Jackie After O (7 page)

Jackie continued her emotional, physical, and intellectual support. Reading him stacks of newspapers to occupy his mind only went so far, as did the games and guests she brought in. Eventually, their discussions floated back to the spring before, when Jackie had enrolled in the Georgetown School of Public Service, taking a class on American history. She recalled that during one class, her professor had lectured dramatically about John Adams's diplomatic courage and pluck, which had averted war with France. Jack, meanwhile, had been intrigued by Adams for some time and the hard choices Adams had made with Boston's economic interests in mind. Early in his Senate career, Kennedy was also focused on his home state's economy and drew inspiration from Adams. The husband and wife agreed there was an idea there—an important story to tell about elected officials who faced down danger or went against popular sentiment to accomplish what they thought was right. In fact, Kennedy had already asked his speechwriter, Ted Sorensen, to begin collecting similar examples of political courage.

Sorensen called Jackie's young Brooklyn-bred professor, Dr. Jules Davids, to learn more about Adams and he also began pulling records from the Library of Congress. Eventually, after the Kennedys conferred with Lee's husband, Michael Canfield, about writing a piece for
Harper's
magazine, they all realized the idea could be a book with more than a half dozen politicians given their own chapters written as case studies.

“What would the size of a book be?” Kennedy asked the younger Canfield.

“Oh, at least 50,000 words,” he replied.

Kennedy called Sorensen and relayed their conversation.

“It's a wonderful idea and I am prepared to work but bear in mind the article we wrote for the Sunday
New York Times
magazine was 1,500 words and it was a lot of work,” Sorensen told him. “This would be the equivalent of 33
New York Times
articles.”

Kennedy was undeterred. He and Jackie began doing their part in Palm Beach. She made sure that around his bed were worktables, filing cabinets, a dictating machine, and a telephone. His day would begin with breakfast in bed at 8:00, followed by reading papers from New York, Boston, Miami, and Palm Beach, then the
Congressional Record
, and then the mail.
⁶⁶
In the afternoon, he'd talk with Sorensen, who visited twice in Palm Beach to move the book project further along, often hauling material from the Library of Congress.
⁶⁷

The original manuscript has JFK's handwritten notes, as well as those from Sorensen in the margin.
⁶⁸
But Jackie's role is undeniable—she was the book's midwife—and she gave the manuscript one final read before it was sent to the publisher.

“The greatest debt is owed to my research assistant, Theodore C. Sorensen, for his invaluable assistance in the assembly and preparation of the material upon which this book is based,” Kennedy wrote in the preface to the book, named
Profiles in Courage
. But the final person Jack thanked in the preface—and the person he dedicated the book to—was Jackie. “This book would not have been possible without the encouragement, assistance and criticisms offered from the very beginning by my wife Jacqueline, whose help during all the days of my convalescence I cannot ever adequately acknowledge.”

The next year, with Kennedy back on his feet,
Profiles in Courage
won the Pulitzer Prize for biography
^*
and helped ignite his launch for the presidency and perhaps Jackie's interest in editing.
⁶⁹
But for the moment, Jackie was devoted to another profession: being a smartly coiffed and supportive political wife.

Instead of pursuing others with a notebook and a camera, she was now pursued. While Jack thrived on crowds, she avoided them, instead finding quiet corners to voraciously read novels by Kerouac or Colette, or the memoirs of the Due de Saint-Simon about life at Versailles, which especially prepared her for life in the White House. During the Wisconsin primary, she read
War and Peace
, two bleak landscapes playing off each other.
⁷⁰
Even if she did not like politics and the fishbowl it forced her to live in, she had great instincts, knowing how to motivate an important demographic, as for example when she addressed a Bronx crowd in Spanish, or how she could inform an important speech by translating French books and documents to help her husband's Senate testimony on Algeria or Indochina.
⁷¹

Aside from adapting to the glare of politics in the early years of her marriage, Jackie was also transformed in another way: she became a mother. After giving birth to a stillborn daughter in August 1956, Caroline was born by cesarean section in November 1957.

Pregnant again—with John Jr.—during the presidential campaign in 1960, her doctors wanted her to take it easy given her obstetrical history. So instead of riding airplanes and shaking hands, she put her writing skills to work again, penning six weekly newspaper columns between September 16 and November 1 called Campaign Wife. The folksy dispatches portrayed what it was like to be married to a man running for president. In effect, the columns were Jackie's way of being public when she was pregnant and unable to travel on the campaign. The columns were issued out of the Democratic National Committee as press releases, at least being honest about what they were.

