White Houses

by Amy Bloom

  “The function of democratic living is not to lower standards but to raise those that have been too low.”

  “That’s very good,” I said.

  She rang a bell and said, Would you care for a sherry? Her eyes were light blue, then dark blue, lake blue. I saw a quick flare, a pilot light of interest come and go.

  I put away my notebook and we sat, sipping sherry, listening to opera, until a maid came in and asked if she should get my coat.

  I said, Mrs. Roosevelt, I hate to go, but I have a story to file. She said, Don’t make me sound like a fool, Miss Hickok. I said that I couldn’t if I tried and she said she thought that was the first lie I’d told her. We both stood up and she helped me on with my coat. We looked at each other in their grand, gold-framed mirror and she adjusted my hat. Then she said, We’re grown women, both doing our jobs. Call me Eleanor. I smiled all the way home.

  We saw each other every week of the campaign and I liked what I saw so much, I offered to cover her full-time for the Associated Press as Roosevelt’s race for the White House heated up. My editor liked the pieces and every once in a while he’d say, Your lady’s got some good lines. I liked her height and her energy. I liked her long, loose stride and her progressive principles. She insulted conservatives and cowards every time she opened her mouth and I wrote it all down. She smiled when she saw me coming and I did the same. When we had breakfast together, I sometimes took a sausage off her plate.

  She called me at the end of October and told me that Franklin’s secretary’s mother had died. I’d already met Missy LeHand, the governor’s executive secretary, his lodestar of competence and tact and likely something more. Dozens of reporters, including me, saw Missy sitting very close to Governor Roosevelt, late at night, rubbing his shoulders. Eleanor said she didn’t want to make the trip to Potsdam, New York, with just dear, bereft Missy and Franklin certainly wasn’t going to attend that shit storm of weeping, hopeful women (which was not how Eleanor put it). She said, Won’t you come with us, Hick? It’s quite a long ride, we’ll get better acquainted and then we’ll tour a power plant. We can go see where they want to put the Saint Lawrence Seaway.

  I was between girlfriends and between dogs. I packed my bag.

  * * *

  —

  Before we got on the train, we stopped in a department store, for her to get some handkerchiefs. Only a few heads turned. I said I could use a new scarf. We walked through together and for a minute we linked arms, like lady shoppers with time on their hands. We got her plain linen hankies and I picked up and put down a red silk scarf. Very racy, she said. You should get it. We sat, side by side, in the department store café, which would have been heaven to me when I was growing up, a clean place to eat, drinks brought to you by tidy-looking women, surrounded by silk flowers. I ordered a grilled cheese-and-bacon sandwich and wished they served beer. Eleanor, who liked to pretend she didn’t care for anything self-indulgent, had a bowl of split pea soup. It came with oyster crackers and after she had dumped her packet of them into the bowl, she looked to see if I might have some, next to my sandwich.

  “Why don’t you just ask for some more crackers,” I said.

  “This is fine. This is what they gave us,” she said.

  I gave the waitress a little wave and a big smile. When she came by, I asked for three more packets of crackers. Eleanor clasped her hands in irritation and then she turned it on.

  “The crackers are so good, miss,” Eleanor said. “If it is extra, please just put it on our bill.”

  I said, “No one is going to accuse the future First Lady of chowing down oyster crackers at the expense of the working class.”

  She did laugh and she put two of the packets back on my plate, unopened.

  * * *

  —

  On the train to Potsdam, Eleanor sat down next to Missy. I pretended to read. She held Missy’s hand. Missy said she hated funerals. She said that she didn’t like leaving the President for so long and Eleanor smiled. No one can take your place, she said. Eleanor gave Missy the drawing room and we took the sleeping car. I didn’t think of Missy again.

  Eleanor and I couldn’t take our eyes off each other. We pressed knees. We patted arms. We shared our sandwiches. We shared an apple and a bunch of grapes and we took turns, plucking the grapes off the stem. We talked and talked in her sleeping compartment and at about ten o’clock at night, I realized that she wasn’t going to be putting on a nightgown, or whatever she wore at night. I had brought my navy-blue Sulka pajamas, classy and not creepy, in my overnight bag, but I didn’t want to take them out, uninvited. Navy-blue Sulka pajamas, worn by the Duke of Windsor and picked out by Wallis Simpson, were in every fashion magazine.

