Authors: Gore Vidal
“May I?” Mrs. Roosevelt looked into the room. Caroline rose to her feet. “Please.” Eleanor half-shut the door behind her. She looked exhausted. “I’ve come for a moment’s peace, if you don’t mind.”
“It is your house.”
“No. It is the nation’s house.” She sat down in a heavy wood mission rocking chair. “One tends to forget that until … something happens.” She shut her eyes and rocked back and forth. From the corridor, many hushed voices could be heard. Military aides, secretaries, cabinet members were assembling—like ants when their hill has been kicked over.
Caroline had a thousand questions that she wanted to ask and so asked none. “I have four sons.” Eleanor spoke with a degree of wonder. “They are all in the military or will be. What are the odds, with four?”
“I should think good.”
“The last time there were all of Uncle T’s boys, and one was killed. Franklin was eager to go, too, until Mr. Wilson ordered him to stay at the Navy Department. But one’s own sons are different, aren’t they?” Eleanor’s eyes were moist. Caroline wished for Eleanor’s sake that she would weep, let go. But instead she simply shut her eyes, as if she
wanted, suddenly, in the midst of so much disaster to sleep her way out of it. “You have no son, do you?” This was Eleanor’s spontaneous politeness. To include the other.
“Only a daughter.”
“I remember—she must be married by now.”
“Married. Divorced.”
“The usual story these days.” Eleanor opened her eyes;
they
were as usual. “I saw Mr. Farrell’s film about England. We liked it very much. Mr. Churchill was delighted, of course. But then Mr. Farrell let him overact outrageously. What is Mr. Farrell doing now?”
Eleanor was obviously determined to put out of her mind the ships, sunken and aflame in Pearl Harbor.
“Tim will probably want to cover the war in the Pacific.” Thus, Caroline mentioned the unmentionable. Quickly, she created a diversion. Chose drama. “Only I haven’t heard from Tim in some time. You see, Emma, my daughter, is with him now.”
“Wasn’t she working in his film?”
“Yes. But they are also … they are now a couple, I am told. I suppose there are precedents for a mother to be replaced by her daughter but I’ve never actually known of one. But then, to be precise, Tim and I parted for good twenty years ago, in the most friendly way, and so I am no longer a part of the story.”
“This,” said Eleanor, “is rather the sort of thing that happens along the River.” The River Families were, mostly, all related to each other and so given to complicated marital and extramarital arrangements. “I am sorry.”
“No. No. Please. I am well out of it. I am only sorry for poor Tim. He is stuck with Emma, a fate one would not wish on an enemy much less an old friend.”
Mrs. Roosevelt was now thoroughly distracted, the object of Caroline’s exercise. In general, Eleanor seemed immune to gossip, but now, rather like a great psychoanalyst or whatever witch doctors were currently called, she wanted more and more details about Emma’s general character, details which her mother was happy to provide, including her work with Fortress America, which brought a frown to Eleanor’s pale
brow. Then Caroline concluded with a revelation. “To my surprise, I think I am something that I have never been before—jealous.”
“Never before? Oh, you
are
lucky! I’m afraid that I’ve always been jealous of those I care about, and since they are so very few, one’s apt to become ridiculously jealous. Sooner or later, I always blame myself. I always try to forgive. And I think I do. Only …” The mouth was suddenly compressed to a straight line. “I never forget.” She took a deep breath. “It is sad we never know where we have gone wrong as parents until it is far too late. My late mother-in-law felt that I had made every mistake one could make as a mother while I
knew
that she had made, deliberately, every mistake a grandmother can make, spoiling the children when I was away and undoing all my efforts to bring them up as they should be brought up or so I, perhaps wrongly, thought. This house has been no help.” She went over to the window where Lincoln’s desk had been so placed that he might get the southern—Confederate?—light. She stared a moment at the monument to Washington. “It is a terrible place to bring up children. With everyone flattering them because they want something from Franklin. There are times when I think there must be some sort of curse on this house.”
“There is a curse on power.”
“Not when used for others, or so I like to think.”
“Where does one’s own self leave off and that of others begin?”
“There are …” Suddenly, the great grin. “… markers, I believe, like no-trespassing signs. I keep running up against them all the time.” She rose. “Now I must go write my radio broadcast. You’ve done me a world of good, Caroline.”
“You do us all good.”
