Empire

wife, moving from post to post around the world.

But Del chose not to answer her directly. “You’ll see what’s next.”

“When?”

“Today. At lunch.”

Mystified, Caroline took her place in the Hays’ family carriage, which proceeded from Market Square into Pennsylvania Avenue, then headed north. “There are more electrical cars,” Del observed. “And telephone wires.” Like spaghetti, wires were strung every which way on posts in the bright noon-light, which made their shadows on the avenue resemble an elaborate spider’s web. The trees along the sidewalk were in new bloom. Washington’s April was so like Paris’s June that Caroline was, suddenly, homesick: by no means the proper mood for a young lady who had not seen her fiance for a year. She noted her opal ring on his finger; tried to imagine a wedding ring on her own; thought instead of Saint-Cloud-le-Duc. She and Blaise had agreed that neither would go there until the will had been finally settled. Marguerite was suicidal. Caroline was stoic.

“I am stoic,” she said to Del, apropos nothing at all. But he was speaking to the driver. “We’ll go in from the south side.” They were now opposite the immaculately restored and redecorated facade of Willard’s. Black children stood on the sidewalk, holding out clusters of daffodils and blossoming dogwood switches, pale pink, white. White.

“The White House?” asked Caroline.

“Yes. We’re having lunch with the President.” Del’s small eyes gleamed; he would be, one day, as large as his mother, she thought, and she wondered if she could be happy with so huge a masculine entity.

Although the south door of the White House had been originally designed as the mansion’s great entrance, nothing in Washington ever turned out as planned. For instance, the Capitol on its hill faced, magnificently, a shanty town, while its marble backside loomed over Pennsylvania Avenue and the unanticipated city’s center. The city had been expected to grow west and south; instead it had grown east and north. The Executive Mansion had been designed to be approached from the river through the park, with a fine view of Virginia’s hills across the river; but the unexpected primacy of Pennsylvania Avenue had obliged the tenants to make the northern portico the main entrance, and only secret or private visitors were encouraged to drive through the now muddy park to the somewhat forlorn grand entrance, where curved stairs looked as if they had been designed for an al fresco republican coronation of the sort that the Venetian doge endured atop stairs of equal pomp.

The downstairs corridor was empty. As always, Caroline was fascinated by the casualness of the White House. Except for a single policeman, who sat reading a newspaper inside the door, they had the shadowy corridor to themselves. “How easy it would be,” whispered Caroline, though if ever walls had no ears, it was these, “to stage a coup d’etat.”

“Who would bother?” Del seemed genuinely surprised by the idea. “The place is too big.”

“This house is very small.”

“The house is nothing,” said Del, as they started up the creaky steps to the main floor. “It’s the country that’s too big for that sort of thing.”

In the main entrance hall, crowded as usual with visitors, Mr. Cortelyou greeted them in front of the Tiffany screen. “The President will join you in the family dining room. She’s joining you.”

“She’s better?” asked Del.

But Cortelyou was now stowing them in the small presidential elevator; then he shut the door, and remained behind. Rattling alarmingly, the elevator rose. Caroline clutched Del’s arm: would the machine be stuck? Would they die of suffocation before help came? But after what seemed like a purgatorial if not presidential term, they came to a halt, and Del led the way into the living quarters. One of the Germans opened the door to the dining room, where the table was set for four. To Caroline’s surprise, Mrs. McKinley was already in her place. Had she been carried in, and set upright, like a doll? The face was unreal in its prettiness. Like so many women whose career is illness, she looked younger than her years. “Miss Sanford,” the voice was nasal, like a crow’s cawing, “I’m glad to see you again. Sit down here, next to me. The Major sits on my other side. I don’t know why Mr. Hay’s department fusses so when a husband and wife want to sit together at supper. After all, that’s why you get married, isn’t it?”

