These Few Precious Days (26 page)

“They weren’t faking it,” said Jacques Lowe, who never failed to be amazed by the way the Kennedys “brought the world to a complete standstill” whenever they walked into a room. “They enjoyed being in each other’s company. Jackie wanted her privacy and she wasn’t always around, but she more than made up for that when she was. Alone, they were incredible, but together—and I know it sounds corny to say it—they were magic.”

The next day, JFK summoned Dr. Max for another series of shots, this time to give him the energy to deal with the looming prospect of race riots in the South. Just days after the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, twenty-eight-year-old James Meredith had been barred from registering as the first black student at the all-white University of Mississippi by that state’s governor, Ross Barnett.

Forced to confront the volatile issue of race relations head-on, Kennedy canceled plans to join Jackie and the children at Hammersmith Farm and hunkered down with his top domestic advisers. After a series of conflicting reports from the field and bizarre phone conversations between Jack and a vacillating Barnett (“You knew the man was an inferior person to begin with,” Jackie sniped), the president addressed the nation. He pledged that Meredith would register safely the next day. He then sat down at a table that had been owned by Ulysses S. Grant and signed an executive order sending federal troops to desegregate Ole Miss. They did—but not before rioters armed with rocks, bottles, and guns killed two people and injured two hundred.

Twice during the crisis—at midnight and then at 5 a.m.—Jack woke Jackie in Newport to vent his frustrations. “Oh, my God!” he told her over the phone. “You wouldn’t believe this.” Jackie was impressed by her husband’s self-control as he worked through the night to get Army troops to the Ole Miss campus. “There was never rage there,” she recalled. “It was just so hopeless. I guess that was one of the worst nights of his whole life.”

Yet Jackie was moved that the president took time out from conferring with his team of domestic advisers to reach out to his wife. “You know, I was so touched that he called me,” she said, “and just wanted to talk.”

JFK may have been motivated, to some degree, by guilt. Around this time, Mimi Beardsley informed Dave Powers that she might be pregnant—no surprise, really, since JFK never used condoms and Mimi knew nothing about birth control. Abortions were illegal at the time, but Powers told the coed to stay calm. Within an hour, he put her in touch with a woman in Newark, New Jersey, who, in turn, gave her the number of a doctor willing to do the job. The need for Powers to distance himself and the president from the whole procedure was obvious. “Even the docile White House press corps,” she later wrote, “couldn’t have averted their eyes from that story.” As it turned out, Mimi wasn’t pregnant, and no mention was made of the episode again. But, she would admit decades later, “I shudder to think what other cleanup jobs Dave Powers was asked to do for his boss.”

On October 9, Jackie packed up the kids and returned to Washington. The next night, she and Jack hosted an intimate dinner party that included Federal Aviation Administration chief Najeeb Halaby, noted San Francisco architect John Warnecke, Bill Walton, and Walton’s supposed date for the evening—Mary Meyer. Although JFK and Meyer had been alone at the White House several times, this was the first time she and Jackie actually sat across from each other at the dinner table. To make matters even more awkward, JFK had to be helicoptered to Baltimore to give a speech; he could only stay with his guests for drinks in the Yellow Oval Room and then return after dinner for coffee.

That evening, according to the other guests, there were no stolen moments or knowing looks from Mary or Jack. Jackie, who spent part of the evening deep in conversation with Warnecke about efforts to save Washington’s historic Lafayette Square, held down the fort until the presidential helicopter returned shortly after nine. “Lovely and gracious but totally inscrutable—that’s how they handled things,” said Baldrige. “If Jackie knew someone was sleeping with her husband, she’d never let on—and certainly not to the person in question. That just wasn’t her style.”

Cassini, one of the relative chosen few frequently invited to the first couple’s intimate White House dinners, chalked it all up to Jackie’s “natural dignity. She was a woman of great pride. If she and Jack had had a fight ten minutes before, she would
never
have shown it.”

“They both considered 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue sacrosanct,” Baldrige agreed. “She wore a mask.”

I want to be with you, and I want to die with you—and the children do too—rather than live without you.

—
JACKIE TO JACK, AS THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS UNFOLDED

They did have a sex life. She talked about that intimately with me. She loved him dearly, and I felt they were getting much closer together.

—
JIM REED, LONGTIME KENNEDY FRIEND

8

“But What About All the Children?”

OCTOBER 20, 1962

A SATURDAY

J
ackie stretched out languidly in the warm sun of an Indian summer, glad to be back at her beloved Glen Ora. In keeping with her usual routine, she had arrived with the children the previous day, hoping for another much-needed break from the pressures of Washington. She was surprised when Provi said the president, who had been speaking in Chicago, was on the phone.

“I’m coming back to Washington this afternoon,” he said. “Why don’t you and the children join me there?”

When she asked him why, Jack paused for a moment. “Well, never mind,” he said. “Why don’t you just come back to Washington?”

“There was something funny in his voice,” she recalled. “I could tell something was wrong. . . . That’s the whole point of being married—you just must sense trouble in their voice and mustn’t ask why.”

But she knew why. Four days earlier, National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy had rushed to the residence at 8 a.m. to show the president aerial photos taken by a U-2 spy plane the night before. The images showed the clear presence of offensive nuclear weapons in Cuba—intermediate-range Soviet missiles capable of striking the United States capital.