  I’d met Wallis Simpson. Twice. She wasn’t pretty. She was a skinny roughhouser from a shitbox Southern town but she had done a phenomenal job of remaking herself, vanquishing good-looking rivals, and turning a genial, not stupid, sort of spineless royal into her love-slave. Like a lot of rich people, she liked the Nazis more than she liked Democrats and she was famous for kissing up and kicking down. She worried that people would see who she’d been: the homely daughter of a Baltimore flour salesman with lots of charm and lots of unpaid bills. She did away with the charm and the debts and she did, in her awful way, offer hope to those of us who were not conventional beauties.

  * * *

  —

  Eleanor and I were not conventional beauties. That’s what we’d say and we’d laugh, to underscore conventional, as if maybe we were some other kind. But the pictures of Eleanor floating in yards of white on her wedding day are so pretty, her sweet face crowned with her lovely dark-gold hair and handfuls of lilies, you’d have to think that the terrible photos of her later on must have all been taken by Republicans. Later, when I did complain about the magazine photos, Eleanor would fan through the worst of them and sigh. She said, Dearest, when one has buck teeth and a weak chin, one can hardly blame the photographer. But I did. I also hated my photos (You have to keep your arm at least six inches away from your body, a friend of Eleanor’s told me, so you’re not all bulk) but Eleanor didn’t like vanity and I pretended to grow out of it.

  * * *

  —

  On the train, we sipped sherry as the sun set and watched the world pass by in yellow and pink sunset, fields and lakes, small houses with scrub yards, washing hung up, tall, narrow trees, lightless and struggling, and at two A.M., at the right time, on the night train, we cried for each other.

  “My mother,” she said, “was exceptionally beautiful. She was famous for it. And she found me…disappointing. I was plain, you see, and shy, and my mother loved parties, loved gaiety. I was a serious little thing, I’m afraid.”

  I pressed her hand.

  “My father,” she said, taking back her hand, “thought I was a miracle from heaven. He praised everything I did. He encouraged bravery and self-reliance. He pushed me to excel and to speak my mind.”

  She looked down.

  “I’m not as good at that as I should be. But he wanted me to be a strong person, standing on my own two feet. He always did. He had his own difficulties, unfortunately.”

  I said that rich or poor, people struggled with their demons and then I added that what I really meant was, people struggle and it’s better to be rich.

  Eleanor looked out the window.

  “When I was quite a little girl, two and a half, my parents, and my nurse, a wonderful girl, and my Aunt Tissie, we all sailed to Europe.”

  She ran her finger down the misty window.

  “Once upon a time,” I said.

  “Oh, you’re exactly right. Once upon a time, a very small, plain girl with too many teeth and a great white bow got on a great big boat, with her beautiful mother, her dashing father, her kindhearted nursemaid, and her fun-loving Aunt Tissie. They all boarded the Britannic with more boxes and trunks and suitcases than you can imagine. The little girl got to keep her doll in a hatbox. They were off to see the Continent. Of Europe
.”

  “I’ve never been to Europe,” I said. Take me.

  “You would love London,” she said. “I still have lots of friends there. School friends.”

  We both contemplated English schoolgirls and she blushed.

  “On the very first day of the little girl’s trip, the fog came in. It blew across the ocean and lay on top of everything. Have you ever been fogged in? It’s unpleasant.”

  “I’m from South Dakota,” I said. “Anything that’s not dirt appeals to me.”

  “Well, the fog was very thick. On deck, I had trouble finding my toast. I still remember,” she said. “Cinnamon toast.”

  She smiled, painfully.

