by Amy Bloom
White Houses is a work of historical fiction, using well-known historical and public figures. All incidents and dialogue are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 by Amy Bloom
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
RANDOM HOUSE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint preexisting material:
Daily News: Excerpt from “The Day Charles Lindbergh’s Baby Was Kidnapped in 1932” (3/2/32), © Daily News, L.P. (New York). Used with permission.
Nancy Roosevelt Ireland, Executor, Eleanor Roosevelt Estate: Telegram to Lorena Hickock, November 8, 1962. Reprinted by permission of Nancy Roosevelt Ireland, Executor, Eleanor Roosevelt Estate.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Bloom, Amy, author.
Title: White houses: a novel / Amy Bloom.
Description: First edition. | New York: Random House, [2018]
Identifiers: LCCN 2017028296 | ISBN 9780812995664 (hardcover: acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780812995671 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884–1962—Fiction. | Hickock, Lorena A.—Fiction. | Presidents’ spouses—Fiction. | Women journalists—Fiction. | GSAFD: Biographical fiction. | Historical fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3552.L6378 W48 2018 | DDC 813/.54—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017028296
Ebook ISBN 9780812995671
randomhousebooks.com
Book design by Simon M. Sullivan, adapted for ebook
Cover design: Laura Klynstra
Cover images: Library of Congress (Truman Balcony, the White House), © Imagno/Austrian Archives/The Image Works (women)
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Prologue
Part One
Luck Is Not Chance
Brother and Sister in One Body
Longing Is Like the Seed
Part Two
Heart of My Heart
Swinging on a Star
The Words the Happy Say
Part Three
Remembrance Has a Front and a Rear
I Have No Life but This
Good Night, Sweetheart
The Show Is Not the Show
Heaven Is What I Cannot Reach
Part Four
The Inundation of the Spring
It’s All Right with Me
Puttin’ on the Ritz
Between You and Me
Parting
Lilac and Star and Bird
Author’s Note
Dedication
Acknowledgments
By Amy Bloom
About the Author
Prologue
FRIDAY AFTERNOON, APRIL 27, 1945
29 Washington Square West
New York, New York
No love like old love.
I’ve done the flowers as best I could. I got stock and snapdragons, pink roses and daffodils, from the Italian florist and I’ve put a vaseful in every room. I’ve straightened up the four rooms, which were already neat. The radio still works. The record player works too, and someone has brought in albums of Cole Porter and Gershwin and there is one scratchy record of La Bohème with Lisa Perli from when I was a more regular visitor. I’ve gone to the corner grocery twice (eggs, milk, bread, horseradish cheese, sardines, and I went back again because there was no can opener) and up the street one more time, for booze. I hope that at five o’clock, we’ll be drinking sidecars. I bought lemons. I want to have everything we need close by. I am hoping we don’t see so much as the lobby all weekend.
I change my clothes in the living room. I don’t think I should be in the bedroom, at all, unless I get invited. I anticipate sleeping on the couch. I’ve brought my navy-blue Sulka pajamas, for old times’ sake.
On the radio, the newsman raises his voice like a coach on the field, and says that the eighteen major cities of Germany are ablaze. He says, the Potsdam Division of the German army is systematically murdering the Americans wounded on the battlefield. He says, with a lilt, that two thousand American planes are attacking rail positions near Berlin and other communications centers in southern Germany. He says, Good night, ladies and gentlemen, victory is in sight. I hope so.
I’m glad and I’m tired. I’ll celebrate the war’s end out on Long Island, with a couple of other old broads and our dogs, and we will all toast Franklin Roosevelt, who didn’t live to see it. My neighbor Gloria and I will sing “Straighten Up and Fly Right.” Every single one of us will cry.
I sit down on the living room couch to wait. I used to be able to read Eleanor’s heart, when I saw her face, and I worry that I can’t anymore. I expect to see her gray with Roosevelt suffering, the kind that must not only be borne but must be seen to be borne, elegantly, showing her great effort to be patient with everyone’s sadness and pulling need and beneath that, just like it was with her brother, a hook of barbed and furious grief that she’d tear out if she could. She told me that nothing on earth was worse than losing her baby, the first Franklin Junior, but I sat with her for the long days of her brother Hall’s death, and she cried for him, every night, as if he hadn’t broken everybody’s hearts, as if he hadn’t almost killed one of his own children and ruined the other five. She sat by Hall’s bed, looking like that Henry Adams statue she used to drag me to, the monument of transcendent misery Adams put up when his wife killed herself with cyanide. That’s what I am expecting, but I hope that in the mix of her feelings for Franklin, sorrow at his death, and grief for her children and for the country, she’ll be glad to see me. I want her to feel that with me, she’s home, like it used to be. She sent me away eight years ago, and I left. Two days ago, she called me to come and I came.
The buzzer rings, which means her hands are full and she can’t get to her key.
I open the door and Eleanor is leaning against the wall, paper white.
