Page 64 of Jackie

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That night, I hemorrhage. Jack has already left to fly down to Palm Beach for meetings. I lie in bed with my nightgown and overcoat on and, when the ambulance team arrives, I tell them, “I lost a baby once, and I’m afraid. Let’s please go now.” I try to smile, but the pain is just so sharp. I can feel the wet along my leg.

Later I learn that Bill Walton reached Jack just as the plane touched down in Palm Beach. Jack boarded another plane and flew back.

—

“The baby’s system isn’t quite developed.”

That’s what my obstetrician, Dr. Walsh, tells us about our baby boy once I surface from surgery.

“Will he be all right?” Jack asks.

“We think so.”

The baby didn’t cry right away, Dr. Walsh explains. He didn’t cry even when they held him up and gave his little bottom a slap. They fed a tube into his trachea, blew air into his lungs, and he began to breathe. We’ll be in the hospital for at least two weeks, possibly more.

As soon as we can hold him, Jack has the baby in his arms. He sits in the chair by my bed, the small head resting in the crook of his elbow, the unskinned surface of our baby’s eyes sponging up the world.

Jack says his name. John. The baby shifts at his voice. Caroline is next to Jack, one small hand resting on his shoulder, watching, transfixed, and for a moment it’s like the four of us are held in frieze, the four of us imprinted into time, and I feel something new move through me. The light in the room feels altered. Every object in the room touched by that new light.

—

From the hospital, I begin to prepare. The private rooms first, to create a sense of home for our family. Everything else will follow. I send Clint to get books and periodicals, histories of the White House, its antiques, architecture, and grounds. I study photographs and blueprints, the before and after of Teddy Roosevelt’s design for the West Wing. I make notes on how the various public rooms have been used. I draw up lists of things to be packed from our house on N Street, designating what should be moved where. Shortly before I’m released from the hospital, I ask Oleg Cassini to come. I show him pages I’ve torn out from magazines and sketches I’ve made.

“Your sketches are very good,” he says.

“Not as good as the ones I used to make on the back of my exam books.”

He laughs, his hair stiff with pomade, the deep tan. He was born in Paris, he tells me that day. “At three in the morning, the doctor swept into the delivery room straight from a party, in white tie and tails.” He glances at the stack of books on the small table by the window, then back at me. “Have you had any rest at all?”

“It’s quite stunning, how much there is to do. I’m not even the president-elect.”

“Well, the president-elect didn’t just give birth.”

“Oleg, what do you think about an American Versailles?”

“America is not France,” he says.

“I suppose, but don’t you think we could have a little magic?”

—

As the elevator rises to the Residence, I remember the first time I saw the White House as a child—the soaring promise of the building outside, how inside there was nothing, only cavernous dark rooms and a musty smell, windows that hadn’t been opened in years.

In the elevator, the chief usher, Mr. West, stands slightly turned away. An almost British sense of propriety and discretion. When he met us at the portico, he showed no surprise that I was sitting in the front seat of the station wagon while Mr. Hill drove. He led us inside and asked Mr. Hill to wait downstairs.

The elevator slows to a halt on the second floor. The door slides open.

In the hall stands Mamie Eisenhower, her crisp smile and shirtwaist, curled bangs pulled forward and flattened, a noose of pearls. I’ve heard that Mamie calls me “that college girl.”

Mr. West steps forward.

“Mrs. Kennedy,” he announces. I wait a moment for the older woman to step toward me, but she doesn’t. Mamie only extends her hand, forcing me to take the step to bridge the distance between us. Ninety minutes later when the visit ends, I’m exhausted. The pain flares where my stitches are, those muscles still so weak. The wheelchair we requested never appeared. Later, I will learn Mamie instructed Mr. West not to offer it unless I asked.

Stepping out into the sharp cold day where Clint is waiting with the car, I feel the fresh wind against my face as a white pop of flashbulbs bursts in the shadow of the portico.

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