Page 42 of Jackie

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The tone of the meetings has changed. Less casual. More formal strategizing. Endorsing Adlai Stevenson for president, Jack manages to get Stevenson’s top aide, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., as an ally. The rumor is that Adlai is considering Jack as a possible running mate. By April, the meetings at our house in Georgetown are day in, day out—in our living room, in our kitchen, on the front stoop, on the stairs. Meetings after work and over lunch. The men leave the toilet seats up. Their crumbs litter the rug, and their drinks mold rings on the end tables. Once, after a shower, I walk out of the bathroom into a knot of men leaning against the wall in the upstairs hall, the air thick with the smoke of Havana H. Upmann cigars. Silent, they stare as I pass through them like a gauntlet, my body wrapped in a towel, the little bulge of my belly, a second towel around my hair. I walk into the bedroom and shut the door.

One Saturday in Hyannis Port, Jack and Teddy are down by the shore, messing around with the boat, trying to set the rigging for a sail. I stand with Bobby, watching them as Jack barks orders and Teddy fumbles around, doing it not quite right, or not the way Jack wants.

“Hey, Jackie,” Jack calls. “I left my jacket up at the house, can you get that for me? Don’t let that line go, Ted.”

“I’ll get the jacket,” Bobby says to me. “You stay here.”

I smile. “I’m pregnant, not an invalid.”

“Jack’s really happy,” he says as we walk up. “He talks about that baby all the time.”

“He wants me at the convention.”

“You should come.”

“Chicago in August, with a baby due in October?”

“Ethel will be there.”

“Oh, Bobby, your wife is an ace at being pregnant.”

He looks embarrassed.

“Do you think Jack really wants the vice presidency?” I say as we reach the porch steps.

Joe is there. “Don’t ask for my opinion on that,” he says.

“I wasn’t, Joe.”

“I don’t know why the hell he’d squander political capital to be runner-up. They’ll all lose to Eisenhower anyway.”

“We’re just getting a jacket, Dad,” Bobby says.

Joe follows us into the house. “I can’t imagine it’s been nice for you, Jackie, having them all underfoot when you’re trying to rest up for my grandchild.”

I laugh. “If this were a convenient campaign for you, Joe, would you be so concerned?”

“Schlesinger says Stevenson likes what he sees,” Bobby says. “We’ll let it play out.”

“And blow his chances for the real race?” Joe says.

“Jack’s being smart about the vice presidency, Dad. He’s not bragging like Humphrey or going around puffed up. Just the possibility of being named VP gets him into the center ring.”

Joe pretends to consider this, but he’s never put much stock in what Bobby brings.

“It’s going to be Jack,” says Bobby.

“I hope it isn’t,” I say.

“Why? Jack wants this.”

I smile. “To be second?”

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At the convention in Chicago in August, heat ripples off the pavement. Over ninety degrees in the shade. I attend a champagne party for the campaign wives and overhear Perle Mesta complain to another woman she can’t believe Jack Kennedy’s wife would be such a beatnik as to show up without stockings. My feet and legs are swollen from the heat at the session where Jack nominates Adlai Stevenson as the Democratic candidate. I sit at the edge of the crowd. A hush comes over the convention hall as Jack speaks. His voice has begun to exert a new pull. My hands rest on my belly, marking the occasional slight push of the baby under my palm. I’ve learned to distinguish the turn of thehead, the kick of a foot, what’s knee, what’s shoulder.

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