Tenderness, page 41
The following week, there was another flutter of correspondence. Their mood was now downcast and subdued. The government had lodged an appeal. Mrs. Kennedy was, she said, incredulous. ‘How can it be?’
The Professor was ‘very saddened’ to hear the news. These things, he conceded, could drag on for a long time, and in that way, good books were simply ‘disappeared’ out of circulation, and small publishers went under. Red tape was the easiest form of censorship.
It was Hoover behind the appeal, of course. Harding knew the Director was not going to give up. The Bureau had his secret picture of Mrs. Kennedy; the gift which he, Harding, had given; the gift that would go on giving if the Bureau, under the guise of the U.S. Mails and ‘the government’, stuck to its guns. They had the big lawyers. Hoover was determined that the book which Mrs. Kennedy clutched in glossy black-and-white would still be proven to be, not merely scandalous, but obscene.
He hadn’t given up his hope of getting her popular husband off the scene before the Senator could declare his candidacy for the presidential race. Of course he hadn’t. The Director was tenacious to the point of obsession, and the scandal of a scandalous wife could pull Jack Kennedy down in a way his womanizing probably never would.
If the latter got out, American men would feel sorry for young, pretty Mrs. Kennedy, having to put up with her husband’s infidelities, but they’d admire and envy handsome Jack Kennedy. They’d want to be him, and that might just be his ticket into the White House. Hoover’s greatest hope lay in Mrs. Kennedy’s dirty secret.
It wasn’t only politics. Hoover believed in ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, and he was sure he knew which was which. What other government employee, he would ask himself, was allowed to indulge in un-American activity? Why should the wife of a rich-kid Senator get away with it? She’d been caught red-handed with a banned book. Why wasn’t she supporting the government position? Why was she sneaking around?
Jackie Kennedy, according to Hoover’s own notes in her Bufile, ‘put on airs’. She liked to be called ‘Jacqueline’. Queen Jacqueline! That’s what he’d penciled in one margin. In another, he dubbed her ‘Lady Kennedy’, and in another, not ‘Lady C.’ but ‘Lady K.’ He must have smirked at his own wit.
In Bureau-think, she and her husband needed to be dealt with. And soon. The New York Field Office had reported that Papa Joe Kennedy was already taking out leases on two whole floors of new office space in the Marguery Hotel, the family’s New York base. His son’s declaration for the Democratic nomination contest was a foregone conclusion. The only question was when he came out with it.
In mid-August, Harding’s personal copy of the contraband book arrived in thick brown paper in the motel mail, marked ‘Strictly Confidential’. The owner of Pilgrims Motor Inn looked at him hard over his yellowing bi-focals, but the man knew not to say anything. Mr. Harding always paid his bills right on time, and he seemed to have no plans to move on.
* * *
—
After Harding’s long banishment to Butte, the open space of the Sound that summer, the play of light, and the bedrock peace of the Cape seemed eternal. Harding knew it was as illusory as anything else; that, under the skin of the world, all of life was restless. Change was the only constant. When he was seven, his father kissed his mother goodbye, popped a quarter in his son’s pajama-shirt pocket, hoisted his encyclopedia case, and never returned.
He and his mother watched for him – silently sometimes, giddily at others. They’d watched at the living-room window for months, ducking out of sight when neighbors appeared on the front step and rang the bell, to ask after them. Once, they even made popcorn and sat watching the living-room window, as if it were the big screen at the movie theater. After that night, he never could stand the smell of popcorn. But it was in those months, staked out behind that window, that he learned how to watch, how to see, and how to work out truth from appearances. The two didn’t line up as often as people thought, and knowing that, in the gut, is what made a good agent.
It sure was something how the brain could play tricks – with another man’s height or his gait or even the back of his head. He saw his father for years, on street corners, in barber shops, at gas pumps, and at the far end of drugstore counters. Maybe the truth was that everyone was marked, randomly or miraculously, with the traces of strangers; that no one was ever only themselves. Maybe that meant no one was ever truly alone either.
