Just Jackie by Edward Klein Read Free Book Online

ruefully, she was already living in her own private Grey Gardens.

“THE MOMENT I WAS ALWAYS SCARED OF”

    A fter the children were asleep, Jackie came down from the Family Quarters, and peeked into the Oval Office. Jack had always wanted a red rug, and while they were in Texas, she had instructed the White House decorators to lay a new scarlet carpet.
    The refurbished office now belonged to Lyndon Baines Johnson, who had been urged by Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to move in as quickly as possible to minimize the shock of transition. But things had not gone as smoothly as expected. On the day after the assassination, as Johnson approached the Oval Office for the first time as President, he had been surprised to find John Kennedy’s personalsecretary Evelyn Lincoln still sitting at her desk in the anteroom.
    “Can’t you clear out of here so my girls can come in?” Johnson said.
    Mrs. Lincoln reported the rude remark to Robert F. Kennedy, the Attorney General. Bobby Kennedy was so outraged that he virtually ordered Johnson to stay out of the Oval Office until after his brother’s funeral. Not wanting to look like a usurper, Johnson acquiesced, and waited three days before moving in.
    During that time, word spread that the new President had been barred from the Oval Office by the Kennedys. It was said that Johnson was being forced to conduct the nation’s business from across the street in the vice president’s office in the old Executive Office Building. Even after he took possession of the Oval Office, Johnson had to return each night to the vice president’s residence to sleep, because Jackie and her children were still occupying the Family Quarters.
    “I can’t even live in my own house,” Johnson complained to a companion one day while he was doing laps in the White House swimming pool.
    Pressure mounted on Johnson to get Jackie and the rest of the Kennedys out of the White House.
    “You’re the President,” Harry Truman scolded Johnson. “Clear this bunch out, and move your people in.”
    Jackie had promised Lady Bird Johnson that she would move within a week after her return from Hyannis Port. Her shock and sorrow were etched in every word of the memo she sent to the new First Lady.
    Maybe I will be remembered as the person who start[ed] restoring the White House—but you will be remembered as the one who
PRESERVED
it—and made sure for all time it would be cared for. That was the moment I was always scared of—Would the nextPresident’s wife scrap the whole thing as she was sick to death of hearing about Jacqueline Kennedy.
    The women of the White House press corps, whom Jackie had dubbed “the harpies,” had never warmed to the aristocratic Mrs. Kennedy, and they were eager to see her go. In the dispatches they sent back to their local newspapers, they noted that Eleanor Roosevelt had vacated the President’s House the day after Franklin’s death. When, they asked Liz Carpenter, Lady Bird’s press secretary, would Jackie make way for the Johnsons?
    “So I went to Mrs. Johnson and I said, ‘They just keep asking when are we moving in,’ “ recalled Liz Carpenter. “It’s the first time I’ve ever seen Mrs. Johnson really angry. She turned and said with rather intense indignation at the question, ‘I would to God I could serve Mrs. Kennedy’s comfort. I can at least serve her convenience.’ ”
    “Everything was in a jumbled state as we were packing for the move,” recalled Mary Barelli Gallagher, Jackie’s private secretary. “The third floor was the busiest those days, fairly buzzing with activity. All the storage rooms had been opened and the things brought out to be packed. That moved smoothly enough. But the complication was Jackie’s clothes: special tall cartons had to be made to hold the closets full of gowns.”
    “Now that I look back on it,” Jackie admitted later, “I think I should have gotten out the next day. But at first I