Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot Part 3

The president of the United States is naked, and on schedule. Almost every afternoon, at precisely 1:00 P.M., he slips into the indoor pool-always heated to a therapeutic ninety degrees-located between the White House and the West Wing. John Kennedy does this to soothe his aching back, a problem for him ever since he was a student at Harvard. His ordeal with the Amagiri exacerbated his back problems, and he has even endured surgery-to no avail. The pain is constant and so excruciating that Kennedy often uses crutches or a cane to get around, though rarely in public. He wears a corset, sleeps on an extra-firm mattress, and receives regular injections of the anesthetic procaine to ease his suffering. Aides know to look for a tightening of his jaw as a sign that the president's back is acting up. The half hour of b.r.e.a.s.t.stroke and the heat of the pool are part of Kennedy's therapy. His lack of a bathing suit for many of those swims stems from his notion of manliness. Real men do the b.r.e.a.s.t.stroke au naturel, and that's that.

The White House staff could never imagine the previous president, Dwight Eisenhower, swimming naked anywhere, anytime. The elderly general and his wife, Mamie, were as traditional as they come. Very little unexpected happened in the White House during the eight years the Eisenhowers lived there.

But now everything has changed. The Kennedys are much less formal than the Eisenhowers. Smoking is allowed in the staterooms. Receiving lines are being abolished, giving formal functions a more casual feel. The First Lady is having a stage set up in the East Room, to allow performances by some of America's most notable musicians, such as cellist and composer Pablo Casals and singer Grace b.u.mbry.

Still, the White House is a serious place. The president's daily schedule revolves around periods of intense work followed by restorative breaks. He rises each morning around seven and immediately begins reading the news of the day in bed, including dispatches from the New York Times, the Was.h.i.+ngton Post, and the Wall Street Journal. Kennedy is a speed-reader, capable of absorbing twelve hundred words every sixty seconds. He is done with the newspapers in just fifteen minutes, and then moves on to a pile of briefing books covering events going on around the world.

The president then takes breakfast in bed. It is a substantial meal: orange juice, bacon, toast slathered in marmalade, two soft-boiled eggs, and coffee with cream. By and large, he is not a huge eater. He meticulously keeps his weight at or below 175 pounds. But he is a creature of habit and eats the same breakfast almost every day of the week.

Shortly before 8:00 A.M., Kennedy slips into the tub for a brief soak. In the bath, as he will throughout the day, he has a habit of tapping his right hand constantly, as if the hand is an extension of his active thought process.

The president is in the Oval Office at nine o'clock sharp. He sits back in his chair and listens as his appointments secretary, Ken O'Donnell, maps out his schedule. Throughout the morning, as Kennedy takes calls and listens to advisers brief him on what is happening in the rest of the world, he is interrupted by his handpicked staff. In addition to court jester Dave Powers and the quick-witted Kenny O'Donnell, son of the College of the Holy Cross's football coach, there are men such as the bespectacled special a.s.sistant and Harvard history professor Arthur Schlesinger; Ted Sorensen, the Nebraska-born special counselor and adviser; and Pierre Salinger, the former child prodigy pianist who serves as press secretary.

With the exception of the president's personal secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, the Kennedy White House is very much a fraternity, with every man deeply loyal to his charismatic leader. Conversation often lapses into the profane, as the president's naval background lends truth to the saying "swears like a sailor." "I didn't call businessmen sons of b.i.t.c.hes," Kennedy once complained about being misquoted in the New York Times. "I called them p.r.i.c.ks."

The tone is courtlier when women are around. The president, for instance, never refers to his secretary as anything other than Mrs. Lincoln. But even then, crudeness can be camouflaged. Once, in his wife's presence, Kennedy uses a version of the military's phonetic alphabet to lash out at a newspaper columnist, referring to him as a "Charlie-Uncle-Nan-Tare."

When the confused First Lady asks the president to explain, he deftly changes the subject.

Kennedy's half-hour midday swim is an effective tonic for his pain, but sometimes he also uses the swimming sessions to conduct business, inviting staff and even members of the press to put in laps alongside him. The catch? They have to be naked, too. Dave Powers, a regular swimming partner, is quite used to it. For some on the White House staff, however, the scene is almost surreal.

Enigmatically, the president's informal aquatic habits belie the fact that he is the polar opposite of his easygoing vice president. Lyndon Johnson is well-known for grabbing shoulders and slapping backs, but Kennedy keeps a physical distance between himself and other men. Unless he is campaigning, a ch.o.r.e he relishes, the president finds even the simple act of shaking hands to be a burden.

After swimming, Kennedy eats a quick lunch upstairs in the residence-perhaps a sandwich and possibly some soup. He then goes into his bedroom, changes into a nights.h.i.+rt, and naps for exactly forty-five minutes. Other great figures in history such as Winston Churchill napped during the day. For Kennedy, it is a means of rejuvenation.

The First Lady wakes him up and stays with him to chat as he gets dressed. Then it's back to the Oval Office, most nights working as late as 8:00 P.M. His staff knows that after business hours, Kennedy often puts two feet up on his desk and casually tosses ideas back and forth with them. It is the president's favorite time of the day.

When everyone has cleared out, Kennedy makes his way back upstairs to the family's private quarters-often referred to as "the residence" or "the Mansion" by his staff-where he smokes an Upmann cigar, enjoys Ballantine scotch and water without ice, and prepares for his evening meal. Often, Jackie Kennedy puts together last-minute dinner parties, which the president tolerates.

