White Houses

by Amy Bloom

  * * *

  —

  Franklin was presiding at dinner one night, in ’33, when Amelia Earhart was our new best friend and Eleanor and I were in the throes. We’d dressed each other, to the nines (her in Eleanor blue, with navy piping, and me in navy silk with Eleanor blue at the waist). We each wore a white orchid on our right lapel. Honestly, you couldn’t miss us. Dinner with other people, then, always left us restless and giddy, like thoroughbreds before a race, but dinners with Franklin wore me out. He was the handsomest man in every room and he was president. He always had Missy by his side, and sometimes another pretty woman or even a pair, seated near him, for no reason except to please his eye. I appreciated the pretty girls, the way I appreciated a nice vase or a very good but not great painting. Eleanor did too. We didn’t aspire to it. We admired it. When we were young women, there was fear and envy for her, desire and worry for me, but we got older. If you wait, everyone gets tired and the glittery gifts people carry will mostly be tossed aside just so they can cross the finish line. We both liked pretty women well enough, for different reasons, but by fifty, neither of us envied them.

  “You cannot fault a man for what he does when he’s intoxicated.” Franklin meant Parker Fiske. Fiske wouldn’t have to resign for another ten years but people were talking about him.

  Eleanor said, “Really.”

  I said, “Do the ladies also get a pardon?”

  I hoped Franklin thought so, but it didn’t matter. Eleanor didn’t think so. Eleanor thought that if you were a person of advantages and intelligence, you were responsible for every single thing you did or said and every choice you made until the day they laid you in the ground. That’s how she lived her whole sainted life. If Eleanor had been Franklin, I would have worried about infidelity. I would have known that I was married to a charming liar. I wouldn’t have been able to stand how easily she’d tell me one thing on Monday and another on Tuesday, without a blush.

  Eleanor has only one face and it’s the face I love most in the world, but for the day-to-day business of being human, Franklin was easier.

  Amelia was in great form that night, sitting across from her idiot husband, George.

  Amelia said, “You can’t possibly mean that, Mr. President. In vino veritas, after all. We show our true colors, however unattractive, when we’re drunk.”

  “Exactly,” Franklin said, and he raised his coffee cup, to show that dinner was over, and wheeled off, laughing like hell.

  Amelia turned to Eleanor and me and said, “That’s why I don’t drink, do I, G.P.?”

  G.P., George Putnam, went to Harvard and married society ladies before and after Amelia. He owned three cars and five horses and four tuxes (I know because he told me) and still, sitting across from Amelia, who glittered like a wicked fairy, George looked like the poor fisherman in the folktale who’d gotten his wish and lived to regret it. He nodded, glumly. Nothing wrong with a drink once in a while, he mumbled.

  Amelia said, “I think women—some women—regard matrimony as a highly honorable retreat from the possibility of failure in the larger world.”

  I said, Maybe some women, and Eleanor drank her water and Amelia kept talking.

  “After all, it’s nothing more than an attractive cage and some of us, we have to spread our wings, don’t we, my dears?”

  She winked at Eleanor. She lifted her pretty arms, under her sheer, spangled chiffon wrap so it slid to the floor, and George picked it up for her. She managed to make me sorry for him.

  * * *

  —

  “Please finish Parker’s letter,” I say. “Then we can talk.”

  Eleanor looks at me over her glasses and reads to me, quietly, without inflection.

  I was lying in a ditch, in my robe and pajamas, earlier this evening. I plan to go back there when I finish this letter. The ditch runs across the ass end of the property, behind the last row of cypress trees and yews. I tripped over the roots of an old maple tree and slid, ass over teakettle, into the ditch, and lay there, wedged in the dirt, like a soldier at Ypres.

  I confess to you, I threatened the butler tonight. He threatened me. He stood on the other side of the kitchen table, white apron wrapped as tight as a cummerbund around his waist, shirt starched like a sheet of ice, and his cuffs rolled up to show his revolting monkey wrists. We’d had a drink together. I was tired and put my hand on Bauer’s shoulder as I sat down. He didn’t move away.

