The Chameleon (22 page)

Clairest, write often and oftener. Even seeing your slanted script with your little drawings lifts my mood. When I come back from a mission it is like being handed a bag of coins to receive a parcel of your letters. It was especially important after we dropped the bombs on
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and on the fly-by where we got to see the mangled damage we had wreaked. All that, and to lose so many boys and then the island itself. I
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but
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.
Our boys’ spirits are dampened but the tide in the South Pacific will turn soon, I am sure.

You are so perceptive, darling. You are right to see this is not the same as shooting clay pigeons. I don't know how it is you always know my mind. In the meantime, I kiss you on the lips and thank God you are waiting for me.

Your Harry

P.S. Please thank your auntie Slim for the mono-grammed stationery and portable writing table. Unfortunately the paper is not the right issue but the writing table is a terrific hit in the ship's hospital, where I loaned it to some of the fellows on the mend.

P.P.S. Did I remember to tell you it makes me have wonderful thoughts to hear that you sometimes sleep in my leather flying jacket?

Chapter Nine

Eleanor and Lucy

Mature women should enter politics in order to guard against the emptiness and loneliness that enters some women's lives after their children are grown. Today's women need to have lives, interests and personalities of their own apart from their own households.

—
Eleanor Roosevelt
“What I Want Most Out of Life,”
Success Magazine

I
n 1942 five thousand new people poured into Washington each month, and early that summer Claire was one of them. Like Claire, nearly one-third of the newcomers were women, mostly young. They came from every corner of the country, these fresh faces in their one pair of nylons and pencil-thin skirts, all in search of jobs, excitement, and, with any luck, husbands. But Claire already had each of these in spades. As the newest staff assistant to the president's senior adviser, her father-in-law, she was dropped smack dab into a heady world of generals, cabinet members, and twenty-four-hour workdays in a city that never shut down. After the sleepy days in Tuxedo, she welcomed the frenetic activity of the capital boomtown.

Where two years earlier the prewar armies had trained with cardboard weapons and flour for gunpowder, now there was a war department so vast it was preparing to move into the largest building in the world, the Pentagon.

Daylight savings—“war time”—was instituted throughout the country, and in Washington working hours were staggered to ease congestion in the streets and offices. Stuck in a bottleneck of Nashes, Fords, and DeSotos, Claire craned her neck around to better take her first look at the capital's picture-postcard sights—as if Imperial Rome had sent over its leftover marble columns, obelisks, and temples, it seemed to her—from the back of Harrison's polished black Lincoln. His aide and sometime driver Tom Brewster explained to Claire, driving her down Pennsylvania Avenue at a snail's pace, how trees were being uprooted and streets widened to accommodate the automobile traffic that choked the city in spite of the staggered hours and rationed gas. “This town is getting so crowded that Hitler and his tank could be stuck in traffic for hours before anyone noticed,” Tom joked. He laughed with a friendliness that reminded her of Harry's straightforward warmth. Tom couldn't have been more than a year or two older than her husband. The appealing impact of his sandy hair, big white teeth, and skin tanned the color of toast was mollified by a pair of thick tortoise-shell glasses. In Washington, with its scarcity of young men, even Harvard-educated noncombatants like Tom, thanks to poor vision and rich fathers, double-dutied as drivers and couriers. “Housing is at such a premium,” Tom told Claire, watching her closely in his rearview mirror, “that secretaries working the late shift ‘time share’ a bed with someone working the early shift. One sleeps on the still-warm sheets while the other works.”

Claire listened to Tom's stories, her wide-eyed gaze locked on the Washington Monument, which loomed ahead, as a peachy gray dusk fell over the city. Eventually, they pulled up to the very proper Willard Hotel.

Because of the housing shortage, it had been decided that Claire would live at the hotel with her in-laws. Since the Harrisons didn't share a bedroom, Claire would take the sitting-room couch or the extra bedroom when either was out of town. Not so different from the Windermere, Auntie Wren had pointed out in a letter. Claire didn't care. Adapting quickly to the improvised arrangement, she was so relieved to be out of her gilded birdcage at Charlotte Hall and in the center of power and activity that no inconvenience could deter her.

