Jackie O by Alma H. Bond

Author:Alma H. Bond [Bond, Alma H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-61088-022-0
Publisher: Bancroft Press
Published: 2011-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

JACK’S OTHER WOMEN (PART 2)

Much as I was offended and hurt by the women with whom Jack had intimate relations, one affair was so painful it was all I could do not to act in a way that would have demolished us both. Over and over again, I fantasized about exposing and punishing Jack by divorcing him in a public and detailed fashion. If it weren’t for our beloved children, I might well have done so, and maybe, somehow, that would have spared the nation the shock of November 22, 1963. Or maybe it would have been even worse for the country, to watch a maligned first lady evict her husband from the White House. I’ve always wanted to be a person of historical significance, but that wasn’t exactly the way I hoped to achieve it.

It was a standing joke among knowledgeable women in Washington that half the females in town had either had sex with Jack or been invited to. His womanizing was humiliating, but usually I wasn’t threatened by it, because I knew that, in his own way, I was the one he loved. But the relationship I’m speaking of wasn’t of the playful pool-party type, indulged in purely for the fun of it. This one was different. It was a real love affair that lasted for many years, and the woman, a so-called friend of mine (we used to take walks together along the Chesapeake and Ohio towpath) was a respectable, intelligent, sophisticated woman of my own set who would have been more at home as first lady than I was.

Her name was Mary Meyer, a member of the politically prominent Pinchot family, East-Coast aristocracy with a huge estate. Like me, she was a Vassar girl and an artist. In fact, she was like me in so many ways, I often wondered why Jack needed her at all.

There was, however, one big difference. She was, literally speaking, a golden girl. She wore wheat-colored clothing that accentuated her golden hair.

Jack had first come to know Mary when they were teenagers in boarding school. They had an affair then, but Mary soon married Cord Meyer, a gifted man, both in a literary and political sense. The couple expected Cord to rise to the top of United States politics, but his personality deficiencies stood in the way. He was a terrible disappointment both to himself and to Mary. They had a miserable marriage, and ten years later, when he was a broken-down, abusive drunk, Mary divorced him. In the years after her divorce, Mary reinvented herself as a wild woman who exuded an air of danger and mystery. She didn’t avoid peril; she actively sought it out. Men were shocked, excited, and fascinated by the new Mary. To paraphrase the illustrious Dorothy Parker, Mary knew eight languages and couldn’t say “no” in any of them.

At a party Jack and I gave at the White House, the beautiful, fine-boned, still golden-haired Mary (perhaps by now with a little help) arrived with the same penetrating blue-green eyes that changed color to match whatever she was wearing.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.