  “Suddenly, people were screaming and running past the little girl. Children were screaming. The little girl saw a fountain of blood flying up in the air and landing on the deck, spattering the tea table. The little girl had no idea what was happening. As it turned out, it was a steamer ramming into us. A big man, bigger than her father, picked her up and held her close. She could smell the salt on his blue jacket and she could see the stiff, shiny quills of his short blond hair. Her beautiful mama and her dashing father and her kindhearted nursemaid and her wonderful Aunt Tissie were all standing in a little white boat far below, calling for her. They wanted the man in the blue jacket to throw the little girl down into the boat. Her father said that he would catch her, he promised he would catch her, but the little girl could see that with all the screaming and the blood and the fog, the man in the blue jacket would drop her and no one would be able to catch her. The little girl grabbed at the man’s buttons. She grabbed at his hair. The man pulled the little girl’s fingers loose, pushing them back so she couldn’t hold on to him anymore. He held her by the waist and dropped her like a stone. She fell very, very slowly into her father’s arms. She was safe. She knew she was safe but, according to everyone, she cried for days afterward. Her beautiful mama said that the crash was not that bad but the little girl remembered the screams and the cries for help and the bleeding children for the rest of her life. A little boy lost his arm. And, I absolutely hate being on board a ship,” she said.

  I will never take you on a cruise, I thought.

  Eleanor asked me to tell her a once-upon-a-time story from my childhood. I said, Let me think.

  People like when their griefs balance, when the sufferings can share the same stage. My heartache, your heartache. My illness, your illness. Not my broken arm, your mass murder. I fold up my jacket and put it on my shoulder and I sit up straight, and if she stretches out, she can rest her head on me.

  * * *

  —

  I was thirteen years old. My father bent over me, one hand on my shoulder, the other steadying himself on the slats. He pressed me hard from behind, up against the skinny fence between our house and the railroad yard. His suspenders slapped against my back, light and rhythmic. They didn’t hurt. I bunched my school dress up between my stomach and the splintering wood and held on tight to the pickets, so I didn’t lose my balance and slide back in the hard dirt toward him. I arced way away from him but not enough and there was pain in my private parts, where it felt like he was taking a chisel to me, time after time. I watched crows vee across the sky, to take my mind off everything. My father wiped himself off with his shirttail and buttoned up. We both watched the crows.

  I straightened my dress and socks and I shook the dirt off my shoes. It would be so good if it was him that died and my mother that had got better. Myrtle and Ruby and I would stay with my mother and we’d all start again someplace better than Bowdle, South Dakota, and its flat, treeless misery. We’d go back in time to Milbank, which was not so bad, or way back to Elgin, which was before Myrtle was born and had water and green leaves, and the barbershop and Mama being a seamstress, so Ruby and I each had a Sunday dress and a school dress and play clothes too. Now, wherever we’d be, it’d be just the four of us, sitting around a table with an oilcloth on it and four plates and forks and real napkins and my mother humming, dishing out rabbit stew. Ruby hands around the monkey bread and Myrtle is remade, in my imagination, into a nice little girl. The sky is blue and white, the orange sun dropping, all of our chores done, the one pleasant hour in a South Dakota summer day.

  My father passed his hand over my mouth, just as a reminder, and I smelled the chickenshit and milk on his hand. He tapped me on the leg, to show me where blood was trickling down my legs. He took out his bandanna from his pocket and tucked it into my hand and he walked back to the house, a little hitch in his gait. I stayed by the fence for a while, smoothing my dress from where I crushed it against the fence, and then I went to the pump and gave it a few, cleaning myself off from the waist down until I was soaking. I was clean. I hid the bandanna under a rock.

  I dawdled, the way I did. There was nothing to hurry for, no better place I could get to, and when I finally went in, still dripping water into my shoes, Myrtle was sitting in my mother’s rocker, the cushion back on the seat, pulling a splinter out of her foot. Ruby sat on the floor, twisting herself into a little knot. My father’s hat was gone and a woman I’d never seen before was sweeping our kitchen floor.

  “I’m Miz Min,” she said.

  My little sisters lowered their eyes.

  “Your daddy’s gone to be a traveling salesman now and I’m here to keep things going.”

  I said, “What about the butter-making? Isn’t he going to make butter anymore?”

  Miz Min looked at me. I don’t think it occurred to her that we’d talk. She opened the kitchen door and spat her tobacco outside.

  “You hear me? Your daddy’s a traveling salesman now. He’ll be home at the end of the week. He’s a drummer, now.” She put her hands on her hips. “You gonna mind me.”

