Page 112 of Jackie

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They’ve set up a makeshift stage on a flatbed truck. He’s offered a raincoat. He shakes his head and steps up, turning to the crowd. They cheer, he raises a hand, and they still.

Play it right. Just get this day right.

—

Stepping back inside, he glances at his watch, then at the agent.

“Well?”

“Clint says Mrs. Kennedy will be right down.” The agent tries to sound reassuring.

“What else did she say?”

“She asked us to remind you that you told her to make sure she out-belled the belles.”

—

Walking toward the ballroom, he runs into Yarborough.

“Mr. President,” Yarborough says, all smiles.

“Stick to Johnson like Duco, will you, Ralph,” he says. “For Christ’s sake, just cut it out.”

He strides toward the kitchen, glancing back once to make sure his team is there, behind him, in place. They duck through the kettles and around the counters to keep up. He comes to the double doors that open into the ballroom.

“Everybody set?” he says. “All right, let’s go.”

—

Twenty minutes into the breakfast, the door to the kitchen opens again.

Clint is with her as she pauses for a moment, copper and stainless steel through the open kitchen door behind her, and in the ballroom two thousand conservatively dressed conservative Texans are rising from their chairs to catch a glimpse. She steps into the room and the chaos of klieg lights. They call her name, clapping their hands. She smiles, her eyes deer-like, bright, finding his, looking nowhere else, only at him. She threads the gauntlet of long tables toward the dais. Clint’s eyes dart, sweeping left, right, always shifting, watchful. Jack has witnessed it, the precise formal dance between them. He has watched them arriving at the White House from Virginia, Clint driving, Jackie stepping out of the passenger seat, her hair windblown, face flushed, the scent of cigarette smoke on her clothes. She trusts Clint completely. She’ll ride down a highway with him, windows open, her feet on the dash, smoking, listening to the radio. Some casual interval of ordinary life.

She has reached the dais. She takes the few steps and passes Jack on her way to her seat. Her hand, for an instant, brushes his. Then she sits down and smiles, the sweet warmth in her face so sudden and uncertain, he feels a sharp ache. He turns back to the crowd.

The cheers roar like fire.

November 22, 1963

We have an hour before the flight to Dallas. Walking back to our suite, I hold his arm.

“I couldn’t decide, Jack, between the long gloves or the short gloves, and then once we came outside, Clint explained I was going to a breakfast in a ballroom.”

“Now we’re back, and we can have breakfast.”

“I want to look at the art,” I say. “Did you see what they did in the room—the art they hung for us? They must have stripped their whole museum. I was too tired to really see it last night, then I woke up to Van Gogh, Picasso, and that sculpture of the girl.”

There’s a catalog of the art on the coffee table. Jack flips through it.

“Does it say who put this together?” I ask.

“A Mrs. J. Lee Johnson III. Why don’t we call her?”

“Did you know they were doing this?”

“I know everything.”

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