Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot (41 page)

White House employees attended kindergarten and the first grade—could stay open until the semester’s end. She said she didn’t want to disrupt Caroline’s education. After the se- mester, the school would be moved to the British Embassy. Lady Bird was happy to oblige.

“Don’t be frightened of this house,” Jackie told Lady Bird before they parted company. “Some of the happiest years of my marriage were spent here.”

After the new First Lady departed, Jackie sat down and wrote a long letter to Lyndon Johnson to thank him for his involvement in Jack’s funeral.

Jackie and Bobby had led a march from the White House to St. Matthew’s Cathedral, where the funeral service was held. President Johnson overruled the Secret Service’s wishes that he not participate in the march saying, “I’d rather give my life than be afraid to give it.” He walked be- hind the casket, and Jackie was moved by the gesture.

“Thank you for walking yesterday, behind Jack,” she wrote on blue onionskin paper on her first night in the White House alone, after the funeral. In the letter that, many years later, she agreed to have displayed in the Lyndon Johnson Library, she noted that she realized that Johnson had proba- bly been surrounded by people who were concerned that he should take such a risk, and that she was grateful that he had been unmoved by their wishes.

Previously, on the night of the assassination, Johnson had written letters to John Jr. and Caroline, telling them of Jack’s importance to the country, and recognizing their deep, per- sonal loss. In her own note to the new President, Jackie now mentioned how much Caroline and John Jr. “loved” LBJ, and said that she believed his letters to her children would have great sentimental value to them in the future.

“And most of all, Mr. President,” she continued, “thank you for the way you have always treated me. The way you and Lady Bird have always been to me before, when Jack was alive, and now, as President.”

Jackie then mentioned that she had gleaned from the his- tory that she’d read since first going into the White House that the relationship between the President and vice- presidential families was often a strained one. She was grateful that, in her view, this had never been the case be- tween the Kennedys and the Johnsons. She considered the four of them—herself, Jack, Lyndon, and Lady Bird—to be close friends, she wrote. Before signing off, Jackie Kennedy reiterated her admiration for Lady Bird Johnson, the new First Lady. In her estimation, she wrote, “I always thought . . . that Lady Bird should be First Lady,” and then she cited Mrs. Johnson’s dependability, loyalty, and eager- ness to take on new challenges. “I love her very much,” Jackie concluded.

Thanksgiving, 1963

W
ednesday, November 27, 1963—it was just three days after the funeral and tomorrow would be Thanksgiving. How could anyone think of being thankful at a time such as this?

“It was as if such a thing was unthinkable,” Joan Kennedy would say. “Thankful? For what? Jack was dead. There was nothing to be thankful for, or at least that’s how we felt.”

Ethel agreed. In an interview, she once remembered, “That was the worst Thanksgiving of all. We had always been a grateful family with so much to be thankful for, but that year it was impossible to find gratitude.”

Rose Kennedy had returned to the Hyannis Port com- pound two days after the funeral to be with Joe. Ted and Joan arrived shortly thereafter. Then Pat, Jean, the then- pregnant Eunice, and their husbands showed up. Somehow, they decided, they would have Thanksgiving dinner to- gether, even though a darkness that was almost palpable seemed to envelope the entire household. It was as if Joseph and Rose’s home had been enfolded by a shroud of death.

Where there had once been optimism and hope, now there was hopelessness and despair. This kind of negativity seemed incongruous in the Kennedy home, a place where high spirits and “vig-ah” had always been the dominating forces, but things were different now. Jack was gone. The presidential flag, which was always illuminated by flood- lights at night, was flying at half-mast in front of Joseph and Rose’s white clapboard home.

Inside, everyone was emotionally exhausted and seemed deflated. Joan remembered, “We wanted to pull it together, somehow. Ted tried to be jovial. People tried to laugh. The Kennedys always tried to rise above the worst of circum- stances. I don’t know if it was healthy though. In fact, I think maybe it wasn’t. I know I had so many feelings bottled up, afraid to let them go, let them out, because I didn’t want to be the only blithering idiot in the bunch, you know?”

As the Kennedys tried to talk among themselves, the ser- vants gossiped about the funeral in order to ease the tension. Chauffeur Frank Saunders marveled to Rita Dallas about the fact that Rose had worn the black dress she had been saving

for Joseph’s funeral. “Not only did she expect him to die,” Frank said of Rose, his voice a hushed whisper, “she even bought the dress. How awful that she had to wear it for her son’s funeral.”

Bobby couldn’t manage to make it home for this holiday. He was so distraught that he took his family to Hobe Sound, Florida. Ethel was concerned because he would go for hours without speaking to her; rather, he would stare straight ahead and burst into tears unexpectedly. Ethel and Joan agreed that Bobby and Ted needed to spend more time to- gether after these morbid holidays. “They’re all they have left now,” Ethel said, ignoring the fact that there were other family members, but perhaps referring to the fact that two Kennedy brothers were now gone, leaving only two more.

No one expected Jackie to be at the compound for this holiday, so when the telephone rang and Rose was told that Jackie had just landed at the airport, she couldn’t believe her ears. “Jackie’s here!” she exclaimed. “Oh my God! What will we say to her?”

The room became quiet as all the Kennedys silently won- dered how they would ever be able to comfort Jackie and how she would react to them. She had been through an or- deal that was more than any of them could imagine, and that she still wanted to be with them for Thanksgiving dinner demonstrated her continued allegiance to the family.

“It’s family,” Ted reminded everyone. “She is family, still.

Thank God she’s coming.”

Joan agreed. “Yes,” she said. “Thank God for that, at least.”

Kennedy intimate Chuck Spalding, who went to Harvard with Jack, sank into one of the comfortable stuffed chairs. “Oh, man,” he said, sighing. “Jesus Christ almighty.”