In just her very first week on the job, as part of Harrison's War Materials Oversight Team, Claire had been called upon to collect projections from the chairman of Chrysler on how many and how fast its assembly plants could turn out tanks for the hush-hush North Africa operation coming that fall. She'd also made dinner reservations for Cyrus Pettibone and his out-of-town guests, owners of a Chicago scrap metal company, in town for urgent discussions about the quickest way to melt down rusty old tankers and salvage the sheet metal for airplanes. In Claire's newly opened eyes, even though the floodlights that had always bathed the city's monuments in a soft, democratic glow were switched off for the war's duration, living in the capital was like being in the center of a thousand watts of energy.

“Turkey and yams. That's what you get when Eleanor's in residence. Dry as a bone, too,” Harrison said slyly to his daughter-in-law. He shook the summer rain off his umbrella and handed it over to the usher as they followed Ophelia up the stairs to the first family's private quarters. The humidity was high, and Claire could feel the dark fabric of her summer frock sticking to the back of her knees. She was nervously excited to meet the great man himself. She could hardly believe that she was calmly making her way upstairs to the president's parlor.

“E.R.’s stomping all over the country on Franklin's behalf to learn what the American people are thinking and you're expecting her to prepare a beef Wellington?” Ophelia scolded her husband. She fidgeted with a bow-shaped diamond brooch the size of a well-fed mouse that dangled from her ample bosom.

Harrison diplomatically took both of the ladies by the arm as the trio ascended the remaining stairs to the private residence. There in the Oval Room was the president seated at a table, mixing cocktails. A pince-nez on his nose, he peered over at Claire, his broad grin and cigarette holder dominating his jovial face. His cocktail hour was the only time of the day when he let all the worries of war briefly fall from his shoulders, Harrison informed her.

“Harry's bride! And just in time. Jump down, Fala, and give the lady your chair,” he bellowed to his black Scotch terrier, who instantly handed over his seat even as he left his four-pawed imprint on the cushion.

“Eleanor's having a lot of do-gooders for dinner so we have to get the fun in before the first course. Isn't that right, Ophelia?” Ophelia waved hello and skirted out to find the first lady, still at work in her office down the hall. “What can I fix you with, my dear?”

Claire was frozen. Here was the most important man on the face of the earth asking her what she'd like to drink.

He put her at ease. “Most people ask for something with ice on an evening like this.”

“Ginger ale,” Claire gulped.

“And how about you, Harrison? The usual?” His thin lips curled into a contagious smile when he greeted his friend. Claire observed that the affection between the two men was genuine. Harrison found a leather chair that had acquired a rich glow from years of use and slowly lowered his tall frame. Harry Hopkins handed Claire her beverage from his moist hand. If Harrison was FDR's right hand, Harry Hopkins was his left.

“Thank you,” Claire said softly to everyone.

Her eyes swept the room, taking it all in. The president's study was in fact a large oval room lined with mahogany bookcases spilling over with leather volumes and a tumbleweed decor of family pictures, Harvard ashtrays filled with dog treats, and Audubon prints. The ships in glass bottles and slightly askew oil paintings of sailing vessels were a tribute to FDR's love of the sea. Upstairs at the White House had the cozy look of a well-born family's lifetime of clutter, gathered together for a rummage sale. Claire had no idea that this untidy room—the lived-in version of the formal Oval Office directly below—was in reality the heartbeat of the White House where FDR conducted most of his business until the wee hours of the morning and that his bedroom was only a closed door away. Claire sipped at her cold drink and demurely shook hands with the Morgenthaus, the Sherwoods, Harry Hopkins, and the president's only daughter, Anna. Even though Anna was fifteen years older than Claire, she was still the second-youngest person in the room, and had the warmest smile. As a mother whose husband was also soldiering overseas, Claire felt an unspoken bond with her and so she shyly settled herself into a nearby chair. She was satisfied that at least she looked presentable, with her thick hair softly waved to her shoulders, the crisp white collar and cuffs accenting her silk maternity smock.

“The hardest job in Washington is being Harrison and the second hardest is working for him. How are you holding up?” Roosevelt asked. His broad grin criss-crossed his entire face.

