When Audrey Met Alice (4 page)

Reading Alice’s weird, old-timey cursive was a challenge, so I only made it through two more entries before I decided to stop for the night.
Alice
was
incredible. How come I haven’t heard more about her before this?
The book I’d read on First Kids never talked about Alice, but I guess that’s because it started with the Kennedys. I slid from my bedspread to my rug, where the handkerchief, cigarettes, and postcards were strewn, to examine the pictures again. One more time, I reread the entry about sliding down the stairways on tray tables from the kitchen.
Inauguration
of
Fun.
Picturing that scene made me giggle. 1600 probably
would
be more fun if I had siblings, like Alice had, or at least some cousins. My whole life I’ve felt cheated that I’m an only child. There has never been a kid table at Calloway/Rhodes family holiday meals because I’m the only kid in the clan. Period. Harrison tried to make me feel better once by saying, “It’s okay—your dad and I are immature, anyway. Remember this, Audrey: You’re only young once, but you can be immature forever.” Reminds me of Alice’s comment about eternal youth and arrested development.

It was almost midnight, but I was too wired to sleep. I opened the door to my room slowly.
Maybe
I
don’t need to feel like a prisoner in my room. Alice certainly didn’t.
I strolled through the quiet, dark halls, triggering on lights wherever I went—1600 has motion sensors to turn off lights in unused rooms as part of its green initiative. I passed a guard or two as I made my way to the lower level, waving and hurrying ahead before they could ask me where I was going. I bet they thought it was a midnight cookie run.

I skipped the halls as I headed downstairs, crossing my fingers that the door to the bowling alley wasn’t locked. It wasn’t, so I walked in and plopped down on the floor to unlace my sneakers. “This is my version of tray sledding, I guess,” I muttered. The pins were all lined up at the far end of the lane, as if they’d been waiting for me to wander in to play. I grabbed a ball and sent it rumbling toward the pins. I slid around on the waxed wood floor in my socks, watching as the ball inched down the lane. Gutter ball.

“I’m just warming up!” I called to the empty room. I threw another ball and managed to hit three. I slid down the lane to the pins and reset them (if the lane had an automatic resetting thing like Elsie’s Bowling back home, it wasn’t turned on). Some security guy was probably watching me via closed-circuit TV somewhere, laughing hysterically. I craned my neck to look around for a security camera. Not finding one, I twirled around, waving at all corners. I danced around in what I felt the hootchy-kootchy should be as I made my way back to the start of the lane. “This one’s for you, overnight-shift guard!” I took a running start and lobbed another ball down the lane. It struck five pins with a satisfying
thwack
. “Sweet!” I jumped up and thrust my fist in the air. I dedicated my next attempt to Nixon, since he was the president who put in a bowling alley.

I kept bowling until my right arm and wrist ached. I plopped down in the middle of the single lane and stretched out, staring at the ceiling. I checked my watch, and it was almost two in the morning. I reset the pins one last time, because I felt bad leaving the alley in disarray for the cleaning people.

I headed up to the third floor, to the game room. I flipped on the lights and walked over to the foosball table, figuring out pretty quickly that it’s awfully hard to play foosball alone. I spun the knob on one side and tried running over to the opposite, but all I succeeded in was jabbing myself in the ribs with a handle. I decided to pass on table hockey. Disappointed, I left and walked into the Solarium. I approached the outside door, wanting to step out on the Promenade and take in the Washington night sky. But I wasn’t allowed to go out there at night, and I’d started to get sleepy. Skipping back to my room, I thought it wasn’t quite racing stilts and bicycles through the first floor, but Alice would’ve approved if she could’ve seen me having fun tonight. If I wasn’t eating up the world at least I was nibbling it.

After breakfast the next morning, I settled in the Solarium with the journal, my laptop, and a fresh thermos of tea. I started researching Teddy Roosevelt online. He was the twenty-sixth president, known for something called progressive reform and conservation. And teddy bears were named after him. Alice was his oldest daughter, a wild child who moved into the White House as a teenager. That surprised me—given the way Alice talked and her stunts like tray-sliding and pet-snake wrangling, she seemed a little younger. But, she was living in a different era.
Or
maybe
Alice
was
on
to
something?
Maybe when you find yourself cooped up in “the crown jewel of the Federal prison system,” as President Truman had called it (Harrison told me that in an e-mail), the only way to stay sane and entertained is by being a little crazy. Eccentric. Alice’s life in the White House didn’t sound boring at all so far, unlike mine.