  I walked to our room, trying to show gumption. The little girls followed me. They watched me dry myself off on the bottom of my mother’s quilt and they waited until I was done. It was still light out but I took off my shoes and got into our bed and the girls did the same. As vicious as Myrtle could be in her sleep—foot in your eye, elbow right in the kidney—I let her stay on my right side, her hair fanning over me, and Ruby curled up like a baby on my left, her fat little hands around my neck.

  We’d already lived through the dark night of my mother’s stroke a week ago, coming right after laundry day, the worst day of the week and as hot a wet hell as you can imagine. My father’d come into our bedroom late at night, pulling me up out of our bed, telling me to hurry and get dressed, just like he had me walk to the store for flour or oats when we ran out, except that it was pitch-dark and he was talking in what we called his friendly way, meaning that he wasn’t likely to pull a stave out of the butter keg and whip me or Ruby or Myrtle black and blue right then.

  He said, “Your mother’s not well.”

  He shoved me down the hall and opened the door to their room. I’d never been in their room when they were both in it. I helped my mother out, when I had to, with the basin and pitcher and bringing her the commode. Twice, she got bronchitis and last year a neighbor lady sent us hog stew and my mother got so sick on it, she puked until nothing more came up and still she was twisting and turning on the floor. I helped too after Ruby was born, helped my mother to get right and feed Ruby, because the visiting nurse had come and gone in no time. My mother lay back on the pillow and I pulled her breast into the baby’s mouth, rolling the milk down and squeezing and flicking Ruby’s cheeks to suck. When Ruby and I were playing and I was a little too rough on her and she said why was I doing her like that, sometimes I said, I am your true mama and what I say goes.

  * * *

  —

  My father and I stood on either side of the bed in their small, hot room, the paper shade flapping against the one window. Their quilt was on the floor. He looked at my mother and at me and he pushed me toward the bed.

  “Lorena’s here,” he said.

  Her chest was heaving, her gray cracked feet kicked at nothing. But she did breathe. Her mouth opened
ragged and wet against the pillow and spit ran out, wetting the ends of her gray braid, and I kept my eyes on the rattling shade and thought, You can beat me till hell freezes over and still, I am not gonna take care of her. Will not, no more than she took care of me these last years. My father beat us, but Ruby had sweetness and Myrtle was little and I was the oldest, so, mostly me. When I played follow-the-leader with the two of them in the barn, and they slipped on the ladder and skinned their knees, I comforted them and thought, That’s nothing to what I go through and you do not.

  My mother lived for peace. When my father whipped our puppy for peeing on the rug, my mother covered her face with her apron until he was done, and she swept the puppy’s body out to the ditch. When he slung our kitten against the side of the barn, a full five times, my mother stood by the road, with her hat and coat on, as if she were about to leave him, and she watched him toss its little gold body in the weeds. Ruby and I wrapped it up, after school, in a scrap of crochet my mother handed me (finger on her lips, back of the kitchen) and I sang “Blessed Assurance.”

  Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!

  Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine!

  Heir of salvation, purchase of God,

  Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.

  And Ruby, who couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, belted it out beside me. Myrtle, who had more of my father than my mother in her, poked the dead cat with a stick, mumbling, until we’d sung all four verses and buried the little thing properly. We came back in and my mother gave us molasses on bread heels and she put her finger to her lips again, watching the road.

  * * *

  —

  My mother wanted peace when she was living and peace when she was dying. She cried out, looking up at the ceiling, Mother of God, let me go. I walked as far around her bed as I could and opened the window to give her some air. I waved the shade, to make a fan for her. I had to empty the commode and walked downstairs with it, my face pulled in from the black, terrible sea in the bowl, and the ugly shapes in it lapped up to the edge and I tried to keep my fingers and shoes from being splashed with it. It stank and I emptied it and washed it out and washed it again, and somehow the porcelain bowl still stank. Where I poured it out, nothing would ever grow. I washed my hands at the pump, with a handful of Borax. I moved as slow as I dared, back up the stairs, to turn her over, trying to be careful of the purple bruises blossoming up and down her knobby spine, to flip the sheet, to close the window now that dust was coming onto her, to give her some water from the teacup and clean up when she couldn’t keep even the water down. I moved too slow and she rose a little and grabbed my sleeve.