Chapter 44
A heat wave is flooding Texas.
“You’re going to be hot,” Jack says to me on the plane.
“I’ll be fine.”
“They’re calling for rain in Dallas, so maybe we’ll bubbletop it after all.”
“You don’t want that, though.”
“No one comes out to see the president through a layer of glass.”
I read over the speech I’m giving tonight in Spanish. Jack’s talking now with Kenny O’Donnell about the feud in Texas, about Connally and Yarborough, splintering the Democrats.
“Texas will be hard enough to win without that,” Kenny says.
Jack changes the subject. “Any furniture broken last night at the party?”
“Just a Bobby and Ethel party,” Dave Powers says.
“Who was more wild?” Jack says. “Ethel or the kids?”
Dave and Kenny laugh.
“And that was only Bobby turning thirty-eight,” Jack says. “Imagine when he hits forty.”
Before we land, I go into the bedroom to change. White skirt, black belt. I clip my hair under my hat—not a beret, but enough to keep things from being destroyed in a car with no bubbletop.
I finish pinning the hat. The light is blinking. We’ve begun our descent.
The crowd is a dark sea beneath as we touch down in San Antonio. Jack leans back, shifting in his seat. He turns, looks at me, and grins.
“All right,” he says. “Let’s do this thing.”
The route is lined with people, hands waving, banners, flags.
“Jack, look,” I say, pointing to a massive cardboard sign.
Jackie
Come Water-Ski
in
Texas
Dave Powers glances at me, then at Jack. “They’re here for her,” he says.
That night at the Rice Hotel as we’re finishing dinner in our suite, the Johnsons come in. Lady Bird wants to know what she can arrange for our visit to their ranch.
“I’m sure Jackie will want to ride,” she says. “But what about you, Mr. President?”
“I’ll ride with Jackie,” he says, as if riding horses with me is the most natural thing in the world. He asks an aide to have the White House ship his riding pants to the Austin Air Force Base.
“My trousers, Lady Bird, will meet us at your house.”
“I like them,” I say as the door closes behind the Johnsons.
Jack laughs. “You used to call them Colonel Cornpone and his little Porkchop.”
“They’re kind,” I say.
“Do you think she’ll ever call me Jack?”
“On the last day of your presidency. Or maybe the day after.”
We’re alone, and he tells me then about the oxygen chamber he saw earlier that day at the aerospace center. He’s sitting at a small desk, digging a pen into a doodle on the hotel stationery.
“I pulled one of the scientists aside,” he says, “to ask if space medicine would have saved Patrick.”
Every time he says Patrick’s name, I feel a shift in him, like the name is a key that unlocks a door that swings open into a pool of dark. He keeps on with the doodle, silent.
“It’s time to get ready, Jack.”
“I know.”
I cross the room and kiss his cheek. I see it then, the sketch on the hotel stationery. A sailboat.
“I love that, Jack. Look how fast it’s going. But no one is in it. Who has the tiller?”
“He’s behind the sail.”
“Why’s that kite up in the corner?”
“That’s the sun.”
“Shaped like a diamond. Reluctant abstractionist, you. Are you sure it’s not a kite?”
He laughs and puts the pen down. “Where’s my tie?”