I went online to start researching more about Alice’s life, but my fingers froze in midair as I was about to type in her name.
What
will
the
fun
be
of
reading
Alice’s diary if I already know what happened to her?
That would spoil all the secrets, and Alice already seemed like the kind of girl who’d have loads of juicy secrets. I decided right then that I wasn’t going to do any more Alice research—at least not until I’d read the whole journal.

I shut my laptop. I was
dying
to know what happened with Alice’s big debutante ball thingy. Did she get everything she wanted? I picked up the journal to find out firsthand.

December 13, 1901

Diary—

I took a break from the debut planning today for a lengthy pillow fight with my siblings. Kermit started it, whacking Ethel with a heavy down pillow as she came out of her bedroom. Those two tend to be at each other’s throats. Soon we were all in the fray, winding up in the attic wing with feathers raining down on us. When the fat pillows had turned thin, Ethel suggested that we settle scores by racing stilts and bicycles. I beat them all on my trusty stilts. I had a leg up, literally, because of my years with those braces.

It felt strange to wander down to the first floor after those activities and make debut arrangements. Of course I am excited to enter society. Yet it’s tinged bittersweet, especially for me as the oldest in the family. I certainly hope a debuted young lady can still partake in an attic pillow fight, now and then. Then again, when have I ever concerned myself with the rules?

I was still flushed, with my hair falling out of my bun, and Belle Hagner asked if I intended to appear like such a “ragamuffin” in society. I rolled my eyes until Edith reprimanded me for my attitude. She and I have been battling about the specific plans for my party. Despite being the child of a World Leader, Rough Rider, Master of the Bully Pulpit, I shall not get everything I want. For example: the dance floor. I was told that I had to seek the approval of
Congress
to get the renovations necessary to make the White House ballroom presentable. I cornered a few congressmen and gave them my very best Auntie Corinne “elbow-in-the-soup” treatment—feigning interest in every boring detail that they told me about their legislation, nodding and blinking my big blue eyes and exclaiming, “Oh! How absolutely fascinating!” and “Aren’t you just the cleverest chap,” at every chance. (Auntie Corinne was and is the master of faking enthusiasm in otherwise dull social settings. She leans in so close to whomever she is speaking to that her elbow tends to be precariously positioned next to, and almost in, her soup bowl. Hence the term “elbow-in-the-soup” treatment.) Perhaps that sly fox Corinne could have won where I lost, but sadly no money came through for poor Alice’s ball, and we will be having a slapdash linen-crash floor because the ballroom is without a hardwood floor. I find this personally humiliating.

Then there is the issue of refreshments. I begged and pleaded with Stepmother for champagne, which is
the
drink in fashion. All the girls having their debuts in New York City are serving it. But apparently those stuffy Women’s Christian Temperance Union biddies would drown in disapproval, so we will be serving punch. If they only knew that I have taken to smuggling bottles of whiskey (which I sneak out of the White House stock) into boring dinner parties at teetotaling houses—I hide them in my elbow-length gloves. It’s a great way to garner the attention of my male dinner companions, who are always so very grateful for a surreptitious sip.

My gown makes me excited, though. It’s achingly beautiful: made of pure white taffeta, with a white chiffon overskirt. The bodice is appliquéd with tiny white rosebuds, scores and scores of them embracing my torso. I have a very elegant, very simple diamond pendant necklace. When the light catches it, it takes my breath away. (I will have to stash smelling salts in my elbow gloves, instead of a flask, for that reason.) After the alterations finally were finished, I sneaked the dress up to my room and put it on. Standing in front of my mirror, I got chills. For the first time in ages I didn’t see a homely little tomboy, a knock-kneed girl who spent years of her life in ugly metal braces, but a slender young
woman
.
I looked beautiful, and whether I actually am or it’s simply the magic of this lovely, breathtaking dress—I don’t care. I will always know what I looked like in the mirror right then.

