Gore Vidal - Empire

“Why do you have a copy, and I don’t?”

“A friend- our friend, Gardiner-gave me this early draft. Once the will is probated, and King’s bric-a-brac is sold, the widow will be able to live in moderate comfort as Mrs. Todd or Mrs. King, in Toronto or Flushing or…”

“This sounds like one of poor Stephen Crane’s stories. The gentleman and the fallen lady, the illegitimate family, the false names…”

“Oh, it’s a much bolder story than anything Mr. Crane put his hand to. You see, dear John, King’s perfect woman, mother of his five children, emblem of the original universal goddess for whom the male has no use once his biological function is complete, this glorious creature from pre-history, this Ada Todd, is a Negress.”

Hay exhaled suddenly; and all the blood went from his head. For an instant, he thought he might faint. Then he rallied. “Clarence King married a Negress! But-that’s impossible.”

“You did not go to Tahiti.” Smugly, Adams gazed into the fire, framed by luminous Mexican jade.

“But you did, and I fail to see a dusky Mrs. Henry Adams on these premises…”

“Only because I moved on-and up. To the Virgin of Chartres, to another more perfect avatar of the primal goddess, who…”

“I’ll be damned,” said John Hay, as William slowly opened the door to the study and said, “The young ladies would like to pay their respects…”

Adams rose; and assumed his avuncular mask, though a certain unfamiliar gleam in his eye suggested that there was still something demonic latent in his nature.

The room was filled by three girls. Hay had never been able to figure just how it was that his two daughters and their friend Alice Roosevelt could take up so much space, breathe so much air, create so much atmosphere-for want of a better word-but they did.

The three swarmed over Uncle Henry; receiving chaste touches of his hands, now raised in papal blessing. Helen was more and more like Clara, while Alice was like himself. The President’s Alice was, happily, not like her father, except for a thin mouth full of large snaggled teeth. Alice Roosevelt was more handsome than pretty, with a slender figure, and gray marbly eyes; she stood very straight, and comported herself like the regal princess she saw herself as. She was also given to demonstrations of manic energy, and there were already signs of a dexterous, most undemocratic-yet hardly royal-wit. Henry Adams affected to find her intimidating. Eager to please, she proceeded to intimidate Uncle Henry. “You must come to the party. It’s not every day I have a debut in the White House…”

“I am too old, dear child…”

“Of course you are. So we’ll prop you up like who was it at the feast?”

“Themistocles…”

“Mr. Hay, make him come!” Alice Roosevelt turned to Hay, one arm raised high like the goddess of victory.

“I’ll do what I can.”

Helen threw herself, with rather too much of a crash, into the chair opposite Adams, the large chair consecrated to her mother, who was still larger, Hay was relieved to note, than their daughter. He was also relieved that Helen would marry Payne Whitney the following month. Were she to become even larger… He dared not think of what it would be like to live in a house between that massive Scylla, his wife, and a prospective spinster of equal grandeur, Helen, as Charybdis.

“Everyone else is coming.” Alice Roosevelt perched on a stool. “Of course, it will be boring. Father and Mother refuse to spend money. Other girls get a cotillion. Do I? Of course not! Simple Republican Alice gets only a dance, and punch. Not even champagne. Punch!” she exclaimed, as her father might have shouted “Bully!”

“Surely punch is suitable for young people.” Hay, making kindly grandfatherly sounds, could think only of voluptuous black women, heavy-breasted and sinuous, crabs to his relevant shell, to appropriate Henry’s ugly image. How lucky King had been. Even as he was dying, he had had “a woman,” and, apparently, such a woman as the unadventurous Hay had not known since he was a very young man, living a bachelor life in Europe. Was it now too late? Of course, he was dying, but then King had been dying, too. Where there was a will, there was Eros. There was, also, Thanatos, he grimly completed his reverie. He would never again touch warm silken skin.

“We’re to have a hardwood floor in the East Room instead of that awful mustard carpet, and those round seats with the palms sprouting out of them. It’s a horrible house, isn’t it, Uncle Henry?”

“Well, it has never been a fashionable house,” Adams began.

“Father is going to redo everything, as soon as he makes Congress cough up the money. It’s intolerable, all of us upstairs, and Father’s office, too, in such a small place. We’re going to do over the entire floor, from west to east…”

“And where will the President have his office?” In Hay’s memory, every administration had tried to change the White House; and except for the odd Tiffany screen, nothing much had been altered since Lincoln’s time.

“Father’s going to tear down the conservatories, and put his office where they were. So he’ll be practically next door to you at the State Department.”

“Is this wise?” Even the iconoclast Adams-and what mustier icon than the White House was better suited for his smashing?-was dismayed.

“Either our family grows smaller or the house grows larger.” Thus the Republican princess decreed.

“Alice knows her mind, her mind!” Helen applauded.

William was again at the door; this time he stood very straight, as he announced, “The President.”

All rose, including the Republican princess, as Roosevelt, dressed in morning suit, skipped into the room, as if he were still racing upstairs, two at a time, his usual practice, which would, sooner or later, Hay thought, with true pleasure, cause that thick little body to break down. “I’ve been to church!” The President shared the great news with all of them. Lately, he had taken to dropping in on Hay after church, which gave sovereign and minister a few often crucial moments alone together, away from secretaries and callers. The President, Hay had duly noted, could not be alone. Even when he was reading, a family passion, he liked to have fellow-readers all about him. “I heard you were over here, for breakfast…”

“Join us, Mr. President.” Adams was silky.

“Oh, no! Your food’s much too good for the likes of me.”

“Chipped beef will do for the President.” Alice grimaced. “And a nice hash with an egg on it. And ketchup.”

“Perfect breakfast! If Alice ever exercised, she’d eat hash, too. Prince Henry of Prussia.” Roosevelt flung the name at Hay; then took up an imperial position before the fire; and clicked his teeth three times.

“Father!” Alice shuddered. “Don’t do that. You know, the slightest breeze makes my bottom teeth sway…”

“I’m not making a breeze.”

“But you’re clicking your teeth, which reminds me… Look,” Alice opened wide her mouth, “the horror!”

But all Hay could see was a lower tier of teeth somewhat smaller than the tombstones above. “They are all loose,” she said triumphantly, mouth still open, diction suffering.

“Do shut, please!” Roosevelt, in turn, as if by paternal example, pursed his own lips tight-shut.

“I should have had them all pulled out. Every debutante in America would have imitated me, of course. A nation of toothless girls-like the Chinese women, with their bound feet…”

“Alice, your teeth have exhausted us as a subject…”

“I,” said Adams, “was just beginning to enjoy this dental-permutation on Henry James’s American girl…”