Jack's Widow by Eve Pollard Page B

that he is trying to deal with it…What do you think he will be able to do?”
    She said this in such a matter-of-fact tone that it was some seconds before he responded. She interrupted his spluttering avowal of apology.
    “Bobby, we haven’t got time. Is there anything that Lyndon can do, without making it more of a story?”
    “Well, he is hardly going to ruin his reputation for the Kennedys, is he?”
    Although Bobby believed that the president must be taking some delight in this situation, he said nothing more.
    “Let me think about everything, look up some law books, and call you back within the hour.”
    Jackie hoped he would call Lyndon and help stop the story from getting out, but during the next hour all her sisters-in-law called her again and told her yet again how Jack loved her and how he had confided to them how much he admired her.
    Poppycock!
    Now not only did she know that he had continued to be a habitual womanizer, Jackie realized that she alone would have to deal with it.
    Should she put out a statement? Saying what? Should she call up the newspaper owners, speak to them off the record? In the old days they had been very helpful. She could ask that they watch what was written for the sake of her children.
    No, they would be as sweet as peaches on the phone and then the word would get out that she was groveling.
    Never.
    Should she ask to meet Consuelo James and try and beg or bargain directly with her?
    Too risky; it was bound to get out.
    Later, Bobby called her again. Both he and the family lawyer felt that if the government legal team could not coax the maid or frighten her into releasing the letter and picture, no one could.
    Next morning even the serious journals featured, among others, the photographs of her late husband meeting the woman that she now knew had been his mistress for years.
    The ravishing blonde was also pictured with her first and second husbands and her last costar. Most of the stories referred to the remarkable coincidence of Monroe committing suicide on the first anniversary of Jack’s death.
    The next day the children returned from Europe in time for their birthdays.
    As they were going to spend Thanksgiving with Janet at Merrywood, they had their parties early. Luckily both of these celebrations took place at home.
    In front of her children’s friends, assembled nannies and mothers, Jackie once again entered dream mode.
    She laughed, ate crustless cucumber sandwiches, and birthday cake. She joined in with laughter at the clown booked for her son and the magician she had hired for her daughter.
    It was during one of the latter’s tricks that she stepped outside the drawing room to take a call from President Johnson.
    Sadly he explained that he had been able to do nothing about the note. “I assume you are coming down to your mother’s for Thanksgiving? Could the attorney general visit you there?”
    “More bad news?”
    “Why don’t you just enjoy the rest of Caroline’s party,” said Lyndon, and was gone before she could follow up with supplementary questions.
    The most powerful man in the land knew she would be horrified by the picture that he held in his hands.
    He felt it essential that she should be surrounded by loved ones when she saw it.
    When he arrived at Merrywood, Nicholas Katzenbach, the attorney general, quietly suggested to Janet that it would be a good idea for her to be present at his meeting with Jackie. In the cathedral quiet of Hugh Auchincloss’s library he slowly withdrew the picture from the heavy white paper envelope with its presidential seal and placed it on the low glass coffee table. Jackie bent forward, painstakingly absorbing its content. Involuntarily she fell forward, emitting an anguished whimper followed by the entire contents of her stomach.
    The two of them. In the Lincoln bedroom in the White House.
    For days she had been unable to escape her self-made images ofthe pair. She imagined them chatting longingly and lovingly on the