The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [448]
“I think all of us have been tremendously impressed and are cognizant of the many members of your squadron. I think all the brothers met a number of them from the country certainly in the campaigns before, certainly in the different states they have always come up and said hello and I have always been delighted to meet with them and hear their stories,” Teddy said. “I just in the last few weeks have received some notes from some of the sons wanting to come by. Even though I’m the one member of the family who did not serve in the last war we feel tremendous respect and a closeness.”
Teddy was the most distant from Joe Jr. in age, intimacy, knowledge, and experience. He nonetheless saw himself as the proud bearer of a noble legacy and was willing more than his brothers to meet with anyone who had touched Joe Jr.’s life, to invite their children into his office, send them autographed photos, and listen to their reminiscences.
When Teddy finally finished, the veterans returned to their wartime tales, and the three brothers celebrated their father’s birthday.
30
The Adrenaline of Action
Kennedy loved convivial gatherings whose only purpose was the amusement of those fortunate enough, witty enough, or pretty enough to be invited. He and Jackie held a number of dances at the White House. These were elegant soirees, the room festooned with lovely women. There was an ample charge of sexual electricity in the air, and the happy anticipation that something especially memorable would happen, or some unseemly gossip or perhaps a presidential witticism would be uttered, to be repeated across Georgetown the next morning.
At the first dance of the winter of 1962-63, among the ladies in their long, elaborate formal dresses was one guest who was wearing a gossamer, chiffon summer gown. It was clothing that would have seemed out of place on almost anyone else, but one looked at Mary Meyer and thought, yes, it was summer. Meyer was an abstract artist, and she brought her style to whatever she wore, whether it was a vintage dress that she had picked up for five dollars in a secondhand store or a designer gown that she had purchased in Paris. Her daring only began with her clothes. She had an impish, taunting manner unlike anyone else in the room. Once, at Hickory Hill, she had trumped even Bobby and Ethel’s frenetic sense of fun by suggesting that everyone strip naked and plunge into the pool.
For a year Meyer had been seeing the president, always making her private visits when Jackie was away. “I think Jack was in love with Mary Meyer,” reflected Ben Bradlee, who was there that winter evening. “She was a very interesting woman, but she was trouble. With one less chromosome, she would have been a perfect person for Jack to marry.” Bradlee spoke with a certain authority, since until Mary’s divorce from Cord Meyer, a top CIA official, she had been the Newsweek editor’s sister-in-law.
Kennedy had once preferred elegant, educated, fashionable, upper-class women. Since he had begun his pursuit of presidential power, he had often settled for a parade of women who lacked all these attributes. Meyer was different, harking back to the women he had once pursued, women sweetly perfumed with all the allure of money and class. Yet Meyer represented something exotic too, the new bohemians of the sixties. She smoked marijuana and led him on a journey away from the emotional certitude in which he lived.
The president was host of the evening, seeing everything, and remembering most of it. “Blair, get Teddy to do the twist,” Kennedy directed his old college friend. The junior senator made his entrance to social Washington not in some formal procession but gyrating his hips.
While the dancing proceeded to the sounds of Lester Lanin’s orchestra,