T
he news was bad, very bad.
Martin Luther King Jr. had been killed, shot while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.
It was tragic and alarming.
Over and over again the TV was repeating excerpts from his Washington “I have a dream” speech. Guy saw people gathering around the windows of electrical shops to look at the screens.
The three TV network stations were putting out little else. The mood in the street was dour and nasty. Another good man’s life snuffed out by an assassin’s bullet. It didn’t take a lot of imagination to see that Jackie would be very upset. Guy would have understood if she had called this evening off.
It would have been the second time she had done so; he would have been disappointed and Harry Blackstone’s request for some answers to a short list of vague questions would have had to wait, but no call came.
As he left the sidewalk to cut across Central Park he began to wish that she had canceled.
Up until now these tête-à-têtes in her apartment had always been
highly successful. Underpinned with a soupçon of flirtatiousness, the highly attractive pair would gossip and giggle well into the night. He knew that she was a bad sleeper and since he was someone who had been trained to get by with only five hours’ rest, their evenings frequently spilled into the early hours. He was fascinated by her, a woman that he felt had never been and never would be understood by the outside world. Her gratitude to him for finding some worthwhile work with which to occupy herself had deepened their friendship. Although they probably only saw each other five or six times a year, combined with the occasional letters they exchanged via the agency, the relationship had developed into an important one for them both.
In their letters and face-to-face they would analyze mutual contacts, discuss their children, the war, American diplomatic initiatives, and places they knew around the world.
He was sure that there was no way this evening was likely to continue that tradition.
Added to the terrible news about the slaying of Martin Luther King was Guy’s own unusually low mood. He had discovered that he could handle the day-to-day dramas of the Cold War, the depressing tasks of a secret life dealing with people who hated everything he stood for, the sudden deaths of old colleagues in the field. But when it came to his son, Guy realized how vulnerable he was.
Ever since he had left his wife, Marie-Helene, and Lucas in the new Florida house, the bells and whistles in his brain that attended all his planning, his dreaming, had slipped into a downturn, minuscule but determinative. To the external viewer Guy appeared exactly the same. He knew that he wasn’t.
Strange that the first place he would have to test himself, assure himself that the sheen and glow of the persona that everyone expected was not dented, would be with Jackie.
His personal situation had upset him so much that he felt he no longer retained that automatic belief he had always had in everything he was doing. He had begun to question how effective his job
was. From the moment he heard about the murder of Martin Luther King Jr., he started to wonder what good it was attempting to guard America from threats from abroad when the country was still capable of such uncivilized behavior at home.
Once again, it just took one man. One gun-toting loner. One madman.
Guy felt that it was a bad time to leave.
This was his last night in New York. Tomorrow he would go back to the office in Virginia, attend two conferences, dine with his mentor, Harry Blackstone, then head back to Europe, Moscow, and his job.
He had been imagining this evening for days. For a start he had been hoping that he could, for the first time, utilize Jackie’s ability to understand children for his own personal reasons.
Perhaps she would have some inspirational ideas about how he could keep close to his ten-year-old, whom he would not see until the summer, and, as importantly, what he could do to make sure that his only child would not forget him.
Within the confines of a civilized evening at 1040 he had been hoping to receive some help.
After her move to New York a traditional pattern had been established for these occasions. They began with a drink while Jackie, who was an inveterate reader, unearthed some articles, usually related to someone they both knew, out of a foreign magazine, often
Paris Match
or sometimes the British
Spectator,
for discussion. Occasionally his gift of Beluga caviar would be presented with the usual accompaniments, onions, hard-boiled egg yolk, capers plus some vodka shots around it.
The following meal, taken at a small circular table in the dining room with its floor-length curtains in deep red and gold, would be simple. Favorites were soft-shell crabs with little red-skinned potatoes or medallions of veal with chive sauce and fresh peas.
