These Few Precious Days (31 page)

Later JFK sat on the steps with his son for a few minutes, playing with a toy palomino pony John had been given for Christmas. Then the president walked Caroline and John back toward his office. Before they went inside, the trio turned around and posed for Stoughton. Jack, clutching both children’s hands, grinned broadly.

Suddenly Stoughton’s job—and those of photographers like Jacques Lowe and Stanley Tretick—had gotten a little easier. “Mrs. Kennedy seemed a little more relaxed about having the children photographed,” said Stoughton, whose photographs captured a father clearly besotted with his children. “He really came to understand them and he played with them in that marvelous way that some people have and others don’t.” To Stoughton, it seemed JFK “was enjoying them even more now, if that was possible. Obviously, he was excited about the new baby, although at the time none of us knew about it.”

Jackie knew that her husband was hoping for another boy, although he would never admit it. Certainly his bond with Caroline was stronger than it had ever been. He also was counting on her to help Maud Shaw keep John in line. “Now, Buttons,” JFK told Caroline, “you’re the big sister. You outrank John, so don’t let him forget who’s boss.”

It wasn’t easy. “A lot of the time,” Evelyn Lincoln recalled, Caroline “talked about her brother misbehaving. That was a favorite topic of hers.” Rose Kennedy’s secretary, Barbara Gibson, recalled that Caroline was “always after him, ‘John, do this’ and ‘You’re not supposed to do that, John.’ ” After one particular sleigh ride at the White House, Caroline dashed off a note to Grandma Rose complaining that her brother was a “bad, squeaky boy who tries to spit in his mother’s Coca-Cola and who has a very bad temper.”

THAT TEMPER WAS IN EVIDENCE
whenever John, who had a tough time pronouncing “Caroline,” felt he was being upstaged by “Cannon.” One week Caroline pestered half the White House staff with the riddles she had learned from friends at school. It was only a matter of time before John piped up with, “Miss Shaw, I know a riddle, too.”

“Yes, John,” she said, “and what’s your riddle?”

John thought for a moment before shouting, “Um . . . apples, giraffes, and alligators!”

Miss Shaw gave it some thought. “I’m afraid you’ve stumped me,” she answered. Delighted, John ran to tell Caroline the news.

Only one thing troubled JFK about his son’s upbringing at this point. The saga of PT-109 and Kennedy’s own World War II exploits notwithstanding, he told Stoughton he was worried about what impact all the parades, wreath-layings, color guards, and twenty-one-gun salutes were having on his son. “I’m concerned about John’s fascination with military things,” JFK said. “He’s right there when he sees guns, swords, or anyone wearing a uniform.”

“Why don’t you just stop letting him watch the parades?” Stoughton asked.

That, of course, was not about to happen. “I guess we all go through that phase,” the president mused. “John just sees more of the real thing.”

This sudden concern on JFK’s part may have been a direct result of his staring down the barrel at Armageddon during the Cuban Missile Crisis. “Like a lot of men of his generation who had been to war,” journalist Theodore White observed, “Kennedy hated to see it glorified.” Ironically, it was Jackie who made sure John got a ringside seat for the marches and military ceremonies. “She’d come outside and stand behind the bushes and hold him up,” Baldrige said, “just so he could get a clear view.”

NOW THAT SHE WAS WELL
into her second trimester, Jackie cut her official schedule down to only one evening event for the entire month of March 1963—a state dinner on March 27 for thirty-three-year-old King Hassan II of Morocco. Hassan, who wore his white dress uniform, presented JFK with a gold sword encrusted with diamonds. Jackie, dressed for the occasion in a floor-length white silk gown embroidered with colored gemstones, was enthralled with the dashing monarch and would later write a five-page letter to him in French promising to visit Morocco.

In the meantime, the Kennedys provided their visitors with one of the more memorable evenings at the White House. At dinner JFK pointed out in his toast that Morocco was the first country to recognize the United States, and he read George Washington’s thank-you letter to Morocco’s ruler.

JFK’s Harvard classmate and friend Alan Jay Lerner had imported the entire cast of his hit Broadway musical
Brigadoon
to entertain that evening, and Tish Baldrige had prepared for every eventuality. Because of the limited space in the East Room, taped music was used in lieu of the Marine Band. When the president expressed concern that the tape might break, Tish reassured him that a backup tape would be running at the same time.

All went smoothly until the halfway mark, when an extra spotlight was turned on and blew a fuse, thrusting the East Room into total darkness. A dozen Secret Service agents drew their guns and rushed to every exit and window. The president, unable to see his hand in front of his face, leaned in the direction of his guest of honor. “Your Majesty,” he whispered reassuringly, “it’s part of the show, you know.”

Once the lights came back on two minutes later, the first lady glanced over at her husband—and winked. She knew it wasn’t the first time the president had been called upon to calm his guests. The year before, Metropolitan Opera singers were performing Mozart’s
Così Fan Tutte
for the children of diplomats when the feathered turban worn by one of the stars touched a wall sconce and burst into what Baldrige described as a “towering mass of flame.” A fire extinguisher took care of the problem within seconds, but even though the president threw his arms around the terrified children, they kept crying. So, Baldrige said, JFK “burst out laughing . . . [and] with the sight of the President laughing and laughing, well, they started laughing too, and soon the whole room was laughing.”