Her beautiful blue eyes are red-rimmed, all the way around, and she looks as if she has never smiled in her life. Her dusty black coat is enormous on her, and her lisle stockings bag. I kiss her because I always kiss her hello, when we are alone and we’re on speaking terms, and she turns her cheek toward me and looks away. She hands me her purse and her suitcase. I put down the bags and I put my arm around her waist. I try to pull her face to mine but she turns away and rests one hand on my shoulder, to take off her shoes.
She drops her hat, coat, and scarf on the big brocade armchair. She unbuttons her gray blouse and lets it fall to the floor. She walks into the bedroom, unzips her skirt, and I follow behind, picking up as we go. She sits on the edge of the bed in a ragged white slip she should have thrown out long before the war.
She takes the pins out of her gray hair and pulls off her awful lisle stockings. We fought about those stockings. I said that even in a war, the First Lady did not actually have to entertain royalty while wearing knit cotton stockings and she said that was exactly what the First Lady had to do. I stretch the stockings over the arm of the club chair and she shrugs.
She lies down on the bed, facing the wall, and lifts her right arm up behind her. Without turning to face me, she beckons me over.
“Well, Queen of England,” I say
.
She drops her arm. This is not my Eleanor. I used to weep when she was stern and gracious with me, explaining my faults until I curled up like a snail on a bed of salt. She’d sit still and tragically disappointed for an hour or more, until I begged forgiveness. That’s my sweetheart. This waxy indifference is new.
I pile her clothes on the wood chair. I put her black shoes in front of the fireplace. I hang her black coat in the closet, next to my navy-blue one, and my red scarf falls over them both. I’m sorry I’ve come.
Oh, Hick, she says, if you don’t hold me, I will die.
I climb in behind her and she undresses me with one long white hand, still not turning. I look out over her shoulder and watch people turn on their lights.
* * *
—
Eleven years ago we had our golden time and our first vacation. Maine and beyond was our golden hour. Hoover was out. Franklin was in. We all moved into the White House, friends, family, and me.
Eleanor and I had had our first private lunch at the White House, grinning and posing in front of the portraits like teenage girls. Why don’t you move in, she said. We have so much room.
I asked her what she meant and she said, again, We have so much room. I leaned over to kiss her and she pushed me away a little. I have some housekeeping to do, if you’re coming, she said. Why don’t you go and get your things?
I went back to Brooklyn and put my rent check, almost the full amount, in the mail. I drove my blue suitcase, my Underwood Portable, and a box of books down to D.C. the next day. One of the housekeepers took me through the White House, up the stairs to Eleanor’s suite, blank and polite, as if she’d never seen me before, as if she’d never done my laundry or hemmed my skirt when I’d stayed for the weekend, but when she opened the door to my room, she smiled and put my typewriter on the desk. My new room adjoined Eleanor’s; it was her old sitting room.
I had a big desk, a bookshelf, and an old Windsor chair. I had two table lamps and a floor lamp. I had a bed, a dark velvet couch that had seen better days, which I pushed toward the corner, and an oak armoire big enough to hide in. The only thing between us was a wall covered with photographs and an old wooden door.
I spent about an hour, sitting upright on my twin bed, my hat and coat still on, staring at that door, willing it to let me in, to look down on the Rose Garden, to let me open the window to the big magnolia tree.
Eleanor finally came in and sat down next to me.
“I shower people with love, because I like to,” she said. “I like showering people with love. You’ve seen me, with my friends.”
I had. It already drove me crazy.
She said, “I want you to know, besides my friends, I have had crushes. I’ll find someone, often someone wonderful, but really, they don’t have to be, and I adore them, no matter what. Doctor Freud would say it’s my mother all over again. Or my father.”
She took off my hat, laughing. I did not do or say a single charming, clever thing. I rubbed my knuckles.
“I am determined to tell you what I want to tell you,” she said. “About the crushes. Because people may tell you, that I’m prone. That this is a crush. Someone looks into my eyes, and they see a whole world of love that I have for them. And they love that, and they love me, for the way I love them. They look into my eyes and see themselves at the very center of the world. And people do love that.”
She walked over to the wooden door and twisted the knob a few times.
“This thing always sticks.”
“Come back,” I said.
She sat back down on the bed, and held my hand, looking straight ahead.
“You see me. You see all of me and I don’t think you love everything you see. I hope you do, but I doubt you do. But, you see me. The whole person. Not just yourself, reflected in my eyes. Not just the person who loves you. Me.”
My ears burned, the way they did after three Scotches.
Now, she turned and faced me.
“Lorena Alice Hickock, you are the surprise of my life. I love you. I love your nerve. I love your laugh. I love your way with a sentence. I love your beautiful eyes and your beautiful skin and I will love you till the day I die.”
I pushed out the words before she could change her mind.
“Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, you amazing, perfect, imperfect woman, you have knocked me sideways. I love you. I love your kindness and your brilliance and your soft heart. I love how you dance and I love your beautiful hands and I will love you till the day I die.”