The apartment reflected a cosmopolitan look of French and English eighteenth-century antiques enmeshed with long fringed rugs. The vintage appearance of the fine bone china in different colors,
pink for one course, palest green for the next, all added further luster. Good silverware, not just cutlery but sauceboats, saltcellars, and oval platters, were utilized. Fresh flowers—sweet peas, hyacinths, anemones, and tulips—as well as dried ones—blowsy bunches of hydrangeas—filled vases and baskets. Candles, especially rectangular ones from Cape Cod, were everywhere. Wherever there was a place to curl up and read, on a small love seat by a window, or a chintzy upholstered settle in the corner, there would be attractively arranged piles of books flanked by coffee tables with low lamps.
Depending on the weather, the fire was lit to pitch an even golden glow on the paintings and small sculptures, some in terra-cotta, some in bronze. For Jackie, fashion was for clothes. Houses were to be reassuringly the same, sanctuaries of grace. When fabrics wore out or antiques were damaged they were repaired or replaced with the same.
As he walked across an eerily empty Fifth Avenue he knew that the nation’s mood was fear and anger. This concurred with the atmosphere at 1040.
Jackie was incredibly upset. As he entered, he heard her talking in the library to her brother-in-law Bobby. Their telephone conversation centered on planning when she would go to Ebenezer to see Mrs. King.
“I have just finished writing to her. I wrote, ‘When will our nation learn that to live by the sword is to perish by the sword.’ Bobby, you should listen to that, this country has gone mad.”
He could hear the conversation swiftly winding down.
In a minute she was by his side; there was a warmer hug between them than normal.
Jackie was in straight black trousers and a charcoal gray turtleneck sweater. With her pearl and jet necklace, pearl stud earrings, and Italian shoes, she could be the Jackie of the White House, the most photographed woman in the world. She looked thinner but just as stunning. Her bouffant hair was immaculate, unlike the desk in the corner. She looked over toward it.
“Coretta King has four children, Guy. The eldest is just twelve,
the little one is only five. What sort of country is this that any madman, any fool with a gun, can kill someone just like that? Why do we let this happen?
“He was a good man trying to make America a better, more equal place.
“Was anyone looking after him or watching over him? No, don’t tell me—if it’s the Secret Service I’ll become even more petrified. You know I feel so much safer when we are abroad.”
As soon as she stubbed one cigarette out, she lit another.
“You know I always stood up for the Reverend with Jack. I really thought he was working in the right way to sort out civil rights. Poor Coretta. Four fatherless children! What is it about America?”
As they talked on she started pacing.
She was getting into a state…“How do we get a drink around here?” she said, suddenly realizing that no one had come in to offer them one. Her cook arrived with a tray of bottles and cocktail biscuits. After she filled their glasses Jackie took hers over to one of the tall windows.
“There will be riots…we’re lucky they don’t burn Central Park down. I’m telling you now, and I know I’ve told you before, I’m getting out. I’m really worried. No one in the public eye is safe. I wish, oh, how I wish that Bobby wasn’t running for president. Of course he ignores me. Talks about Jack, about his duty, and ignores the risk and the danger. The whole country seems to walk around with a gun in its hand. I’m almost thinking of getting one myself.”
She didn’t tell him, but this had been true ever since the rape. She had gone so far as to ask a friend for a gun catalog. Tomorrow she would ask one of her Secret Service detail if she could be taught to shoot.
For much of the rest of the evening they talked about assassinations. Her husband, Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, and the attempted murder of Harry S. Truman.
She repeated that she was thinking of getting away from the U.S.
Yet, even though Guy, on Harry Blackstone’s orders, asked several times where she thought she could go she was vague.
“Anywhere,” she declared, “anywhere but here.”
As Harry had asked him simply to ascertain Jackie’s general mood, Guy didn’t push it.
Her ire, anger, and fear would hardly surprise his boss. Most Americans felt that way to night. The American dream seemed more like a nightmare.
