The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [456]
“What’s the helicopter coming in for, McDuff?” Kennedy asked Kilduff, his deputy press secretary, calling him by the nickname he usually employed. It was a Saturday morning in October and Jackie was still away.
“It’s for the news hens,” Kilduff said, using the president’s preferred term for the women reporters who covered Jackie and the East Wing. “They’re going to see Atoka.”
“Well, you go call that thing off, McDuff,” Kennedy said, not wanting the reporters to visit the first family’s new weekend home. “That place is going to be just for Jackie and me.”
“Me go out there and tell them it’s off at this point?” Kilduff asked unbelievingly.
“Better you than me, McDuff,” the president laughed, pointing his press aide toward his duty.
“To me, it was very meaningful,” Kilduff reflected years later. “It sealed everything that I had observed since Patrick Bouvier died. They were closer now than any time in their marriage.”
The president and first lady had an emotional bond that they had not had before, but even so, Jackie chose to be away from her husband for several weeks. While the couple was physically apart, they both continued to display the aspects of their personalities that had been most detrimental to their marriage. This was a pleasure-loving, luxuriantly indulgent Jackie dancing her way through the high spots of Europe. She was unwilling to temper her behavior, to consider the impact on her position as the nation’s first lady, first wife, and first mother. As for her husband, the president used her time away as he always did, by bringing in other women. Whenever Jackie left town, he was like an innkeeper putting out a sign that the White House had vacancies.
At the same time Kennedy spent more time with Caroline and John Jr. The president had never had his father’s attitude toward his own children, though not his grandchildren, that little sons and daughters were largely decorative objects who only became interesting when they were old enough to think, reflect, and talk in rounded sentences. As much as the president saw the political advantage of having children in the White House, he also adored moments such as when his namesake walked with him to the Oval Office each morning. That had always been a pleasant diversion, but since Patrick’s death there was an intensity to Kennedy’s moments with his children. This had become time when he blocked off the world.
“I’m having the best time of my life,” Kennedy told Kay Halle, a family friend, when she came to visit. As he talked, looking at his two children, John Jr. rushed forward. “I’m a great big bear,” he said. “I want something to eat.” Halle pretended to feed the child, but the president intervened. “I’m a great big bear,” he said his voice charged with false menace, “and I’m gonna eat you up in one bite.” Little John Jr. replied in a cascade of laughter.
When Jackie was away, she wrote her husband of ten years a seven-page, handwritten letter that was an exquisite rendering of her complex feelings for him. Even her most perfunctory thank-you note always had some graceful, unique phrase. In these pages all of her exquisitely nuanced sensibilities came together. There was both an emotional intimacy and a near formality, as if she were reaching something within herself and in her husband that neither of them had touched but that she knew she must touch now. “I loved you from the first day I saw you and if I hadn’t married you my life would have been tragic because the definition of tragedy is a waste,” she wrote. “But ten years later I love you so much more.” She wanted her husband to know how much she cherished their love. “I am just sorry for Caroline—all I will tell her to put into and expect from marriage—but if she doesn’t marry someone like you what good will it do her.”
Surely there are few things in life as unknowable and mysterious as the intimate truths of a marriage. She loved her husband, and Jackie’s letter was like a rare orchid, a flower of beauty and subtlety, but a flower that needed warmth and light and