by Adam Braver
On November 29, 1963, George Harris, chief judge of the San Francisco District Court, will write President Johnson on behalf of his court to suggest not only that Jackie continue her role in preserving and refurbishing the White House but also that she be given official status. He suggests that the recognition might help assuage the sorrow of this “symbol of American womanhood at its best.” President Johnson responds by saying that he will do everything he can to “accord suitable recognition to this great lady.”
Mrs. D. Jean Mills will write President Johnson a handwritten letter from Middletown, Connecticut, urging a “special medal” for Mrs. Kennedy.
Based on Jackie’s “high diplomatic skills, linguistic proficiency, good Catholicism . . . appreciation of art and culture, both past and contemporary,” Betty Horne, assistant professor of Spanish at Morris Brown College, will suggest that President Johnson make Jackie his ambassador to Mexico.
When Jackie moves from the White House, two navy stewards will be assigned to help her transition into private life. Because it appears as though it will be an ongoing task, writes Captain Tazewell Shepard in a January memo to the attorney general, her situation becomes unique, not the normal one “to which the restrictions on military personnel performing a job outside of military service were meant to apply.” As naval aide to the president, Shepard, who had been in Dallas, believes that Jackie should still be awarded the stewards, but is concerned for the president’s political reputation. “As long as it appears to be an act of moral consideration on the part of the president, it is not likely to become a political issue,” he’ll write to the attorney general. “However, after what might be considered a reasonable period, it will probably be considered fair political game.” He’ll suggest some ways to ensure that Jackie can receive the navy stewards, including charging her, including it in the $50,000 appropriation, or assigning retired personnel. He’ll save his most radical solution for last—“to have the GAO classify Mrs. Kennedy as a ‘Government agency.’”
4. Moving Day (a story)
When Jackie arrives at her new but temporary residence in Georgetown, she’ll have been preceded by four days of moving trucks going in and out of the White House, mostly in the rain, dollies bumping across the cobblestones while the movers’ hands steadied their loads, looking almost regretful about their task. Most of the items have gone into storage until she finds a permanent home. But on this morning, boxes arrive at the brownstone known as the Harriman House, named for its owner, Undersecretary of State Averill Harriman. The load seems oddly appropriate, almost a reporter’s inventory of the Kennedy mystique. Boxes labeled with John’s toys, and children’s bicycles, and boxes of French wine, and hatboxes, and birdcages, and armloads of White House guidebooks.
It’s sunny out. It really should be raining, because that’s what the day deserves. And in a black limousine she’ll leave the White House with the children. Solemnly, and without expression, following a day of honors and medals, spending part of the morning at the Treasury Department building, watching Clint Hill get the Secret Service Medal for Exceptional Bravery. And maybe he did deserve it; who can say? He did react quickly, running up to the back of the limousine and taking her hand as they fell into the back, and if he hadn’t been saving her from the bullets, he surely saved her from flying off the back of the car as it sped away. Then back at the White House she will have said her goodbyes, looking far more comfortable with the staff than with the officials, posing for photographs with each usher in the West Hall, not quite smiling and gazing past the camera, but still withholding the devastation that must have made her wish she had flown off the back of the car.
And it’s not more than a ten-minute drive over to the Harriman House on N Street, even less if the driver can avoid the traffic at the intersection of Virginia and Twenty-fifth, but it’s a final drive, and the children are in the backseat along with Bobby and Ethel, and the windows are rolled all the way up, tinted, almost ensuring no one could ever find them in the car, and she slumps a little, keeping her head down, vulnerable and ready to scramble away at the slightest disturbance. None of them converse, just rub their hands against their legs, polite smiles when they catch each other’s eyes. And it’s kind of Bobby and Ethel to come along, though not really necessary, because the truth of it is that leaving the White House was easy—a lot easier than staying there. Already, just minutes past the gates, she can close her eyes and see it as a memory, no longer a reminder. At least in the memory she knows her place there.
About halfway to Georgetown, she brings up one of the letters she received. She’s not talking to anyone in particular, and her stare is placed between her in-laws, as though she might be surprised to find out she was talking out loud, that it wasn’t just thoughts. There are at least three hundred thousand letters stacked in piles in the East Wing. She’s barely looked at any, only the VIPs that her staff felt she should see in order to prepare responses. But every once in a while she opens one of the strays, mostly Mass cards or a specific memory of the president. And she doesn’t know if this particular letter stuck out because it was the most recent one she’d read, or because it had some value. It was sent from a woman in Dallas, Texas, who was on the street when the shots were fired, and now she can hardly go to Main Street anymore. Jackie tells them, “She just wanted me and the children to know that Dallas is mourning too . . . And she even included a picture taken of some of the flowers at the fatal spot.” Bobby and Ethel don’t reply, they just nod their heads. What’s eating at Jackie is this strange presumption of connection. She looks at her in-laws. “She sent me a picture of where my husband was shot. You don’t think that’s . . . ?” and she stops talking because she kind of feels like laughing right now, thinking about this. A picture of where her husband was shot to make her feel better?