On the way out he took a moment to tell her his family woes.
Furious with herself for not picking up the signs earlier, she made them return to their seats, poured them both another drink, and asked him to go through the whole thing from the very beginning.
“Maybe absence will make the heart grow fonder,” she said, when he told her that his wife’s move to Florida, in his eyes, signified the beginning of the end of their marriage.
“Have you ever found that silly edict to be true?” He gave her a hard look.
“I know that living in an embassy compound in a hostile foreign country isn’t easy,” he said. “But I’ve told her time and time again it wouldn’t be for long. Lucas could start his new school at the beginning of the school year, the September after next. She says no.”
Guy was trying hard to be fair. He wanted Jackie to see that he was hurt but not unreasonable.
“She wouldn’t even consider moving near our head office in Langley.
“Let’s be honest, I am bound to end up there. I can’t keep up a fake front at the embassy and go crawling through the undergrowth forever. She wouldn’t live near my grandfather in Connecticut; he is the only one left. She says that after Moscow and Prague, sunshine is all she wants.
“She does have friends down in Florida, she spent every Christmas and spring vacation there when her grandmother was alive. She also knows that I’ll miss Lucas so much.”
“When did all this moving-back-home stuff start?” asked Jackie.
“She came back for a college reunion about a year ago,” he explained. “It wasn’t immediate but I guess it all started a few months after that. I’ve repeatedly asked if there is any connection. I have to admit, and I’d only tell you, I’ve even had a little hunt around to see if there is anyone else involved. An old sweetheart, perhaps, but I can’t find anyone and she swears there isn’t.
“She does admit that she had a good talk with some of the women who were her contemporaries and she envies them their lifestyle. I did ask her to think again but I seem to be incapable of making her realize what damage she is doing, to all of us. And, before you ask, yes, I did compromise. I don’t really want to give up my job but I told her that if she gave me just one more year, I would do whatever she wants.”
“Well, my advice is to write to Lucas, write to her too,” advised Jackie. “Write often. Receiving a few lines a day is better than waiting for a long screed, especially in the mind of a child. Say all the things that you find hard to say. Simple things, stories, draw pictures for him. Tell him you love him. And that goes for her. Most women never receive anything written, let alone passionate and loving, from their husbands.”
“You sound like you know how this works,” he said, laughing.
“I had many wonderful letters from my father but not from Jack,” she said sadly.
“When he died I had just a few notes from him. Nothing really. I’ve always wished that I had something. It takes so little time. Do it, it’s worth it. You might even persuade her to come back.”
He shrugged. “I wouldn’t dare hope for that.”
“You know you can always call me and ask for advice,” she said.
“Anytime, really. You’ve helped me so much, it’s the least that I can do.”
“Who knows, I might not be so far away from Moscow. Perhaps we could have more of these little evenings in the future?”
Then she started again about how she was going to escape, flee America.
“I am sure I can do a little work for the agency anywhere, London, maybe?
“There must be all kinds of people you would like me to meet over there. It could work as well as here, couldn’t it?
“I promise you, Guy, this time next year, well…I won’t be here so that any lunatic who wants their name to be in the history books can take potshots at me and my children.”
As he left, very, very late, she repeated her offer. “Call me at any time. I’m always pleased to hear from you, Guy.”
As Guy left the apartment he realized how much he admired and felt protective of her.
The next day Guy passed on what she had said. Over dinner he earnestly told Harry Blackstone: “Whoever is handling her next needs to know how unhappy she is. How raw her emotions are even though she tries to hide them under that cool exterior. Maybe there should be more protection for her and the children.
“Oh, by the way, although it is none of my business, is somebody guarding Bobby properly?”
After midnight when Blackstone returned home, as arranged, he phoned the general.
“If there was ever a good time to ask, this is it,” said Blackstone.
“She does seem very upset,” muttered the general. “Let me talk to the president in the morning.”