I took off my sapphire ring and slipped it onto her pinkie. She unpinned the gold watch from her lapel and pinned it on my shirt. She put her arms around my waist. We kissed as if we were in the midst of a cheering crowd, with rice and rose petals raining down on us.
* * *
—
All the way to the Associated Press office, I kept my hand on the gold watch. I knew I had to resign. I’d already quashed a dozen prizewinning Roosevelt stories to protect her, or him, or the kids. I needed to change my beat or give her up.
I did resign. Also, I was fired. I offered to cover some other beat, Wall Street or city crime. My editor pushed back in his chair, folded his hands over his great belly, and looked at me like I was the worst kind of cockroach. You’re part of the story, kid, he said. He said, I got the greatest inside track to the White House, ever, and I’m not giving that up. In that case, I said, I have to resign altogether. He shrugged like he’d never expected anything more and we shook hands.
Some old pals watched me empty my desk and no one offered to buy me a drink. The woman who did weddings waved, cheerfully. The sportswriter shook his head. The obit guy lifted his hat. (What do you call the Jewish gentleman who leaves the room? Bernard Baruch said to me. A kike.) I had twenty-five dollars in my bank account and no job prospects.
All the way back to the White House, I reminded myself that I was good, that I was honorable, that there was depth and beauty to my sacrifice and that integrity mattered. I wanted it to matter to Eleanor, who’d never had to get or quit a job, and she was delighted with me. She believed that all life worth living involved sacrifice and the more the better. This way, she said, we’ll have more time together. This way, we will have our life. She meant that I wouldn’t have to worry about betraying her and she wouldn’t have to worry about my betraying her and I wouldn’t spend so much time with rumpled men who swore and drank Scotch before noon. She hugged me and said, I think this is for the best, Dearest. Franklin rolled by, on cue and said, We got a job for you, Hicky.
* * *
—
I never found out which one of them thought of it first, but they both told me to go talk to Harry Hopkins, who was looking for an investigative reporter to help him run Federal Emergency Relief. (You report back to Harry, about how bad it is out there, Franklin said. And just be a reporter, not a social worker.) They both told me the pay would be better than what I got at the Associated Press. Hopkins hired me in ten minutes, holding my résumé behind his back and looking out a window as if he were reading from a script. Thank you, Miss Hickock, I’ll rely on your reports, he said, still looking away.
I ran back to tell Eleanor that I got the job and she smiled.
At five o’clock, another maid came and told me to go downstairs for drinks. Franklin and Eleanor toasted me. Franklin said, Much better to have you inside the tent, Hick, and pissing out.
We planned a vacation. (I want to see everything with you, Eleanor said.) We talked Franklin out of sending the Secret Service with us and we loaded up the car and waved to him from the driveway. He waved from the front porch. Behave yourselves, he shouted. We waved one more time.
* * *
—
We thought we knew everything about each other that mattered and none of what would come to matter was even a mote in our golden light. We had new love and this beautiful country, reckless and wide. We had Eleanor’s very sporty light-blue Buick roadster and enough money for everything we wanted, or eve
n were just in the mood for. Eleanor wrapped her hair in a scarf and dangled one arm over the side of the car, like a movie star. We glided from place to place, in love, in rapture, enjoying each day, all day, and moving on, just so as to enjoy more.
We camped and talked. I sang to Eleanor, every hymn I’d ever learned and dirty songs to make her put her hands over her ears. (A lot of things rhyme with Hick.) We loaded the backseat with bags of pretzels, brand-new sunglasses, a stack of maps, a bag of Eleanor’s knitting, which made me laugh, a deck of cards, just in case, and books of poetry. (Wild nights, I recited, while she drove. Wild nights, were I but moored in thee. Moored, I yelled again, until she blushed. I admire Emily Dickinson, Eleanor said.)
I’d packed my navy pajamas and she’d packed her pink nightgown and one night, in a nearly empty hotel in Vermont, she put on the pajamas and I put on the nightgown and we almost broke the bed. She wrote to Franklin regularly. Just so that he won’t worry, she said. Send my regards, I said. Sometimes people recognized her, and we’d stop and I’d back away, to the car, or into a shop, so she could sip the lemonade or the cider, and admire the children or the goats or the quilts, and pose for a picture if someone had a camera, which they rarely did, because we were so far from the modern world, up there. She’d started out as not much of a public speaker and she’d made herself a good one. She couldn’t tell a joke to save her life. But Eleanor could listen. Every person she spoke to was her hero. Angry logger, blind widow with a Rose of Sharon quilt, hopeful musician, grateful nurse at the end of the graveyard shift, mother of six with her hand crushed in the factory. She came close. She bent her head toward yours and she slowed and she listened. She settled and got still. She didn’t look, for a second, as if she was thinking about anything except your story. If you hesitated because you were worn-out or embarrassed, she leaned forward as if she couldn’t bear that you would now, in the middle of this moment between you, turn away from her.
