Eleanor’s campaign headquarters were just up the block in the Roosevelt Hotel. Whitney Warren and Charles Wetmore, who had designed Grand Central Station, surrounded their cavernous train depot with some of the city’s more elegant buildings. Both the Commodore and the Roosevelt hotels were part of this “Terminal City” vision, linked by their architecture if not their warring campaign headquarters.
Joan loved the Roosevelt’s neoclassical spectacle. A fitting place to be named for Eleanor’s Uncle Teddy, but more fitting, she thought, as the place for his niece to aim for the highest office in the land.
Larry caught her as soon as she walked in the door.
“There you are!” he began, as if she’d been AWOL. “I just got a call from Lou Cowan. He’s picked up a rumor on Madison Avenue that Ike is putting together some short TV commercials that they plan to put on right before election day in key areas. They’re buying a lot of time.”
“I picked up something like that, too,” Joan answered, not wanting to say more.
“Well, I want you to be sure we have all the tapes from the stations we’ve let come in and film Mrs. R. here, at Val-Kill, on the train, everything. Lou offered to use it to make some spots for us.”
“Where will we target?” Joan asked.
“Hard to tell, but put some calls in to stations in Pennsylvania, Illinois, Texas, and Michigan, oh yeah, and Massachusetts.”
“Massachusetts? Don’t you have that sewn up, Larry?” Joan asked in a teasing tone.
“I don’t like to take chances,” he said as he walked away.
Joan sat down at her folding table that served as a desk in the middle of a meeting room that was the campaign bull pen. Newspaper clippings covered the rickety table, along with phone messages and notes to herself. Her habit of taping notes on top of notes taped to the table left little flip-pads of information clinging to the rough surface. She looked at the chaos without seeing it. She couldn’t get that Chamberlain guy’s comment out of her mind. “A woman’s woman.” Why did he say it like that? What did that sarcastic tone mean? All of her journalist’s instincts were kicking in. It reminded her of the answer to a question she had asked just a few days before.
Joan had been looking through press clippings of Eisenhower in Europe, trying to anticipate how his campaign would play up the war-hero angle, when something caught her eye. In picture after picture there appeared a pretty dark-haired woman in some kind of British army uniform. She looked about Joan’s age, trim, straight-shouldered, and alert. There she was, her two-button, tri-corner hat at a rakish angle, her hair swept off a high forehead, in midsentence with Ike. There she was again, in a broad-knotted tie and shirtsleeves, laughing as she tried out an army motorcycle in the North African desert while Ike watched. In another shot, the two of them in civilian clothes sat astride handsome horses with a caption, “General Eisenhower out for his daily ride at Telegraph Cottage, London.” In another, she was sitting in the back of a jeep next to Ike as they visited Hitler’s retreat at Berchtesgaden in 1945. And there she was again, standing behind Ike as he triumphantly held up the pens that the Germans used to sign the surrender. As Joan looked at the girl’s joyous and relieved smile, she felt tears sting her eyes. They had all been through so much during the war, but this girl had survived the maelstrom, and it showed.
“Hey, Molly.” Joan stopped Molly Dewson as she swept by in her perpetual hurry. “Can you take a sec and tell me who this girl is?” Joan held up one of the newspaper photos.
“Well, I guess you were too young to be up on the rumors during the war. It was common knowledge in Washington and New York, if not the country, that Ike’s driver, her name was Kay Summersby.” Molly pointed to the girl in the picture. “She was doing more than driving, shall we say.” Molly walked away without more explanation.
As Joan recalled Molly’s words, she remembered the tone of sexual innuendo, the same tone Jonathon had used about Mrs. R. Was he suggesting she had a lover? There wasn’t much news there. Dr. Gurewitsch was a perfectly proper companion, and they were both single people. They always took separate hotel rooms, anyway, although everyone knew it was for show. That couldn’t be what Jonathon had been hinting at. But the incident reminded Joan that she had wanted to find out more about Kay Summersby. The story intrigued her—so illicit, so romantic. She imagined Ingrid Bergman saying good-bye to Bogey in Casablanca. Joan wondered how easily Kay Summersby had let her general go. She taped another note to her desk, “DDE—when returned from Europe?/and what happened to Summersby?” A family friend had served on General Marshall’s staff at the Pentagon during the war. She decided to give him a call.
“Henry, it’s Joan calling from New York with a gossipy little question.”
“What would I expect from Ruby’s daughter?” he answered with a laugh that Joan returned.
“I just looked at a bunch of newspaper photos of Ike in Europe during the war, and this Kay Summersby woman is in an awful lot of them. When he came back, did she come, too, by any chance? She looked like she was a top assistant.” Joan tried to sound as casual as possible.
“You’re too young to know the stories, aren’t you?” Henry asked. “No, she didn’t come back, but Ike would have liked her to, and that’s all I’m saying.”
“Hennnnrrrry! You can’t do that to me. I’ll have to come to that little country house of yours down in Virginia and twist your arm if you don’t tell me the whole story.”
“Well, at least I’d see you then. I’ll tell you this much—there was a letter.”
“A letter? To who? What kind of letter? From Ike? What did it say…?”
“Joan, that’s it. I mean it. I was working for the army chief of staff. It was a privilege to serve under George Marshall, and I’ve said enough. Now tell me when you’re coming for dinner. I want a date certain.”
Joan couldn’t sit still the rest of the afternoon. She paced to the windows looking over Madison Avenue then back to her desk, then over to the coffeepot, then down the hall to Molly’s cubbyhole to bum a cigarette. A letter…did Marshall write Ike and tell him to knock it off with Kay because of the rumors? No, he would have had a lot more to worry about than that. Ike must have written Marshall. How else would Henry know about the letter? But what did he say? Why would he have written Marshall about Kay? She taped down a new note and checked her schedule to see how soon she could get to the Pentagon.