Jackie and Me(24)

the calls short or declined to take them at all—withdrawn

just far enough—and it was in these moments, more than

ever, that she wished for a confidant. Her mother, of course, wasn’t to be trusted. Neither, after some thought, was her father or sister. With a twinge of surprise, she found her

thoughts cohering around Lem.



JACKIE & ME

85

Hadn’t he been exceptionally kind to her at Bobby and

Ethel’s? Wasn’t he uniquely qualified to explain Kennedy

mating rituals? Maybe he might volunteer to be her guide

into this strange new land.

So she began, as before, introducing his name into the

conversations. “I saw a Bromo-Seltzer commercial last night and thought of Lem . . .” “Oh, hey, does Lem know how to dance? They’re looking for men at the Dancing Class . . .”

“Does Lem wear fedoras? Hughdie’s got some he’s never

worn, and they need a home.” Each time Jack answered neutrally, and she had no notion she was making any headway

until one afternoon, he replied, in a tone of mild peevishness:

“If you want to date Lem, why don’t you just say so?”

So, without too much effort, he’d been prodded into

mock-jealousy, which was near to the real thing, and for the first time in their acquaintance, he had used the infinitive to date. Baby steps.

“Don’t be that way,” she teased. “Lem isn’t the dating

kind, is he? But he’s a perfect dear, and you can tell him I said so.”

ELEVEN

I feel for this Jackie— my Jackie—I really do. She was waiting, and who could blame her, for the kind of declaration that makes a girl have a hard discussion with her mother. Something like, I know he’s shanty Irish but he’s a war hero and there’s loads of money and possibility and have you seen him?

She was in no position to know that hard discussions

were already beginning around her. I was party to one of

them. The morning after the Bobby-Ethel affair, I was heading back to Baltimore, and Jack took the unusual step of

driving me to Union Station. We had just about slipped free of Georgetown’s grid when he said, in a voice of enigmatic blankness:



JACKIE & ME

87

“Well?”

“Well, what?”

“What do you think of Our Miss Bouvier?”

“Oh,” I said, “it’s our Miss Bouvier? In that case, we find her dear.”

“Dear . . . ”

“I mean in a way that’s opposed to . . . what you . . . cus-tomarily go for . . . ”

“That was tortured.”

“Well, don’t blame me, you never ask me about your girls. I mean, why would you when they’re all gone by cock’s crow?”

“You never told me my cock was crowing.”

In spite of myself, I laughed. And then, irritated at giving him the satisfaction, I stared out the window the rest of the way. It was when I was climbing out of the car that he said: “We’re in a different era, Lem.”

The phrasing was just vague enough to make me think he

was referring to McCarthy. Only because McCarthy was on

everybody’s mind in those days (fifth columnists, indeed),

and because he and Jack were the weirdest sort of pals. But no, there was something else afoot, and the fact that Jackie and I were both so slow to pick up on it speaks to the fact that neither of us was a political creature. Which is why, in the spring of ’52, we were apparently the last people in the Western Hemisphere to grasp that Jack had his eyes on Henry Cabot Lodge Junior’s Senate seat.

Lodge had his eyes on it, too. Like Jack, he had a handsome face and a glittering war record; unlike Jack, he had

88





LOUIS BAYARD


a family membership in the Boston Tennis & Racquet Club and a name that had been around since the Puritans. The very shape of his mouth was a reproach. On top of that,

he’d taken on pretty much every mick who’d been thrown at

him—Curley, Walsh, Casey—without a break in his stride,

and there was no reason he wouldn’t do to Jack what his

papa had done to Jack’s grandpa back in 1916. Take it from

me: Brahmins don’t give up their possessions easily because heaven wouldn’t care for it. The Lowells talk only to Cabots, and the Cabots talk only to God.

“I bet I’m a better lay,” said Jack one night, over a bottle of Scotch in his office.

“No doubt that’s true,” I said.

“Do you think Lodge screws with his socks on?”

I said probably, yes, though I can’t, for the life of me,

recall a time when I’ve screwed with my socks off. Who’s

noticing?

“I’m telling you now,” said Jack. “We’ll sweep the whole

goddamn state from Boston to Stockbridge.”

It’s funny, when he first got into politics, it seemed to me he was just biding his time. I figured he’d hold out until the next bright thing caught his eye. A motion-picture studio, like his dad, or a major-league franchise. Maybe he’d do

nothing at all—that’s what I would have done in his place.