* * *
—
I waited until the president was gone, but I did not mince words once I had my husband alone. “You can’t go, Joe.”
He didn’t offer any reply, merely sat there in the same chair, his finger tracing the line of his chin—back and forth, back and forth—in infuriating and inscrutable silence. I, on the other hand, had no use for silence. “To be clear, Joe, he’s asking us to move back to Moscow. We can’t do it.”
My husband looked at me, meeting my eyes for the first time since Roosevelt’s departure. “Would you like me to refuse the president of the United States, Marjorie?”
I could not recall the last time Joe had called me Mumsie or Blue Eyes, I noted with a twinge. But this was no time for sentimental musings. I exhaled, trying to bridle my exasperation. “Joe, this doesn’t come from me. Your doctors have told you that added stress would mean more trouble. And do you remember the food over there? And that was during a time of peace.” I wrung my hands just thinking about it; I fed him all fresh food and purées these days—made from ingredients we would never have access to in the USSR. “And the travel,” I went on, “the winter weather…not to mention the Nazis…it’s the last thing you should consider.”
But Roosevelt did not want anyone else for the job. When Joe declined the post, the president came back with another request. “He still wants me to go”—I made to interject with all of the reasons why that would be madness, but Joe raised a hand, quieting me so he could continue—“only to meet with Stalin. Calm and reassure him. And give him a handwritten note.”
I insisted that if Joe were to undertake this abbreviated assignment, he would also take his doctor with him, along with several coolers of healthy frozen foods. So Joe prepared to make the trip, and I prepared to send plenty of General Foods nourishment. On the night before his departure, as I helped him pack the last of his luggage, I noticed a sealed envelope on top of his personal briefcase. “What is that?” I asked.
Joe glanced down at the thin envelope. “That’s the letter,” he said.
I knew what he meant by that. “Do you know what it says?”
“No.” Joe shook his head. “Only the president does. And soon Joseph Stalin will.”
Yes, I thought, as long as you make it there alive to deliver it.
Chapter 44
New York City
March 1946
Peace returned to America with a wave of good cheer and one national exhale. We’d done it. Hitler was defeated. The Nazis would not rule all of Europe. The Japanese would not be storming our Pacific shores. Joe had survived his harrowing trip to Moscow and had made it back, mission well accomplished, much to the relief of both our president and me.
As peace treaties were drafted first for Europe and then Asia, the young men began to come home, heroic, and the topics on everyone’s minds seemed suddenly to be weddings and babies, and I saw that firsthand in my own home. “You really think he’s the one?” I stared into the gorgeous face of my own baby. Well, not a baby any longer. Deenie—though now she liked to be called Dina by others—would be turning twenty-three in a few months, even if her aquamarine eyes still glowed with girlish liveliness. We were having dinner together at Sardi’s in Manhattan’s Theater District, Deenie having just wrapped her nightly performance in Broadway’s The Mermaids Singing. And though she was no longer up there onstage, performing for a packed house beneath the lights and the stage makeup, my daughter was fairly aglow.
“I do, Mother. I know Stan is the one,” my daughter answered, lowering her long-lashed gaze to her left hand, where a stunning new diamond shone on her manicured finger.
His name was Stanley Rumbough, and he was as close as any man could ever come to being worthy of my Deenie. Stan was well built, with dark hair and a broad, self-assured smile. After his time at Yale, he’d spent the war years as a marine fighting the Japanese. And I knew he didn’t want my daughter for her money, because as the scion of the Colgate-Palmolive fortune, he had plenty of his own.
“Where would you like the wedding to be?” I asked my daughter. All around us the bright, noisy restaurant pulsed with nighttime chatter and energy, and the waiter appeared with our plates, pork chop for me, fillet of sole for Deenie.
“I was thinking Long Island,” Dina answered. “At home. Hillwood.”
I smiled at this; a wedding at our home, the place where Deenie had spent so many of her childhood summers, would be perfect. But then a sour thought quickly followed: it had been Ned’s home as well. Our home. Across the restaurant a waiter dropped a dish, sending a clatter across the crowded space, but I barely noticed. All I could hear was the one loud, unwelcome thought that now filled my mind: Ned was going to be the father of the bride. My daughter must have seen the shifting of my features, because she leaned toward me and said, her voice low and beseeching: “Mom, please, you know Daddy will be walking me down the aisle, right?”