  I remember this the way I remember much of the past—through a smoky bourbon haze. That’s how I remember my first honeymoon, when I’d found myself—in black-and-white-striped silk dressing gown and some sort of French lounge pants plus silver-plated cigarette holder and not a shred of humor about my whole getup—in a suite of the Grand Hotel de Vesuvio in Milan. The bellman took his time unpacking our bags and when my first wife, Deborah, went into the large and beautiful bathroom, he hung up my jackets and my trousers, smoothing the legs. He looked at me, running his slim, tan fingers round and round the waistband of my suit pants until Deborah came out again, her hair fixed, her dimples showing.

  That evening, I wandered—which is how I liked to think of myself then, a diffident traveler making his way through unfamiliar terrain—oh, la, who knows what I’ll find behind this tree—into the dusty basement. There was luggage, a coatrack, a bench and a sprung armchair, a dozen brooms, a row of grimy but uniform dustpans, and the beautiful boy. I extended our visit and for years Deborah would tell people, Say what you want about Florence and Rome, Parker and I adored Milan.

  In the kitchen tonight, I told Bauer I’d give him the bottle, if he could beat me in arm wrestling. He nodded. I have longer arms; the better fulcrum and I beat him twice, nearly coming out of my seat to do it. I felt his warm, wet hand in mine, his arm under me. I said, Ich habe gewonnen! And he bowed his head a little. We clinked glasses and just as I thought things were going as smoothly as they could, that I would not find myself miserable and alone in my big bed, he stood up. He put his hand on my head and guided it toward his crotch. I pushed his hand away and stood up. I said that it was time for us to call it a night. I said there had been a misunderstanding. He didn’t stand aside and I gave him a shove, just to clear my way. I was very tired.

  Cybele came into the kitchen with a small bag and her big fur. She nodded to Bauer and smiled at me, as if we were in a lovely room, not a depressing kitchen. She looked me in the eye, so as not to look at anything else, and said that she was going to visit friends. I said that the roads were getting bad and that was enough. She pushed up her sleeves, ready to box, and said that there could be snow, hell, or high water on the roads tonight but she wasn’t staying in the house with me, in the mood I was in. I said I wouldn’t have another drink until Memorial Day. She said, You couldn’t pay me to go through another day with you. We had reached that point.

  I followed her into the front hall and watched her put on her coat. I tried a few husbandly gestures—my hand on her elbow, steadying her with the boots, pushing forward to lift her bag into the car. She ignored me. She walked to the car and left the front door open. The blue Chrysler pulled away, snow spraying, taking a big slide to the right. I watched until the twin tire prints were covered.

  I fell asleep in the library and woke up to Bauer putting on his overcoat, knocking things over in the front hall. He carried his suitcase.

  “You don’t have to leave,” I said. “It’s coming down hard.”

  “No longer,” he said.

  He opened the door. Cybele’s tracks were gone entirely. The dark night air dotted with flakes, and fresh as a forest. Bauer walked out and got into a beat-up Dodge sedan. The driver tapped his horn.

  I should have said something conciliatory. I should have taken Franklin’s approach and made a joke out of it, as if nothing serious had passed at all and only a fool would think it had. I’m famous for reconciling opposite parties, all over the world. I have no conciliation left in me. I want to be loved, the way my dear mother and my first wife l
oved me, and if I can’t have that, I want to be desired fiercely. I want a man who will find me and never lose me. I have found that man, as it turns out, and the day before Christmas I told him we could never see each other again.

  It’s not our habit to be candid with each other but I would like, even if it’s just while I’m writing, to imagine that I’ll send this and that you’ll know who I really am and you’ll love me still. I would like, for this little while, not to be in disguise, and I like to imagine that at least while you’re reading this, you are not in disguise, either. These days, you are usually disguised as First Lady. Sometimes, when I see you in those drafty halls, I hardly know you. Franklin himself was disguised only by his health. His performance as a man who had difficulty walking was one of the greatest performances of the twentieth century. To see him standing with his cane, leaning into the wind, hatless and defiantly cheerful, was to deny even the passing thought that if he’d had no strong man by his side, he would have fallen to the ground, instantly.