It was the kind of thing that could turn a person’s wits. It was also the closest thing to religion he could muster these days, a thin belief in the stray but seemingly inevitable connections between strangers; a sense that everyone was only a thread, a frayed stitch or a loose end in some design too big for any of us to ever see clear of.
On the beach, at the tide-line, a roller crashed at his feet, soaking his shoes. He’d have a flare-up on his feet by the time he unlaced them, but he couldn’t always avoid everything. Besides, sandals were unacceptable on a man, and he certainly wasn’t about to go barefoot, not even on a beach. He agreed with the Bureau conduct manual on both points. There had to be standards.
The weight of the camera felt good in his hands. He fixed the base-plate to the tripod – loosely, in case he needed to pluck the camera from the path of an approaching wave or a splashing swimmer. He didn’t usually photograph ‘shore scenes’. Breaking waves were the stuff of a million Cape Cod postcards. But he wanted to see if he could capture the wall of a wave as it glided in to shore. He wanted the smooth, rolling stillness in the powerful upsurge; the glassy calm in the unstoppable force. It was the tug of two opposing elements that made a great picture.
In the shot of Mrs. Kennedy, say, it had been the vulnerability of her face combined with the defiance of that book clutched under her arm.
It felt odd knowing things about her, about her movements, her thoughts; things that even her husband didn’t know.
Not that his respect for her changed anything. He was determined to do what Howard Johnson said – stick to the job. ‘Don’t get ideas.’
The Nantucket Sound seemed to draw in and hold its breath before each crashing release. Waves surged toward the shallows in thundering exhalations: pure power just before they broke.
He thought he could get that on film. If he were to stand more or less in the shallows, he’d get something special. He’d forget about his trousers getting wet and his skin going crazy tomorrow. Hell. So what?
The rhythm of the Sound was hypnotic. He felt his breathing deepen. Time stretched away, as far as the horizon, and he was up to his shins.
He anchored the legs of the tripod in the wet sand. Then he pocketed the lens cap, fitted a filter and selected a slow shutter speed. The tide was coming in fast, and his feet were already stinging, but he’d survive. He’d parked his car not far from the beach, on Irving Avenue by the Senator’s house. He’d have time to change at the motel before his afternoon shift, and he could spring for another pair of shoes in Hyannis on Tuesday, when the stores opened again after the holiday.
It was as he took the first test-shot that the sea-floor pulled away.
A rogue wave.
The world tipped.
The horizon disappeared.
Later, he remembered only the arch of her back and the shadowy-white knots of her spine as she burst from the wave.
He nearly fell backwards at the wave’s slap, but he got hold of the tripod and steadied himself. The wave flooded the shallows, crashing to shore, bearing its swimmer to the beach. Spray flew high. He was all thumbs, fumbling with the base-plate, with the already pointless lens cap.
Damn it, damn it.
Above him, gulls screeched.
She was struggling to stand in the surf, trying to get her balance. She was in a two-piece, a dark blue bikini, and a yellow-petaled swimming-cap. He tried not to watch as she sat down in the shallows and tugged off each flipper, like an angry child. She brought her hands to her face to wipe her eyes, and pulled off her cap, flinging it hard up the beach. Then she stood again, awkwardly. Her ribs heaved, and her hair was plastered to the sides of her head.
He reached for the sunglasses in his shirt pocket, for their safety, for cover, and nodded a neutral greeting.
She approached, gripping her flippers as if she wanted to clobber him. ‘Why are you taking pictures?’
He shoved his hands in his pockets – a reflex action from his first day on the job in Hyannis Port. In case she remembered New York, the hearing at the G.P.O., his hands, him – which of course she was not about to do now, not after all these months. But the movement, his stance, seemed to strike her in that moment as rude or insubordinate. She glared.
He could still hear his grade-school teachers shouting at the boys: ‘Hands – out – of – pockets!’
‘I beg your pardon, Mrs. Kennedy. I didn’t realize you were swimming this morning.’
