*
Maria took off her clothes and got into the bath with President Kennedy.
Jack Kennedy took pills all day but nothing relieved his back pain like being in water. He even shaved in the tub in the mornings. He would have slept in a pool if he could.
This was his bathtub, in his bathroom, with his turquoise-and-gold bottle of 4711 cologne on the shelf over the washbasin. Since the first time, Maria had never been back inside Jackie’s quarters. The President had a separate bedroom and bathroom, connected to Jackie’s suite by a short corridor where – for some reason – the record player was housed.
Jackie was out of town, again. Maria had learned not to torture herself with thoughts of her lover’s wife. Maria knew she was cruelly betraying a decent woman, and it grieved her, so she did not think about it.
Maria loved the bathroom, which was luxurious beyond dreams, with soft towels and white bathrobes and expensive soap – and a family of yellow rubber ducks.
They had slipped into a routine. Whenever Dave Powers invited her, which was about once a week, she would take the elevator up to the residence after work. There was always a pitcher of daiquiris and a tray of snacks waiting in the West Sitting Hall. Sometimes Dave was there, sometimes Jenny and Jerry, sometimes no one. Maria would pour a drink and wait, eager but patient, until the President arrived.
Soon afterwards they would move to the bedroom. It was Maria’s favourite place in the world. It had a four-poster bed with a blue canopy, two chairs in front of a real fire, and piles of books, magazines and newspapers everywhere. She felt she could cheerfully live in this room for the rest of her life.
He had gently taught her to give oral sex. She had been an eager pupil. That was usually what he wanted when he arrived. He was often in a hurry for it, almost desperate; and there was something arousing about his urgency. But she liked him best afterwards, when he would relax and become warmer, more affectionate.
Sometimes he put a record on. He liked Sinatra and Tony Bennett and Percy Marquand. He had never heard of the Miracles or the Shirelles.
There was always a cold supper in the kitchen: chicken, shrimp, sandwiches, salad. After they ate they would undress and get into the bath.
She sat at the opposite end of the tub. He put two ducks in the water and said: ‘Bet you a quarter my duck can go faster than yours.’ In his Boston accent he said ‘quarter’ like an Englishman, not pronouncing the letter ‘r’.
She picked up a duck. She loved him most when he was like this: playful, silly, childish. ‘Okay, Mr President,’ she said. ‘But make it a dollar, if you got the moxie.’
She still called him Mr President most of the time. His wife called him Jack; his brothers sometimes called him Johnny. Maria called him Johnny only at moments of great passion.
‘I can’t afford to lose a dollar,’ he said, laughing. But he was sensitive, and he could tell she was not in the right mood. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I don’t know.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t usually talk to you about politics.’
‘Why not? Politics is my life, and yours, too.’
‘You get pestered all day. Our time together is about relaxing and having fun.’
‘Make an exception.’ He picked up her foot, lying alongside his thigh in the water, and stroked her toes. She had beautiful feet, she knew; and she always put varnish on her toenails. ‘Something has upset you,’ he said quietly. ‘Tell me what it is.’
When he looked at her so intensely, with his hazel eyes and his wry smile, she was helpless. She said: ‘The day before yesterday, my grandfather was jailed for trying to register to vote.’
‘Jailed? They can’t do that. What was the charge?’
‘Loitering.’
‘Oh. This happened somewhere in the South.’
‘Golgotha, Alabama; his home town.’ She hesitated, but decided to tell him the whole truth, although he would not like it. ‘Do you want to know what he said when he came out of jail?’
‘What?’
‘He said: “With President Kennedy in the White House, I thought I could vote, but I guess I was wrong.” That’s what Grandma told me.’
‘Hell,’ said the President. ‘He believed in me, and I failed him.’
‘That’s what he thinks, I guess.’
‘What do you think, Maria?’ He was still stroking her toes.
She hesitated again, looking at her dark foot in his white hands. She feared that this discussion could become acrimonious. He was touchy about the least suggestion that he was insincere or untrustworthy, or that he failed to keep his promises as a politician. If she pushed him too hard, he might end their relationship. And then she would die.
But she had to be honest. She took a deep breath and tried to remain calm. ‘Far as I can see, the issue is not complicated,’ she began. ‘Southerners do this because they can. The law, as it stands, lets them get away with it, despite the Constitution.’
‘Not entirely,’ he interrupted. ‘My brother Bob has stepped up the number of lawsuits brought by the Justice Department for voting rights violations. He has a bright young Negro lawyer working with him.’
She nodded. ‘George Jakes. I know him. But what they’re doing isn’t enough.’
He shrugged. ‘I can’t deny that.’
She pressed on. ‘Everyone agrees that we have to change the law by bringing in a new Civil Rights Act. A lot of people thought you promised that in your election campaign. And . . . nobody understands why you haven’t done it yet.’ She bit her lip, then risked the ultimate. ‘Including me.’
His face hardened.
She immediately regretted being so candid. ‘Don’t be mad,’ she pleaded. ‘I wouldn’t upset you for the world – but you asked me the question, and I wanted to be honest.’ Tears came to her eyes. ‘And my poor grandpa spent all night in jail, in his best suit.’
