The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [116]
At the same time Jack looked up from his cynical disregard for the female sex and conferred on Inga a passion that was as much emotional as physical. If love is emotional idealism, Jack bestowed that on her, in deed if not in word. She constantly showered her lover with verbal roses: “Honey,” “Darling,” “Honeysuckle,” “Honey Child Wilder.” She called him all these names and more. She proclaimed to Jack, “I love you.” He said nothing in return but sidled silently away from such professions. He may not have been demonstrative, but he told Inga that he had talked to the Church, presumably about the possibility of marrying a twice-divorced woman.
For all the hours that the FBI recorded their conversations over the telephone or in hotel rooms, not once did Jack mention Rosemary and her terrible fate. He did not talk of his own physical pain and how he hid that from the world. He did not explore the complicated relationships with his father, mother, or Joe Jr. This was the deepest love affair of Jack’s twenty-four years, but even in bed with Inga in their most intimate moments, he kept a distance from her, harboring his deep concerns like keys to an inner life that no one would ever see.
As tightly as Jack guarded his own psyche, he was astute about human beings and their motivations. He may well have sensed that within the layers of Inga’s complexity lay ample room for carnal duplicities. During the first weekend in February that she took the train down to Charleston, the FBI reported that she and Jack “engag[ed] in sexual intercourse on numerous occasions.” When she returned to Washington, she invited Nils, her former lover, to Washington; he would come only if she would “go to bed with him.” Inga told him that though she didn’t “want to sleep with a dozen men at one time,” she would “be with him.”
When Inga talked about her fear that she might be pregnant and her desire to get an immediate annulment, Jack remained silent, the loudest possible message. Jack’s father called and talked to his son about the affair. Inga blamed Jack’s father for injecting himself into their pure, perfect love.
She wrote him later: “If I were but 18 summers, I would fight like a tigress for her young, in order to get you and keep you.” She was not only four years older and twice married, but she was carrying on affairs with two different men. Joe was right in prophesying disaster if Jack did not back away from Inga. Whatever he said to his son, whether it was the logic of his words, the sheer emotional brutality of his revelations, or the strength of his threats, it was enough for Jack.
Jack obtained permission to fly to Washington on February 28; there he spent one last night with Inga and told her what he felt he had to tell her. “I may as well admit that since that famous Sunday evening I have been totally dead inside,” she wrote him afterward. She went out to Reno to obtain a divorce, returning afterward to Washington.
Jack’s heart had led him into an emotional jungle where he had never ventured before. Inga may have betrayed him, but Jack’s heart had been a betrayer as well, leading him into this dangerous, uncertain world. He had fought his way out again, and he stood now in a world of clarity and distance. In her pain and emptiness, Inga admonished her lover: “If you feel anything beautiful in your life—I am not talking about me—then don’t hesitate to say so, don’t hesitate to make the little bird sing.”
However much Jack mourned his loss, that suffering was probably nothing compared to his physical agony. He was racked with pain in his spine. His stomach was knotted