November 8, 1932
On the night of the election, a little more than a week later, the Roosevelts invited a troop of family and friends as well as all the reporters assigned to the campaign trail over to their town house on Sixty-Fifth Street for a buffet supper. FDR was heavily favored, of course; the only suspense was over the margin of victory. Just how severe a drubbing would Hoover take? We reporters had been traveling the country for months, ostensibly to cover the campaign, but, as a free gift with purchase, we got an eyeful of just what was going on in America in 1932, and, my, was it bleak. Bedraggled men and women were building towns out of garbage—flattened tin cans and squares of cardboard and stained canvas sacks lashed together with cord—and they were naming those towns after the current president of the United States. We thought Hoover deserved whatever he was going to get.
It was already getting dark when I took Prinz, my German shepherd, out one last time. Then I walked him back into the apartment and closed him in the bathroom. My poor boy had a tendency to destroy every object in sight when I was not around, and this way he could lounge in the bathtub, as befitted a royal, until I came home. I changed into a fresh blouse and then smoothed my hair and slipped my notebook into my coat pocket. On the way to the door, I switched off the record player and the anvils of Wagner’s Das Rheingold clanged their last. I caught a cab uptown.
The Roosevelts’ town house was lit up like it was Christmas Eve, a lamp in every window and a red, white, and blue paper garland hanging over the doorway. A campaign poster on the door featured FDR’s picture with the caption here is the man we have been waiting for. Just like that—so solemn you’d have thought he was a prophet. I could hear someone inside giving a toast as I tapped the iron knocker hanging from the lion’s mouth on the door.
A servant in a black uniform answered and whisked my coat away while I switched my notebook and pencil to the pocket of my skirt and went into the parlor. About fifty people were crowded into the room, draped over couches or standing in clusters of two or three, the taller men with their elbows resting on the mantel. Anna, Mrs. Roosevelt’s daughter, was there with her sulking stockbroker husband, Curtis Dall. It was an open secret that she was involved with John Boettiger, a reporter from Chicago, and intended to seek a divorce, and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her two-timed husband, dull as he seemed. Anna’s younger brothers, Franklin Jr. and John, were home from Groton School for the week. James Roosevelt—the favored, eldest son—was at his father’s elbow, and problem-child Elliott was just as reliably at the bar.
In the back of the dining room was a table heaped with chafing dishes, where servants doled out plates of ham, sliced beef, potatoes, and vegetables. A bartender mixed drinks in the corner. Prohibition may still have been the law of the land, but few people let that stand in the way of their God-given right to imbibe. I was headed the bartender’s way when I saw her.
She was swathed in a regal chiffon dress, a far cry from the tweeds she’d worn that night on the train, and the color was high in her cheeks from the room’s heat. I tried to catch her eye, but she either didn’t see me or pretended not to. I felt my chest constrict with the thought that I was wrong about whatever I imagined had passed between us on the train, and I glimpsed the humiliation I could have brought down on myself had I acted on it. I felt as though I had stepped off the curb and back up just in time to avoid being mowed down by a taxi.
I didn’t recognize the man ahead of me in line for the bar. His jacket was too well-made for a member of the fourth estate. He had to be a Roosevelt, or Roosevelt-adjacent. “All the news is good, eh?” I saw Tommy across the room and gave her a wave.
He nodded at me and munched a cracker. “They are saying turnout is very high. In South Carolina, the polls couldn’t find one man on the street who said he voted for Hoover.”
Women can vote too now, you know, I felt like saying, but didn’t.
The good news indeed was that Manhattan shared South Carolina’s opinion, at least as far as I could tell from speaking to people leaving my own polling place that morning. Unlike his ghoulish predecessor, FDR could charm the stink off an onion. Of course, his supporters weren’t exactly sure what he planned to do when he got elected—he was too good a politician to make any concrete promises—but we had faith he would do something. Three years of inaction had plunged the country into the worst depression it had seen in anyone’s lifetime. The choice couldn’t be simpler: something had to be better than nothing.
Louis Howe approached Mrs. Roosevelt on the other side of the room. A bent little man in a wretched brown suit, he was the governor’s campaign manager, adviser, and fixer. He looked like an undertaker, with his gaunt face and bulging eyes, and he smoked about a hundred cigarettes a day, sometimes two at a time, but he was a gifted political strategist, the engine of the Roosevelt machine. He got his start as a reporter himself and was a genius at coaxing favorable stories out of the New York papers. Even though the governor seemed to have clinched the race, there would be no rest tonight for poor Louis. He and Mrs. Roosevelt were putting their heads together over by the window—quite a feat as she had to stoop by about a foot to do it. I turned around to check the status of the bar line and nearly plowed into John Bosco.
