Jackie, page 17
“Well, you don’t exactly know that yet.”
“I’ll make a bet.”
I pause, then, “You’re going to need me to do something with my time, Jack, so I’m not always hanging on you.”
“There will be plenty to do.”
“I don’t mean ninety-nine cups of tea with some other national leader’s wife.”
He laughs. “We’re not buying Jeffersonian antiques.” He picks up the briefing packet.
“Jack, don’t worry. We can solicit donations or fundraise to pursue things we don’t have.”
“Pursue as in purchase?”
“Monroe ordered pieces from Paris.”
“The White House had burned to the ground.”
“Why don’t I just give it a try for a month or so,” I say. “Maybe the idea will flop, and we can move on.”
He looks at me, a flash of uncertainty, but I can see he is intrigued, and for the moment I have won.
* * *
—
I’m the last to leave Palm Beach. It’s like watching a season fall away. I spend days alone with the children on the property caged by tall hedges, palms, bougainvillea.
“It’s lovely here,” I say to Joe one afternoon as we sit by the pool. “And quiet now. The day before Jack left, I walked out of the bathroom to find Pierre Salinger holding a press conference in my bedroom.”
Joe laughs.
“It’s going to be a fishbowl life,” I say, “isn’t it?”
“Just stand by Jack.”
“I’m afraid I’ll have to request an appointment whenever I want to see him.”
“Some days it might be like that. But he needs you.”
The water in the pool is still. The faintest wind ripples the surface. The children will stay on in Palm Beach when I fly north for the inauguration. Their rooms in the Residence aren’t ready, there’s still too much chaos. I don’t want to bring them into that, at the same time I can’t imagine leaving them. John, six weeks old, is so tiny, too fragile, he isn’t sleeping well.
Joe looks at me over those wire rims, his blue eyes penetrating.
“This is a great thing, Jackie.”
“I know. The long twilight struggle, the new frontier, a new generation of leadership. I’ve read the inaugural draft. ‘Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.’ I love it, Joe. It’s thrilling. A great thing.”
“I still think that speech is too short,” Joe says.
I smile. “Jack doesn’t want anyone to think he’s a windbag.”
Joe laughs again. For him, I know, this is a dream come true. What is it, though, for Jack? For me? And what will I bring to those people we see, who turn out with their shining faces and their hope? I’ve been asked by Jack’s team to gather details of my life into a brief story they can share. I’ve collected photographs, jotted down notes. I wrote passages about my childhood, my parents, even their divorce. I wrote about meeting Jack, about our marriage, and the words I used imply an intimacy between us that is not exactly there but could be. The facts are intact, but I’ve washed the truth. People need a story. I understand that. Just as they need something to believe in.
One request intrigued me. A writer I know was assigned a piece for Look, “What You Don’t Know about Kennedy.” He wrote asking for any thoughts I might share. I wrote back, I’d describe Jack as rather like me, in that his life is an iceberg. The public life is above the water—& the private life—is submerged…. At the close of the letter, I told him he could use the words I wrote, but with no attribution to me. It did strike me as I sealed the letter that I might not have been so honest about that split between our public and private selves if Jack was here. Somehow the distance made it possible to admit the more complicated terrain that still exists between us.
* * *
—
When I leave Palm Beach, a crowd has gathered on Southern Boulevard as we approach the airport. We pull to the curb at the terminal. I empty my face and step out. I turn and wave. I let my focus blur, as I’m learning to do whenever I feel that leveling fear and flood, taming a rush of people into a softer featureless shape, a darker cutout against the pure blinding bright of Florida sky.
They’ve come this time not for Jack but for me. As I move closer, a face in the crowd catches my eye, a woman roughly my age, light-brown hair pulled sharply back, a dust of freckles. Our eyes meet, and I feel a splitting ache, that wrench of leaving my children behind. I look at that woman in the crowd. She’s a mother. I can feel it. Even without seeing a child near her, I know. I smile at her. She smiles back.
I board the plane. My new press secretary, Pam Turnure, is with me, along with the Secret Service men, who call me Lace. My code name. Jack is Lancer; Caroline, Lyric; John, Lark. As those men walk up and down the cabin aisle with their guns, I look through the plane window to the crowd below, scanning the faces, marking the features I can make out from that distance. I am looking for that woman, that mother, her smile, the flash of recognition between us. I look for her knowing I won’t find her, or see her, again.
Thursday, January 19, 1961
The day before the inauguration, snow falls. It layers the streets and trees outside. A blistering wind. It is dark by four. I watch from the window of my bedroom in Georgetown as cars snake through the whiteness, snow falling through their headlights.
As a child, I loved to watch snow fall through light, each flake a soul, emerging for that instant into its own brightness, then falling back into the dark. Beyond the bedroom door, the house is full. It is time.
Eerie, haunting. Those are the words that come to me as the limousine flows through the night streets toward Constitution Hall. Bill Walton is with us. “You’ll float away,” I told Jack. “As soon as we arrive, someone will come and bear you off. Bill can stay with me.”
