Jackie and Me(8)

It could be I was wrong about you.

Well, Janet Auchincloss wouldn’t have known Cressida

if she’d tripped over her on the way to the open bar. She

knew only that Jackie, at the age when she was supposed to

be growing pliable, was stiffening. The harder the push, the less the give. Tell her that Mrs. Palmer of Greenwich had the most charming son, practically coining money at Morgan 26





LOUIS BAYARD


Stanley, and Jackie would twitch like one of Galvani’s frogs.

Tell her she should dance with every man as if he were Gary Cooper because Gary Cooper might actually be watching, she would transform herself into a Rand McNally atlas and

sketch for her mother the exact geographical route that Gary Cooper would have to take to bridge the distance between the Hollywood hills and Darien. God forbid you told her

that her left stocking seam was crooked or her right-hand

top coat button about to fall off. She’d turn on you and, in a Frigidaire voice, say: “If I had a job, you wouldn’t have to look at me all day.”

Job. No other word could so resemble a Molotov cocktail when tossed in Mrs. Auchincloss’s direction. Her first thought was that Jackie was bluffing. No girl could get a job without a Social Security number, could she? And what

well-raised girl had one? Yet, in the months that followed

Jackie’s graduation, job was the idea she increasingly fell back on—whether or not she was peeved, whether or not they’d argued.

I should probably say that Mrs. Auchincloss’s aversion

stemmed from not just class prejudice but bitter experience.

As a still-young divorcée, she’d been forced to work as a

Macy’s department-store model in order to pay for Jackie’s

riding lessons. Having to seek employment was bad enough,

but to be forced to wear Macy’s clothes in full view of the public—that, for Janet, was a shame as great as Dickens’s blacking factory, and the idea that her daughter, after all the sacrifices made on her behalf, should so blithely steer for that deadly shoal was more than Mrs. Auchincloss could

JACKIE & ME

27

bear. Night after night, she raged at Jackie’s ingratitude, her malice, until Hughdie, with a suppressed yawn, said: “Why don’t we just get her a job? Then she’ll see what a bore it is.”

Janet let the idea marinate for twenty-four hours, then

gave her cautious assent. Hughdie put in a private call to

Allen Dulles at the CIA; the old-boy network drew in upon

itself; the very next Sunday, over lunch, Mrs. Auchincloss

announced to the whole uneasily gathered family that Mr.

Dulles had found Jackie a position at the State Department.

“Doing what?” asked Jackie.

“Well, gee,” said Hughdie. “I guess they need clerks and

secretaries just as much as the next fellow. Even more so, I’d guess.”

“I mean, you have to start somewhere,” said Janet.

“But I can’t type,” said Jackie. “Or take shorthand.”

“I’m sure they need interpreters, too, darling. It’s just a matter of getting one’s foot in the door.”

“You’ll meet perfectly fine people,” offered Hughdie.

“Dulles says there’s a polyglot in every room.”

“And it’s just a twenty-minute drive to Foggy Bottom.

Why, it would be like going back to school, wouldn’t it?

Only with a little paycheck at the end of the week. You could burn it up at Garfinckel’s in two hours.”

“Why, the Reds will never know what hit ’em! Not that

anybody expects you to bring down Stalin.”

“Of course not. It’s just until, darling.”

Jackie needed a few moments to register the preposition.

“Until what?”

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LOUIS BAYARD


“Un til,” said her mother, with a touch more vehemence.

“I’m still not following.”

Janet stabbed lightly at her crown roast. “Really, must

you be infuriating on Sundays, too? I should have thought

you’d like a day off.”

“That’s all I have, Mummy, are days off.”

“Then why can’t I get one, too?”

Jackie sat silent for a time, frowning at a vase of hya—

cinths. Then, as if speaking to nobody in particular:

“Please tell Mr. Dulles that I greatly appreciate the offer, but I already have a job.”

FOUR

T he news produced the tiniest spasm in her mother’s

face, just below the left eye. Like the pennant that

starts flapping just before the monsoon.

Don’t look at me, Jackie wanted to say. It’s your fault.

Some months earlier, while sitting under a hair dryer and

thumbing through the pages of Vogue, Janet Auchincloss had come across a notice for the magazine’s annual Prix de Paris contest. The winner would work as a junior editor for six months in New York, then spend the next six months covering the Paris shows. If she proved her mettle, she would then win a permanent spot on the masthead. There was no more prestigious entry point into American fashion journalism, but when Janet tore out the notice and handed it