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To my brother, Greg,
in memory of our first trip to Washington, D.C.
Father's foot swung back and forth, tick, tock, tick, tock, in time with the clock on the wall. It was nearly ten o'clock at night. Tuesday, September 13, 1901. We were assembled in the parlor of the main lodge of the Tahawus Club, a resort in the Adirondack Mountains in upper New York State. Usually I would have been asleep already, but not that night. We were waiting for a telegram.
Father stared hard at the page of the book he was reading, almost hard enough to make the words pop off the page. I half expected them to—Father could do anything— but I knew better.
He turned the page. He turned another. Page after page, so fast I knew he wasn't really reading, though Father read faster than anyone I knew, faster even than Mother, who read all the time. Father did everything fast.
He hated waiting. We all did.
Mother looked up from her own book. She said, “Wouldn't you feel better if—”
“Not hardly!” Father snapped. “I'm not going until I'm sent for. Been there once already. I'd be like an old vulture, hovering over him. Dreadful.”
Normally Father wouldn't cut Mother off like that, and she wouldn't stand for it if he did. But that night Father smacked another page of his book and Mother just shook her head. “His poor wife,” she murmured. “What on earth will she do?”
I didn't ask whom she meant. I knew. I might have been only ten years old, but I paid attention to everything. Mrs. McKinley, the president's wife, was an invalid. At state dinners the president had to sit beside her, instead of across the table the way he was supposed to, so that if she had an epileptic fit he could cover her face with his napkin. At the inaugural ball, my big sister, Alice, sat on the arm of Mrs. McKinley's chair without ever noticing that Mrs. McKinley was sitting in it. Afterward Sister told Mother that she hadn't meant to be rude.
I didn't get to go to the ball, but I did meet Mrs. McKinley at the inauguration, before the swearing in. She was so lifeless and still, she reminded me of one of Quentin's wax dolls. President McKinley was kind but not joyful. Sister said he had the personality of a mackerel. “Next to him,” she said, “Father's brighter than the sun.”
Next to most people Father was brighter than the sun. So was Sister, for that matter.
I had wondered if Mrs. McKinley would talk more when she wasn't surrounded by crowds. I had wondered if she would invite Mother to tea in the fall; maybe I could go too. Now I guessed not. A week before, President McKinley had been shot in the stomach while attending the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. At first everyone had thought he was going to recover, but now it looked as if they were wrong.
Quentin, my littlest brother, who ought to have been in bed two hours before, climbed onto Father's knee. “Are you an old vulture?” he shouted. “Or are you a bear?”
Quentin was only three. He didn't understand. Father played bear with Quentin and Archie, and sometimes with Kermit and me, almost every night. Not that night, though. Archie, who was seven, looked up from the parlor rug with grave anxiety. Archie did understand.
“I'll take him, sir.” Mame, our ancient Irish nurse, rose from the sofa and held out her arms. Quentin ducked and tried to bury himself beneath Father's elbow. Father wrapped his arms around Quentin.
“He can stay,” Mother said softly. “Just for tonight, Mame. If you're tired, go ahead to bed. I'll take care of the children.” Mame hesitated, but her back had been hurting all day. She went out of the parlor. I could hear her steps down the hall, and the front door opening and shutting. The cabin we were staying in was just across from the main lodge.
Quentin fell asleep. Father adjusted his spectacles, moved Quentin more securely into the crook of his arm, and shut his book. His crossed foot still swung in the air. Tick, tock.
Archie reenacted the battle of Kettle Hill with his tin soldiers on the rug. The rest of us sprawled across the sofas and chairs. We were taking up the entire parlor, and I hoped none of the other guests minded. We'd come to the Adirondacks for two weeks of vaction after Archie caught chicken pox, Quentin stuck a mothball up his nose, Sister got an abscess in her jaw, Ted got bronchitis, Quentin got an ear infection, I got poison ivy, and Mother almost had a breakdown. Father had been away much of the summer giving speeches, but he'd joined us three days before. The day before, Kermit and I had hiked with him halfway up Mount Marcy and stayed overnight in a hunting cabin. In the morning it was raining, and the first telegram came, saying that President McKinley was worse.
“Why haven't the other guests come into the parlor?” I asked.
“They could if they wished to,” Mother said.
“Respect,” my oldest brother, Ted, said. “Privacy.”
“They weren't worried about privacy before,” I said. On the first day Father got there, all the guests and staff lined up to shake his hand. He told them the story of the cougar he killed on his last hunting trip to the Badlands, and they applauded. It was a good story, but I thought they would have applauded a bad one too. Everywhere we went, people wanted to talk to Father.
Kermit, who was almost twelve, put down his book of poetry and looked at me.
“What?” I said.
“Think,” he said.
I frowned. “Does everyone here know why we're waiting?”
“I imagine so,” he said.
I pursed my lips at him. Sometimes Kermit had too much imagination.
“Nonsense,” muttered Father.
“Yes,” Mother murmured. “Yes, Ethel. They do.”