“I’m not sure, Mrs. McKinley. But, then I’m not married…”

“Yes,” said the First Lady, and smiled. The smile was indeed lovely; and like a young girl’s. “Well, you’ll make a fine couple, and with money, too. Did you know that the Major’s the only honest man we’ve ever had as president? Mr. Cleveland came here poor as can be, but when he left he was able to buy that mansion of his in Princeton. Well, the Major and I have finally, after all these years of scrimping, been able to buy our old house in Canton, Ohio, and guess how much we paid?”

“I don’t know,” said Caroline, who did know. The Tribune had already carried the story.

“Fourteen thousand, five hundred dollars, and the Major’s going to spend three thousand more-which is all we have left-on fixing it up so that when I’m feeling poorly, like last summer, we can just hole up there, and he can still be president, with the telephone and all. Do you play cribbage, dear?”

“No. But I can always learn.”

“You ought to. Euchre is a good card game, too. I always win, you know. It’s important when you’re a wife, to have something to do.”

“Miss Sanford has her newspaper.” Del meant to be helpful; and failed.

Mrs. McKinley buried her sudden frown in the bouquet of hot-house roses beside her plate. “I never read those… things.”

“Neither do I,” said Caroline quickly. “I only publish, which is very much like… like cribbage, I think,” she added nonsensically. Why, she wondered, was she here? Obviously to be approved of by the Major and his lady as Del’s wife; but why was that so important?

The Major stood in the doorway, large and serene, eyes glowing with-was it opium he was supposed to take? In his left silk lapel he wore a pink carnation, to set off Ida’s pink roses. Caroline got up from her chair and curtseyed. The President crossed to her; he took her hand and, gently, seated her again. The low and beautiful voice was as rustic as Ida’s but without the canting nasality. “I’m glad you could come, Miss Sanford. Sit down, Mr. Hay. Ida…” Fondly, he touched his wife’s face; fondly, she kissed his hand. Caroline noted how pale each was. But then he had nearly died of pneumonia after the New Year’s reception, and she had had a nervous collapse the previous summer. Caroline tried to imagine what it was like to be at the head of such a vigorous, loud nation; and failed.

Lunch was as simple and as enormous as the President’s dove-gray waistcoated paunch, which began very high indeed on his frame and curved outward, keeping him from ever sitting close to table, which accounted, no doubt, for the single shamrock-shaped gravy stain on the black frock-coat that hung in perpendicular folds to left and right of the huge autonomous belly, like theater curtains drawn to reveal the spectacle. Quail was followed by porterhouse steak which preceded broiled chicken, each course accompanied by a variety of hot bread-wheat muffins, corn sticks, toast, and butter. Butter flowed over everything, and the Major ate everything while Ida picked at this and that. Del, Caroline noted with alarm, kept pace with the President: two of a kind, obviously. Would Del be as fat? Across Caroline’s future fell a shadow, every bit as large and fateful as President McKinley’s stomach.

The President spoke of the coming trip across the country. “Mrs. McKinley will make the effort.” He gazed at her fondly. She munched a quail’s leg. “Her doctor comes, too. And your father, of course. In fact, I want the whole Cabinet with me. Not everyone can get to see us here in Washington…”

“Seems like everyone does.” Mrs. McKinley frowned.

“But they don’t. So we’ll go to them. It’s very frustrating for me, these front-porch campaigns, having to stay home in Canton. Because I like… I really like going to see the folks…”

“I don’t.” Ida spread butter over a length of cornbread. “Never have. Always wanting something, the folks, from my dearest.”

The President ignored her obbligato. “You get a sense of what they’re thinking about, which you don’t in this place. You also get a chance to talk straight to them, without the papers coming in between.”

“You know, Miss Sanford has one of those newspapers, dearest. I told her she should learn to play euchre. Much better way to pass the time. You can win money, too, if you gamble, which is a sin.” Ida looked suddenly sly.

“I like your paper, Miss Sanford. Much of the time,” the Major added with a droll blink of the huge eyes.