Washington, D.C.
August 28, 1956
Five days after their baby died, Jack arrived in D.C. Jackie was recovering at home in Georgetown, where she lay on top of her bed with a fan blowing cool air on her legs. Her sister, Lee, had flown in from London and was bustling around, fetching drinks and tidying the bedside clutter of books and lotions, wearing an immaculate silk polka-dot dress from Jean Patou’s spring/summer collection.
Jackie regarded her critically. It had been kind of her to drop everything and rush over to play nursemaid, but who wore a brand-new designer outfit to look after an invalid, for heaven’s sake? Lee always strove to be the better dressed of the two of them, no matter what the occasion, and her competitiveness could get tedious.
“How are you, kid?” Jack asked, leaning over to kiss her, a concerned expression on his face. “Are you okay? We had a stopover in Paris and I bought you some perfume.” He put a gift-wrapped package in her lap but she didn’t touch it. How could he think of perfume at a time like this? “Hi, Lee,” he continued. “Good of you to help out.”
Lee beamed at him. “Hi, Jack. Great tan!”
“The funeral was last Saturday,” Jackie interrupted, poker-faced, trying to snap them both into some respect for the solemnity of the occasion. “She was a girl. Your daughter. I called her Arabella.”
Jack nodded, at last serious. “I like the name.”
“Bobby made the arrangements,” she continued, her voice like a knife.
“Good man,” he remarked. “I’ll call and thank him, but first I need a sandwich. I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”
“Let me get your sandwich,” Lee insisted, heading for the door. “Ham and mustard okay?” She was dippy about Jack; nothing was too much trouble for her darling brother-in-law.
Once they were alone, Jackie waited for him to apologize for not returning sooner, to tell her how sad he was about the loss of the baby, to share the grief that was lodged inside her, hard and implacable as a bullet—but instead he began talking about some journalist he’d met on the plane. She watched him, his hair bleached from the sun, his skin as dark as walnuts, and marveled at the electricity he exuded. He had no idea what was going through her mind. None whatsoever. Maybe he never had.
He finished his story before sitting on the edge of the bed and pulling her into his arms. “It’s so sad about Arabella,” he said. “I can’t take it in yet. After all those months of waiting . . .”
His face pressed against her shoulder and she heard him stifle a sigh—or could it have been a sob? He did seem upset now, but he didn’t feel the loss; not like she did. Her grief was dark and solitary, and it was mixed with bitter anger at him for being overseas when their baby died and then not coming home immediately.
He broke away before long, the moment over, and she watched as his mind flipped to the next matter to be dealt with. “I’m glad Lee is here for you. It was good of her to come.” He glanced at his watch. “Do you mind if I drop by the office this afternoon? Just to pick up messages.”
Jackie was so shocked he could consider it that she was lost for words. She kept her feelings buried, but surely Jack must know how devastated she was, and how much she needed him to comfort her? Down the hall there was a beautifully decorated nursery with no baby to put in it.
“I won’t be long,” he promised, standing up. “We can have dinner together.”
The problem was that she had married a man who was an iceberg. A glacier. Deep down, did he care about anything apart from politics and power? It was hard to tell.
Once Jack had gone, Jackie eased herself out of bed, waving away the maid’s protests. He had left his suitcase on the floor and she lowered herself to sit beside it, gasping at the tug in her stitches. She didn’t know what she expected to find as she rummaged through his sandy swim shorts, casual shirts, and musty towels, but she knew there was something Jack wasn’t telling her.
And there it was: when she picked up a copy of a Saul Bellow novel, a Polaroid fluttered out. A girl with white-blond hair sitting on his lap, wearing a skimpy hot-pink bikini. She looked Scandinavian, with a high forehead, laughing eyes, and a slim figure.
Jackie’s stomach heaved. This was what he was doing when their baby died. Holding the photograph between thumb and forefinger, as if it might contaminate her, she rose, hobbled back to bed, and dropped it into her handbag.
What should she do? Who could she confide in? Definitely not Lee, who would make excuses for her brother-in-law; definitely not her mother. There was only one person she could turn to. He hadn’t been able to visit her in the hospital, but she would meet him for lunch in New York just as soon as the doctors told her she was well enough to travel.
BLACK JACK BOUVIER examined the photo for several minutes. They were sitting at a quiet corner table in an Italian restaurant in east Midtown, a bottle of plum-colored Chianti encased in a raffia basket between them.
“He’s clearly having an affair with her, isn’t he?” Jackie demanded.
Black Jack tilted his head to one side. “A vacation fling rather than an affair. She looks that sort of girl.”
“How could he do that to me? To our baby?” Tears began to well, and once she let go there was no stopping them. Her daddy passed her a crumpled white handkerchief with the ease of a man who often dealt with crying women.