“Easy!” he said. He was a hayseed like me, from Ohio, and kept his hair cut too short for his giant ears. “I was just bringing you this.”
I took the cocktail, something fizzy with a curl of lemon peel floating on top. “Thanks,” I said, and took a sip, waited for the kick that didn’t come. I peered into the glass. “Did you put the bourbon in with an eyedropper?”
“Blame the bartender,” John said, and took a swig from his own glass. “You coming to the Biltmore after this to wait on the returns?”
“You bet.” I looked back at the window, but Mrs. Roosevelt had disappeared. I wondered if I would even talk to her at all that night. It now seemed entirely insane that I’d gotten my brain so scrambled over those unguarded moments on the train.
FDR was seated at the dining room table, receiving well-wishers and talking with reporters. It went without saying among the press that we wouldn’t dwell on his physical condition unless it was to mention his various strengths—arms like a prizefighter’s and beautiful posture, as well as that winning smile. A photographer who dared to snap a picture of him rolling into the room on the wheeled dining chair would have been asked to surrender his film and leave the party. Louis Howe in particular had devoted his life to ensuring that this man he admired was never seen as a cripple or an invalid. Most of America thought Governor Roosevelt’s polio had been merely a mild case from which he had almost completely recovered. When you heard him on the radio, you felt like you would follow him into battle. You never thought about how he’d have to be wheeled to the front.
I felt the whisper of fingertips at my elbow, and Mrs. Roosevelt was there. My heart sprang up like a grasshopper.
“Hick, how lovely to see you.”
“Likewise,” I said, trying to sound calm. I couldn’t help searching her face; she wouldn’t quite look at me. With so many guests to attend to, she could have passed me by. Did it mean anything that she’d come to say hello? Probably not. I had told myself a little story about her, but it was all in my imagination.
“Franklin will want to say hello,” she said, gesturing to the table.
I looked at John. “Want to meet him?” His eyebrows jumped. Though John had been on the trail for about a month, he griped to me every day that FDR never once called on him at the daily press conferences.
When we approached, Mrs. Roosevelt put her hand on her husband’s shoulder. “Darling, you remember Lorena Hickok from the Associated Press?” John and I sat in the chairs to his right, and Mrs. Roosevelt sat to the left. It felt rude to stand while he was seated.
The governor fixed me with his laughing eyes, and his ivory cigarette holder smoldered in the ashtray in front of him. “Of course! Hello, Hick!” He shook my hand heartily. “You’ve had a busy summer— your pieces on convention politics are some of the best I’ve ever seen. Well done.”
Hoo. I knew I’d be trotting that praise out later on when I needed a pick-me-up. “Thank you, sir. This is my colleague John Bosco.” The men shook hands, and I could feel John trying to keep his cool, though his pinkening ears gave him away. In the presence of greatness, physiology can go haywire.
“You’ll be seeing a lot of Miss Hickok,” Mrs. Roosevelt leaned down and told her husband over the din, “now that she has been assigned to write about me.”
I looked at her in surprise. I hadn’t said anything like that on the train. After I finished the feature on her, I wasn’t sure there would be much else to write. My focus was supposed to be on the candidate himself, what he would say tonight in his victory speech. She met my eyes for a fluttering moment.
“If I might,” Governor Roosevelt said to me, “let me give you a piece of advice: you must never get into an argument with my wife.” Mrs. Roosevelt rolled her eyes as FDR’s grin broke out like a sunrise. “I mean it. You can’t win. You think you’ve got her pinned down over here,” he said, pressing his finger on the tabletop, “and she pops up over there”—he moved his finger to the other side of the table and smacked his palm flat—“and deals you the death blow. Take it from one who knows, Miss Hickok.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
Mrs. Roosevelt gave a little laugh and then stood up and we got the picture that the exchange was over.
“Good luck tonight, sir,” John said, the earnestness making him seem much younger than his thirty years.
Roosevelt folded his hands across his chest, as if he were relaxing in a club chair at the Knickerbocker, just waiting for his brandy. “Don’t need luck. I’ve got the votes.”
Mrs. Roosevelt grasped the back of his chair to wheel him toward the kitchen door. I waited for her to turn back to look at me again; she didn’t.
“I guess that means we’re moving over to the hotel,” John said, still a little stunned by his contact with the candidate.
