JFK and Mary Meyer Read online

  Copyright © 2020 by Jesse Kornbluth

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Cover design by Mimi Bark

  Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-5915-2

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-5916-9

  Printed in the United States of America

  for Libby Handros

  Contents

  Introduction

  1961

  1962

  1963

  1964

  Epilogue

  Bibliography

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Introduction

  This is a work of fiction, built on fact.

  FACT: John F. Kennedy said he needed sex every three days or he got a headache. While he was president, he never had a headache—women streamed into the White House to share his bed, and when he traveled, there was almost always a woman waiting for him. Affairs that became real connections? He wasn’t interested. And yet, from January 1962 until his death, he had one constant lover: Mary Pinchot Meyer, a family friend and a frequent guest at White House dinners. Like his wife, she was expensively educated and socially prominent—but she was an artist, far more adventurous, opinionated, and sensual.

  FACT: On October 12, 1964, eleven months after Kennedy’s assassination and two days before her forty-fourth birthday, Mary took her noon walk along the towpath of the Chesapeake and Ohio canal in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington. A gunman shot her, execution style, in the head and the heart. An African American man was arrested, tried, and acquitted. Her murder remains unsolved.

  FACT: That night, Mary’s best friend, then living in Japan, urgently called Mary’s sister Tony and Tony’s husband, Ben Bradlee. “Mary had a diary,” she said. “Please get it and secure it.” There are several versions of the events that followed; the most intriguing has the Bradlees rushing to Mary’s studio and finding James Angleton, head of counterintelligence at the CIA, holding a boltcutter. Eventually, Ben Bradlee has written, they found a small notebook, mostly filled with paint swatches, sketches, and shorthand ideas for her art—and no more than ten pages about an affair with an unnamed lover.

  The Bradlees quickly understood the identity of that lover. As Bradlee would later write, “To say we were stunned doesn’t begin to describe our reactions.”

  The Bradlees burned the notebook.

  This novel is the diary I imagine Mary Meyer might have written—not the diary the Bradlees and Angleton found, but a full account of her life from 1961 to 1964. We know the dates she saw the president at the White House, and we know about every White House dinner she attended and the private parties where she and Kennedy were guests. And just enough has been written about a friendship that became a romance for a writer to imagine what Kennedy and Meyer felt, and when they felt it.

  This novel has four main characters: Mary Meyer, Jack Kennedy, and Jackie Kennedy—and the footnotes. These footnotes are useful because the people in this book, though often important in the Kennedy years, are mostly forgotten now. They also reveal information about Mary, the Kennedys, and the Kennedy assassination that wasn’t known in the 1960s. But what makes them more than mere fact is that they have a point of view; their editorial commentary is tart and opinionated.

  As the author of those footnotes, I come to my opinions by my age and a distant emotional connection to Kennedy’s world. Robert and Edward Kennedy graduated from Milton Academy, the prep school I attended from 1961 to 1964. At Milton, I befriended a number of girls who have, all these years later, helped me imagine the young Mary Pinchot; I had crushes on their mothers that I merged into the middle-aged Mary Meyer. In his senior year at Milton, my brother was the student adviser to a new boarder: one of Mary Meyer’s sons. In the Harvard class of 1940, my girlfriend’s father and my Milton mentor knew Kennedy and moved in his social circle. On the afternoon of November 22, 1963, I walked for hours with a grieving Sandy Spalding, son of one of Kennedy’s closest friends. And on the day of Kennedy’s funeral, with the entire school assembled at the flagpole, I took my trumpet to the chapel roof and blew “Taps.”

  Between the lines, the diary presents two intriguing questions: Who killed John F. Kennedy? Who killed Mary Meyer? The footnotes offer some clues, but because I can’t answer these questions, it may be best to begin reading the diary as a love story. An unlikely love story—when Kennedy invited Mary to dinner in October 1961, she expected nothing more than a pleasant evening with an old friend. As I have her write, before she goes to the White House:

  Decades from now, when I tell my grandchildren how a very popular, very handsome president used to flirt with their wrinkled, creaky grandmother, they might not believe me.

  So I’ll make notes and show them the proof.

  And if there’s no one to tell, when I am old and gray and sitting by the fire, I’ll read these entries and remember…and smile.

  One thing Mary knew better than almost all of Kennedy’s friends: his promiscuity masked a deep loneliness. Given time, she believed her love could help him heal. And, given time, Kennedy might have done what he fantasized: divorce Jackie after the ’64 election and marry Mary. But then a love story became a tragedy.

  JFK AND MARY MEYER

  A LOVE STORY

  EDITOR’S NOTE: What’s not in this book? The mundane moments of diaries: a record of Mary’s daily life, which would have included pasted-in recipes and newspaper clippings, phone numbers, and random jottings. There’s beauty in those small moments, but they aren’t the reason you’re reading this book.

  1961

  JANUARY 1

  RESOLUTIONS

  Fewer parties, more nights home with boys.