“You need to separate this out, honey. Jack didn’t know you were going to lose the baby when he slept with this woman. They’re different issues. It’s sad your baby died but it’s not his fault. You married him knowing he was a ladies’ man.” The tears were rolling silently down her cheeks, and he reached across to stroke her forearm.
She dabbed her eyes. “I knew he was dating other girls before we got married, but I thought he would stop once we were engaged. Was that naive?”
She watched his reaction, aware that Black Jack used to have lady friends back when he was still married to her mother. She remembered him bringing a pretty brunette to watch her ride in a gymkhana one Saturday. She was only about nine, but she saw a knowing look between them, watched her daddy’s hand brush the lady’s knee, and in a flash gained insight into a whole new grown-up world of understanding. She should have known her father would defend Jack. They were cut from the same cloth.
The difference was that she’d never felt jealous of Black Jack’s girlfriends. They made a fuss over her and Lee, letting them eat ice cream and popcorn, and never chastising them the way their mother did. As for her father, she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was his favorite, so she had no reason to feel insecure. He loved Lee too; just not as much.
“Some men have particularly strong sexual needs,” he answered. “One woman will never be enough.”
“Daddy!” She blushed and covered her wet cheeks with her hands.
“It’s not a betrayal of you. It’s just something Jack has to do, a physical act like cleaning his teeth or shaving. He doesn’t love you one bit less because of it. And I bet they’re all brief encounters; he’s not going to risk keeping a mistress.”
The thought hadn’t even occurred to Jackie. Good God, she hoped he wouldn’t do that.
“Do you really want a divorce, though?” Black Jack continued. “Think of the heartache caused by your mom and me divorcing.”
Her parents’ divorce had been a long time coming: First her daddy had moved to a different apartment and she and Lee were told it had something to do with his work. The girls preferred it that way, because they didn’t have to huddle in bed at night listening to their parents screaming at each other anymore. Her mother, who had always been quick to lash out with a slap, became even stricter without Black Jack there to restrain her. Good manners were paramount. You had to be on your best behavior when Janet was around.
Jackie was a teenager when her mother announced that she was getting remarried, to the Standard Oil heir Hugh Auchincloss. Hughdie, as he was known to those closest to him, was much wealthier than Black Jack, with estates in Virginia and Rhode Island as well as a Park Avenue apartment. Their standard of living leapt to a whole new level of affluence, with dozens of staff members in each house, their own stables, attendance at top schools, and generous clothing allowances. Jackie and Lee both adored clothes, and now when they pored over Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar or traipsed around stores together they could afford to buy their favorite outfits. They had endless discussions about the new collections, the season’s hemlines and colors, and their passion for all things French. The marriage meant they saw less of their daddy, though, because he still lived in New York. By then, Jackie was old enough to know that he drank too much, and she worried about him. She never stopped worrying about him.
“Divorce would kill Jack’s career,” Black Jack said over their chicken cacciatore, then took a slurp of wine. “It’s difficult enough getting elected as a Catholic because Protestants will be biased against him—but if he’s a divorced Catholic he won’t even get the Catholic vote.”
“He should have thought of that sooner,” Jackie replied, peering into her compact mirror and wiping away mascara smudges. She didn’t want a divorce. She wanted Jack. But she wanted more of him. She wanted them to be able to talk about the baby they had lost. She would have liked for him to be with her when she was told Arabella had died. And she wished he wouldn’t cheat on her. Was that too much to ask?
“Rise above it and keep your dignity,” Black Jack counseled, tilting his head toward the photograph. “Make sure he treats you with the respect due to a wife. No fornicating in your home, or parading other women under your nose. Draw the line at that. But stay married, honey. That’s my best advice.”
On the train back to Washington, Jackie wondered if other wives put up with this. In novels or plays, cheating husbands always got their comeuppance, but perhaps it wasn’t the same in real life. Why had she picked a man like Jack? Was it partly because he reminded her of her flawed but adorable daddy?
Looking back, the only period in their marriage during which she could say for sure he’d been faithful was after he’d had back surgery in 1954 and was laid up for a few months. She’d been a good wife then as now: arranging visitors to entertain him, reading magazine articles to him, feeding him his favorite foods, devising ways to make love without straining his stitches.
But after he recovered he became preoccupied again. He popped home from the office to shower and change his clothes before dashing off to more meetings. Were they really “meetings,” or was that a euphemism? Did he have a mistress right on their doorstep in Washington?
She had a choice to make: she could do as her daddy suggested and rise above it; she could turn detective and confront him whenever she caught him; or she could ask for a divorce. Even if she didn’t go through with it, she knew the suggestion would shake him up. His political future relied on a stable marriage.
She knew what her mother would say: “Don’t wash your dirty linen in public.” But Jack owed her for this. He’d have to buck up his ideas big time if he wanted to hang on to her.