The three of us sit in the back of the car, snow crushed under the tires. The frost a white dust on the windows, the glass blurred with the inside heat, our bodies and breath. Time slows, like we are moving from the past into the future. I can feel an excitement I’ve not let myself feel—in the dark mystical silence of the car where we sit on this night journey toward the inaugural concert and from there to the inaugural gala. Jack is in his tails. I am in my white gown, a necklace, heavy and cool against my throat, grounding me. And the snow blows everywhere, free in a way I love, as we travel wrapped in the warm isolation of the car, moving through the cold and the dark outside.
I am with Jack, and I can feel him near me, close. Then he turns to Bill Walton and says:
“Turn on the lights so they can see Jackie.”
Part III
I am become a name
—Tennyson, “Ulysses”
January 20, 1961, Inauguration Day
The old poet steps up to the podium in the piercing wind and falters. His hand brushes his eyes. The winter sun is blinding, light trapped in the edges of ice, air sparkling, so sharp it feels cruel, as he stumbles through the first lines of the poem, trying to read off the paper in his hands.
Lyndon Johnson stands up to help him, moving to shield the sun with his broad shoulders and top hat. The glare still too bright, the poet finally gives up. He sets the paper down, closes his eyes, and starts with new lines, a different poem, one he recites from memory.
I feel the bite of the wind through my coat. Robert Frost’s voice is tremulous but strong, and as he comes to the end, Jack steps up. He doesn’t wear a coat. He shakes Frost’s hand and takes the old man’s place on the dais and delivers the address he has worked and reworked. I know the words by heart. We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty. The words flow through my ears, and I let myself go into that inspired bolt of Jack’s voice. The crowd surges like a wave and I let it sweep into me, the thunder of applause and cheers.
As the ceremony ends, I’m shuttled to a room with other women. Coffee, hot cider, a glass of sherry someone has pressed into my hand. I catch sight of Jack and push through to him. I touch his cheek, and it is just the two of us. I love you, he says. I love you. Tears in his eyes, he looks down at me. We’re here, Jackie, he says. Then the cameras flash, and when my eyes adjust, he is gone again, drawn away by someone who has his arm, his ear. I feel it all that day, how he belongs now to something larger than either of us can grasp—a vision, a mission, an ideal. I am part of that, and from now on I will share him with the world. It isn’t only him they need; it’s the dream he’s promised. On that searing-cold day, minutes flash by. Faces, bodies. Everything seems to glisten and shine. I smile, answer questions, shake hands. After a while I am brought to him again, and to see his face there, so beautiful and free, lifts me. He reaches for my hand and holds it tightly as we board an open car and ride through the winter city to the White House and the reviewing stand, where his father waits with his brothers, my mother, my sister. They are all there. As we draw up, Joe tips his hat, and at the same time, Jack stands, doffing his to Joe.
* * *
—
I make it through two of the inaugural balls before I beg off and return to the White House.
The chief usher, Mr. West, meets me at the door. There’s nothing I can read in his face, no opinion or disdain for my fatigue or weakness, no compassion either. The complete lack of expression shoots a warmth through me—gratitude as I realize he sees everything, judges nothing. I almost confide in him then that, on the ride back, it struck me I’d never be able to undo the whole length of tiny pearled buttons down the back of my dress, and since Provi, my assistant, has already gone home to her sons, perhaps I will have to sleep in my dress like some beached mermaid, but the joke of it feels like too much to explain, so I just lean a bit on Mr. West’s arm and he escorts me in silence. At the Queens’ Bedroom, he turns the knob and holds the door open, and I see then that he has asked a young woman to stay, to help me with the dress or anything else I might need.
I turn to thank him, but he’s already closing the door behind him.
* * *
—
It’s after three when Jack wakes me up and pulls me down the hall in a sort of hobbling waltz to the Lincoln Bedroom. He hurls onto the bed.
“We are sleeping here!” he cries. “Here!”
We stay there for the rest of that night, and in the morning we talk in bed with the extra pillows kicked onto the floor, the blankets drawn up around our chins, sunlight streaming in.
* * *
…
Boxes of our things fill the rooms.
He carries photographs of me and the children from the Residence to the Oval Office, which begins to assume the design of a captain’s quarters: ship models, paintings of rocky coasts, a plaque engraved with the mariner’s prayer. His bits of scrimshaw are set around the room.
The day after we move in, I walk into his office and ask Dave Powers to please leave. When we’re alone, I ask Jack if it’s true what my chief of staff, Tish Baldridge, just told me, that three days before the inauguration someone in Jack’s camp called up Sammy Davis, Jr., and disinvited him and May Britt.
“I told you he wasn’t going to perform,” Jack says.
“You didn’t say he was asked not to.”
“We barely won this election.”
“You did win, and he supported you.”
There’s an uncertain look on his face, and I realize that whether or not he knew in advance it was going to be done, he doesn’t feel good about it.
“We still need the South, Jackie.”
“That man campaigned for you because you asked him to.”
“Then he went and married that woman.”
“A woman he loves.”