“Now. Now. I am just an old politician of the wrong sex or the right sex but born at the wrong time.” She was gone.
A moment later Hopkins limped into the room and stretched out on the sofa. “Eleanor …” He stopped.
“We talked about sons and daughters.”
“She’s ringing all her children now.”
“How much damage did the Japanese do?”
“No one knows. But just about every ship in the harbor was hit.
They’ve also attacked Hong Kong, Malaya, Guam, the Philippines, Wake, Midway. He’ll address Congress tomorrow.” Hopkins sighed. “It’s an awful thing to say but this is a terrible weight off all of us. No more waiting. No more stalling. Everything plain.”
“Did you expect so many shoes to fall at once?”
“Shoes? Oh, yes. Well, now, we’re a bit worried about the West Coast. Without Pearl Harbor, we’re vulnerable to air attack. Even invasion. The Boss thinks we can certainly turn them back by the time they get to Chicago.”
“You’re joking.”
“He’s only thinking ahead, which is what he is paid to do.”
Caroline restrained herself from remarking that if the President had been seriously thinking ahead in the last year the United States might still possess its Pacific Fleet.
Hopkins was on another tack. “I think we should find a job for Wendell Willkie. He’s eager. The Boss likes him. They’ve become sort of pen pals.” Hopkins appeared to be talking to himself rather than to Caroline. “What a ticket that would be in ’44. Roosevelt and Willkie.”
“A
fourth
term?”
“Why not? Unless the war is won by then. In which case, we can all go home.”
“Politics never stops, does it?”
Hopkins made no answer.
Caroline rose. “I’ll be covering the Capitol tomorrow. For the paper.” Hopkins nodded; his eyes were shut again. “Oh?” She stopped at the door. “What ever happened to Hitler?”
Hopkins chuckled. “Don’t worry. We never lose track of him. He went into winter quarters yesterday. He’s been bluffing the Japanese. He had them convinced that Moscow and Leningrad were about to surrender any day now, which meant that this was the best time for them to hit us. Now Adolf’s taking a well-deserved rest. Moscow and Leningrad are safe, and the Japanese are busy committing suicide. In a few days, Hitler will do something very unusual for him, he’ll actually honor a treaty. The one with Japan. He’ll declare war on us. Is Mrs. Woodrow Wilson still alive?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I think history requires for Eleanor to sit with her tomorrow when the Boss makes his speech.”
Eleanor did sit with Mrs. Woodrow Wilson while Caroline was squeezed into a corner of the press gallery. The President struck all the right notes. The face that had yesterday been gaunt and gray was now its usual ruddy color. The voice was resonant and firm as he looked out over the combined houses of Congress, Cabinet, Supreme Court. He spoke of the “surprise” attack as a day that would “live in infamy,” yet, thought Caroline, it came as no surprise to anyone except the American people, as always kept in the dark. Nevertheless, he made his case; then, almost graciously, he said, “We may acknowledge that our enemies have performed a brilliant feat of deception, perfectly timed and executed with great skill.” Thus, most eloquently, he described his own tactics that had got him the war that he had so dearly wanted for reasons which Caroline hoped were virtuous because if they were not …
In the crowd, after the official declaration of war, Caroline found James Burden Day and Arthur Vandenberg standing in front of the glass swing doors that led into the Senate chamber. Vandenberg was owl-solemn; Burden was grim.
Caroline congratulated Vandenberg on his blessedly brief speech to the Senate before the vote was taken.
“Unity is all-important.” Vandenberg shook his jowls menacingly. “When the war’s been won, we can argue about how the Administration might have avoided it.”
“Or, worse, might have provoked the attack,” said Burden.
“All that’s for later. We mustn’t seem to be playing politics, particularly not now with all the dead and the dying in Hawaii.”
Caroline asked if any figures had come through.
Burden nodded. “Something like three thousand men are thought to be lost aboard the ships.”
Vandenberg slipped away. Burden was bitter. “We were all set to investigate this whole matter but now Arthur is too busy playing at being statesman to be one.”
“Were you at the White House yesterday, with the other congressional leaders?”
“No. I was the one leader
not
asked. Roosevelt knows that I am on to his game. He also knows that now, with all the panic building, he’s home free.”
As if on cue, a reporter from the
Tribune
hurried over to Caroline to tell her that San Francisco had just been bombed.