To Thine Own Self Be True,

Alice

January 4, 1902

Diary—

It’s past noon, and I am still lying in my bed (although, as my father likes to comment, I rarely make any appearances before noon these days), reliving last night again and again in my memories. Diary, it was wonderful—every single shining moment. I have so much to write down now because I want to remember the night of my debut for the rest of my life.

The receiving line began at ten o’clock in the Blue Room. And do you know how many people my parents and I received? Over six hundred! I might not have gotten a shiny new hardwood floor, but the decorations almost made up for that. We transformed the Blue Room into something like the hanging gardens of Babylon. Over two thousand flowers covered the room—roses, carnations, hyacinths, narcissus—and there was holly on every lintel. It was thrilling to walk in and see the room decorated beyond my wildest expectations. My gown made me look as lovely as when I tried it on before, which made it easy for me to be confident and proud and charming in front of so very many people. My hair was even done up so as to hide my gargantuan high forehead.

The first waltz played at eleven, and of course it was the U.S. Marine Band playing for
me
.
(No “poor Alice” on that account.) I danced with the positively dashing Lieutenant Gilmore of the Artillery. I was nervous and sure that my gimpy legs would make me trip all over him, but he told me that I was “graceful as a swan.” At which of course I had to snicker. It is quite a heady experience dancing at these events—the rooms get warm, and after a few rounds, the gentlemen tend to smell…not so gentle. It can get a little overpowering, especially when you are clutched tightly in a partner’s arms, and at times I couldn’t tell if I was getting dizzy from all the twirling or from the strong scent of sweat.

After we danced, the buffet started. The only word for it is
sumptuous
. Finger sandwiches, oysters, aspics and jellies, escargots à bourguignonne, chicken fricassee, roasted beef, savory soups and consommé, puddings, crepes, éclairs, meringues, soufflé, petits fours, and ice cream! No champagne, though, for poor Alice. Just punch. That wish did not come true, and champagne can’t easily be smuggled in elbow gloves.

It’s silly how these things are set up—first you attack the buffet as though you were a Rough Rider in Cuba at a chuck wagon, then you find a gent and dance or stroll the promenade. More like roll the promenade, after all that food. But my sateen-and-whalebone health corset did not permit me to sample as much as I desired of the delicious spread. One of the dear kitchen maids put aside some goodies for me in the icebox, so whenever I finally drag myself from this bed I can start sampling what my guests enjoyed.

I don’t much care for public speaking—actually I don’t care for it at all; it makes me frightened and faint. The kind of attention I got last night, though, I adore. All those eyes on me in my gorgeous dress, specifically the male eyes. Many handsome lads attended last night, and I flirted like mad with them. Auntie Corinne remarked to me that there was a crowd “seven-men deep” around me, the whole night. I don’t know if that is precisely true, but I did have a lot of admirers. I suppose because it was
my
fancy party and I was wearing an ethereal dress. There wouldn’t be a crowd for me as I look this morning, puffy-faced and tired and entirely without fuss and finery. Don’t think I’m playing “poor Alice,” though. It was a lovely, fantastic evening, and I felt the same: lovely and fantastic. Filled to the brim with happiness.

Now my stomach is growling in a very unladylike way (I am a lady now, I suppose—how strange) so I am off to raid the icebox.

To Thine Own Self Be True,

Alice

January 5, 1902

Diary—

All of those good feelings from yesterday have evaporated. Poof! The papers chimed in on my debut (some even on the front page!), and they’ve offered faint praise. First off with the little good: The
New York Tribune
did say, “A more charming debutante has rarely been introduced in Washington.” They went on to tell that I was “attractive in my dignified simplicity and natural grace as I was beautiful. Tall, with a striking figure, blue eyes, and a fine fair complexion, she was certainly one of the prettiest girls in Washington.” One of the prettiest girls in Washington! My cousin Eleanor will die when she reads that. Of course, that wasn’t so much my figure as it was that of my undergarments, but I won’t quibble.