Truth be told, JFK would rather be watching a movie. The White House theater can screen any film in the world, anytime the president wishes. His preferences are World War II flicks and Westerns.

Kennedy's fixation on movies rivals his other favorite recreational pursuit: s.e.x.

The president's bad back does not discourage him from being romantically active, which is a good thing, because, as JFK once explained to a friend, he needed to have s.e.x at least once a day or he would suffer awful headaches. He and Jackie keep separate bedrooms, connected by a common dressing room-which is not to say that John Kennedy limits his s.e.xual relations to the First Lady. While happily married, he is far from monogamous.

The president's philandering aside, unquestionably the biggest change between the Kennedy and Eisenhower administrations is in the lady of the house. Jackie Kennedy, at thirty-one, is less than half the age of Mamie Eisenhower. The former First Lady was a grandmother while in the White House and a known penny-pincher who spent her downtime watching soap operas. By contrast, Jackie enjoys listening to bossa nova records and keeps fit by jumping on a trampoline and lifting weights. Like her husband, Jackie keeps her weight constant, a slim 120 pounds to compliment her 5-foot, 7-inch frame.

Her one true vice is her pack-a-day cigarette habit-either Salems or L&Ms-which she continues even throughout her pregnancies. As her husband does with his physical ailments, Jackie Kennedy keeps her smoking a secret-during the recent presidential campaign, an aide was charged with staying within arm's reach with a lighted cigarette so Jackie could sneak a puff anytime she wanted.

Jackie's parents divorced before she was twelve, and she was raised in wealth and splendor by her mother, Janet. She attended expensive girls' boarding schools and then Va.s.sar College before spending her junior year in Paris. Upon her return to the United States, Jackie transferred to George Was.h.i.+ngton University, in D.C., where she got a diploma in 1951.

Throughout the First Lady's developmental years, she was taught to be extremely private and to hold thoughts deep within herself. She likes to maintain "a certain quality of mystery about her," a friend will later note. "People did not know what she was thinking or what she was doing behind the scenes-and she wanted to keep it that way."

The fact is that Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy never fully reveals herself to anyone-not even to her husband, the president.

In far-off Minsk, Lee Harvey Oswald is having the opposite problem. The woman he loves just won't stop talking.

On March 17, at a dance for union workers, he meets a nineteen-year-old beauty who wears a red dress and white shoes and who styles her hair in what he believes to be "French fas.h.i.+on." Marina Prusakova is reluctant to smile because of her bad teeth, but the two dance that night, and he walks her home-along with several other potential suitors smitten by the talkative Marina.

But Lee Harvey is defiant, as always. He knows the other men will soon be distant memories.

And he is right. "We like each other right away," the defector writes in his journal.

After her mother's death two years before, Marina, who was born out of wedlock, was sent to live with her uncle Ilya, a colonel in the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs and a respected member of the local Communist Party. She is trained as a pharmacist, but quit her job sometime ago.

Oswald knows all this, and so much more about Marina, because between the nights of March 18 and 30, they spend a great deal of time together. "We walk," he writes. "I talk a little about myself, she talks a lot about herself."

Their relations.h.i.+p takes a sudden turn on March 30, when Oswald enters the Fourth Clinic Hospital for an adenoid operation. Marina visits him constantly, and by the time Lee Harvey is discharged, he "knows I must have her." On April 30 they are married. Marina almost immediately becomes pregnant.

Life is getting more and more complicated for Lee Harvey Oswald.

In the winter of 1961 the world outside the White House is turbulent. The cold war is raging. Americans are terrified of the Soviet Union and its a.r.s.enal of nuclear weapons. Ninety miles south of Florida, Fidel Castro has recently taken over Cuba, ushering in a regime thought to be friendly to the Soviets.

In America's Deep South, there is growing racial strife.

In the marketplace, there is a new contraceptive device known simply as "The Pill."

On the radio, Chubby Checker is exhorting young Americans to do the Twist, while Elvis Presley is asking women everywhere if they're lonesome tonight.

But inside the Kennedy White House, Jackie sees to it that none of these political and social upheavals intrude on creating the perfect environment to raise a family. Her schedule revolves around her children. In a break from the traditional style of First Lady parenting, in which children are managed by the household staff, she is completely involved in the lives of three-year-old Caroline and baby John, taking them with her to meetings and on errands.

As she grows more comfortable in the White House, it will not be uncommon for Jackie to camouflage herself with a scarf and heavy coat and take the children to the circus or a park-discreetly followed by the Secret Service.

The sight of the First Lady playing with her children on the South Lawn will also soon become commonplace, causing one observer to note that Jackie is "so like a little girl who had never grown up." Indeed, she speaks with the same breathy, almost childlike voice of actress Marilyn Monroe.

The First Lady likes to think of herself as a traditional wife and dotes on her husband. But she also has a fiercely independent streak, breaking White House protocol by refusing to attend the myriad teas and social functions other First Ladies have endured. Jackie prefers to spend time with her children or concoct designs for a lavish renovation of the White House, an activity that does not interest her husband, who has little aesthetic sense when it comes to such matters. Jackie Kennedy refers to her new home as "the president's house" and takes her inspiration from Thomas Jefferson's White House, elaborately decorated by the former amba.s.sador to France.

The current decor dates to the Truman administration. Many pieces of furniture are reproductions instead of actual period originals, giving America's most notable residence a cheap, derivative feel rather than an aura of grandeur. Jackie is a.s.sembling a team of top collectors to enhance the decor of the White House in every possible way.

She thinks she has years to finish.

At least four. Perhaps even eight.

She thinks.