Jackie and Me(63)

JACKIE & ME

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“The way Dad’s free. I mean, she’s so damned young,

Lem. A girl like that’s bound to bring expectations. Romeo

and Juliet—oh, Christ, give me another example . . . ”

“Darby and Joan.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. The point is

she’ll be under the spell of all these—lady authors who’ve

never in their lives gotten laid and want to make sure nobody does.”

“If you’re talking about fidelity,” I said, “you should

remember that Jackie’s father wasn’t much for that either.”

“All the more reason she’ll want me to be. Right Old Dad’s wrongs, rewrite the whole story, score it with angels’

choirs. Oh, don’t look like that. I’ve seen it happen.”

“You can’t really know what she wants unless you come

out and ask her.”

“Do you honestly think it’s something a guy just can bring

up? Say, Jackie. I may be cold-blooded, but I’m not French.”

He smiled then, a little shamefacedly, and advanced toward

me. “What I require is an intermediary.”

“Oh,” I said. “Oh, no.”

He told me then it would be nothing less than an act of

Christian charity on my part to let her know how things

stood, how they would stand, so that she could make the most informed possible decision about her own future.

“That’s not what it sounds like,” I remonstrated. “It

sounds like you want me to end your engagement for you

before you’ve even gotten engaged.”

“That depends on how she reacts. If it’s more than what

she’s signed up for, why, then she’s better off bolting, isn’t she?”

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LOUIS BAYARD


“What if she doesn’t?”

“Then I’m in real trouble. The thing is, LeMoyne, I like

her. I almost wish she didn’t fit the bill as well as she does. I wish she weren’t so damned smart, I wish she hadn’t weathered my family so well. I wish I didn’t want to get more acquainted with her neck, I wish I didn’t want to sit and

smell her for a whole afternoon.”

“Chateau Krigler Twelve.”

“That’s not the smell I’m talking about. What I’m getting at, since you’re too dense to follow, is I like her too much to do this to her without her knowing. And since you like her, too, I figure we can make common cause around Our Miss Bouvier. What do you say?” With just the tiniest cocking of his head, he added, “You’d be the best egg ever.”

TWENTY-SIX

T he plan was not long in forming. Jack would invite

Jackie to the inaugural ball and encourage her to

make a full evening of it by coming to the cocktail party he was throwing beforehand. I would be invited to the same party and would, at some point over highballs, draw Jackie

aside for a conference. With so many guests about, she’d be unlikely to make a scene, and I could, as needed, sit with her or drive her home.

“Five to one says she’s out,” said Jack.

Of course, once Jackie recovered from the surprise of

Jack asking her, she accepted the invitation in a rush of syllables, and only after she hung up did she remember that the Times-Herald had assigned her to cover the same ball for 226





LOUIS BAYARD


the next morning’s paper. It became, then, a matter of

reframing the task at hand. Society reporters were technically guests at the events they covered, nibbling on the hand that fed them. Wasn’t a VIP pass better than slipping somebody a fiver just to get in the door?

“Imagine the eavesdropping a girl can do, Lem, when she

looks like just another fool at the bacchanal. I won’t even need to pull out a notebook, I’ll just jot it all on cocktail napkins.”

It’s telling, I reckon, that she devoted less time to planning her dress than to scouting who would be there. Every

night, she scoured the congressional photo directory, attaching names to faces. In those days, that was harder work than you might credit because Republicans and Democrats

looked even more alike than they do in 1981. The gentleman from South Carolina was, in any detail that mattered,

the gentleman from North Dakota. You could imagine them

reaching for each other’s briefcases, blundering into each

other’s houses, kissing the nearest wife. But Jackie was terrified at the idea of calling some senator by the wrong name or mistaking his wife for his mother. “Newport’s one thing,”

she said. “I’ve known them all from birth. Washington’s a

whole other racket.”

I reminded her then of the upside to being in such a public gathering. For the space of one evening, in the eyes of officialdom, she would be marked indisputably as Jack’s.

“You’re right,” she said. “He can’t palm me off as a ste—

nographer. He has to take me by the arm, doesn’t he?”

“And dance with you in plain view. Next day, you’ll