  On a more cheerful note, I’ve been looking at pictures from your wedding this evening. I remember every detail of your royal wedding. I know, we both know, how the world came to see Franklin but back then, Franklin was a bit of a stiff and not much of an athlete. He didn’t get into a good club at Harvard. He joked around like a missionary and drank like a guilty altar boy. And didn’t he overcome both, con brio. The man married you and devoured Charm.

  They put me in a page’s suit for your wedding. Those were the days of mountains of ferns, allées of white ribbon, fields of white Prince of Wales ostrich feathers tipped with silver (the other Roosevelts’ obsession with their ridiculous coat of arms), and pink roses everywhere. Among Roosevelts, you could not escape roses. Cousin Alice, no prettier than you, less clever, and so much worse a human being, did the same at her wedding. There were pale pink roses by the bushel, down the staircase, in the bridesmaids’ bouquets, in those silver urns the size of a large child, and across the mantels of Sissy Parish’s two drawing rooms. Your bridesmaids came down the stairs, perfecting their sulky, virginal sway down thirty-four steps.

  I was twelve. I was bubbling over, sweating and smelling, breaking out in small red patches, on my chest and my cheeks. You turned around and gave me one of your sweet smiles. Just as I was about to pick up your train, my mother darted forward, with rice paper. She patted my face, to mop up what she could, and she smoothed my hair, which was standing up like pokeweed.

  My mother was really very fond of you. She said that Grandma Mary Hall dragged you home from France and your feminist hotbed for no reason but polite society. Eleanor does not complain, she said. I complained, all the time. I even complained about having to be a page and wear a cravat but I was proud of it, and of my job, carrying the train. I complained about having to walk behind your grandmother Mary. Your grandmother managed, like a lot of rich old people—and I find that I am just like this—to insult people and take offense in the same sentence. She told me I was not to get in your way and when I rubbed my nose, just for something to do, she patted her chest and said that she hoped I wasn’t suggesting that there was anything wrong with the air in the apartment, that she had not thought she’d be insulted by a weedy little boy on the morning of her grand-daughter’s wedding.

  Both women were in black, both smelled like camphor and attar of roses. I can smell it now, that acrid, biting scent overpowering a dull, wistful one. I was twelve. I believe that homosexuals are born, not made, but if I’m wrong, it was those old ladies that turned me.

  Your Uncle Teddy led us all into the reception and told story after story. The men who liked him roared. The women sparkled. Aunt Edith smiled behind her fan. Hall and I found the spiked punch and took it into the back garden, drinking cupfuls as fast as we could, until my father found us. My father smacked me on the back of the head. He pulled Hall up and said, Your sister relies on you, and Hall vomited into the chinaberry.

  When we were both about to graduate from Harvard, Hall took me to a show. That night was his gift to me. An enormous man swung overhead, his feet almost grazing my head. He was twice the size of Uncle Teddy, if you’ll forgive me, in a black bathing costume and bare feet and his thighs and backside splayed out and hung over the seat. He grabbed on to the leather straps of the swing with big hands and I could see that underneath the black suit was another, red-striped suit. Sweat ran down his sides. The man pumped his legs and tossed red silk flowers into the audience. He must have weighed three hundred pounds. He wore a straw hat, a boater, like all our uncles and cousins wore at picnics, and his calves were like bowling balls, white-blue and very smooth.

  A few weeks before the nightclub debacle, I’d made a picnic for Hall and me. We went down to the Charles and found one of those great willow trees, its soft branches pooling on the grass. I suggested we sit inside the canopy and he laughed.

  “That’s baloney. Let’s get some sun.”

