The House of Kennedy(27)

Or it may be that he simply cannot stand the truth that Jack is dead.

Afternoon shadows crisscross Joe’s room. The man who built the powerful House of Kennedy is left with only his memories to comfort—or taunt—him.

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A few days earlier, President Kennedy and the First Lady are in Jack’s White House dressing room, reviewing travel plans. The next day, they’ll depart on a whirlwind two-day, five-city trip to Texas, with a final stop on November 23 at LBJ Ranch, which the vice president acquired when serving as a senator.

Richard Nixon, the Republican presidential nominee whom Kennedy defeated in 1960 and who has since been practicing law in New York City, is also in Dallas for a corporate speaking engagement. He’s ready to predict a key absence from the 1964 Democratic ticket—Johnson’s. “In 1960, Lyndon was a help. In 1964 he might not be,” Nixon theorizes.

The president is experiencing a surge of health. “I feel great. My back feels better than it’s felt in years,” Jack tells White House aide Kenny O’Donnell.

Nevertheless, JFK is wearing his Nelson Kloman back brace, made at the surgical supply company in Washington, DC. As customary, his tie clip features a replica of his wartime boat, PT-109. Valet George Thomas coordinates the array of clothing needed for the multiple public appearances the Kennedys have planned for each day of the trip.

Jackie is also busy with preparations, from hair to wardrobe. She’s written a four-page packing list to her personal assistant, Providencia Parendes, inspired by the president’s advice: “Be simple—show these Texans what good taste really is.”

The First Lady’s signature low-heeled shoes—a narrow size 10A—are specially made, according to biographer Barbara Leaming, “to make large feet look smaller and more feminine.” In her memoir Jackie’s Girl, former personal assistant Kathy McKeon reveals another of Jackie’s sartorial secrets: “[A] quarter-inch lift affixed to one heel on each pair of shoes, apparently meant to compensate for one leg being slightly shorter than the other. No one ever would have guessed.”

A possible inspiration for the footwear adjustment comes from the president himself. Dr. Janet Travell, the first woman to be appointed as personal physician to the president, has been treating Jack since his third back surgery in 1955. “One of the first things I did for him,” she says, “was to institute a heel lift” to correct his left leg being shorter than his right.

During her tenure as First Lady, Jackie has already become a style icon, known for her “overwhelming good taste” and her collaborations with the dress designer Oleg Cassini, informally known as “the Secretary of Style,” who called her an “American Queen.” “Jackie wanted to do Versailles in America,” Cassini recalls. Together they create the “Jackie look.”

While Jack is proud of his wife’s style, he’s annoyed at how much she spends—though his father, Joe, foots the bill for all of her Cassini dresses. “Just send me an account at the end of the year. I’ll take care of it,” he tells the designer.

For the trip to Texas, however, Jackie packs mainly Chanel.

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The 1961 Lincoln Continental convertible—painted presidential blue metallic and code-named SS 100-X by the Secret Service after undergoing two hundred thousand dollars in security modifications—is ready to drive the Texas streets. It’s the first presidential car outfitted with a removable transparent roof. But the top is not bulletproof, and the body of the upgraded vehicle, though heavy, lacks protective armor. Gary Mack, curator of Dallas’s Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, describes the car as an “expensive, fancy limousine.” Any glare or reflection might disrupt an assassin’s clear shot. And in any case, Jack, who once astounded the French president Charles de Gaulle by insisting on touring the Champs élysées by convertible even in the rain, is against using the roof. “I don’t want the bubbletop on the car,” he tells Kenny O’Donnell, who is organizing his Dallas schedule. “I want all those Texas broads to see what a beautiful girl Jackie is.”

Despite tensions in their marriage, and Jackie’s initial discomfort at the public role of First Lady (she remarked to the New York Times in 1960, after Jack’s election, that she felt like she had become “a piece of public property. It’s really frightening to lose your anonymity at thirty-one”), she confides to a friend in 1962, “The last thing I expected to find in the White House [has been] the happiest time I have ever known—not for the position—but for the closeness of one’s family.” By early August 1963, that family is set to expand—Caroline is five and a half, John Jr. is two and a half, and Jackie is pregnant with another baby, due around the same time as what will be her tenth wedding anniversary, on September 12.

But on August 7, 1963, more than a month prematurely, Jackie goes into labor while vacationing on Cape Cod. The date is significant—it’s the twentieth anniversary of the Japanese attack on PT-109 that made Jack a naval hero. There is “no way in God’s Earth,” says Ben Bradlee, that the president wouldn’t have noted the coincidence. Unlike when Jackie went into labor with Arabella, this time Jack rushes to his wife’s side at Otis Air Force Base on Cape Cod, where Jackie is undergoing an emergency Cesarean.

Patrick Bouvier Kennedy is born at 12:52 p.m., suffering from hyaline membrane disease, a lung disorder common in babies born prematurely.