The first column was about weathering a hurricane in Hyannis Port that knocked down trees and blew off part of the roof. “We really weren't terribly frightened, but Caroline did worry about what was happening to her father and whether her kitten and puppy were safe,” Jackie wrote. “Once she was assured Jack was in Texas where there was no storm, and Mitten and Charley were with us, we spent a cozy evening reading stories by candlelight.” In the next paragraph, she writes that her doctor allowed her to go to New York for a campaign trip, where she appeared on a TV show, shopped for maternity clothes, and spoke with reporters. “All the talk over what I wear and how I fix my hair has amused and puzzled me,” she wrote. “What does my hairdo have to do with my husband's ability to be President?”
⁷²

In the last column, she could barely contain her excitement. “One more week until November 8th. It's hard to imagine how everyone can keep working at the same pace even seven more days and yet these are the most important days when volunteers across the country are calling to be sure everyone goes to the polls. If everyone is working as hard and the women who have sent in thousands of Calling for Kennedy forms telling what women believe to be the most important issues facing the country Jack and Senator Johnson are sure to be elected!”
⁷³

All of these writing experiences came rushing back to her in late 1974 as Jackie toiled on the
New Yorker
piece. She took her time reporting it and reviewed her words carefully, knowing that the magazine was just another kind of fishbowl. She put the pages in an envelope and sent the piece by courier to William Shawn's cluttered office at 25 West Forty-Third Street. How surprisingly good it would feel to have a published article again—in one of the most influential literary magazines in the world—even without her name on it, as the Talk of the Town pieces did not include bylines then.
The New Yorker
was a magazine that had published Dorothy Parker, John Cheever, Truman Capote, Harper Lee, Ring Lardner, W. H. Auden, Vladimir Nabokov, E. B. White, J. D. Salinger, John Updike, and most every other literary light of the twentieth century. It had been a long dry spell from journalism for her, at least as a member of the fourth estate. Of course now she was the object of it, and had been for some time.

When Shawn was done editing her submission, he called her in to discuss the final changes.
⁷⁴
She could barely see the man seated behind his desk, which was stacked with papers and mail, and contained a glass vase filled with pencils next to a hand-crank sharpener. Behind him, snapshots were tacked to the wall. Her brief visit to the office sent ripples of excitement and curiosity through even the most hardened scribes on staff, who suddenly felt compelled to stretch their legs, gather around the water cooler,
⁷⁵
and catch a glimpse, all the while imagining what she could have written that he thought was worth publishing.

By mid-January 1975, the Christmas tree was gone from Rockefeller Center but Jackie knew she had one last gift coming to her, and it was waiting in her mailbox. There, rolled up, was the January 13, 1975, issue of
The New Yorker
, in which her Talk of the Town article finally appeared. Upstairs in her apartment, she was thrilled to hold the magazine in her hands, perhaps noting the irony of its cover—a drawing of ladies lunching. The article, spanning four pages, was tucked into the front section. She noted that Shawn had cut the feature in half, to fifteen hundred words, to fit stylistically with the other short pieces.
⁷⁶
He had also changed Jackie's first-person singular to the magazine's standard “we” and gave it the odd title of “Being Present.”

She read her familiar words again, the piece beginning with her description of a lunch at the Met with Karl Katz, whom she called one of the “guiding spirits” behind the photography center, and how they discussed Capa and his humanistic approach to photography. After the lunch, she and Katz had walked up the stretch of Fifth Avenue known as the Museum Mile to Ninety-Fourth Street, and into the historic brick Georgian mansion that had housed the Audubon Society before Capa had located the center there. The piece, she thought, didn't read half bad:

Although the article was unsigned, it didn't take long before everyone knew she had written it. The
Washington Post
was so breathless about her writing the article that the paper immediately reprinted it.
Time
magazine ran an item in its People column suggesting she wrote it for the paycheck. “Is Jackie Kennedy Onassis going broke?” the magazine asked.
⁷⁸

Jackie, slightly bemused by the attention, issued a typically demure statement through her old classmate and former White House social secretary, Nancy Tuckerman, which said, “I am glad
The New Yorker
took my piece if it helps more people to know about the International Center of Photography.”
⁷⁹

The reclusive Shawn, of course, was not interested in engaging the press either, though he no doubt understood the value of having Jackie's name in the magazine, for reasons other than its literary merit. Rather than deal with each reporter who called, he, too, released an underwhelming statement, saying the article “was delivered to us by messenger. It's a straightforward little piece of reporting, very good and very usable with a little editing … She will be paid at the regular rates, which run into the hundreds rather than the thousands.”
⁸⁰

Crossing the street from 1040 Fifth for some fresh air in Central Park, Jackie could see
The New Yorker
on the newsstand, and if she smiled, it was surely in the knowledge that years after her debutante ball, this literary coming-out party allowed her to unleash a little bit of creativity in a very public way. She had produced something of worth and had been paid for it. She had exposed her passion for art, culture, and preservation, as well as an abiding curiosity about what to do next with her life—things that had been on her mind more lately with her marriage ending and her children verging on adulthood. By publishing, she was asserting herself, reviving her talents, and erecting a bridge to a new land, from one rarified world of glamorous parties, exotic vacations, and a life defined by her husbands to another, where she could express her true self. It had been a long time since she had received a check to publish her work. And it felt good, despite—or perhaps because of—the fact that she was married to one of the richest people in the world. That the piece explored art (photography) as well as architecture (the Audubon House) is not surprising. Surely she knew what Hemingway said: Write what you know.