married me.' Flora tried to keep her tone light. Other people would be saying the same thing much more pointedly in the years to come. She was as sure of that as she was of her own name. A presidential candidate with a Jew for a wife? Unheard of! How many votes would it cost him?
'That has occurred to me,' Hosea Blackford said slowly. 'It couldn't very well not have occurred to me. But then I decided that, if I had to choose between the two, I would rather spend the rest of my life with you than be president. So I'll take my chances, and the country can take its.'
Flora stared at him. Then she kissed him. One thing led to another. The run from Philadelphia down to Washington wasn't a very long one, especially not when traveling on President Sinclair's express. They barely had time to get dressed again and set their clothes to rights before the train came in to Union Station.
'It's a good thing you don't have to wrestle with a corset, the way you would have before the war,' Hosea said, adjusting his necktie in the mirror.
'Don't speak of such things-you don't know what you're talking about,' Flora answered. 'The only thing I can think of is, whoever put women in corsets must have hated us. Especially in summertime. A corset on a hot summer day…' She shuddered.
'Well, you wouldn't have had to worry about the heat today.' Her husband looked out the window. 'The snow's still coming down.'
'March is late in the year for a snowstorm,' Flora said. 'I wonder if what people say is true: that the weather's been peculiar since the Great War, and that it made the weather peculiar.'
Hosea Blackford laughed. 'Back in Dakota, I would have said May was late for a snowstorm, but nothing sooner than that. If you ask me, the weather's always peculiar. I have a suspicion it's peculiar because it's peculiar, too, and not because we made it that way. I can't prove that, but it's what I think. The weather's bigger than anything we can do, even the Great War.'
'I hope you're right,' she said.
On the platform, a military band blared away. Flora didn't care for that. It wasn't a proper Socialist symbol, even if it was a symbol of the presidency. But if President Sinclair wanted it-and he did-she could hardly complain. People called her the conscience of the Congress, but this wasn't a question of conscience-only one of taste.
A limousine whisked the president and his wife to the White House. Another one brought the Blackfords there. The journey took only a few minutes. When Flora saw the Washington Monument, she pointed. 'It's taller than it was when we came down here for Roosevelt's funeral. You can really tell.'
Her husband nodded. 'Before President Sinclair's term is up, it'll be back to its full height. No mark on the sides to show how much of it the Confederates knocked down, either. I think that's good.'
'So do I,' Flora agreed. 'No matter what the Democrats say, there can be such a thing as too much remembrance.'
'Yes.' Hosea sighed. 'Some people just can't see that. Why anyone would want to remember all the horror we went through during the Great War… Well, it's beyond me.'
'Beyond me, too,' Flora said. 'Try not to get into an argument with my brother tomorrow.'
'I won't argue if David doesn't,' her husband said. 'I'll try not to argue even if he does.' David Hamburger had lost a leg in the last year of the war. In spite of that-or maybe because of it-he'd gone from Socialist to conservative Democrat since. Having paid so much, he couldn't, wouldn't, believe that payment hadn't been worthwhile.
During President Sinclair's-and Vice President Blackford's-first inauguration, Flora had been a Congresswoman, yes. But she hadn't been Blackford's wife, and hadn't been fully swept up into the social whirl surrounding the occasion. Now she went from one reception to another. She found it more wearing than enjoyable.
When she said as much, Hosea Blackford laughed. 'Are you sure you're a New York Jew, and not one of those gloomy Protestants from New England? No matter what they say, there's nothing in the Bible against having a good time.'
'I didn't say there was,' Flora answered. 'But it all seems so-excessive.'
'Oh, is that all you're worrying about?' Hosea laughed again. 'Of course it's excessive. That's the point of it.'
She gave him a disapproving look. 'I'm sure Louis XVI said the same thing just before the French Revolution.'
'Not fair,' Hosea said.
'Maybe not.' Flora didn't want to argue with her husband, any more than she wanted him quarreling with her brother. But she wasn't altogether convinced, either.
She found believing him easier when Inauguration Day came. When the Socialists won the election in 1920, electricity had filled the air. The Democrats had dominated U.S. politics since the election of 1884. Some people had feared proletarian revolution. Some had looked for it.
It hadn't come. Politics had gone on as usual-the same song, but in a different key. Flora supposed that was a good thing. She still sometimes had a sense of opportunity missed, though.
This second Socialist inauguration seemed different. Now no one acted astonished the day had ever come. People took it for granted, in fact. Flora didn't know whether that was good or bad, either. She did know that, up on the reviewing stand in front of the White House, she wondered if she'd freeze to death before her husband and President Sinclair took the oaths of office for their second terms.
But having her family up on the stand with her made up for a lot. Her older sister Sophie's son Yossel was very big now-he was almost ten. He'd never seen his father, who'd been killed in action before he was born. Flora had hardly seen her younger sister Esther's new husband, a clerk named Meyer Katz. She was also startled at how gray her parents were getting.
She wished her brother David hadn't worn his Soldiers' Circle pin, with a sword through the year of his conscription class. Only reactionaries did. But he wore his Purple Heart next to it. That and the stick he used and the slow, rolling gait of a man who made do with an artificial leg after an above-the-knee amputation meant no one near him said a word about it. His younger brother, Isaac, had gone through his turn in the Army after the Great War. His tour had been quiet, uneventful. He didn't wear a pin on his lapel.
In President Sinclair's second inaugural address, he talked about justice for the working man, old-age pensions, and 'getting along with our neighbors on this great continent.' The first two drew fierce applause from the crowd, the third rather less.
'Memories of the war are still too fresh,' Hosea Blackford said when all the speeches and parades were over. 'In another ten years, people will look more kindly on the Confederate States.'
'Not everyone will,' David Hamburger said. He was only a tailor talking to the vice president of the United States, but he spoke his mind.
His brother-in-law frowned. They were going to argue after all. 'Would you want your children to go through what you did? Do you think the Confederates are mad enough to want their children to go through it again?'
'I hope there's never a war again,' Flora said.
'I hope the same thing,' David answered. 'But hoping there won't be and staying ready in case there is are two different animals.'
'We'd do better if we'd made a just peace, not the harsh one Teddy Roosevelt forced the CSA to swallow,' Hosea Blackford said. 'And we're still trying to figure out what to do with Canada.'
'You try giving away anything Roosevelt won and you'll lose the next election quicker than you ever thought you could,' David said.
'I don't think so,' Flora said. 'If we aren't a just nation, what are we?'
'A strong one, I hope,' her brother answered. They eyed each other. They both used English, but they didn't speak the same language.
No one questioned the Socialist Party's agenda at any of the inaugural banquets and balls that night. Even the Democratic Congressmen and Senators who made their appearance were smiling and polite. They wouldn't show their teeth till Congress went back into session up in Philadelphia.
Flora was just as well pleased to return to the de facto capital. Over the past eight years, it had become home to her. Her husband teased her as the train pulled into Broad Street Station: 'You'll be busier than I will. The vice president's main job is growing moss on his north side.'
'You knew that when you accepted the nomination the first time,' Flora said.
He nodded. 'Well, yes. Even so, these past four years have really rammed it home.'