“Who’s white when he isn’t.”
I look at him for a long moment.
* * *
—
Later that afternoon—almost five—I’m in the Residence with Tish and Pam when the folded note arrives.
Jackie,
Let’s declare war on the toilet paper.
Where is it?
I smile. His olive branch. He might not apologize for what happened to Sammy Davis, Jr., and May Britt, but the note is his way of saying he heard what I said.
I continue working, going through boxes, unpacking and sorting, until I come across an unframed photograph in a box from the Georgetown house. The two of us at the Hyannis airport. I don’t remember the photograph being taken, but I remember the moment. In the picture, my back is to the camera, Jack is leaning in to kiss me goodbye, an awkward unclaimed intimacy between us, captured in those nuanced dark shapes against the white sky behind.
* * *
—
For those first weeks, the halls ring with the sounds of hammering, smells of paint and linseed oil. Though the house isn’t ready for them yet, the children are the focus of my days. I miss them desperately, their skin, their smells, Caroline’s voice and laughter, John’s sweet sleepy face and how his hands grip and uncurl. He’s still so fragile.
“I want my children to have a routine,” I tell Pam as we unpack Caroline’s books and toys, “a sense of an ordinary life outside the spotlight and fairy tale. Do you think that’s possible? To construct a normal childhood for them?”
“It seems to me,” Pam says quietly, “you can build whatever you want.”
“I’d like to keep my station wagon. I don’t want to always drive around in one of those long black cars.”
She smiles.
“And when Tish is pushing me to do more, I’d love it if you’d help find people who can stand in for me, so I can take the children on small trips to the circus or the theater. I’ll tell Tish before I go, so she won’t take it out on you.”
Pam is unwrapping a lamp when Mr. West walks in with a short list of questions. Some art has arrived, he says, and would I like the paintings hung before dinner?
“Also, Mrs. Kennedy, we are going to order the playground set and the treehouse.”
“Thank you, Mr. West. Let’s have those placed near the president’s office, so he can see the children play.”
He makes a note on the list. “You’ve also added here a trampoline?” he says, not even an eyebrow raised, as if such a request comes with every change in administration.
“Yes, Mr. West. Thank you. Full size, I should have mentioned, and please have that placed a distance from the swing set.”
“But it is for the children?”
“Oh no, Mr. West. They can use it if they’re supervised, but, no, the trampoline is for me.”
* * *
—
I’ve hired a designer, Sister Parish, to help me with the family quarters. Ideally, I explain, we’ll use what we have and buy as little as possible. I want to keep the funds we’ve been allocated for the restoration of the public rooms. But things don’t go as planned and, within weeks, the budget is spent. We scour the boarded-up rooms and the cellar for antiques. Sister Parish always wears a dark dress with a tremendous white spread collar, while I dress in jeans, sneakers, and an old sweater. They nickname me “Queen of the Rummage Sales.” We find a bust of George Washington in a bathroom sink. In the unused carpenter’s shop, we find some old statuary and a seventeenth-century table that once served as a sawhorse. I crawl under the table. “Get down here with me, Mr. Hill,” I say to Clint. “See how this is carved?” I say, running my fingers down the wooden leg. “This level of craftsmanship would never happen today. Imagine the time it took. This detail is by hand.”
* * *
—
Organizing things as well as Field Marshal Rommel ever did. That’s how I describe it to Bill Walton. I invite him to the Residence for lunch. I tell him I’m doing what Joe Alsop suggested back in August, in a letter he wrote about art and power.
“Speaking of Alsop,” Bill says. “At a party last week, I overheard him call Jack ‘Mr. Facing Two Ways.’ ”
I don’t want to think it’s funny, but when Bill gives me a quizzical look, head slightly cocked, I laugh.
“It can be a vicious little town,” I say. “Just another reason to keep my circle small. You, of course. Because I trust you forever. Tony and Ben, and Bunny Mellon, whom I’ve come to adore. We’ve asked Bunny to redesign the White House gardens. And I want her to teach me how to make the sort of arrangements she has everywhere in her house—freesia and tulips in baskets that look like Dutch paintings. I love Bunny’s house.”
“It’s not too shabby here,” Bill says.
“And the other thing so intriguing about Bunny,” I say, “is that, along with design, she’s perfected privacy to high art. She minds her own life and walks around with that absolutely lovely smile, saying nothing. I need to learn how to do that.”
* * *
—
Jack is restless in those early weeks. He’s assembled his cabinet and named Bobby attorney general, which creates a stir. Bobby’s only thirty-five, the youngest AG since 1814, and he doesn’t have the legal experience one would expect for the role.
“I need him in there with me,” Jack says.
In those weeks, he emerges from long classified briefings looking worn out. He paces the West Wing, the executive offices. Someone finds him in the mailroom, I hear, just standing there with a letter opener, opening unsorted mail. I ask him about it when he comes home to the Residence that evening. He shrugs.
“Just trying to figure things out. Hey, let me show you this.” He digs into his briefcase and draws out a letter from John Steinbeck.
