Jackie and Me(61)

track her down in the newsroom the following afternoon.

“I’ll be expecting a little more deference from you,” he

said.

“Well, you’re in luck, I’ve been practicing my salaam.”

“You’ll have to show it to me.”

“I’ll be pleased to.”

“And how is your kowtow? Have you been practicing

that, too?”

“With the greatest relish.”

“If you could somehow combine the salaam and the

kowtow . . .”

“I’m not sure that’s even legal.”

He was too busy to say much more. On Thanksgiving

Day, she received a call not from Jack but from Jack’s father, who hoped that she was enjoying her holiday at Merrywood.



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217

“Family are so important, aren’t they?” he said before handing the phone to his wife, who encouraged Jackie to go easy on the wine. “It’s bad for the figure, dear.”

Jack himself never got on the line, an omission that puzzled her, and in the silence that now ensued from his end,

Jackie began to question the credo she’d carried out of Fall River. Perhaps he’d only kissed her because he didn’t know what else to do.

Resolution came from an unexpected quarter. That very

Sunday, Mrs. Auchincloss put down the morning paper and,

in a voice as silky as her omelet, said, “Isn’t it time we met this politico of yours? Oh, don’t look so surprised, darling, a mother always knows what her daughter is up to, and if she doesn’t, she asks the people who do. Now, let’s see, I’ve been looking at the calendar, and I think we have the second Saturday in December open if he’s available.”

To Jackie’s surprise, Jack said yes. He was greeted by

swags of Christmas holly and fir and pine on the banisters

and moldings, even an Auchincloss child in a Santa hat, yet the mood from the start was not festive but commercial.

Mrs. Auchincloss installed Jack at her right and kept the

wine flowing and the talk moving, repeating things as necessary for Hughdie and quizzing her guest as though he were just another young man on the rise. “Oh, that sounds fascinating, Mr. Kennedy. I can see you’ve given a lot of thought to the subject. Indochina, you say? What an interesting line of work you’ve stumbled into.”

“Mummy,” Jackie finally said. “He’s not Mr. Kennedy,

he’s Senator Kennedy.”

218





LOUIS BAYARD


“Already? I thought senators don’t get sworn in until

January.”

“That’s true,” Jack acknowledged.

“Oh, so I haven’t got it wrong. What a relief.”

“He’s still not a mister,” Jackie insisted.

“You’re absolutely right, darling, I should be calling him

Congressman. Or Senator-elect, how shall that be?”

And so it would be for the rest of lunch. Senator- elect, with a tiny lilt that suggested the people of Massachusetts might rise up any second and wrest the title back. Jack did not receive the favor of a postprandial stroll from his hostess, who brought the strict minimum of fuss to his leave-taking and waited no more than a second after his departure to announce in an enervated tone: “I thought he’d be someone to worry about. Now I see he’ll be some other mother’s

problem. He’ll be many other mothers’ problem.”

Jackie was more baffled than offended. The Senator-elect’s effect on women was not to be disputed—she had

seen it work on a revivalist scale. Why had it failed on

her mother? Over the course of just a few hours, Janet

Auchincloss had taken a leisurely circuit of the candidate, like a breeder surveying a yearling, and had reached the conclusion that he didn’t have it in him for long distances. It was one thing, surely, for Jackie to doubt her own place in Jack’s heart; it was another for someone to come to the same judgment independent of her. How quickly, it seemed, a prospect could come unraveled—as soon as someone pulled the thread. Maybe this was why she began calling me at home

more often. Often enough, anyway, that Mother began



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219

handing me the phone without a word, and Jackie would be

talking by the time I lifted the receiver to my ear.

“Tell me now. When your dad was courting your

mother . . .”

“You know I wasn’t there.”

“But there’s lore.”

“No, darling, we’re Wasps.”

“What I’m saying is there must have been some point

when your father . . . well, you know, laid claim to your mother.”

“Stop. Stop.” My head fell back against the wing chair.

“Oh, my God.”

“No, I mean some point when he declared himself, he said . . . sorry, what’s your mother’s name?”

“Romaine.”

“He’d say . . . really, it’s Romaine?”

“Like the lettuce.”

“He’d say, ‘By gum, Romaine, it’s . . . it’s . . . ’” She swallowed hard, but she was already sputtering, and so was I, and in the next few minutes, we came up with all the things my father might have said under the grip of amour. “Lettuce make lettuces, Romaine,” that line of wit. Thankfully, Mother by then was out of earshot, so I felt no particular irreverence, but I did grasp, at some deeply instinctual level, what Jackie was after. A way into the man’s heart. So I wasn’t surprised to hear her ask: