“In Russia we believe that if we fail, we die,” I stated. “And I have seen nothing in this war to make me disbelieve that.”
“But life isn’t always going to be war, Lyudmila,” she said gently. “And you’ll do yourself a grave disservice if you live your every moment—not just your wartime moments, but your gentler ones—by a standard as harsh as never miss.”
I stared at her, clutching the towel around me, shaken to my core.
“Now let’s get these cuffs done.” Clearly seeing my distress, the First Lady adopted a brisker tone, holding the pajama top up to my face. “This pink is a lovely color for you . . .”
An hour, a pot of tea, and a plate of biscuits later, there came a knock at the door. But we didn’t hear it, because we were talking up a storm. “But to my understanding, women do not regularly serve in the Soviet military,” Eleanor was saying. “Even in your own country, it is not entirely common. So how is it that you were able to make the choice to enlist so easily?”
“Because in my home, women are respected not just as females but as individuals.” To my relief, the First Lady and I had moved into less sensitive topics of discussion: first color palettes and fashion disparities, then the differences between American and Soviet cinema, and now the complexities of serving in the military as a female. “We do not feel limitations because of our sex. That is why women like me took their places beside men so naturally in the army.”
“You need to work this into your next speech. I would emphasize that word individual—we Americans are enamored with the idea of the individual, and assume you Soviets are all about the collective—”
The door opened, and I looked up at the creak of hinges. “What’s this?” said President Roosevelt, looking amused.
I jumped to my feet, shedding biscuit crumbs. I was now wearing the towel around my lower half, upper body draped in the frivolous pink flower-embroidered top as Eleanor set the final stitches on the bottoms. I watched the American president look around his wife’s room—pink satin scraps scattered over the bed, reels of thread everywhere, teacups drained to the dregs, a half-dressed Soviet sniper. “Hello, dear,” Eleanor said tranquilly, as if she hemmed pajamas for foreign-born killers every day before dinner.
“This is one of those scenes,” the President mused, rubbing his jaw with that sinewy hand, “that just defies description.”
I began to apologize, side-slipping into Russian, but he burst out laughing. So did Eleanor. And then so did I.
When I went back to my own quarters in my pink satin splendor, I found my felt cap, which Kostia had scooped from the water into the canoe, carefully dried now and sitting on a chair beside the door. I folded it tight in my hands, heart thumping—but I could feel the First Lady’s arms around me in a surprisingly strong hug, and my battered heart was cautiously exploring the words that still echoed through my bones in her forthright voice: The world won’t smite you for the occasional misfire.
Notes by the First Lady
Something dear Lyudmila said today bothered me deeply. It was when she was departing for her own room, looking no more than sixteen in her pink pajamas and damp hair, and Franklin asked how she was liking Hyde Park. “I sleep well,” she replied, straightforward as one of her bullets. “No one can harm me here.”
She doesn’t know Franklin, so she didn’t see the shadow on his face as he answered jovially, “Or me.”
When she is gone, I look at my husband and ask, “Who do you think would try to harm you?”
He shrugs the question aside with a tilted grin. “We’ll be late for lunch.”
“Another Zangara?” I make myself ask. “Another MacGuire?”
Zangara was the assassin who fired five shots at Franklin in Miami in 1933, seventeen days before his inauguration. MacGuire was the American Legion official at the head of a plot to depose my husband in 1934 and install a military dictator. Zangara killed the mayor of Chicago instead of my husband; MacGuire’s coup folded and was disappeared into a flurry of House committee hearings. Those men failed.