She looked up the beach, and he turned too. The two older women, from the beach-umbrella shelter, were marching in their direction. It was Mrs. Clyde, the housekeeper, and Maud Shaw, Caroline’s nanny. He could see their faces now.
‘I was just trying,’ he said slowly, ‘to get a few shots of the Sound. Stupid idea. I’m a city-slicker by nature.’ He could feel the saltwater biting the blisters on his hands. He wished she’d leave him be so he could check his camera for water damage.
Jackie Kennedy’s dark eyes narrowed. He could see, without wanting to see, that her skin was goose-pimpling; that, beneath her top, her nipples had risen with the breeze. Her bikini bottoms looked too big for her, and her knuckles were white against her hip where she gripped their elastic edge. Sand was weighing them down at the back. Her trademark poise was gone.
‘You have no right at all to be taking pictures,’ she said, almost inaudibly. Of her, she meant, of her. But she couldn’t come out and accuse him, as much as she wanted to. Her jaw was square and hard-set.
‘I thought you were at church, Mrs. Kennedy, at nine o’clock Mass,’ he said, ‘with the family.’
Mrs. Clyde and Maud arrived breathily at the water’s edge, and Mrs. Clyde stepped forward into the shallows on varicose legs to drape her charge in a large striped towel. The gulls dipped and squawked overhead. His heart flapped. He couldn’t blow another assignment.
Jackie Kennedy didn’t take her eyes off him as she spoke to the two women. ‘Thank you, Mrs. Clyde. Thank you, Maud,’ which meant, Please leave us now.
They retreated up the beach to wait, patient as sentries, by the dunes.
‘I’m not able to go to Mass, Mr. Harding.’
I apologize. I didn’t—’
‘I can’t go into Hyannis now. I said as much to you already.’ Her voice was low, breathy but insistent.
She was referring to the issue of LIFE magazine. A couple of weeks before. The cover story: ‘Jackie Kennedy: A Front Runner’s Appealing Wife’.
After that hit the stands, she couldn’t walk down Main Street in Hyannis without drawing a crowd. Women wanted to know where she’d bought that pink dress she wore for the magazine cover; where she had her hair done locally. Men stared. A few had the presence of mind to ask after her husband, the local boy done good. She smiled always, but privately she felt overwhelmed by the attention, by the intrusions; by the way complete strangers addressed her as ‘Jackie’. Only family and close friends called her that. Harding knew her mother-in-law worried she wasn’t going to cope with political life, and Rose made no secret of her concerns. He had it all well documented on the audio.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs. Kennedy,’ he repeated. ‘I assumed you still went to church with the family on Sundays. I didn’t know anyone bothered you there. We’ll put another Secret Service man outside the church if you like. I’d do it myself, only I’m not on the job on Sunday mornings.’ As you can see, he almost added, but he stopped himself, in case it sounded sarcastic.
Her eyes were molten. ‘I want that film, please.’ She extended an arm and opened her palm. The elbow of her other arm gripped the flippers at her side. It was a balancing act: the towel slipping; her bikini bottoms sagging; the flippers heavy.
‘Photography’s just my hobby, Mrs. Kennedy. Mr. Kennedy Sr. said I could use the beach for picture-taking. I’m sorry if I surprised you. I was only trying to shoot the wa—’
‘I’m waiting, Mr. Harding.’ She eyed the camera. She seemed even to appraise it. He’d forgotten until that moment that she’d once been a photographer of sorts herself, the Times-Herald’s ‘Inquiring Photographer’.
So neither of them saw it coming: the second wind-driven wall of water – at least five feet high, and powerful as it exploded in the shallows.
In that tumult – in the crashing indifference of the Nantucket Sound – she seemed, briefly, to care as much for his camera as he did. He saw concern flicker in her eyes. Your Leica! Then the tripod went over, the camera and base-plate went flying, and she leaped out, the full length of herself, to catch it, like a center-fielder.
