Jackie and Me(12)
Jackie sensed that Black Jack had come loose in ways that no one had anticipated, and although she considered herself a daddy’s girl, she could not welcome the job of triage nurse.
Even if she got an apartment of her own, as her father was
already encouraging her to do, wouldn’t she always be waiting for the next call? The last call?
Meanwhile, Janet Auchincloss was calling regularly to
make sure she had everything she needed. “Are you sure?
We can ship you anything you’ve forgotten.” She wanted to
know which issues Jackie was working on so she could grab
them the moment they came out. “I’m not even going to wait
for the beauty parlor, darling, I’m going to drive to the nearest newsstand. Wherever it is.” It wasn’t until the third call that she took advantage of a brief lull in the conversation to bring up Arthur Krock, the dean of Washington newsmen and a regular enough presence at Merrywood that Jackie,
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41
from her earliest years, was encouraged to refer to him as
Uncle Arthur.
“I wouldn’t even mention him, darling, but he says he’s
pretty sure he can line you up with a job.”
“With the Times?”
“Oh, no, darling, the Washington Times-Herald. It’s a Hearst paper so you know it’s on the right side of things.”
“When would it start?”
“I don’t know, next year.”
“Next year?” Jackie paused to recalibrate. “Well, that
shouldn’t interfere with anything.”
“That’s exactly what I was saying to Hughdie. I said,
Uncle Arthur can wait, and so can Lee. ”
There was a long pause before Jackie asked what her sister had to do with anything.
“Oh, I was only asking her what she wanted for her graduation gift and she—well, it won’t surprise you to learn she wants to go to Paris.”
“You’d better send her.”
“Of course we will, it’s just . . .” A beat. “Now don’t you dare tell her I told you.”
“Tell me what?”
“She wants you to take her. Oh, I know how the two
of you bicker, and I know she’s not very respectful—I’ve
spoken to her about this—but she understands how fluent you are and how sophisticated and—well, I’ll admit that, as a mother, I would love you to be there, too, because (I
would never tell her this) she doesn’t have your command of things. And I’ve already said too much, so, to help her 42
LOUIS BAYARD
save face, I should just tell her to hold her horses until next summer, when you’ll be free. If you’re free. I mean, autumn in Paris is exquisite, we all know that, but I don’t think the summers get too infernally hot, do they? It’s just the tourists that make it feel that way.”
That weekend, Jackie came back to Merrywood, but
purely to pick up some of the items she’d forgotten to pack.
Saturday, she sat brooding in her room. Sunday, she began
typing out a letter to the Vogue editor. She went through at least a dozen drafts, she told me later, trying to find the right balance, but there was no balance, and the final draft was a master class in equivocation. She would be staying home
for the time being, but perhaps she’d come back in January, if there was an opening, as she was so hoping there would be. Or perhaps the following spring when the fashion shows
began. Or perhaps not at all?
Very sincerely, Jackie Bouvier.
One other thing happened that week at Vogue. She was asked to help edit a nine-page Irving Penn photo essay on Famous People of Washington. At the time, she had zero
standing to make any kind of stink, but after seeing the
orderly procession of Kefauver and Krock, she wondered out
loud why there was no Kennedy.
“Isn’t he a bit done?” said the photo editor. “I mean, that PT boat sank years ago.”
The remark left a quiet sting. Like most Americans in
those days, she knew the story of that boat. And of its brave young lieutenant, who refused to surrender after being
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43
rammed by a Japanese destroyer and who, despite his badly
injured back, led his crew on a grueling three-hour swim
to the nearest island, towing a badly burned but still living crewman the whole way. The next day, he swam another two miles to try to hail a passing boat. The day after, with food running short, he led his battered and starving men to another island—a four-mile swim against a fierce current—still biting down on the life-vest strap of that burned crewman. The next day he swam out again and brought back a canoe, food and water. Nearly a week passed before
they were finally rescued by another PT boat, and it was the consensus of the survivors that they would have perished without their skipper. Handsome and gaunt, he was lionized
in headlines and newsreels, awarded a medal and a Purple
Heart, but in the midst of the idolatry, he had the grace to shrug his shoulders and say that, when it came to being a hero, he’d had no choice. “They sank my boat.”
The tale had long since passed into legend, and it irked