This startled me. “Oh?”
“It’s…Mother, it’s the company on board.”
* * *
—
Things had changed for him, and for us, in recent years. Once the most in-demand expert on Soviet affairs and a regular confidant and colleague of the president’s, Joe had seen his influence wane dramatically of late. Now that Roosevelt was gone and President Truman was in the White House, my husband no longer had a close friend in the Oval Office. In fact, Harry Truman, along with his inner circle of George Kennan, Averell Harriman, and Dean Acheson, seemed to have no use for my husband. “Why don’t you invite Truman to Topridge?” I’d suggested early on in Truman’s first term. “Or aboard the Sea Cloud?” We’d been close with many presidents before, and I was sure that we could make friends with this one as well.
So Joe took my advice. I overheard the phone call, listening in as he said: “I’d love for you to visit my camp up here on the Upper St. Regis. Great spot. Bring the wife and daughter—I’ll set them up with canoes, hiking guides, whatever they’d like.” Joe never mentioned that it was in fact my camp. But I didn’t bring that up. There was no point, since the president politely declined the invitation.
With Hitler defeated and the Japanese wiped out, American foreign policy had careened swiftly and staunchly toward an attitude of anti-Soviet sentiment. My husband, a onetime defender of Molotov’s and a friend of Litvinov’s, someone who’d shared multiple cordial meetings with Joseph Stalin and had spent years advocating for partnership with Moscow, was suddenly seen as a pinko and a Commie.
We’d thought we had some good news when Warner Bros. bought the rights to adapt Joe’s book, Mission to Moscow, into a film. But when it came out, Joe was lambasted from coast to coast. Dozens of newspapers called it propaganda for the Soviets. And though American audiences uniformly hated the film, Soviet audiences loved it. Even Joseph Stalin. That did not help.
The first few years after the war saw us firmly ensconced in Washington, since Joe was too sick to do much traveling and his physicians were in the capital. We were going less and less to New York. Manhattan had been my home with Ed Close—Joe hated that. Hillwood had been my home with Ned, the site of so many blissful summer days and nights—Joe hated that even more. The upkeep on both places was turning into more trouble than they were worth, since every time I proposed a trip to either spot, it ended in a fight with Joe, and so I sold both properties.
I hoped that Joe would see these efforts for what they were: my willingness to part with the pieces of my past that reminded him of the other men. I was firmly behind him and with him in making our life together in Washington, as he wanted. So then why did I fear for how that life might look?
Chapter 45
Washington, D.C.
Spring 1952
Alice Roosevelt fixed me with her wry, blue-eyed gaze as she said, “My dear Marjorie, you’re the type of gal who has lifeboats for her lifeboats.”
“I think that’s a compliment, Alice. But either way, I thank you for calling me a gal, rather than the old matron I am.”
“You?” Alice leaned close, and I saw the mischief of her beloved late father in that cool, twinkling smirk. “Hardly. You know, Marjorie, that everyone in town wanted an invite to this party of yours? They’re calling you Duchess Davies.”
“Coming from the lady who is called the Other Washington Monument, it means a lot,” I replied.
“Overly tall and thickheaded as stone, that’s me.” Alice linked her arm through mine, and suddenly we were young girls whispering about the city that had been the adopted home to us both for so long. “We’ve done our time in this place, you and I, haven’t we?” Alice sighed, surveying the colorful scene before us, and then she declared: “You’ve made it magical tonight.”
I looked around. Alice was right: my brand-new home did look splendid. The grounds were in the full throes of a glorious southern spring—balmy, lush, with the last spears of gentle late-evening sunshine falling across them and the lights of the nearby monuments twinkling on like electric starlight. Dreamlike as the place appeared, it had taken weeks of hard work and meticulous planning, and I had left no detail uncovered. I’d timed this gathering with precision; after that many springs in Washington, I knew certain rhythms, one being that the flowers were at their finest exactly one month after my dogwoods blossomed.
So there we were, surrounded by a garden bursting with color, Nelson Rockefeller and Mamie Eisenhower mingling over chilled champagne, admiring my magnolias and azaleas, my rosebushes and cherry trees. Inside, my bright home was fragrant with my hothouse jasmine and orchids. In addition to the flowers and the guests, the house was resplendent with my Russian antiques on full display. Sprawling banquet tables were set with an engineer’s exactitude, each setting meticulously measured and spaced, sparkling with golden plates and cutlery, crystal glasses, and cut-glass bowls filled with bite-sized cubes of fresh melon and strawberries.