Notes by the First Lady
“She put me in my place,” I tell Franklin later ruefully. “No other word for it.”
“I’d like to see the Russki who could do that.” He grins.
“I wasn’t intending to belittle her . . . if anything, it was American women I was thinking of less favorably. I want the Soviet delegation’s time here to be a success, but the average Virginia housewife or Washington hostess will not make that easy for a woman like Mrs. Pavlichenko.” I frown at myself as I pass my husband a new pen. It’s not like me to stumble so with a guest, but my nagging worry about Franklin has me distracted this morning.
“Never mind American housewives. She’ll have her hands full with the American press.” He uncaps the pen, looking full of vim and vigor, which relieves me. “We’ll see if she puts the journalists in their place at the press conference tonight.”
He taps the pen against his leg brace, looking thoughtful even as we make notes for his upcoming tour of the western defense plants. He’s wondering if the girl sniper can be useful in his crusade to swing public opinion in the matter of aid to the Soviet Union. He hopes she will be, not only because he wants his second front in Europe—and has been facing opposition to it given our setbacks in the Pacific—but because he has a most unusual liking for useful women. He collects us, and what a varied constellation of females we are. The shy, awkward wife he turned so efficiently into his eyes and ears . . . his impervious secretary Missy LeHand, who could organize that second front as efficiently as she organizes everything else in the White House . . . his labor secretary, Frances Perkins, the iron hand behind his New Deal, who dispatches strong men reeling from cabinet meetings . . .
Franklin’s women. He collects us, admires us, hones us, and then he does not hesitate to use us up, burning through us body and soul until we flame out. If some part of us rises up in silent protest at such treatment—as it does sometimes in me, for things between us are not always easy—then it dies unspoken when we see that he burns himself up no less ruthlessly. We would all die for him, because he is killing himself for all of us.
Do they realize that, the men who are his enemies, who call him class traitor and communist lover and tyrant? The men he worries about now, whether he will admit it or not? Do they realize this man in leg braces is the bulwark against the fall of the West?
Or do they wish to topple him anyway, just so they can see the crash?
Five Months Ago
March 1942
The Sevastopol front, USSR
Mila
Chapter 21
My memoir, the official version: The funeral of my husband Lieutenant A. A. Kitsenko was attended by my entire platoon and all the officers of the 54th Regiment who were not on duty; the speeches were powerful and the salute heartfelt.
My memoir, the unofficial version: He was not my husband in law—I missed my chance for that, missed, and the mockery of the loss cored me. But Lyonya was my husband in every way but law, and I knew I’d call him that until the day I died.
“POST-TRAUMATIC NEUROSIS.” ALEXEI Pavlichenko said it without bothering to examine me. “I’m giving you two weeks in hospital.”
“This is absurd.” I tried to push up from the chair.
He pushed me back down. “You nearly throttled the political instructor at Kitsenko’s funeral.”
I stared stonily, not speaking. The instructor had pressed into my face after the salute was fired over Lyonya’s coffin, demanding to know why I hadn’t fired my pistol with the rest. I’d seized him by the collar and grated, My salute will be directed at the Nazis. It was the only thing I remembered from the entire occasion.
“It took half your platoon to get you off him,” Alexei continued. “He wants an apology. Your partner persuaded him you were suffering from shock.”