Page 63 of Jackie

They laugh. Dinner continues, more talk, more debate, candles flicker and burn. Jack doesn’t mention Bobby or his intent to nominate him as attorney general. We discussed it earlier, before our friends arrived. “I might float it out to them,” he said, “to see how it lands. Or I might just focus on the Republican appointments and, when no one is looking, slip Bobby in.”

I smiled then. “Jack, do you really think there will ever be a time again when no one is looking?”

…

He is young. My Secret Service detail, Clint Hill.

I’ve been told he was assigned to Eisenhower’s detail for a year. He grew up in North Dakota. He has a wife and child. But no one mentioned he is close to my age, my height. Dark hair, a solemn, neatly shaven face. In my living room in Georgetown, Clint Hill looks around, that quick scan with his eyes, taking in the sofa and chairs, antiques, bookshelves, marking exits and entrances, windows and doors. I wait for a pause, for something to register, but as his eyes shift back to meet mine, they are blank. And I realize then this detail is not what he wants, to be assigned to the wife. He doesn’t want it any more than I do, and in that moment I decide we might get along.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Hill. Please sit down.” I’m always saying something like this to someone—please sit down, please come in, please don’t get up, and what can we get you to drink? I ask him about a drink.

“Nothing, thank you,” he says.

My back hurts. I feel the baby move.

Later that day, I’m scheduled to meet the new girl Jack’s office has recommended to serve as my press secretary: Pam Turnure. Or is that tomorrow? No, today. And what about the rumor that this Pam might have had a brief affair with Jack once? Is that true? Does it matter?

I have to call Oleg Cassini. I’m going to ask him to design my clothes. Cassini is an old friend of Joe’s, the only friend of Joe’s who will understand what I mean when I ask for a suit in a “nattier blue.” Cassini will also intuitively grasp that, for me, style is not only art but armor.

So here I am—the Wife.

I feel a wave of nausea.

The other agent with Mr. Hill outlines how things will work. Every house will have a perimeter. Anytime I step over that line, Agent Hill will be with me.

“My baby is due in a month,” I say. “I’ll be primarily in Washington. My concern is keeping a degree of privacy for our children. I don’t want them to feel like animals in a zoo.”

“We don’t trust the press any more than you do, Mrs. Kennedy,” says Mr. Hill.

“So every time I take a walk, you’ll go with me?”

A slight smile crosses his eyes, brief; his mouth does not shift.

—

On a brilliant morning later that week, Mr. Hill and I walk down 34th Street toward the Potomac. I am thinking about that little girl, six-year-old Ruby Bridges from New Orleans, who, just a few days ago, walked through a white mob brandishing fists, guns, and little Black dolls in caskets. Ruby, wrapped in a cloud of U.S. marshals, marched up the steps with her lunchbox into first grade at an all-white school. She’s three years older than Caroline.

I wonder what Mr. Hill would think about Ruby Bridges and all those white parents who pulled their children out of the school just because she walked into it? I want to ask him, but I don’t really know who he is yet, so instead I say, “Mr. Hill, I’ve heard you have a son who’s just about my daughter Caroline’s age. What’s your little boy’s name?”

—

Bill Walton spends Thanksgiving with us in Georgetown.

I raise my glass. “To one last Thanksgiving in our beloved house that leans to one side.”

“With my favorite doorknob,” Jack says.

“Here’s to caviar and clam chowder with Thanksgiving dinner,” Walton says.

“And a December baby,” I say.

Bill has come through on his promise to help find a house in the country, a place where we can be just a family. He found a property called Glen Ora.

“Camp David is free,” Jack says.

“That’s an official house,” I say. “Free in only one sense of the word.”

“There are stables at Glen Ora,” Bill says, “plenty of land, Jackie, where you can ride.”

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