Just Jackie by Edward Klein (web based ebook reader txt) 📗

the 1920s, who had also done 740 Park Avenue, where Jackie had lived as a child.

Bobby stopped to speak with Clint Hill, who had stationed himself inconspicuously in the back of the lobby. Hill seemed confused and distracted. Unnerved by the agent’s appearance, Bobby got into the elevator and ascended to Jackie’s apartment.

He stepped off on the fourteenth floor, directly into Jackie’s foyer. A black-and-white marble floor led him into a large rectangular gallery, which served as the hub of the fifteen-room apartment. He went into the living room, a square room with a Palladian sense of light and serenity, and stood at one of the tall French windows and looked out over a spectacular view of Central Park and the reservoir.

Jackie had found the co-op by scouring the real-estate market with Nancy Tuckerman, her old roommate from Miss Porter’s School, who had served briefly as her social secretary in the White House after Letitia Baldrige had left. Whenever they inspected the available New York co-ops together, Nancy dressed up, pretending that she was a rich matron, while Jackie disguised herself as a British nanny.

Upon finding the apartment at 1040 Fifth Avenue, Jackie had called Andre Meyer, the senior partner of the investment banking firm Lazard Frères and a brilliant spinner of fortunes. Jackie had come to depend on the gnome-like French banker, who enjoyed playing the role of father confessor to beautiful women who were not too sure of themselves.

“It’s perfect,” she told Meyer, “and if you think it’s a good investment, I’ll buy it.”

Meyer looked over the apartment, which was conveniently located near the best private schools, and only a few blocks away from the apartments of Bobby and Lee, and pronounced the $200,000 asking price a fair one.

After Jackie bought the apartment, she turned to her friend Bunny Mellon for advice on decorating it. Bunny favored light, airy French furniture, sophisticated subtlety, and comfort. Nothing must be gold, nothing dark, nothing frilly. Everything had to be “undercooked.”

To achieve that look, Jackie once again hired the designer Billy Baldwin, who had not had time to finish her N Street house before she left Washington. In Jackie’s New York living room, Baldwin used the Louis XVI bureau on which President Kennedy had signed the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963, and her father’s ormolu-mounted Empire fall-front desk. He hung John Fowler curtains over the tall windows and placed Jackie’s collection of animal drawings and Indian miniature paintings on the walls. On a commode, he displayed Jackie’s most treasured possession, an ancient Hellenistic alabaster head of a woman. The result was pure Bunny: rarified luxury without a hint of vulgarity.

“The day Jackie moved into the apartment,” Nancy Tuckerman recalled, “we spent the day unpacking, emptying cartons, putting books in bookcases. Around eight o’clock in the evening, the doorbell rang, and Jackie, in her blue jeans and looking quite disheveled, opened the door. There stood two distinguished-looking couples in full evening attire. When they recognized Jackie, they were taken aback. They said they were expected for dinner at Mrs. Whitehouse’s. It turned out that the elevator man, unnerved by the mere thought of Jackie’s presence in the building, was unable to associate the name White-house with anyone or anything but her.”

Bobby wandered through the sprawling apartment, looking for Jackie. He passed Caroline’s bedroom, and caught a glimpse of the little girl through the half-open door. She was cutting pictures of her father out of a magazine and sticking them on the wall.

The first anniversary of Jack’s assassination was a couple of months away. In the past ten months, 7,740,000 people had visited the slain President’s burial place—more than all the tourists who visited the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument combined. Sixty books about JFK had already been published, and more were on the way. Two dozen phonograph records had been issued, most of them containing the text of his speeches. The mania for all things Kennedy continued unabated.

So did the family’s penchant for tragedy. In June, Bobby’s younger brother Ted was in a plane crash in Massachusetts. Two of those on board lost their lives—Ted’s legislative assistant, and the pilot, Ed Zimny, who had flown Janet Auchincloss to Rhode Island on the day Baby Girl Kennedy’s body was exhumed. Ted fractured his back, and was still recuperating.

Bobby found Jackie and Nancy in the master bedroom, putting away books. The walls were covered in ivory silk, as were those in the adjoining master bathroom. Bookcases held Jackie’s collection of Persian miniatures. The iron four-poster was a gift from Bunny, who had ordered it from her own ironsmith on her estate in Middleburg, Virginia. It was covered by a rare guanaco fur spread that had been given to Jackie by Jack. A photograph of Jack rested on the bedside table next to a small vase with fresh flowers. Apart from Caroline’s clippings, it was the only picture of the dead President in the entire apartment.

Nancy went over to shake Bobby’s hand, and he winced in pain. His hand was swollen and tender from campaigning.

Bobby’s campaign for the Senate was his first attempt at winning elective office. He was running on an idealized version of his brother’s legacy. Whereas Jack had been a give-and-take politician comfortable with compromise, Bobby preached the liberal ideals of youth and public service.

“President Kennedy,” Bobby told the New York crowds, “was more than just president of a country. He was the leader of young people everywhere. What he was trying to do was fight against hunger, disease, and poverty around the world. You and I as young people have a special responsibility to carry on the fight.”

Jackie was delighted with Bobby’s noble message. She had attended the Democratic Party’s national convention that past summer in Atlantic City, and was thrilled when the crowd gave Bobby a twenty-three-minute standing ovation. His emotional reception was interpreted as a humiliation of President Johnson. Everyone in the convention hall was aware that war had broken out between Bobby and Johnson. Bobby