As they pull up to the corner, there are photographers standing across the street. The cameras rattle off like typewriter keys as soon as she opens the door, and someone in the entourage says, For the love of. And Jackie gets out with the children in tow, with Bobby and Ethel behind them, and they walk up the steps, not really talking until they get to the top, where they confer briefly. It seems so private, despite the cameras snapping, and a little voyeuristic since they appear to have no awareness of anybody around them. There’s a boy on a bicycle, riding onehanded, eating an ice cream cone, and he passes in front of the camera, and someone yells at him to get the hell out of the way, while Jackie is shaking her head at Ethel, and then nodding to Bobby, and the two of them turn around and head toward the limousine with the engine still running, and the driver jumps out to get the doors, barely missing an oncoming car, which startles the crowd and the navy stewards, who collectively gasp, then sigh, while Jackie stands on the steps, looking down, holding her keys in her hand, ready to enter her new home with a frightened smile on her face.
A block away, it would just seem to be another black car in Georgetown dropping someone off at midday, the sun raining down over the street and its shoppers and students and businessmen rushing back late from lunch, and one might note how unusually sunny and warm it is for December, and then think to oneself that that means it may be an especially harsh January and February, that we always seem to pay the price for a pleasant day in winter.
5. The Phone Call: Part Two
Maybe the December 7 phone call with President Johnson just after she moves to the Harriman House will be the point when she absolutely knows she’s never going back?
LBJ: Your picture was gorgeous. Now you had that chin up and that chest out and you looked so pretty marching in the front page of the New York Daily News today, and I think they had the same picture in Washington. Little John-John and Caroline, they were wonderful, too. Have you seen the Daily News? The New York Daily News?
JACKIE: No, but I haven’t seen anything today except the Post because I just sort of collapsed, but they’re all downstairs.
LBJ: Well, you look at the New York Daily News. I’m looking at it now, a
nd I just came, sat at my desk, and started signing a lot of long things, and I decided I wanted to flirt with you a little bit.
JACKIE: How sweet! Will you sleep in the White House tonight?
LBJ: [laughs] I guess so. I’m paid to.
JACKIE: Oh! . . . You all three sleep in the same room, because it’s the worst time, your first night.
LBJ: Darling, you know what I said to the Congress—I’d give anything in the world if I wasn’t here today. [laughs]
JACKIE: Well, listen, oh, it’s going to be funny because the rooms are all so big. You’ll all get lost, but anyway . . .
LBJ: You going to come back and see me?
JACKIE: [chuckles]
LBJ: Hmm?
JACKIE: Someday I will.
LBJ: Someday?
JACKIE: But anyway, take a big sleeping pill.
LBJ: Aren’t you going to bring . . . You know what they do with me, they just keep my . . . They’re just like taking a hypo . . . They just stimulate me, and I just get every idea out of every head in my life comes back and I start thinking new things and new roads to conquer.
JACKIE: Yeah? Great.
LBJ: So I can’t. Sleeping pill won’t put me to sleep. It just wakes me up.
JACKIE: Oh.
LBJ: But if I know that you are going to come back to see me some morning when you are bringing your . . .
JACKIE: I will.
LBJ: . . . kid to school, and first time you do, please come and walk, and let me walk down to the seesaw with you like old times.
JACKIE: I will, Mr. President.
LBJ: Okay. Give Caroline and John-John a hug for me.
JACKIE: I will.
LBJ: Tell them I’d like to be their daddy!
6. Casals’s Note (a story)
A note from Pablo Casals’s cello floats away through the East Room on a fall evening in 1961. It’s the end of the Mendelssohn piano trio, a piece that might almost feel uplifting through its lilting rhythms were it not for the minor key. Although pianist Mieczyskaw Horszowksi and violinist Alexander Schneider both play the final triumphant note, it is Casals whose tone carries throughout the room, resting on a low D. He’s stopped bowing, and the piano has stopped vibrating, and the audience is holding its breath before the applause.
Casals’s note still hangs.
A rich vibrato, almost honey-toned. No longer aural. It’s sensual. Melting on the body, massaging the brain.
Nobody wants to clap. Let out a breath. They want to hold this as long as possible. They could die in it without knowing.