Caroline turned to James Burden Day. “How long a war will it be?”
“The last one was only a year for us. Four years for the Europeans.”
Caroline was suddenly struck with what was, for her, an entirely new thought. “Why, if this war should be profitable for us, shouldn’t it go on forever? Particularly if,” she thought of Hopkins’ line, “we gain the world.”
“Countries wear out.”
“Countries also change. Like people. In fact, most of us tend to become what we have always hated.”
“What have you always hated?”
Caroline remembered to smile. “Old age. And the weakening of the mind.”
“You are in no immediate danger of either.” Then, gallantly, he led her across the rotunda with its numerous crude statues of forgotten American statesmen. As they walked, admirers shook Burden’s hand. “Little do they know that I have now become what
I
have always hated.”
“What is that?”
“Powerless,” he said.
Caroline stepped through the open French window onto the rose brick terrace and into the full heat of the day. Opposite her, Frederika cowered in the shade of a striped umbrella, weakly fanning herself with the society section of the family newspaper. “This is
not
October weather.” Caroline kissed her sister-in-law’s cheek, redolent of eau de cologne.
“It is unseasonable,” Frederika whispered as a one-eyed butler placed a tea tray in front of her. “Thank you, Lionel,” she smiled vaguely.
“It’s George, Mrs. Sanford.”
“I know, Lionel.”
Lionel-George withdrew.
“He lost an eye in North Africa. Before that he worked for Vincent Astor. Between the two, I must say I’d prefer North Africa … with both eyes, of course. Poor Lionel was the last butler on offer at the agency. He couldn’t be nicer except that he lost his depth perception along with the eye. He pours wine straight onto your lap.”
“We must make some small sacrifice for the war effort.” Caroline mopped her upper lip with a muslin sleeve. “Laura Delano has warned us that the servant class will not survive the war. They will simply wither away.”
“Too sad.” Frederika seemed unperturbed as she poured them tea. Caroline ate a star-shaped cucumber sandwich, a specialty of Laurel House. “Blaise thinks we should sell the place.”
“Will anyone want so large a place, with no servants?”
“Oh, there are always embassies. And schools for disturbed girls. You know, the usual sort of buyers. Of course, we still have the Massachusetts Avenue house, though that’s also far too big. I shouldn’t in the least mind crawling into one of those hideous brick ovens in Georgetown, like Joe Alsop.”
“I think you’d mind very much. At least here you’re cool indoors. Harry Hopkins says the White House is an inferno now.”
“I thought all the windows were blacked out after Pearl Harbor. That should cool things.”
“Just the opposite. And since Franklin won’t permit air-conditioning the house is as musty and depressing as Tutankhamen’s tomb.” What was it she had intended to say? With failing memory, Caroline had taken to making mental lists. Tombs? “Oh, yes! Speaking of tombs, Wendell Willkie died last night. In New York. Heart.”
“So young! How lucky for Franklin that poor Wendell wasn’t his running mate this year. For the fourth term!” Frederika let the newspaper drop to the terrace. “A
fourth
term? Who would ever have imagined such a thing?”
I would, thought Caroline. Between the victories of the Russian army on the ground in Europe and the American victories at sea and in the air against Japan, it had been clear since the Allied invasion of Europe that each half of the global war was drawing to a close. As a result, every Democratic politician, including Burden, had been positioning himself to succeed Roosevelt in the election of 1944. But Caroline had known, instinctively, that FDR meant to reign and to rule for all his life and so he would run for a fourth term and, as a matter of course, win. Although there were many disturbing stories about the President’s health—some no doubt true—she rather doubted that the
sixty-one-year-old Roosevelt would forgo so great a triumph as a lifetime presidency during which the United States would, in effect, govern most of Europe and Asia. He must also rule long enough in order to accomplish what his mentor, Woodrow Wilson, had so dramatically failed to do—create a world organization in order to maintain a permanent American peace.
After a quiet summer, the President was now on the move across the Midwest, addressing huge crowds, while the Republican candidate, Thomas E. Dewey, having taken to heart the criticism that his carefully studied statesmanlike campaign of four years earlier had lost him the election, had metamorphosed into a prosecuting attorney, attacking the President with all the fury of a terrier tightly leashed by wartime censorship, not to mention by the aura of a president grown mythical to an electorate hardly able to recall any other sovereign.