She was more headmistress than woman, and wore a pencil skirt that made a rustling, sibilant sound, as if it might have bitten the hand that dared to approach its zipper.

Turning left out of the Red Room, we walked over the red carpet of the Cross Hall and then stepped into an elevator where a Negro usher wearing white gloves conducted us up to the second floor. Leaving the elevator, the woman with the noisy skirt led me through the West Sitting Hall and along the Center Hall, before halting in front of the president’s study door, where she knocked and then entered without waiting for an answer.

In contrast to the elegance I had just left, the president’s study was informal and, with its ziggurats of books, piles of yellowing papers tied with string, and cluttered desk, I thought it resembled the shabby little office I had once occupied at Princeton.

“Mr. President, this is Professor Mayer,” she said. And then left, closing the doors behind her.

The president was sitting in a wheelchair, cocktail shaker in hand, facing a small table on which stood several liquor bottles. He was listening to the Symphony Hour on WINX.

“I’m just mixing a jug of martinis,” he said. “I hope you’ll join me. I’m told that my martinis are too cold, but that’s the way I like them. I can’t abide warm alcohol. It seems to defeat the whole point of drinking in the first place.”

“A martini would be very welcome, Mr. President.”

“Good, good. Come on in and sit down.” Franklin D. Roosevelt nodded toward the sofa opposite the desk. He turned off the radio and poured the martinis. “Here.” He held one up and I came around the table to collect it. “Take the jug as well, in case we need a refill.”

“Yes, sir.” I took the jug and returned to the sofa.

Roosevelt turned the wheelchair away from the liquor table and pushed himself toward me. The chair was a makeshift affair, not the kind you would see in a hospital or an old people’s home, but more like a wooden kitchen chair with the legs cut off, as if whoever built it had meant to conceal its true purpose from the American electorate, who might have balked at voting for a cripple.