For the next week, the president maintained what appeared to be a normal schedule while top-secret meetings went on at the White House. JFK went ahead with planned trips to Connecticut and the Midwest, then returned to meet with members of the Executive Committee of the National Security Council—ExComm—to devise a strategy for coping with this newest threat to world peace.

This business-as-usual ruse worked so well that even White House staffers were unaware that key ExComm members were secretly camping out at the Executive Mansion, some sleeping on cots and couches. Jack let his wife know that the situation was serious, and that for the moment the best thing to do was keep everyone—including the Soviets—in the dark. “We can’t let them know that we know what they’re up to—not yet,” he said. “We don’t want to tip our hand.”

It quickly became apparent that JFK’s options were few. The United States could take out the missiles with an air strike, invade Cuba, negotiate a settlement through the United Nations, or enforce a naval blockade of the island. Jack’s first impulse was for decisive military action, preferably an air strike to take the missiles out before they were fully operational.

From the outset, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara strongly disagreed, arguing for a blockade. Positions seesawed back and forth until Bundy, backed by the Joint Chiefs, surprised everyone by calling for an air strike. It was then that Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric, who happened to be one of Jackie’s closest friends, made a case for caution that was elegant in its simplicity. “Essentially, Mr. President,” he said, “this is a choice between limited action and unlimited action, and most of us think that it’s better to start with limited action.”

Early on, Secret Service agent Clint Hill had tried to gently broach the subject of what might happen in the event things spiraled out of control. J. B. West had already given the first lady a tour of the bomb shelter beneath the White House, and that, said Hill, was where she and the children would be taken if there weren’t time to evacuate.

“Mr. Hill,” Jackie stated flatly, “if the situation develops, I will take Caroline and John, and we will walk hand in hand out onto the south grounds. We will stand there like brave soldiers, and face the fate of every other American.”

Jack knew Jackie too well to solemnly confront her with the worst-case scenario. He was far too cool even in such times of crisis, Jackie explained, “to say, ‘Sit down, I have something to tell you.’ ” But when she heard of contingency plans to evacuate her and the children to the underground facility at Camp David, the presidential retreat high atop Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains, Jackie protested. “Please don’t send me away to Camp David,” she pleaded with Jack, who presumably would have stayed behind with his top advisers in the crowded White House bomb shelter in the event of a nuclear attack. “Please don’t send me anywhere if anything happens, we’re all going to stay right here with you.”

“But Jackie . . .”

“Even if there’s no room in the bomb shelter in the White House . . .,” she went on. “Please, then I just want to be on the lawn when it happens. I want to be with you, I want to die with you, and the children do too—rather than live without you.”

Jack looked deep into her eyes. “All right,” he said, “then I promise, I won’t send you and the children away.” Jackie detected a sense of relief in her husband’s voice. “He didn’t really want to send me away, either,” she said of that moment. Later, Jackie was shocked to learn how many wives of top government officials did depart Washington, leaving their husbands behind. “My God,” she said. “I don’t think that shows you love your husband very much!”

Now that she was being summoned back to the White House from Glen Ora, Jackie knew things had taken a turn for the worse. New photos of the missile sites in Cuba showed that the Soviets were now assembling SS-5 missiles capable of striking any target in the United States. The president would soon have to take action that would inevitably bring the world closer to nuclear war than it had ever been. He wanted his wife and children close at hand.

At Glen Ora on October 20, Jackie woke Caroline and John from their naps and asked Clint Hill to call for a helicopter to take them all back to Washington. Early the next morning, J. B. West was awakened at home by an urgent call from the first lady. Minutes later, he was entering the family quarters of the White House through a side door, so as not to arouse suspicion.

“Thank you so much for coming, Mr. West,” she said matter-of-factly. “There’s something brewing that might turn out to be a big catastrophe—which means we might have to cancel the dinner and dance for the Maharaja and Maharani of Jaipur Tuesday night.” As it happened, the Kennedys would still entertain the visiting Indian dignitaries that Tuesday with a small dinner party. In fact, they would entertain virtually every night during the crisis, partly to keep up their own morale and particularly to maintain the illusion of business as usual.

Jackie would describe the rest of the thirteen-day crisis as “a time when there was no day or night”—just round-the-clock meetings, cables, briefings, and phone calls interspersed with catnaps and the rare two hours of uninterrupted sleep. At one point, Bobby donned riding clothes and drove to the White House in a convertible—all part of ongoing attempts to fool the press.

One night, Jackie drifted over to Jack’s bedroom wearing a diaphanous nightgown and saw her husband lying on the bed and talking—or so she thought—on the phone. “I’d been in and out of there all evening,” recalled Jackie, who ran toward her husband’s bed only to have him wave her away. “Get out! Get out!” JFK shouted. When she turned, Jackie realized that owlish, stiff-collared McGeorge Bundy was standing there. “Poor puritan Bundy,” she laughed, “to see a woman running in her nightgown. He threw both hands over his eyes.” Another night, the president and first lady awoke to see a sheepish Bundy standing at the foot of the bed with an urgent cable.