  He took off his shirt and socks and shoes and rolled up his trouser legs. I took off my sweater and folded it beside me. Two boys we knew rowed by and they whooped. Hall jumped up, waving, and waggled his hips at them. His feet were beautiful. The toenails were smooth and rosy and each round, sturdy, clean toe had a couple of tiny gold hairs on it. We sat on the lawn, overlooking the river, drinking ale, eating apples and sausage rolls I’d stolen from the kitchen. That was my great daring. That’s all I was capable of.

  His pants hiked up his shins and I could see more gold hairs, a little darker, above his sharp white perfect anklebone. You know what a handsome young man he was, in his twenties. My feet, like every other part of me, were disgusting to me. I’d mastered the manly art of never being naked, and of appearing not to notice anyone else’s nakedness—I don’t know if that’s how it is in girls’ schools. I knew I looked nothing like Michelangelo’s David or any of the sculptures in our art books or the statues in Auntie Bye’s garden, where she refused to put up fig leaves and said that if anyone was so uncultured as to be offended, they should just close their ignorant eyes. We could use more of that.

  That nightclub was heaven and hell for me. Lipsticked men danced together. An actual girl, looking like Mary Pickford, except for her backless pinafore, offered Hall a pink rose, for fifty cents. He put it in his lapel and sent her away. The big man from the swing had put on a silk dressing gown, leather boots on his bare legs, and a monocle. He did look like Uncle Teddy and he was not unaware of the resemblance.

  “Oh, it’s a bully night, isn’t it, my dears. Bully, bully, bully. I see you little Rough Riders, out there. Daddy sees all. And now, lock your lips and hide your slips, because here to show you how to speak softly and carry a great big stick, and also, vicey-versy, here is Miss Gladys Bentley—”

  People yelled and clapped. A Negro woman came in, large and handsome, in a white tux and top hat. She chucked men and women under the chin. She nuzzled a white girl, who screamed with pleasure. Two boys fanned themselves. She hammered at the piano, like it was her last night on earth, and while she sang in her deep, whiskey voice, two very pretty girls, one light, one dark, climbed onto the baby grand and sang back-up: “Blow it up right, with my own dynamite. I’m knocking down this city, knocking it all down tonight.” Hall cheered. I clapped politely, coward that I was, and am. Hall pushed me toward every invert he saw. I stood my ground and finally sat down at the table nearest the coat check.

  “Look,” he said. “Let’s have a ball. This place, it’s great.”

  I asked him, grousing all the way, if he’d been here before.

  “You goop. Who am I going to go with? Margaret? No, this is for us. This is our bachelor’s party, without the rest of the fellows. Our send-off.”

  He didn’t say, the rest of the fellows who don’t care for you. The rest of the fellows who understand perfectly well what lies beneath.

  One boy, without lipstick and dressed much like us, approached me. Hall was very warm but I think the boy must have seen that my strongest wish was to murder him and he shr
ugged. He said to me, Suit yourself, petal.

  I grabbed my jacket, threw the tie in the coat check girl’s face, and headed for my apartment. Hall ran out behind me but couldn’t catch up. I didn’t speak to him for the next three weeks and when he got married the first time, I was in Paris, myself.

  The snow’s stopped entirely.

  When my mother died—and thank you for that lovely letter. I have kept it in a chest, along with some other letters that matter to me—I thought there was no worse pain.

  There are people you always love, no matter what they have done to you, no matter what you have done to them. I think Miss Hickok is one of those people for you. I hope so. When you are the kind of man I am, you get to envy wives and husbands, the Franklins and the Eleanors. And now, I get to envy the Hickoks as well.

  By the time you read this, I hope that Scotch and this deep snow will have put an end to me.

  My dear Eleanor, I am so sorry about Franklin. He cast light, everywhere. Please forgive me for my deceit and my weakness. Forgive me, further, if you can, for attempting to interfere with your happiness. I want you to have happiness.

  Your cousin,

  Parker Fiske

  The Show Is Not the Show

  SATURDAY NOON, APRIL 28, 1945

  29 Washington Square West

  New York, New York

  “You and my cousin spoke,” Eleanor says. “More than once?”