Page 62 of Jackie

“I’ll help you find something.”

“Thank you. I’m afraid I’ve only gotten as far as the purple coat I’m wearing tomorrow.”

Around nine, Bill Walton and I walked over to Joe’s. Jack was there, with Bobby, Teddy, and the rest of the family. Old friends and aides, campaign workers. Jack couldn’t sit still. He’d cross the room to talk to one person, then walk back. He’d sit down, stand up, cross the room again, his fingers worrying his trousers pocket, his eyes bright. At half past ten, when early returns looked like the momentum was heading Jack’s way, I told them I was tired. The baby, I said. Joe made some absurd proclamation that, if Jack won, he wouldn’t attend the celebration at the Armory. He’d keep to the shadows for Jack’s sake, he said, as he had all year.

“Assuming Jack wins,” I said, “I think he’ll want his father there.” I plucked at the cuff of Joe’s sleeve and whispered, “You might as well just come—if this lifelong dream of yours is a done deal, they can’t unelect him.”

Assuming Jack wins.

I’ve practiced saying it, thinking it. Knowing what I’m not fully ready to know. And soon it will be light. The press will sweep in, past the gate, up the drive, onto the lawn, a wave of flashbulbs, pads of paper, pens, shouldering one another out as they push in, trying to get past the Secret Service, a tightening circle around us.

Outside now, the gray of the sky has paled; threads of fog drift over the roofs as the cedar-shake houses begin to emerge. And still those moving men below. How easily I can distinguish them from the police detail of the night before. These men move like the dead. Noiseless. Trained to disappear. One, standing by the break in the hedge, lights a cigarette. A pinprick orange glow as he inhales. The match drops. His toe grinds it out on the lawn.

…

“We won, Jackie.”

Jack grips my hand. A stormy morning, the ocean wild. I came down to the beach for a walk. Fifteen minutes later, Jack came to find me. I felt my heart lift when I saw him walking toward me through the rain.

His eyes are shining. “We won,” he says again.

“I know, Jack. And I’m so happy.”

“Come back up to the house,” he says.

The men are near us as we walk, the Secret Service men, moving at the hem of things.

The house is a tumult. The air shifts ten octaves as we walk in, the rip roar of laughter, cheers, loud faces, pumping hands. Bodies teem through all seventeen rooms; they spill onto the porch and the lawn.

It feels like a glare, this new world.

“Jackie, you must be thrilled!” someone says.

“What kind of First Lady do you want to be?” That’s Jack’s sister Jean.

Half the room turns toward me, and I say I’m not quite sure how I feel about the term First Lady. It sounds a bit like a saddle horse.

They all laugh.

—

That night we have a small dinner with the Bradlees and Bill Walton. Lem Billings wanted to be there, but he and Ben don’t get along, so Lem with his rough jokes and battered suitcase was exiled to the main affair still roaring away at Joe’s.

At dinner, Ben tells Jack he should think about replacing Allen Dulles, Ike’s CIA director.

Walton agrees. “And toss Hoover out of the FBI. Make a clean sweep.”

Jack listens, nods. He tells them he’s nominating Adlai Stevenson for UN ambassador and Dean Rusk for secretary of state.

“I thought you wanted William Fulbright?” Walton says.

Jack shakes his head. “I don’t like his support for segregation.” He tells them then he’s been thinking about bringing in some Republicans: C. Douglas Dillon as secretary of the Treasury. McGeorge Bundy as national security advisor. Mac Bundy was a friend of Kick’s during the war.

“Roosevelt installed Republicans,” Jack says. “Truman did too, to bridge the aisle. Bob McNamara is the third GOP I’m considering. For Defense. What do you think?”

“McNamara’s barely GOP,” says Bill Walton. “He’s in the NAACP and the ACLU.”

“Jack likes that he’s an intrepid mountaineer,” I say.

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