Once the applause begins, she’ll smile. Rise from her seat, her beaded silk gown touching the wood floors. Looking around this great room. At the gold curtains and recently marbleized mantels. With the portrait of Washington watching, his hand outstretched and welcoming. The beginning of the restoration. This odd period piece of a house and government center that she has resuscitated through culture and sophistication. As the applause continues to build, she’ll swear she sees Casals’s note dissipate along the ceiling, watching it undulate and disappear on its way toward the walls. And it will remind her of the impermanence of things. How even in this great moment, her heart will break a little. Looking at the master while he bows with his tuxedo tails flapping against his back. Glancing at Jack. Confirming the joy of her main guest, the governor of Puerto Rico. At only thirty-two, she understands the sadness of experiencing a great moment, knowing that it’s already passing even while it’s fully alive.
She watches the note slowly disappear into the wall, a last vibration haunting the beams and construction. And she imagines it will stay there forever, becoming part of the White House. Because inevitably someone else will move in and assume that she got it all wrong, or harbor grudges against Jack, or taste, and redecorate the whole building again. But they won’t be able to strip the White House of the soul she has built into it. They won’t be able to strip it of Casals’s last note.
7. The Phone Call: Part Three
In the first week of January 1964, Jackie and President Johnson will talk again by phone. His legs won’t be kicked up on the desk this time. He’ll be leaning forward on his elbow, resting his head against the receiver. His voice will be lower than normal, like he’s tired, but still managing the banter. In only two and a half months, it will be clear how disconnected she is from the goings-on of the White House. And though she’ll appreciate his efforts to make her feel as though she still has a place, throughout the conversation it will become obvious that she no longer has that connection. Already she knows she won’t last the year in Washington; in fact she can’t imagine ever wanting to be there again. The house in Virginia where she and Jack planned to retire will have to be sold. New York is the only place she’ll imagine being. Lost in the anonymity of its density.
All this knowledge will be revealing itself while she talks to President Johnson. But still she’ll engage with him. A construct of manners. The deaf nod. He’s recently given his first State of the Union address, and he complains of being tired. She’ll tell him to rest. Take a nap. Take one after lunch, she says. It changed Jack’s whole life. She tells him that Jack did it every day, just like Churchill. Even if he couldn’t sleep, Jack still stopped for the routine of the nap.
LBJ: I’ll start it the day you come down here to see me, and if you don’t, I’m going to come out there to see you.
JACKIE: Oh, Mr. President . . .
LBJ: And I will just have all those motorcycle cops around your house, and it will cause you all kinds of trouble, and. . .
JACKIE: I can’t come down there. I wanted to tell you. I’ve really gotten a hold of myself. You know, I would do anything for you. I’ll talk to you on the phone. I’m so scared I’ll start to cry again.
LBJ: Oh, you never cried, honey. I never saw anyone as brave as you.
JACKIE: But I . . . You know . . .
LBJ: Or as great.
JACKIE: I just can’t.
LBJ: You know how great we think you are?
JACKIE: Well, you know. I’ll talk to you. I’ll do anything I can. But don’t make me come down there again.
LBJ: Well, I’ve got to see you before long. I’ve got to see you.
GO TO SLEEP
HAUNTING THE LINCOLN ROOM: A STORY
IT’S EASY TO BELIEVE IN GHOSTS. Even believe you’d want to become one. How to live together and to die together has never really made sense.
Eternal reunions. Realizing the soul. Rewards for piety and sanctity. Maybe she’ll come to embrace at least one of those when she’s laid out on her deathbed. But, no, for now she still likes it here. And contrary to the obvious, she doesn’t blame the sins of this world for what has happened. Even with Patrick’s death. Platitudes about faith and calling mean nothing when you’re rushed off to an air force base hospital nearly six weeks before the due date, and they’re cutting open your belly, and you’re feeling the blood from your uterus trickle down your hips, and everybody in the room is quiet, even the baby isn’t crying, and for a moment it occurs to you that you might have died, yet you’re not looking down on the room from a white light like the books claim you will; and you hear the doctors talking, and they say they need to airlift the baby to Boston, so you roll your head a little to the side to catch a glimpse of the boy, and your first thought is: Do they make coffins that small?
God took one in the side that day. But it was the rifle in Dallas that finished him off. Lined him up perfectly in the scope this time.
White House history is filled with ghost stories. Spirits that bump and squeak, play with the lights, and slam the doors. A British soldier from the War of 1812 supposedly keeps residence, wandering the grounds where he died, navigating his way with a torch in hand. Mary Todd Lincoln learned words no lady should ever know when she encountered a bitterly muttering Andrew Jackson in the hallway. And there’s always a story about the Lincoln Room. Always a longtime staffer who has felt something while passing by the bedroom. Sometimes flitting. Sometimes gr
aceful. And as opposed to the mischievous ghosts who rattle their way throughout the second floor, darting in and out of the Queen’s Bedroom, the Lincoln ghost is reputed to be calm, almost welcoming. In his gray pinstripe suit and threebutton white spats. Legs crossed, staring straight ahead. But he will disappear on you. Curious and grateful for the company.