It was thought that Jackie would probably go straight to her and Jack’s home on Squaw Island and not be seen until Thursday, if even then.

But there was a knock on the door at about 8
P
.
M
. Ted an- swered it. It was Jackie. She looked frail in tight black Capri slacks and a gray pullover sweater. Her hair was combed back behind her ears.

Jackie’s dark eyes widened when she saw Ted. “Oh, Teddy,” she said, her voice faltering. The two of them pressed each other close. Then Jackie turned and hugged Joan tightly.

“Joan,” she began. “I want to tell you everything. I must tell you. . . . It was awful, just awful. . . . We haven’t had a chance to talk. . . . In all of this time, we haven’t even had a single chance to talk.”

“No, you mustn’t say a single word about it,” Joan said, tears falling from her eyes. “You must try to forget it all now. Come in and sit down, now.”

“My heart went out to her, standing there, surrounded by people but still seeming so alone,” Joan once recalled. “I wanted to be there for her but I didn’t know how. I felt a des- peration about it, an inadequacy, I guess. I felt that if the ta- bles had been turned, Jackie would have known just what to do. And I wanted to kick myself because I didn’t.”

“Where’s Grandpa?” Jackie wanted to know. “I have to see him.”

Rose entered the room at that point and rushed over to Jackie, hugging her warmly. She suggested that Jackie not see Joe at that moment, perhaps feeling that Joseph was not strong enough to see her—or maybe even suspecting that Jackie would break into pieces at the sight of him. However, Jackie was adamant, so much so that she became

upset when Rose, Ted, and Joan began to insist that she not see Joe.

“But I must,” she said, displaying a slight show of temper. “I’ll rest after I see Grandpa. Now, please!”

Eunice and Jean took Jackie by her arms and tried to guide her into the living room.

“You poor, poor dear, you must rest,” Eunice told her. Jackie broke free, explaining that she had told Maud

Shaw to take John Jr. and Caroline to her home specifically so that she could be alone with Joe. “And I’m going up- stairs,” she said. “Enough of this.”

“The scene downstairs got so loud that Mr. Kennedy again motioned for me to find out what was actually hap- pening,” said Rita Dallas who was upstairs with Joe during the fracas. “Reluctantly, I went out into the hall and stood there for a moment, trying to decide what I should do. Just then, the First Lady came running up the stairs, alone. I suppose I felt she would carry a horrible and visible mark of her tragedy, but there were no changes in her at first glance.”

Jackie ran down the hall toward the nurse, saying that she needed to see Joe. Jackie stood before Rita, holding a furled flag. She hugged the flag and, with tears in her eyes, she gave it to the nurse, telling her that her intention was for Joe to have the flag.

“It was Jack’s,” she said, explaining that she wanted Rita to give it to Joe after she was gone. “I can’t do it,” Jackie said. “I just can’t.”

Jackie and Rita then went into Joe’s room, and as Jackie approached Joe’s bed, Rita put the flag on the dresser, be- hind some papers and books. Jackie sat down on a footstool next to Joe, and took his hand.

“Jack is gone,” she told the old man, “and things will never be the same, Grandpa. Never.”

Caressing his deformed hand, Jackie asked Joe if he wanted to hear what had occurred. He nodded. She then un- folded the entire story, from the time she and Jack arrived in Dallas, through the grisly murder, all the way to the funeral. The telling of this story may have been therapeutic to her; Rita Dallas said that Jackie didn’t leave out a single, painful, even gruesome detail.

After she finished, Jackie kissed Joe on the forehead and explained that she was exhausted and needed to rest. Joe stared at the ceiling, tears in his eyes.

“You know how I feel,” Jackie said, “and how I’ll always feel. Don’t you?”

She squeezed his hand, pulled his covers up to his chin, and turned away. Then she left the room and walked down the hallway as Rita Dallas watched, “and I have never seen a woman who looked so alone,” said the nurse. (In the mid- dle of the night, Joseph’s niece, Ann Gargan, decided to cover the old man with the flag. When he woke up and found that his dead son’s honorary flag was draped over him, Joseph screamed out so loudly the family thought he was having a seizure. It took hours to calm him down.)

When she got downstairs, Jackie hugged everyone warmly. As she stood talking to Rose and Joan, she noticed Jack’s favorite chair in its usual place in his mom’s home, a large bath towel wrapped around its ladder rungs so that they might ease the pain in his back. Jackie went over to the chair and touched it, gently. Then, her eyes brimming with tears, she left as quickly as possible.

Jackie spent the night at her home with her children and their nanny, Maud Shaw. The next day she did not emerge

for Thanksgiving dinner. Instead, Maud Shaw arrived at Rose’s home with John Jr. and Caroline in tow, explaining that Jackie would not be coming. “She can’t bear it,” the nanny explained. “She is just much too distraught. She didn’t sleep a wink. Instead, she cried all night.”

After dinner, Joan drove to Jackie’s Squaw Island house with a plate of turkey, cranberries, stuffing, and sweet pota- toes that had been fixed by Rose. A strong, cool wind blew in from Nantucket Sound; a roll of thunder signaled an ap- proaching storm.

Ten Secret Service agents stood guard on Jackie’s prop- erty—the first time a President’s widow was given round- the-clock protection. There was a checkpoint set up at the bottom of the hill that led up to the house, which in itself was not unusual, as well as agents roaming the area. It still wasn’t known, after all, if Jack’s assassination had been a communist plot, or some other conspiracy, and whether or not the lives of Jackie and her children were in danger. After identifying herself to a guard who shone a blinding flash- light in her face, Joan was let through an opening in a barri- cade. She proceeded up the driveway, got out of the car, and walked to Jackie’s front door. She rang. She knocked. She rang again. But Jackie never answered the door.