  One painting in a group show. No—two paintings!

  Get somewhere solid in a relationship.

  Read more.

  Travel alone.

  Volunteer?

  JANUARY 4

  Agitation after I work.

  My brain needs to cool down.

  Other painters drink. Or sleep with anyone available.

  I feel those impulses.

  Don’t want to give in to them.

  JANUARY 20

  Inauguration Day

  President. I see it. But I don‘t believe it.

  Unserious sex fiend Jack is now eloquent, inspiring Jack.

  Can the act of taking an oath transform a man?

  Or is it as simple as this: Jack grew up when I wasn’t looking.

  JANUARY 23

  Reading Advise and Consent.1

  One Senator is a skirt chaser…from Iowa.

  Everybody in DC knows he’s modeled on Jack. Nobody else does.

  Can he stop? He has to.

  JANUARY 25

  Jack’s fifth day in office: the first-ever presidential news conference broadcast live on TV.

  He’s nervous.

  He should be.
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  JANUARY 30

  Jack’s tenth day in office: State of the Union.

  Gloomy assessment.

  Why give this speech? No other new president did.

  What’s gained? Who advises him to do this?

  FEBRUARY 1

  The Misfits opened.

  Like Marilyn Monroe in the movie, I went to Nevada to get my divorce—but our situations couldn’t be more different. I was happy, light. Marilyn looked like she was trying to hold herself together and not doing a good job of it.

  The credits read Monroe and Gable and then Montgomery Clift. I was there for Clift. Wounded, self-aware, he’s almost in his own movie. There’s a moment that will make me see it again: the phone booth scene, the call with his mother. They haven’t spoken for months, he won’t be calling again soon, and we find out why. He’s proud—at the rodeo he won a belt with his name on it—and he wants her love and approval and, most of all, her forgiveness. And he wants to say hello to loved ones, but not his stepfather. His mother hangs up on him. The broken connection is a metaphor for his life.

  Feelings of abandonment, promises that are ignored or forgotten—everybody has them. But how often do you see this in a few minutes in a film? And to see it not just in words, but on the face of Montgomery Clift.

  They say all paintings are self-portraits. I’m not sure you can see my face and know my feelings from the art I’m making now.

  FEBRUARY 2

  Pam Turnure is Jackie’s press secretary.

  Makes no sense.2

  FEBRUARY 10

  I am sick of standing in my own shadow.

  FEBRUARY 12

  Tony is painting again.3 She says she’ll be painting more now that Jack is in the White House, and she and Ben seem to be Jack and Jackie’s best friends—which means they’re on call for dinners and weekends.4 So painting is a refuge she wants and needs.

  Could she work in my studio?

  Pro: The studio is always a lonely place. Who better to have with you there than your sister, your closest friend?

  Con: The studio is always a lonely place—and it should be. If Tony is there, we’ll chat. About the past, which is useless to me. And the present, which means lots of talk about Jack and Jackie. I say I’m not jealous, but couples see couples and divorced women stay home. I’d rather not hear about all the fun I’m missing.

  I need to think about this.

  FEBRUARY 14

  Dinner with TC, who made a big show of the holiday—a Hallmark card, roses, a flaming dessert.

  I appreciated the irony.

  He says, “A little sincerity goes a long way.” Fine. But I wouldn’t mind a little more.

  A later offer from RB, whom I barely know.5

  FEBRUARY 15

  Raw. Wet. Dark.

  The new “idealistic” mood in DC? Not feeling it.

  This is a character test. Again.

  MARCH 1

  “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”

  He meant it: today he announced the Peace Corps.

  His first good idea.

  MARCH 13

  Pablo Picasso has married Jacqueline Roque. He’s eighty. She’s thirty-four.

  A very practical solution for a woman who’s no longer an ingénue: find a much older, very successful artist, ideally with no small children.

  Sometimes I look at an older man and wonder: could I do that?

  Then I think: Work harder!

  MARCH 14

  I told Tony I can’t share my studio. And why. She understood. And said everything would change once I had “a stable relationship”—which, she emphasized, does not have to mean marriage!

  MARCH 15

  White House. Dinner for the Radziwills.6 Seventy guests.

  Not the usual DC suspects, more fun crowd, lots of NYC, plus the Aga Khan and a contingent of single women: Robyn Butler, Helen C, Fife Fell, Mary Gimbel…and me.

  A witty seating plan: the Pinchot sisters on each side of the President. I got about 20 percent of his attention. Even that was unsettling. It doesn’t matter that I’ve known him forever. In the White House, close up, he’s magnetic. A stone would think about sex if he stepped on it.

  Jackie: white sheath. Regal.

  Nine tables, baskets of flowers instead of those stupid presentations with tall flowers that cut the table in half.

  A French menu, in French (copying from the card here, because it’s so wonderfully affected): salmon mousseline, poulet à l’estragon, champignons marinés aux herbes…but the main course was really champagne.