“Well, it's only been ten days.” Claire blushed.

“Ten days! Why, usually they ask to be transferred after forty-eight hours to something easy, like active duty!”

The president peered curiously over his pince-nez at the wholesome-looking girl with the violet eyes whose posture was show-horse perfect.

“So, my dear, from where do you hail, originally?”

“Chicago.” Claire's timbre was soft and musical, running up and down the octave in some sort of vaguely aristocratic scale. She was finding her own voice at last.

“Ah, Chicago. Come closer. Harrison, you don't know this story either.”

They all circled in.

“The day after Pearl Harbor, the fellows at Secret Service suggested I'd be needing a bulletproof armored car. Guess they figured the Japs would try to sink me next. So Mike Reilly”—he turned in his chair to Claire by way of explanation—“he's chief of the White House Secret Service detail. Well, Mike runs into a federal regulation against buying me any car costing more man seven hundred and fifty dollars.”

Like any great actor, Roosevelt waited for the shock effect to sink in: a president left unprotected because of a fiscal budgetary rule! “Now”—he pointed down with his cigarette holder, spilling ashes on the Oriental rug—“Reilly's a clever boy. Found out the U.S. Treasury owned a huge armored limousine it had seized in an income-tax evasion case.” A chuckle started to escape the side of his mouth. “Reilly had it washed, gassed up, and driven over here. Naturally I asked to whom it had belonged. Thought a thank-you note was in order.” He winked at Claire. “Turned out it was a Chicagoan.”

“Who did it belong to?” she asked, aware that it was expected of her.

“Al Capone. I'm driving around in his getaway car!”

The room laughed, like it was supposed to.

Anna leaned over to whisper into Claire's ear, “It's
his
getaway car, too. He likes to take it out for long afternoon drives into the Virginia hills. It soothes him.”

Claire was beginning to get the drift of the “cocktail hour.” It was a scheduled recess for a beleaguered president and his trusted inner circle away from the gloomy dispatches and war operations of the day. All that would begin again after dinner. This was a time reserved for clearing their heads and swapping the day's best laughs.

“Claire, put that glass of spirits down! It's not good for our baby.” Ophelia burst in, announcing Eleanor's imminent arrival. Rattled, Claire anxiously looked for a coaster on which to put her glass of ginger ale. It was easier than explaining.

Suddenly, the door opened, allowing a tall Eleanor Roosevelt with a stack of papers in her long, suntanned arms to stride into the room, instantly making it her own. A cadre of shorter, solemn-faced women, marching at her side like social reform storm troopers, flanked her. Claire sensed an instantaneous shift in gears. Where the conversation had been driving along at a pleasant idle, in a no-particular-hurry first gear, it was now thrown into full throttle and everyone sat straight up in their chairs for the ride.

“At last. My dear, I thought that you might have abandoned me for your millions of readers.” FDR shifted his cigarette holder from the right side of his mouth to the left with just a slight movement of the jaw.

“But yours is the only high opinion I look for.” The corners of E.R.’s mouth lifted as six chins fell behind her, as though the first lady's friends were disappointed that their thoughts mattered less to her than her husband's.

“And what's the good word for our fellow Americans tomorrow?” Claire, too, was an avid reader of Mrs. Roosevelt's column, “My Day,” appearing without fail six days a week in hundreds of newspapers across the country.

“Nothing that Hitler or Hirohito will be losing any sleep over, I'm afraid.”

“We always have to be sure Eleanor's not giving away state secrets in her articles,” Harry Hopkins explained to Claire. Franklin's side of the room laughed in affectionate indulgence while Eleanor's sorority of camp followers snarled and glared rabidly.

“Well, I've called it ‘Food for Thought,’” Eleanor responded as the president poured her a short glass of beer. She didn't approve of alcohol but there was reason to celebrate. By gently badgering her husband, she had just gotten him to approve the first government-sponsored day-care center. She had framed her appeal pragmatically, convincing him that doing so was the only way to ensure a stable workforce.

“Tomorrow's piece is a plea to grocers to extend their hours so that women involved in war work can shop for their families on their way home.” She gulped down her drink. Eleanor hated wasting time as much as she disliked idle chatter.