He forced a smile. ‘I’m not mad, Maria. Not at you, anyway.’
‘You can tell me anything,’ she said. ‘I adore you. I would never sit in judgement on you, you must know that. Just say how you feel.’
‘I’m angry because I’m weak, I guess,’ he said. ‘We have a majority in Congress only if we include conservative Southern democrats. If I bring in a civil rights bill, they’ll sabotage it – and that’s not all. In revenge, they’ll vote against all the rest of my domestic legislation programme, including Medicare. Now, Medicare could improve the lives of coloured Americans even more than civil rights legislation.’
‘Does that mean you’ve given up on civil rights?’
‘No. We have midterm elections next November. I’ll be asking the American people to send more Democrats to Congress so that I can fulfil my campaign promises.’
‘Will they?’
‘Probably not. The Republicans are attacking me on foreign policy. We’ve lost Cuba, we’ve lost Laos, and we’re losing Vietnam. I had to let Khrushchev put up a barbed-wire fence right across the middle of Berlin. Right now my back is up against the goddamn wall.’
‘How strange,’ Maria reflected. ‘You can’t let Southern Negroes vote because you’re vulnerable on foreign policy.’
‘Every leader has to look strong on the world stage, otherwise he can’t get anything done.’
‘Couldn’t you just try? Bring in a civil rights bill, even though you’ll probably lose it. At least then people would know how sincere you are.’
He shook his head. ‘If I bring in a bill and get defeated, I’ll look weak, and that will jeopardize everything else. And I’d never get a second chance on civil rights.’
‘So what should I tell Grandpa?’
‘That doing the right thing is not as easy as it looks, even when you’re President.’
He stood up, and she did the same. They towelled each other dry, then went into his bedroom. Maria put on one of his soft blue cotton nightshirts.
They made love again. If he was tired, it was brief, like the very first time; but tonight he was at ease. He reverted to playful mood, and they lay back on the bed, toying with one another, as if nothing else in the world mattered.
Afterwards he went to sleep quickly. She lay beside him, blissfully happy. She did not want the morning to come, when she would have to get dressed and go to the press office and begin her day’s work. She lived in the real world as if it were a dream, waiting only for the call from Dave Powers that meant she could wake up and come back to the only reality that mattered.
She knew that some of her colleagues must have guessed what she was doing. She knew he was never going to leave his wife for her. She knew she should be worried about getting pregnant. She knew that everything she was doing was foolish and wrong and could not possibly have a happy ending.
And she was too much in love to care.
*
George understood why Bobby was so pleased to be able to send him to talk to King. When Bobby needed to put pressure on the civil rights movement, he had more chance of success using a black messenger. George thought Bobby was right about Levison but, nevertheless, he was not entirely comfortable with his role – a feeling that was beginning to be familiar.
Atlanta was cold and rainy. Verena met George at the airport, wearing a tan coat with a black fur collar. She looked beautiful, but George was still hurting too much from Maria’s rejection to be attracted. ‘I know Stanley Levison,’ Verena said, driving George through the urban sprawl of the city. ‘A very sincere guy.’
‘He’s a lawyer, right?’
‘More than that. He helped Martin with the writing of Stride Toward Freedom. They’re close.’
‘The FBI says Levison is a Communist.’
‘Anyone who disagrees with J. Edgar Hoover is a Communist, according to the FBI.’
‘Bobby referred to Hoover as a cock sucker.’
Verena laughed. ‘Do you think he meant it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Hoover, a powder puff?’ She shook her head in disbelief. ‘It’s too good to be true. Real life is never that funny.’
She drove through the rain to the Old Fourth Ward neighbourhood, where there were hundreds of black-owned businesses. There seemed to be a church on every block. Auburn Avenue had once been called the most prosperous Negro street in America. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference had its headquarters at number 320. Verena pulled up at a long two-storey building of red brick.
George said: ‘Bobby thinks Dr King is arrogant.’
Verena shrugged. ‘Martin thinks Bobby is arrogant.’
‘What do you think?’
‘They’re both right.’
George laughed. He liked Verena’s sharp wit.
They hurried across the wet sidewalk and went inside. They waited outside King’s office for fifteen minutes, then they were called.
Martin Luther King was a handsome man of thirty-three, with a moustache and prematurely receding black hair. He was short, George guessed about five foot six, and a little plump. He wore a well-pressed dark-grey suit with a white shirt and a narrow black satin tie. There was a white silk handkerchief in his breast pocket, and he had large cufflinks. George caught a whiff of cologne. He got the impression of a man whose dignity was important to him. George sympathized: he felt the same.
King shook George’s hand and said: ‘Last time we met, you were on the Freedom Ride, heading for Anniston. How’s the arm?’
‘It’s completely healed, thank you,’ George said. ‘I’ve given up competitive wrestling, but I was ready to do that anyway. Now I coach a high-school team in Ivy City.’ Ivy City was a black neighbourhood in Washington.