Jackie and Me(89)

LOUIS BAYARD


farewell. Even six-year-old Jamie Auchincloss, in his short black velvet trousers—with every arc of his lace jabot and cuffs, he was showing me the door.

So perhaps it was to forestall that leave-taking that I

drank more than my usual amount. Lunged at every champagne tray, tapped my wineglass at every passing waiter.

Even Eunice was moved to say, “Easy there, big guy.” I had

the sense of wanting to erase myself before anybody else

could, but as the hours wore on, I remained stubbornly

there, and because I was, in fact, growing less and less competent, I couldn’t defend myself from the truly proximate perils like—well, like Ethel’s brother, George Skakel Junior, who showed up as jowly and belligerent as ever and who tugged on the sleeve of my morning coat whenever I wandered too close.

“Hey, Lem. I thought you’d be in the bridal party.”

“Ha.”

“Lem, do you remember when I kicked you in the can?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Wasn’t that a freakin’ riot when I kicked you in the

can?”

I paid him no more mind than you would a midge. Indeed,

I had ceased to think of him at all until, traveling back from the gents to my table, I felt my legs give way before me. I went down hard and lay there, all one hundred and ninety-three pounds, in the late-summer grass of Hammersmith, drawing up the chlorophyll of each blade. From the square of sky just above me came the Chicago bray of George Skakel.

“Gotcha!”



JACKIE & ME

315

I rolled over. My glasses had fallen off, and between

me and the sky there lay interposed a ring of bleary faces, Kennedy faces, laughing with such alarming synchronicity that I had to assume they were all puppets. Puppet George was the most convulsed, but Puppet Ethel wasn’t too far

behind, and there were Puppet Pat and Puppet Jean, too,

and even little Puppet Jamie Auchincloss, in his page’s

costume, flapping his puppet mouth. Something there is, I

guess, about a big fella toppled in the grass that strikes at the funny bone, but as I stared up into their half-human orifices, I thought: My God, how they hate me. Every last one of them, down to the cellar of his soul.

Somebody must have helped me to my feet. Somebody

must have, I don’t know, tried to brush the grass stains

from my coat or asked if I was all right. It’s possible. But the message I took away was bare as could be: Your hour is nigh. And rather than resign myself, I decided at some barely articulated level that the solution was to keep moving. They couldn’t expel me if they couldn’t catch me, so I staggered from table to table, pausing only to wave at the faces I recognized (before they could recognize me). How grateful was I for the protective cover of Meyer Davis and his orchestra, the fortress of big-band sound they erected between me and the rest of the party. I couldn’t exactly hide myself behind the pavilion columns, but I could at least anchor myself to one of them. The introductory chords rang out, and onto the dance floor came Jackie, her train gathered into a bustle, and, dragging behind, Jack, his discomfiture more attractive for being only slightly concealed. They danced, I remember, 316





LOUIS BAYARD


to “I Married an Angel,” and I was sufficiently lulled that I could even croon the words to myself.

Jackie, of course, had come up through the exacting

dance school of cotillions, and Jack (though he would never have confessed this) had long ago taken lessons at Arthur Murray, so neither of them was exactly a slouch, but of

course, their pictorial effect was what carried. It was as if the two best-looking people in the room had, against all odds, found each other and were preparing to go off and

create a new human race. You would have had to be an intimate to know that Jack’s spine had been imploding from the

moment he walked into St. Mary’s and that Jackie was still

seething about her father and that two people who scarcely

knew each other were being forever yoked, with who knew

what calamities to come. All that mattered was the tempo,

which was medium-slow.

From there the band segued into another Rodgers and

Hart tune, “I’ll Tell the Man in the Street.” Jack, with grim resolve, pivoted toward Mrs. Auchincloss, and Jackie whirled in the direction of Ambassador Kennedy, who danced, it must be said, more suavely than his son and at a closer proximity. When the song was done, though, he rested his hands in a paternal way on her shoulders and, with a smile nearly as wide as the tent, said, “Welcome to the family.”

I was close enough to hear. Close enough, too, to see how

Jackie actually paled before those words. I have to think, in that moment, it was all coming together for her. This was her family, her destiny, and whatever alternative paths she might once have entertained were now officially sealed off. As if

JACKIE & ME

317

in acknowledgement of that, she nodded—once or twice, at

nobody in particular—then began traveling in a dazed and

stately procession toward the back of the tent.

Escaping.

That was the first thought that crossed my mind, perhaps

because her face was the exact external correlative of how