I threw back the rest of my poor excuse for a drink, and then John and I hurried down the front steps with the other news hawks. If we were quick, we could beat the limo to the hotel and get a feel for the room before Roosevelt arrived. Hundreds of campaign volunteers had already amassed there to celebrate what they’d spent months working to achieve, and they’d be clamoring to get a glimpse of the man it was all for.
John limped beside me on account of an old football injury to his right knee. He offered me a shrimp; he had grabbed a fistful of them as we’d left the town house. It dangled from his hand like a sad pink comma.
“John, are you really that hard up? Next thing I know I’ll find you eating out of the trash. Doesn’t Bill pay you anything these days?”
“Easy come, easy go,” he said, trying to be casual, but I had a feeling his debts were even worse than I knew. I lit a cigarette without breaking my stride and tried to change the subject.
“Did you get anything on FDR’s speech?” I asked.
He laughed and wiped his buttery hands on his jacket. “And you think I’d tell you if I did?”
“But, John,” I said, feigning shock, “aren’t we colleagues?”
“I’ve seen you scoop far better men than me,” he said.
“Than I.”
“Ha! Point to Hick. See—everything’s a competition with you. I don’t trust you any further than I could throw you.”
That was a fat joke, but I didn’t mind. As my stepmother had liked to tell me, I’d be the perfect wife for a blind man, except I talked too much. Anyway, John and I were about even now, after all the money I’d taken from him at the poker table.
“What do you think of Mrs. Roosevelt?” I asked next, trying to slip the question in as casually as I could. First she had revealed herself to me on the train; then she had pinched closed like a morning glory at night. And, just now, she’d made some kind of play I couldn’t quite interpret. Was I the only one who’d noticed it?
As we walked, he flipped through his notes and frowned. “What do you mean what do I think of her?”
“I mean … what kind of first lady do you think she’ll be?”
John shrugged, looking at me like I had a screw loose. “I guess this is your department, Hick, but how many kinds are there? She can pour a teapot, can’t she? Tie on a bonnet for the Easter Egg Roll on the White House lawn?”
I liked John a lot, but this made me so mad I couldn’t even speak for a moment. I thought back to what Mrs. Roosevelt had said on the train about the great interruption of becoming first lady, and I understood more than ever her dread about life in the White House. It had never occurred to John to think about a woman as anything other than a droopy piece of wallpaper behind her husband. Here was a woman who understood the nuance of law, the complexity of economic policy, the checkered history of the government’s service to the poor. She had founded a school, published magazines, organized women to get out to vote, spoke impeccable French. And now she would be selecting table linens. I felt despair by proxy.
“To tell you the truth,” John said as we ran up the steps to the Biltmore’s lobby and I threw my cigarette in the brass urn, “she looks a little dazed to me. Sometimes it seems like there isn’t any grain in the silo, if you know what I mean.”
We didn’t beat the limo there. When John and I walked into the suite on the second floor, Roosevelt and his aides were already seated at a long table dotted with telephones and radios. On either side of them were rows of telephone operators wearing pearls and red lipstick, plying their trade with manicured hands. You could hear their “good evenings” echo one on top of the other like the parts of a madrigal. In the center of the table, Roosevelt sat grinning like a king, the lamplight reflecting off his tanned forehead, as he took calls from his regional directors. New England was a lost cause. All that old money tended to follow the candidate who promised not to tax too much of it. But the calls from Ohio and everything to the west and south were full of good news.
Every time one of the men spoke to a delegate, he tallied the electoral votes on a little card. It seemed silly that there was any suspense in the room at all. We knew how things were going to turn out. Still, I couldn’t seem to take a full breath. My chest was tight, my heart pounding. Finally the people had made a move to take their country back from the top-hatted thieves who had reduced them to ruin. Roosevelt had pledged it: a new deal. And it was thrilling. But I felt something else dogging me—I was worried about her, Mrs. Roosevelt. I was worried about what his winning was going to do to her. Whatever else had happened in that Pullman car, she’d been quite clear about her trepidation of the fate that awaited her. And for some reason she had trusted me with that fact.
Just then, she materialized at the other end of the table. She waved to me quickly and then turned to shake somebody’s hand with both of hers, the left one on top for good measure. She made her way from one bevy of reporters to the next, threading among the clusters of party bigwigs and donors who’d come to collect the flattery they’d paid for; she smiled and kissed cheeks and laughed at bad jokes and put everyone at ease. To look at her, you would think she was relaxed and happy, but it was like a picture painted on a window shade. If you rolled it up to let the light in, you would find an entirely different scene. Back in September, I had written a story about her husband’s campaign stop in Chicago, when the family went to see the Cubs play the Yankees in the World Series. While everyone around her heckled the umpire or leaped to their feet to urge a runner into base, she sat with her head tipped back and slept. No kidding. The woman slept through Babe Ruth’s two home runs. It just broke my heart right open to see how out of sync she was with everyone around her. But, again, I seemed to be the only one who noticed.