By April 1, the Kennedys had moved out of Glen Ora, and Wexford, their new Virginia hideaway at Rattlesnake Mountain, was nearing completion. Her supply of large yellow legal pads always at the ready, Jackie spent the next few weeks jotting notes about everything from plumbing fixtures and doorknobs to room colors, draperies, furniture, and landscaping. From this point on, Jackie, aware that the name “Rattlesnake Mountain” might give her husband’s detractors some ammunition in the coming 1964 elections, called the site Atoka after the hamlet where it was situated.

While construction continued apace in Virginia, Jackie looked around for another spot secluded enough to serve as a weekend retreat. For whatever reason, Jackie and Jack had both shied away from using FDR’s old Navy-operated refuge, Shangri-La—which Dwight Eisenhower later renamed Camp David after his grandson—convinced that the 125-acre compound would not be to their liking. “Jack always said, ‘It’s the most depressing-looking place,’ ” Jackie recalled, “which it is—from the outside.”

For two years, JFK’s naval aide Taz Shepard kept “pestering and pestering him to go there,” Jackie said. “And Tish used to say to me, ‘The Navy’s so hurt and demoralized he won’t go there.’ ” Another strong advocate for Camp David was Clint Hill, who tried for years to persuade Jackie to give Camp David a try.

On the spur of the moment in March 1963, they finally went—and Jackie was surprised to discover Camp David offered everything they had been looking for in the way of a family retreat. Laced with hiking and riding trails winding through the scenic Catoctin Mountains, Camp David boasted a swimming pool, a bowling alley, skeet-shooting facilities, and both a driving range and a putting green.

The main residence, a rambling timber-and-stone structure called Aspen Lodge, was surrounded by several luxuriously appointed guest cabins with names like Hickory, Rosebud, and Dogwood. Once Jackie explored the premises, she was pleased—and perhaps a little embarrassed—to discover that, without her having to ask, new stables had been constructed specifically for Macaroni and Sardar.

Through the spring of 1963, as they waited for Wexford to be completed, the first family spent nearly every available weekend at Camp David. From this point seventy miles northwest of Washington, the inveterate history buffs embarked with Caroline and John on tours of great Civil War battlefields. One weekend, they piled in Jack’s white Lincoln convertible and drove to Gettysburg. The next, they were off to Antietam by helicopter.

Sticking to her decision to stay off horses during her pregnancy, Jackie spent the first week of April with her husband and children at the White House. On April Fools’ Day, the president took a break from hammering out the details of a proposed Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Russians and went looking for his children on the White House grounds. He wandered down to the children’s playground and found Caroline and John picnicking in the noonday sun. Three days later, with the orange-red tulips outside the South Lawn already in bloom, Jackie invited several children from the White House School to swim with Caroline and John in the South Lawn fountain. When John refused to come out, the first lady kicked off her shoes and waded into the fountain to retrieve him.

Such happy family scenes were repeated in Palm Beach, where the Kennedys would once again spend the Easter holiday. Jackie flew out first, and when JFK arrived in Florida the next day aboard Air Force One she rushed up to greet him with hugs and kisses. “She thought they were way out of camera range, so it wasn’t for our benefit,” said one reporter. “There was obviously a genuine warmth between them that we hadn’t seen that often before—they were such private people. . . . A lot of us got the feeling something was up.”

Wearing the sleeveless Lily Pulitzer dresses JFK had bought for them on Worth Avenue, Jackie and Caroline showed John how to color Easter eggs; Mom and Maud Shaw stashed the eggs around the house for the children to find. Later, the first family was photographed coming out of Easter services at vine-covered St. Edward’s Church. But for the second time since the family patriarch suffered a stroke, they also attended a private Mass with Joe at the ambassador’s estate, La Guerida.

The president never attended one of the famous Easter egg rolls on the White House lawn, but he and Jackie did take their children to an Easter egg hunt at the Wrightsman estate that morning. John found a gold egg, which he proceeded to carry around with him for the rest of the day.

That afternoon, JFK was relaxing on the deck of the
Honey Fitz
with Red Fay when they spotted a catamaran with
Pattycake
emblazoned across its stern. “Let’s have some fun,” he told Fay. Ten minutes later the president was at the tiller, steering the catamaran into open water while
Pattycake
’s beaming owner looked on.

Jackie’s pregnancy remained a tightly guarded secret, but she was starting to make coy remarks here and there: “My bust is bigger than yours, but then so is my waist,” she told a bewildered Tony Bradlee over dinner. At the same dinner party, Jackie abruptly switched gears and began teasing her husband about his fondness for Ben Bradlee’s wife. “Oh, Jack, you know you always say Tony is your ideal.” The president went along with the joke—“Yes, that’s true”—before looking into his wife’s eyes and suddenly turning serious. “
You’re
my ideal, Jacqueline,” he said.

The occasional obtuse hint aside, Jackie managed, in every sense of the word, to keep her condition under wraps. So it came as a jarring surprise to the Washington press corps and to the nation when Jackie made the official announcement from Palm Beach on April 15, the day after Easter. A simultaneous statement from Pierre Salinger further explained that, on the advice of her doctors, Jackie was canceling her official schedule.

Only once before—when Grover Cleveland’s daughter Esther was born in 1893—had the wife of a president given birth while her husband was still in office. (Esther retained the honor of being the only baby actually born
in
the White House.) Esther Cleveland was now sixty-eight years old, married to a retired British army officer and living in Yorkshire. The press wasted no time hunting the hapless woman down and peppering her with questions.