He saw her flippers carried off in the backwash of the wave. The ground beneath his feet pulled away. He teetered again. His sunglasses plummeted into the tide. She rolled, somersaulting at the wallop of the next wave and, for a long moment, he couldn’t see her. When he did, she was receding, not coming at him again. For a moment, he was relieved. He was in the clear.
Then the question came: what was she doing out there? Where was she? He stumbled forward and the cold smacked his chest. The volume of water was a strange sensation. As a kid at Coney Island, he used to wade out, but his mother had always warned him about his skin, about going out above his head. He was a tall guy, sturdy – no one would think to look at him he couldn’t swim. What the hell had he been thinking? Now she was furious with him.
And gone.
He squinted into the sun, scanning the waves, but nothing. She was nowhere – Jesus Christ – when something brushed his leg. A foot?
He looked down but the water was no longer clear. Sand churned in the tide. He thought he saw a foot, pedaling. Had she come up for air?
A wave rolled over his head, almost knocking him off his feet.
The backwash was powerful.
He stumbled deeper into the tide, as deep as he dared. The waves buffeted. Another rolled over him. When they flattened out again, the water was up to his collarbone. How the hell had that happened?
And where was she? Most of his life he’d felt too numb to feel fear – worry, sure, he worried all the time – but fear was rare. Something in his head had scrambled the day his father didn’t come home. A part of him had gone missing. But that hole within had often served him well as an agent.
Yet now he felt it. Fear. Fear for her. Fear for himself.
It was hard to stay upright, hard not to be drawn even deeper. He started taking off his belt – maybe he’d need some sort of tow-line. He had the thing off when, underwater, fingertips brushed his.
And disappeared again.
He groped the water.
His heart slammed out the seconds.
Until her hand locked on.
Only by virtue of his height and weight did he manage to drag them both back to shore. He checked she was steady on land before releasing her hand. Her face was pale. She turned away, coughing onto the beach. Was she throwing up? Seaweed was still tangled around one of her arms.
When she finally turned to him, something – an involuntary flash of sympathy or perhaps a receding sense of alarm – passed between them.
He saw again the startled expression he knew from the New York shot. But it was worse this time. Much worse. She was spooked.
She hauled her bikini bottoms up, and he turned away, embarrassed, as if he were again ‘the intruder’. She bent, stony-faced, for the towel that floated in the shallows. His tripod was there too at the tide-mark, washed up. His Leica was long gone. He no longer cared. He only wanted to get back to his car, and back to the four walls of his motel room.
Her tone was stiff, formal – ‘I’m sorry about your camera’ – but her shoulders were stooped. She looked exhausted, defeated.
‘I’m sorry for the confusion, Mrs. Kennedy. It was a stupid idea of mine.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, formally again.
It wasn’t clear what she was thanking him for.
Another wave crashed at their feet. They both shuddered in the breeze. The silence was painful. Was she waiting for him to confess? What more could he say?
She straightened herself and strode up the beach, in the direction of her keepers and the Kennedy lawn. She’d been right to accuse him, of course, even if her timing had been wrong. He had secretly photographed her. Not today, but…
It was as if she’d intuited the truth of that day in New York, even if there was no way she could ever get at the facts of it. In some part of her, it must have been maddening.
There, alone on the beach, he hated himself, not for the first time. That morning, they’d both foundered, and it was his fault.
Only when she and her companions were out of sight did he fish his tripod out of the shallows and clamber, miserably, toward the dunes in the direction of Irving Avenue. He was soaked. He’d lost his belt in the confusion. His hands were red and raw, as if the dumb creature he actually was, was trying to burst through his thin-skinned hide.
In the distance, he heard car doors opening and slamming shut. The Kennedys were back from church. The pack of family dogs, tied to the wash-line at the back, set each other off. By the time he made it to his car, they were barking themselves into a frenzy. He gave it a day – two at best – until Hoover came for him.
ii
He glanced apprehensively at her. Her face was averted, and she was crying blindly, in all the anguish of her generation’s forlornness. His heart melted suddenly, like a drop of fire, and he put out his hand and laid his fingers on her knee.