When a messenger ran down the stairs to the ballroom to announce that FDR had won Virginia, the volunteers cheered. You could hear the roar coming up through the floor. I scribbled some things down for the story I would file later. One of the telephone operators told me it was the most exciting night of her life, and that was saying something, considering how tight her sweater was.
In the chaotic room, I started to compose a lead in my head for the feature article. After hearing the way John had dismissed Mrs. Roosevelt on the walk over, my sense of duty about the piece surged; maybe I could try to help people understand her. She had plenty of detractors, on the left and the right, who thought she was either a socialist or simply a failure at being an heiress. I would include as much as I thought readers could stomach about her vast accomplishments, but I’d need to sweeten it too, with anecdotes that showed she was a real person. She had a little Scottie dog named Meggy, which she loved and took everywhere with her. And she really did buy ten-dollar dresses off the rack, the way the gossip rags said. Maybe, if I handled the information just right, I could make my readers see how wonderful she was.
I nearly sounded like a publicity hack, I realized, but ushered the thought away.
A commotion at the table with all the telephones claimed my attention. Louis Howe and another man were helping Roosevelt to his feet. You could see the outline of the braces he wore beneath his baggy trousers, two long pieces of steel that ran on either side of each leg and hinged at the knee. The apparatus was secured around his waist and beneath the sole of each foot with leather straps. Once he hoisted himself upright, he could stand with the help of a cane. The whole process took about fifteen long seconds, and the room was full of the nervous anxiety of people trying to steal glances and yet seem like they weren’t looking. Louis saw over his shoulder one of our men from the AP with a camera ready to go, but he held up his hand. He lowered it only once Roosevelt was up and steady. The president-to-be flashed a broad smile. His good looks were wasted on politics—he could have been a film star. He used his handkerchief to wipe a thin layer of sweat from his brow and then he shoved it back into his pocket.
“Congratulations, Mr. President,” Louis said. He shook FDR’s left hand; the right one was on the cane. The photographer’s flashbulb flared and a rumble of voices surged through the room like a wave crashing to the shore. He’s done it! They’ve called it! Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on the way out, Hoover!
A crowd of people lined up to shake his hand. The telephone operators were flinging their arms around one another, and a trio of musicians started to play the campaign song. As disappointed as I was for the future first lady, I was happy for the rest of the country. And yet still I knew: these people thought they had found a savior, but they were wrong. He was just a man. They believed in their hearts that FDR could snap his fingers and put everyone back to work, put all the residents of Hoovervilles in brand-new homes tomorrow. It wasn’t going to happen, not without a long, painful slog—one that felt a little like the process a man with useless legs had to endure in order to balance on sharp pieces of steel so that he could pretend to stand. The hope that was in this room was going to turn inside out into disappointment, guaranteed. But I suppose this kind of foresight was just the sort of thing that kept me from being able to have a good time. Who was I to rain on their parade?
American flags appeared out of thin air, and dozens of bottles of illegal whiskey started making the rounds. Waiters came in with trays full of empty glasses and distributed them. Louis Howe gave himself a few minutes to soak it in and down a couple of large glasses of booze before he became the preoccupied tactician once more, assessing what needed to be done next. FDR would wait for Hoover to concede, and then he would make his acceptance speech and go downstairs to the ballroom to thank the volunteers who, at the moment, sounded a little like rioters locked in a pen. Louis felt at his pocket for his cigarettes and extracted one from the packet. With a smoke bobbing on his lips, he began corralling the reporters to one corner of the room, where they could take a statement from the president-elect.
I let myself be ushered with the others but not before glancing back at the new first lady. She stood just a few feet away at the window, staring out at Madison Avenue. Her palm was pressed to her diaphragm as if she couldn’t quite take a breath. The look on her face was like a hunted animal’s fear, but it passed away in an instant and she turned to the reporters.
Somebody shouted, “Are you glad, Mrs. Roosevelt?”
She didn’t hesitate for a second. “Of course I am,” she said, and I alone in the room knew it was a lie. “You’re always pleased to have someone you’re very devoted to have what he wants.”
Those were her exact words, and all the reporters wrote them down.