Jackie and Me(67)

crashes. And of all the Kennedy cousins, Bobby Junior and

Chris were then on the wilder end of the gradient. It’s why, I think, they liked to come and stay with me when they were in New York. They wanted at least one adult in their orbit

who would suspend judgment and say, in so many words:

Have your fun. Come back alive.

No, what troubled me about my last conversation with

Jackie was the implication that her children were to be kept safe from me.

238





LOUIS BAYARD


It’s true that I haven’t been averse to partaking of certain substances the boys brought home. You meet young men where they are, I’ve always maintained, or you don’t meet

them at all. If, from time to time, I’ve smoked a little weed, branched out to other, more adventurous things—I could ingest things far worse in a discotheque and throw it all up in the ten-minute cab ride home, whereas my experiments with cannabis, conducted in the true amateur spirit, have

expanded my understanding of the world in ways I could

never have suspected. In more open moments, I see the

scales actually sloughing from my skin. Bobby Junior once

told me I was the youngest old man he’d ever met, and I

believe him.

Well, that was the last time Jackie and I spoke directly,

though I still get a card every Christmas. I’m tempted to say I miss her, though I’m no longer sure what that means.

Perhaps it’s me I miss—the prelapsarian Lem, the good

time had by all. Was I having a good time? Without too much trouble, I can put hands on my invitation to the 1953

Pennsylvania inaugural ball—a ball I never attended. No

great loss, I’m sure, but why? Was I still thinking about that conversation with Jackie? I can report that, immediately after, she marched downstairs and fastened herself to Jack’s arm, whispered something for his ear alone. Over his face there stole the very nearly cerebral look he always made in response to an offer. He nodded, once, and followed Jackie back upstairs. To the room she and I had just vacated.

As for what happened at the ball, I assume they danced

together, drew the eyes of everybody who counted, landed



JACKIE & ME

239

in more than one column. But the only evidence I had to go

on the next morning was Jackie’s reportage, which, lacking

a byline, still rose in a pure way from the Times-Herald’s pages. Reading them over my coffee, I imagined her slipping away to the nearest pay phone and murmuring her notes to the rewrite man. “No, peau de soie. S-o-i-e. That’s right.

And Mrs. Nixon’s gown was peacock-blue t-u-l-l-e . . . and

brocade, with a deep turquoise bouffant skirt. Mrs. Herbert Brownell Junior was a vision in striking fuchsia satin, with a cluster of velvet petals . . . yes, petals . . . appliquéd to the skirt. A-p-p-l . . .” Down the list she would have gone— from Mrs. John Foster Dulles to Mrs. John Sheldon Doud

Eisenhower—and before running out of change, she’d have

pointed out that chiffon was popular this year and that the overall mood was pastel.

The next morning, I was taking my breakfast in Jack’s

wainscoted dining room, mopping up the last bit of

Margaret’s French toast, when Jack himself wandered in,

wearing an old Harvard sweatshirt, hair still bearing the

imprint of last night’s festivities. The first words out of his mouth were “Looks like I owe you one.”

I looked up at him.

“So much more than one,” I said. “I’ve been keeping a

running tally, and it’s one to the power of five or six.”

He reached for his grapefruit section. “Jackie says you

had the talk with her.”

“Well, yes.” I kept looking at him. “Did she say what the

talk was?”

“She said you made everything clearer.”

240





LOUIS BAYARD


“That’s the word she used.”

“It’s what we were aiming for, wasn’t it?”

“Mm-hm.”

With great precision, he loosened each grapefruit section

from its membrane. “I hope you didn’t have to get too clinical with her.”

“No, it was all clean. Aboveboard.”

“Well, whatever you said, she’s all in now. I don’t know

if I should thank you, exactly, but let the record show you’re not just an ugly brute, you’re a pal. I’ll even vouch for you with Saint Peter, though I don’t think you’ll make it there.”

In the days that followed, I was trailed by something unfa—

miliar: a sense that, in some almost Puritan kind of way, I had transgressed. Two or three times I found myself actually reaching toward a phone, in a rather urgent way, as if to alert somebody. But who? Jack was perfectly content with

the state of affairs; Jackie was as happy as I’d seen her. Why should I propose undoing all that? To what end? I could neither answer nor quite excuse myself clear.

Later that week, she called me at home. So late at night

that I was already in bed and Mother was fast asleep.

“Lem,” she said. “Can I buy you lunch this Sunday?”