and merriment. Last night, we took some tin trays from the pantry and found them excellent as sleds on the stairs leading down to the main hallway. It was our Inauguration of Fun. That was, until Archie knocked his head on the banister and wailed like bloody murder. Stepmother wasn’t pleased at that. She isn’t pleased with much right now, between all the mourning for President McKinley and even more mourning for our family’s precious “privacy.” If she hated attention so, she had no business marrying Theodore Roosevelt.

  All of us are all excited, though. I hope being the children of the president will make life in Washington grand, even though I know from personal experience that this town can be like a little Puritan village, at least when compared to life in bustling New York City. It will be far better than Albany, where we lived while my father was governor. Albany was dreadfully boring. The places one is forced to live when one’s father is such an Important Man! (And now he is the Most Important Man.)

  Whenever we travel with Father, we create a whirling ruckus. Crowds and press and attention from all corners of the earth. I rather love the feel of it, but then again, I am someone who wants to eat up the world. I expect that I will be able to eat more of it now, for two reasons: 1) Being the eldest in my family, I expect freedom to do as I please here. The addition of a few security men to guard my father and our family should not hamper that. (And after the tragic assassination of McKinley, they are indeed necessary.) My father has a Secret Service man who is with him all the time, William Craig, and another one, Sloane, watches the little boys as they scamper around. But the rest of us don’t see much of the Service at home. I don’t mind when I do—most of the chaps are good sports. 2) I expect to have my society debut this year and I will get to have it in the White House. It doesn’t get more exciting than that, does it?

  I am supposed to be unpacking my hatboxes and such now. More later.

  To Thine Own Self Be True,

  Alice

  P.S. That Shakespearean allusion is my newly adopted motto for life, by the way. My father always has mottoes and such, and it seemed like a good idea for me to choose one to guide my life too.

  Shivering with excitement, I put down the diary to let the words sink in. Alice was writing well over a hundred years ago, but I felt a connection to so much in her entry. 1600 sometimes did feel like a jail! My parents were always freaking out about privacy too! And I wasn’t totally sure what she meant about “eating up the world,” but I liked the sound of that. I murmured those words aloud, then picked the journal back up and turned to the next entry.

  October 5, 1901

  Diary—

  I have been busy, trying to be helpful and watch my little siblings as we slowly settle into our new home. The first floor is formal and public, where we dine and entertain and the like. The second floor has the seven bedrooms, some sitting rooms, my father’s library, and the president’s offices, which are separated by glass partitions from the rest of the floor. A musty smell abounds, the floors creak, and paint peels on the second floor, but there is a newly installed elevator. My stepmother has made our room assignments at long last. I came out fairly well. My bedroom is on the northwest side of the floor, next to my sister Ethel’s room and catty-corner from my stepmother’s sitting room. (Coincidence? Surely not.) It’s a large room, though, with lovely windows. I can peer down from them and see Lafayette Square and the grand houses (mansions, really) of John Hay and Henry Adams. Last night I stood in here and watched the view as the sun went down, and the room was full of the most beautiful light. Unfortunately the furniture is not up to par. It’s positively Spartan compared to what I have at Sagamore, our house on Oyster Bay, where my room is very fashionable and has nice chintz curtains and a happy floral pattern on the wallpaper. This room has big, cumbersome furniture made of black walnut wood. The pieces are ugly and dull. I have two inferior brass beds—couldn’t they have one pleasant bed instead of two creaky ones? I’ll have it redecorated, though. Renovations will start shortly, under the watchful and persnickety command of First Lady Edith Roosevelt. Shockingly, we are in agreement about something: that the private residence is in shambles. I know I’m belaboring the decrepit state of the White House, but it still shocks me how ramshackle it is. It reminds me of Dickens’s Great Expectations and Miss Havisham’s home—both are full of cobwebs and nostalgia gone awry.

  In addition to our tray-sledding, my siblings and I have taken to racing through the upstairs hall on our stilts and bicycles. You wouldn’t think, with my crippled history of orthopedic footwear, that I would be any good at stilts. The leg braces I had as a child prevented my feet from turning inward like those of a pigeon. It was a result of polio going undiagnosed. Those darned braces were terribly uncomfortable, and they used to lock up and make me pitch forward, face-first. But the challenges I faced early in life with my legs have only made me strong as a young woman. I practice yoga exercises, which help stretch my limbs, and I am so limber that I can put my leg behind my head. I find it oddly relaxing. It drives Edith mad; she thinks yoga is strange and horribly unladylike.