Ted's face twitched. This was his fourteenth birthday, a fact that had gotten lost after the morning's news even though we'd tried to celebrate it at dinner. Ted was Father's namesake, a hard thing to be. None of us could match Father, but I knew Ted felt obliged to try.
Kermit's lips moved softly as he went back to his book. Kermit never could keep poetry to himself. I was halfway through a splendid new book called Uncle Remus, but the air in the room didn't feel right to me, and I kept looking up, looking around. I saw Ted twitch again. He wore glasses. The overhead lamp reflected off them and hid the expression in his eyes.
“I wish Sister were here,” I said. “She ought to be.” Alice was seventeen, the oldest of us all. We always called her Sister. Her real mother, Father's first wife, had been named Alice too, and after she died Father didn't like the name Alice anymore. Mother had never liked it in the first place.
Father looked up and smiled. His white teeth caught the light. “She'd be pacing this room like a caged tiger,” he said. I was sure that was right. Just like Father, Sister didn't sit still.
Mother smiled too,
but without warmth. “I'm sure she'd rather be having fun,” she said.
“I don't think so,” I said.
“You can tell her all about it later,” whispered Miss Young. “About the waiting, and everything. You can write her a letter.” Miss Young gave my arm a squeeze. She was our governess, Sister's and mine, the only thing we shared. Sister really didn't need a governess anymore, though she liked Miss Young almost as much as I did. On her last birthday Sister got her own maid and now she didn't have to study or do anything but have fun. She went away to parties for weeks at a time, always at the homes of the Four Hundred. When I asked Mother what Four Hundred meant, she said, “Four Hundred fools.” Father said it was a way of naming a certain group of fashionable rich people. We were not rich or fashionable, but neither were we poor or uncouth.
Sister was different from the rest of us. I knew she was fashionable. She loved beautiful clothes. She was richer than the rest of us too, because of her inheritance from her real mother. I once heard Father tell Mother that we had to be nice to Sister in case we ever needed to borrow her money.
The clock wheezed and struck ten. Mother sighed. Quentin snored. Father continued to beat time with his foot. At ten-fifteen the parlor door creaked open. Mr. LaCasse, one of the mountain guides, stood in the opening with a telegram in his hand. “Sir…,” he said in a hoarse, uncertain voice. Father leapt up, still holding Quentin, and snatched the telegram. He tore it open. Quentin sighed and nestled himself around Father's neck.
“That's it,” Father said. “I must go now.” He handed Quentin to Mother, adjusted his glasses, buttoned his coat. He asked Mr. LaCasse, “You've got horses ready?”
“Three pairs, sir, in stages all the way down, and the light buckboard. But it's raining something fierce now, and the night's black as can be. We've got lanterns on the buckboard. Still, it's a dangerous road.”
“Speed,” said Father. “That's the only important thing. The faster the better.”
It had taken us an entire day to get to the Tahawus Club from the train station in North Creek, the closest village. The road was steep and flinty. In some places it ran along a cliff. I couldn't imagine Father going down it at night.
I would not imagine it. Then I wouldn't worry as much.
Mother lifted her face and Father kissed her. Ted shook his hand. So did Kermit. I hugged him. “Good-bye, dearest Ethel,” he said, kissing my ear. “I'll see you in a few days, I'm sure. And I'll write you a letter.”
Father wrote me letters whenever he was away. “Be careful,” I whispered.
Father lifted Archie and hugged him. Archie burst into tears. “Don't let them shoot you!” he cried. “Don't let them shoot you, too!”
Father put Archie down and knelt on the rug beside him. “Why, Archiekins,” he said, “I'm surprised at you.” He reached into his pants pocket and showed Archie the pearl handle of his revolver. “Do you really think some old anarchist would be faster on the draw than a cowboy like me?”
I wasn't sure what an anarchist was, except that one had shot President McKinley. I knew, though, that Father was a good cowboy, and proud of it. He had had cattle ranches in the Badlands, before I was born. He even wrote books about the West. Ted said they were best sellers.
Archie shuffled his feet and sniffed. Father waited. “No, Father,” Archie said at last.
“If anyone comes at me, I'll get to them first. Don't worry. I'll be fine.”
While Father drove off into the dark wet night, Mother packed us all off to bed. I heard her giving orders to Pinckney, Father's valet, and to Annie, her maid. We had planned to stay another week, but now we were to leave at first light.
I rolled over in my bunk and pulled the wool blanket over my head. I shut my eyes tight to keep from crying. I was no better than Archie, I thought. I worried that someone would shoot Father too.
As soon as we'd finished breakfast the next morning, Mother crammed us all into the lodge's horse cart and we started down the road to the train station. The rain had stopped but the skies were overcast and gloomy. The road was slick in some spots and bumpy in others, and the crowded cart was uncomfortable. Mame moaned. Quentin whined. Ted looked as if he wanted to punch somebody. Mother and Miss Young were tight-lipped. My stomach quivered and flopped. “Father must have made it down all right,” I said. “We'd have heard, wouldn't we, if he'd had an accident?”