  After: dancing.

  Jack and Jackie: one dance…he spent most of the evening table-hopping.

  This is Jackie’s vision of WH entertaining: chic, racy, fun. I’ve seen her look insecure, but not tonight.

  Something I noticed—and I’m sure I’m not the only one. Jackie uses round restaurant tables with plywood tops. She covers them with sunny yellow tablecloths that reach the floor. In a week, two at most, every hostess in Georgetown will have those tables.

  MARCH 16

  The annual fight with Cord over the boys’ summer plans.7

  Not really about summer or boys or me.

  Cord needs to dominate, show he’s smarter.

  I used to tell him: The low profile is the one best seen. They know you’re smart, and how smart; you don’t have to advertise it.

  But his arrogance is the first thing you notice. It’s why he’ll never run the Agency. The code of the CIA is so obvious it’s unspoken: At the top, it’s key not to know. If you don’t know, your denials are true and accurate. Your ignorance protects you, protects the Agency.

  Cord, ignorant? He’d rather die.

  He must have heard I was at the WH.

  The closer I get to Jackie and Jack, the nastier he’ll be to me.

  MARCH 17

  My mother was a radical when she was young, but she came to hate FDR and supported Lindbergh for president.

  My father wanted to keep America out of the war.

  I got confusing messages: it’s okay to be an idealist when you’re young, but don’t forget to marry well.

  When we were dating, Cord gave me a circle pin.

  I said: A circle pin means you’re a virgin.

  He said: Only if you pin it on the left side.

  He pinned it on the right side and unbuttoned my cardigan.

  I loved him immoderately—even, in the beginning, at the CIA. He wasn’t tainted.

  On our tenth anniversary, I handed him the pin and suggested he give it to a girlfriend.

  He said: Which one?

  Pure Cord: he had to have the last word.

  MARCH 21

  Reading The Agony and the Ecstasy. 600+ pages. But not overlong.

  Irving Stone visited the quarries where Michelangelo got his marble and read his letters and, I read somewhere, worked with a marble sculptor.

  I can taste the dust of the quarry.

  MARCH 29

  Twenty-third Amendment ratified. DC residents can vote for president.

  I almost feel I matter.

  APRIL 12

  Russia launches a man in low-orbit outer space.

  Jack congratulates Khrushchev.

  Nixon would have jumped to the so-called military implications and scowled.

  APRIL 18

  The Bay of Pigs. What a stupid idea.

  I bet they told Jack: You’ll be the liberator of Cuba! You’ll keep Communism out of this hemisphere!

  Image: steam coming out of Cord’s ears.

  APRIL 20

  She would never do this, but I like the story:

  After the Cuban fiasco, Jackie was going through Jack’s suit before sending it out to be cleaned, and she found a folded cocktail napkin in his pocket.

  On it, he’d written: DO NOT FORGET—AIR COVER!

  APRIL 27

  How Anne works: prime the wood, add thirty-forty coats of paint, sand after each coat.8

&n
bsp; Result: A surface that conveys both depth and translucence.

  How I work: prime the canvas, add ten coats. Unsure what’s conveyed.

  APRIL 28

  My women friends have two drinks, then stop. Though they clearly want three.

  I think they have alcoholism in their families and saw how damaging it was, and they fear they could easily become sloppy, miserable drunks. Or say too much.

  TC can drink bourbon after bourbon. Hollow leg, he says. Not so. He gets sloppy. But he’s a guy. No shame.

  I stop at two drinks.

  MAY 5

  First American launched into space. No wonder Jack was so gracious with Khrushchev.

  MAY 18

  Proof he is a Socialist: Castro offered to exchange Bay of Pigs prisoners for 500 bulldozers.

  MAY 20

  Clem Greenberg said most artists had “a friend.”9

  Anne said she didn’t.

  I do: Anne.

  MAY 25

  A man on the moon by 1970?

  Jack dreams big.

  JUNE 1

  Jack and Jackie are in Paris.

  Jack was brilliant: “I do not think it altogether inappropriate for me to introduce myself. I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris.”10

  JUNE 2

  The Kennedys at Versailles last night. 150 guests in the Hall of Mirrors. Dinner served on Napoleon’s gold-trimmed china.

  Is Jackie wearing a diamond tiara? The coat-and-dress: that cannot be an American designer.

  Jack, carrying a hat? Bet he didn’t wear it for a second.

  The glamour! When they’re in public, it’s nonstop. How do they do it?11

  JUNE 5

  Jack met with Khrushchev in Vienna. The gossip: it didn’t go well.

  JUNE 6

  I need to pay less attention to the news and more to my work.

  JUNE 7

  Carl Jung died.

  I am so grateful he identified “the shadow”—our dark side, the part I reject and repress and push away and struggle with every day.

  I want the other side of my self, what Jung called “the spirit of one who had long been dead and yet was perpetually present in timelessness until far into the future.”