Jackie and Me(87)
“I could point you to a priest,” I suggested.
“No, I just wanted the Congressman to know. I don’t
know why I came,” she said, with a vehemence that surprised even her and left her standing palely in the foyer. “I won’t come again.”
So, in the end, I had only to stagger out of bed and
exchange a few words, and mission accomplished. Jack
waited a minute or two, then sauntered downstairs with his
hands in the front pockets of his bathrobe. “Christ,” he said,
“don’t you hate it when they become a bore?”
Well four years had since elapsed, and now, traveling
back to Baltimore, I wondered for the first time what had
become of that girl. I couldn’t imagine her hurling herself from the Fourteenth Street Bridge—the congressional staffers I knew in those days were terrestrial. Perhaps she’d found some nice Chamber of Commerce lobbyist and was already on her way to having four unthinkingly healthy children.
But as I thought back on her, sitting alone in that foyer,
I realized I’d never said a single reproachful word to Jack—I
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suppose for the very reason he was now suggesting. Friends
accept each other as is, with no returns. So why, I wondered, should Jackie have any different standing than that
girl whose name I never learned?
It was late when I got back home, but I still found myself
reaching for my phone with the full intention of calling her.
And here, another road not taken. What if I had called?
What if I had told her everything that was lying heavy on
my heart? Would she have listened? Would anything have
changed? Or would I simply have lost them both?
THIRTY-FOUR
I n the week leading up to the wedding, the only question that lingered in my mind was a selfish one: How,
in light of our quarrel, would Jack receive me when I got
there? Mr. Kennedy had dictated a letter to the groomsmen,
asking us to arrive in Newport four days in advance and
make a real saturnalia of it, but for work reasons, I couldn’t get there until Saturday, which meant I got to miss the ushers’
dinner and an awful lot of touch football games on Bailey’s Beach. None of this was a hardship. No, the big challenge was stumbling into the rehearsal dinner, where Jack, at first sight of me, broke out into that palomino grin.
“You old bastard,” he said.
And with that I knew all was well. I was as welcome as
I’d ever been.
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As for the wedding itself . . . well, I know I gave a toast or two, but I can’t for the life of me recall what I said, nor what anyone else said. The words vanished right into whichever champagne flute they emerged from. When I want to really
remember that particular event, I have to consult my photo
album. That’s where I find the crowds gathered from earliest morning, straining against police cordons for the most
evanescent glimpses of bride and bridegroom. I see Jackie’s gown, the ivory silk taffeta off-the-shoulder number with the fitted bodice that she hated and the fifty yards of faille flounces she also hated. I see Bobby, the best man, and Lee Bouvier Canfield, the matron of honor, and Archbishop Cushing, twinkly and hawk-nosed as a Donegal priest.
I see, from a myriad of angles, some portion of the eight
hundred church guests. Family, friends, governors, members
of Congress, Newport summer-colony veterans, all cramming into the canyonlike, incense-clouded confines of St.
Mary’s Church. I see the annunciatory stripes of sun piercing the Austrian stained glass just as the bride and groom
kneel at the altar—a Hollywood effect that you could have
sworn Mr. Kennedy paid for, like the four-foot-tall, five-tier wedding cake from Plourde’s Bakery.
I see the reception guests at Hammersmith Farm, sitting
under canopies and parasols and gazing off, between swigs
of champagne, at a distant arrangement of Auchincloss
cows so platonic it could have been painted by Constable or Poussin. On the menu were creamed chicken and pineapple salad in a pineapple half shell and ice scream sculpted like roses. When the whole event drew to a close, the guests flung rice and rose-petal confetti at the newly married couple as 310
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they piled into the convertible that would take them to the private plane that would take them to Acapulco.
I know it’s a cliché to speak of a bride’s radiance as she
slips into the waiting car and rolls up the window and disappears into the sunset. But when I stare at those old photographs, what I’m most struck by is that Jackie has been
in the public eye for a good eight hours and has dragged
that infernally heavy dress halfway across Rhode Island
and has shaken hands with thousands of well wishers. She
might have been excused for looking a little done in, yet
she’s as fresh as a sunset, and her face is the same unposed, unguarded, undissimulated canvas that stared out from that Life cover. I ache a little, looking at that Jackie, pondering the survivability of hope. The girl who gets into that car still believes she is a princess.
Well, that’s silly, of course. Nobody is really a princess; no wedding is really an idyll. Isn’t that why we go to them in the first place? To see if the best man throws up in the baptismal font or the maiden aunt gets handsy with