Ted sat squashed so close to me that his elbow banged my ribs. “Of course,” he said. “Don't be such a fusspot.”
“I am not a fusspot,” I said. “You know yourself—”
Miss Young shushed me. “Have mercy on your mother, Ethel. Don't get something started.”
“But he—” I saw the look on Miss Young's face and stopped. Miss Young never threatened, but, like Mother, she knew how to be firm.
The cart bumped and jolted. “My ear hurts,” said Quentin. Nobody shushed him. He pulled at his ear and complained again. Mother turned him in her arms so she could look into his ear. “My goodness, of course it hurts,” she said. “You've stuck a pebble into it. Didn't you learn anything from that mothball up your nose?”
“No,” whimpered Quentin.
“We'll get you to a doctor when we get home,” Mother said. “Shhh, you rest now. Just rest.”
Kermit tried to read but the cart jostled his book too much. He slapped the book shut and put it away, glaring at Ted and me as if we were to blame.
“Be grateful,” Ted told him. “At least you don't have to rush off to Groton.” Groton was a boarding school run by one of Father's friends. Ted started there the past year. He hated it, but Father still wanted him to go there. Ted had been supposed to leave for school straight from the Tahawus Club; his trunk had been sent ahead.
“I'll be at Mr. Preston's,” said Kermit. “Same difference.”
Mr. Preston's was the school in Washington that was going to prepare Kermit for Groton. Archie was young enough to go to a regular public school. Quentin was too young for school, and Alice and I didn't go to school at all; girls didn't have to. That was why we had Miss Young.
“It's not the same,” Ted said earnestly. “Groton's dreadful. You wait and see. This will make it worse than ever.”
Kermit frowned. Ted frowned. Quentin started to cry again. Only Archie looked at all happy, even though he had been the only one to cry the night before. I wondered whether it was because he trusted Father more than the rest of us, or whether he was just too young to understand how many things could go wrong.
“Do you trust Father?” I asked Kermit.
He looked at me as though I'd asked him if he breathed air. “Of course,” he said. “We can always trust Father. It's all the other people we have to watch out for.”
Father had been shot at before, especially during the Spanish-American War three years earlier. As a colonel in the army, he had led a group of cowboy soldiers called the Rough Riders up San Juan Hill. It was a famous battle, and he had won. He'd ridden his horse straight through enemy fire and had not been harmed. With his letters home he had sent us spent shells from bullets that had missed him.
But in a war, you expected to be shot at. You knew to be careful. All President McKinley had been doing was shaking hands.
“I wish Sister were here,” I said again. She wouldn't mope, and if she was worried, we wouldn't be able to tell. Sister would have something interesting to say. She would take our minds off of everything.
“Me too,” Miss Young replied.
Mother handed out sandwiches and, when Mame wouldn't eat, made her take sips of water. She promised Mame hot tea the moment we got to the train station. She got Quentin calmed down and asked Kermit to teach Archie to recite a poem by heart. Mother always knew the right things to do. I watched her for a while, and then I asked Ted about the trees we were passing, and the birds and wildflowers, until he started to seem less gloomy. He knew all about birds. When I said so, he shook his head. “Not as much as Father does,” he said.
“You know more
than most people,” I said. “Besides, nobody knows as much about birds as Father.”
Father could hear a bird singing in the woods and say exactly what kind it was. When we were out walking, he'd sometimes pick up a single feather from the ground and tell us all about the bird it had come from.
“I know,” Ted said, looking gloomy again. “I miss Sister too,” he added.
I looked at him sideways. “You do?” He and Sister often did things together, because they were the oldest, but they fought a lot too. They'd had a big fight at the Tahawus Club right before Sister left, and Ted had been awful. I was still a little mad at him.
“Sure. The rest of you all are babies. You don't have any idea what's going to happen to us.” He paused. “This changes everything. Our whole lives.”
I thought he was wrong about that. At least I hoped so. I liked my life the way it was; I didn't want it to be different. “I'm not a baby,” I said. “What do you think will happen?”
“Who was vice president before Father?” Ted asked. “Can you remember?”
I thought a moment. “No. I didn't pay any attention,” I said.
“It was Garrett Hobart,” Ted said. “Remember him?” I shook my head. “He died. But that's what I mean,” Ted said. “No one pays attention to the vice president. You'll see. Everything will be different now.” He sighed. “Groton will be worse than ever.”
“You said that before.”
“Well, it's true.”
“Are you scared?” I asked.
Ted bristled. “No.”
“I don't mean about school,” I said. “I mean about Father—”
Just then the wagon rounded the last bend. We'd reached North Creek at last. We pulled up to the station, where a train was waiting at the siding. As soon as the wagon stopped, a man came out of the station and handed a note to Mother. I put my head under her arm but I couldn't read it. The boys jostled close.
“Well,” said Mother. I could tell it was something she'd been expecting. “Onto the train now. Let's go.” She handed the note to Ted, who read it and passed it to Kermit, who read it and handed it to me.