  We and our stilts and bicycles are strictly forbidden from the first floor…when it is open to the public. Otherwise, we have the run of the house. It’s already become the Roosevelt zoo with all the children and the animals. We are keeping some pets in the Conservatory, like our blue macaw, Eli Yale. The cumbersome stodgy furniture is remarkably good for playing hide-and-seek. Although I know I am getting too old for childish games, I can’t help but join in from time to time. I believe I’ve found the secret to eternal youth, and it’s arrested development. Yesterday, Archie and Ted were hiding behind chairs in the East Room, waiting for visitors to come to see Father so they could pop out and scare them. I couldn’t stop laughing, though, and I am afraid my bark kept giving us away.

  To Thine Own Self Be True,

  Alice

  Chapter 4

  Footsteps, heavy ones, coming down the hallway interrupted my reading. It didn’t sound like my mom’s heels or my dad’s loafers, so I knew it was probably a Secret Service guy doing rounds. No matter who it was, I really didn’t want anyone to bother me. I had uncovered one-hundred-plus-year-old artifacts, belonging to a famous person, hiding under a floorboard. They would get confiscated instantly if anyone else found out, and surely sent off to a museum where historians wearing little white gloves would pore all over them or keep them under glass. I’d never get a chance to read it again, at least not like this. Turning the pages that Alice herself poured her thoughts onto, in the very rooms in which she wrote. If I believed in ghosts or spirits, I would think that she was here with me as I read. That’s how strong her personality was, even on the page. It filled the room.

  I knew a bit about girls who lived in 1600 before me, thanks to a book someone gave me before I moved in. I read it three times and sucked up all the good facts: Caroline Kennedy had a pony named Macaroni, and she let it run all over the grounds. Chelsea Clinton loved dance, like me—but she liked ballet, not jazz. Denise would’ve loved her. Amy Carter had a dog named Grits, and they used to hang out in a treehouse she had on the South Lawn. And Susan Ford got to hold her senior
prom in 1600. But those are facts, not feelings. Sometimes I’ve wondered how other First Kids felt about living here, especially when I’m feeling homesick or annoyed at Denise or nervous about my mom traveling. Was living here always great for them? In that book, Susan Ford said that life at 1600 is “like a fairy tale.” Sometimes I wonder if the fairy tale she meant was “Rapunzel,” in which a girl gets locked up in a tower for years and has to put her life on hold. It feels most like that to me. I ran my fingertips over the diary in my hands, and breathed in its scent of old leather and paper.

  The footsteps came closer, stepping into the pantry next door. I scooped everything up and knotted the handkerchief into a bundle again. I stood and slipped the bundle inside the waistband of my pajama pants, pressing it into my hip with my elbow so it wouldn’t slip out as I walked. In my other hand, I held my mug of tea. Then I casually sauntered out of the dining room. The Secret Service guy waved hello from the kitchen doorway as I passed by on my way to my room. “Don’t leave on account of me. Just doing rounds.”

  “No, it’s past my bedtime, anyway. Night!” I grinned and hustled over to my door. Somebody had shut it after I left, so I struggled to open it, raising my diary-balancing leg to keep the bundle from dropping while I used that hand to open the door. I sloshed some tea on my shirt and the door frame.

  “Need help?” The agent looked puzzled by my weird leg position.

  “No, I’m stretching. A dance stretch. Eleventh position.” I don’t think there is an eleventh position, but I doubt he knew his first from fifth. My door finally popped open and I hopped inside. I grabbed the bundle before it could fall to the floor—I was terrified of screwing up anything inside. I looked around my room, thinking that one nice thing about living in 1600 today was that I got free rein to put up my posters and my pictures in my room—and I picked out all the furniture myself. It was a nicer looking room than my bedroom in St. Paul. And it didn’t smell musty at all, thanks to the hardworking cleaning staff. Poor Alice, having to downgrade her bedroom once she moved to the White House. After setting my cold tea on my bedside table, I sat down with the diary and dove back in to Alice’s version of 1600.