Jackie and Me(30)

what the event’s hostess, Mrs. Gladstone Williams, called

a “checkup from the neck up.” For a good half hour, an

Elizabeth Arden clinician spoke of the benefits to the mature complexion of foundation, rouge and powder, even as she piped home the message that a happy and contented wife

was by her essence beautiful. The afternoon’s high point

came when a stylist applied something called Italian Duet

lipstick (confusingly, a single column) to the pliant mouth of a cosmetics model, who sat so still beneath her smock I felt I was in an operating theater, and I was startled to see passing signs of sentience: a blinking eye, a twitching finger.

Jackie sat to my right, taking methodical notes in a steno

pad. I can see now this was her way of keeping in touch

with her vocation, but at the time, I’m afraid, I was just

wondering how to break it to Jack that this girl of his cared deeply about the merits of Love That Red versus Bachelor’s Carnation. I must have checked my watch four or five times

before Mrs. Gladstone Williams, smiling like an expensive

Persian cat, strolled back to the front of the room.

“Ladies and gentlemen, what a stimulating afternoon it’s

been! And what a treat we have in store for you. Won’t you

please welcome our special guest chanteuse?”

Well, this was Washington in 1952, so the young woman

who came sailing out from the wings in a velvet off-the-shoulder gown, the ash-blonde who had stuck a gardenia

in her hair and was beaming like a Con Ed plant, required

no introduction. Miss Margaret Truman. Who, in those

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LOUIS BAYARD


days, carried a certain whiff of danger, entirely owing to

her father, who had once threatened to castrate a critic for panning her concert. It seemed wholly possible that a White House minion was even now scanning the room, taking down every grimace, so I was steeling myself but good when

the accompanist rolled out the opening chords of “Believe

Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms.”

In the interests of charity, I should say she wasn’t as bad as her press clippings suggested. A smallish but clear soprano, reaching for the melody line and holding on, as if it were a pony’s mane. What impressed me most was the unaffected joy she took in performing, and it made me a little sad that, after playing venues like Constitution Hall, Miss Margaret Truman should now be pouring her effulgence on a blue—

hair salvation show. Now, I can’t say exactly when that went from being sad to funny, but somewhere in the middle of the second verse, I leaned into Jackie and muttered: “Where’s she singing tomorrow? A nail salon?”

Well, as anybody will tell you, I can’t really do anything

under my breath. I heard a hiss like wet logs as the two

august ladies in front of me angled their heads toward me.

To my right, Jackie gave her head a rough shake and slipped away.

I sat for a moment—pinned, you might say, by Jack’s

admonition. Just don’t embarrass me. In the next second, I was stumbling after her, tripping on folding chairs and doing passing violence to a straw hat and feeling the entire ill will of the Truman administration piling upon me as I left the Blue Room behind. I swung my head toward each end of

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the hallway and found her, at last, crouched by an Art Deco cigarette urn, her shoulders shaking. I was already composing my apologies, so you’ll have to imagine my surprise when she lifted her face to mine and, after a quick survey of the hallway, burst into the purest form of laughter. Not her usual coo but something richer and freer.

“Oh, my God, Lem. Oh, dear God. I was thinking the

same thing. And the—” The next wave of laughter caught her

with such force I thought she might topple. “The gardenia!”

FOURTEEN

I wish I could say we were brought together by something higher-minded than church giggles, but what’s

more adhesive? On one of our Sunday afternoons, we went

to see a rotten Loretta Young picture called Paula. We sat in the back row of the Ambassador Theatre, which was empty as only a 1,700-seat house could be, and started laughing

from the moment Loretta Young clocked some kid with her

car. It was funny, you see, because the triangular pendant

she was wearing in that instant had such a rageful key light fixed on it you’d have thought she was a locomotive comin’

round the bend. Well, in the picture, Loretta drives on, but she gets to feeling guilty, and when she learns the kid can’t speak anymore, she invites him into her home and gives him

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speech therapy and the love he’s never had, and you know

it’s just a matter of time before he realizes she’s the one that clocked him, but how will he figure it out? Jackie was betting on straight-up confession. Me, I had my money on that radioactive pendant, and sure enough, the boy sees it, and

it’s the one thing he remembers from that terrible night, and I gave a shout of triumph that echoed all the way out to Eighteenth Street, and Jackie was laughing all the harder

because she believed that Loretta Young’s wig, under the

stress of the moment, had skewed a half-inch west, and I