Page 59 of Jackie

“And a blond wig,” I say.

“You just had a birthday, didn’t you? Thirty-one.”

“Mr. Mailer, your glass is already empty. Would you like another?”

Later, I watch his face brighten—he nearly seems to melt—when Jack tells him he’s read The Deer Park, along with Mailer’s other books. Pierre Salinger prepped Jack for that moment, telling him to specifically mention The Deer Park and not The Naked and the Dead, which made him a household name.

Mailer asks questions like my stepbrother Gore—half query, half bait. Nothing is innocent. Bobby told me that even before he arrived, Mailer had written most of the article, which struck me as strange. Why come at all? But that day in Hyannis Port, it’s clear. He is still gathering more. Breaking down our world, taking notes on us. No paper, no pencil, no pen. But in his hard eyes, I can see notations, calculations being made.

—

Jack is away for most of the fall, barnstorming the country. He’ll come home for a day, stride in, swoop Caroline up, give me a kiss, stay for dinner, then fly off again. He calls on our anniversary but forgets it’s our anniversary. A few days later, when a reporter phones, asking for comment on a statement in Woman’s Day about how last year I spent thirty thousand dollars on clothes, I laugh and say, “I couldn’t spend that much if I wore sable underwear.”

As soon as it’s out of my mouth, I regret it. Jack is furious. The comment’s picked up everywhere.

“That’s the last thing you’ll say on this campaign, Jackie.”

“Okay with me,” I say, “although I do hope my clothes have nothing to do with your ability to be president.”

—

I’m meeting Jack in New York when Mailer’s article in Esquire hits newsstands. I brace myself as I start to read. The piece is brilliant—searing, canny, generous. It’s about Jack and America. An exquisite endorsement and tribute. I remember how Mailer watched us that day in Hyannis Port—how hot it was, how high the baby pushed against my lungs; I craved ice, craved the cool, I wanted to slip out of the room unnoticed, but I was tied to the pleasantries, even as Mailer watched us in a penetrating way that wasn’t pleasant at all. In the Esquire piece, he describes Jack as a prince in the unstated aristocracy of the American dream. He does justice to Jack’s ideas, his vision and intent, his commitment to service. He barely mentions me. I feel a wave of relief.

I ride with Jack in a ticker-tape parade through Manhattan. A thirty-mile route up toward Yonkers for a rally in Larkin Park, then back downtown. Over a million New Yorkers line the streets as the motorcade presses through. Crowds push against the car. I sit close to Jack, perched on the back of the seat, one hand holding on, the other waving, keeping that strong fixed smile. I can feel the pressure of my belly, breathless as the baby kicks, while sheets of confetti and streamers rain from the sky. Jack leans down to shake the hands reaching up. A group of women surges toward him. The sides of the car seem to bend.

At a break for lunch in Rockefeller Center, our friend Bill Walton meets us.

“I’m concerned about the baby, Bill,” I say, loud enough for others to hear. “I’m afraid I should skip the rest of the route.” I turn to one of Jack’s aides. “Could you please let the senator know?” I slip out of my coat and turn it inside out. “Reversible,” I say to Bill. I pull on a pair of dark glasses and put my arm through his.

“I’ll get you back to the hotel,” he says. “You can rest.”

“Oh no,” I say quietly as we walk away. “I want to see those new paintings at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery. Come on. Let’s go.”

—

When I learn, a few days later, that Martin Luther King, Jr., has been arrested for a sit-in at the lunch counter of an Atlanta department store, I pick up the phone and dial.

“Yes,” I tell the operator, “this is Mrs. Kennedy. I need to talk to the senator. I am afraid it’s urgent. Please put the call through.”

It’s not King I’m thinking of, sitting with those college boys in the Magnolia Tea Room and refusing to get up. It’s his wife and that other woman, Rosa Parks, and it’s that dead boy’s mother, Mamie Till. I understand it then. It wasn’t the brutal details of her son’s murder that blew the world apart. It was the choice Mamie Till made to leave the casket lid open that forced the world to see.

Jack’s voice clicks in on the line.

“You must work to free King,” I say. “You know it’s a trumped-up charge.”

“Sarge and Wofford just told me the same thing.”

“That’s why you hired them.”

“Not to cost me the election.”

Jack had met with King a few weeks earlier. King had told him to do something to prove to the Blacks his commitment to them was real.

“Wofford’s prepared a statement,” he says, “criticizing the arrest, calling for King’s release. But Kenny says if I lift a finger, it’ll kill my chances. Even Bobby thinks it’ll backfire.”

“King’s wife is pregnant.”

“This isn’t personal, Jackie.”

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