1400069106Secret Read online

  “President Kennedy’s been shot,” he said.

  We sat in the car as we absorbed the news over the radio. There wasn’t much to report yet. The President was alive and had been rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. His condition was unknown. There were other casualties.

  Then, more ominously, there was a report from UPI that the President’s wounds

  “could be fatal.” I knew UPI meant Merriman Smith, a respected White House correspondent whom I had seen often in the press office.* His voice prompted thoughts of Pierre and Fiddle. Where were they? Was Dave Powers all right?

  Where was Chris Camp? (I learned later she was in Dallas on Air Force One, typing a speech for the President to give that night in Austin.) In the moment, concentrating on members of the staff was so much easier than trying to comprehend what had happened to the President.

  Through the windshield I could see other people on the street who were just learning the news. They moved slowly, as if in a trance, many with their hands over their mouths to stifle sobs.

  I felt trapped in the car. I was itching to jump out, but where would I go? I said to Tony, who was still staring at the radio dial, “We should get going.” I needed to move, to be distracted.

  Tony drove north on the FDR Drive toward Connecticut. We said nothing, letting the radio fill in the silence. Three shots had been fired. Texas governor John Connally, who had been riding in the car with the President, was also wounded. The police were looking for a white man wearing a white shirt and Levi’s whose rifle had been spotted in a window of the nearby Texas School Book Depository.

  Then, at two o’clock P.M., another bulletin, this one official: The President was dead.

  I didn’t believe it at first. The news was too sudden, too soon after the hopeful bulletin that he had been shot but was still alive and on his way to a hospital. As the announcer talked, I could tell from the tone of his voice—beyond sadness, despairing—that it was true. This was my own “Where were you when President Kennedy died?” moment: I was in a car with my fiancé, about to experience a period of emotional numbness that was, for me, unprecedented.

  My head was flooded with images of the President the last time I saw him, just seven days earlier, in the Carlyle. He had hugged me and said he’d call me when he got back from Texas. I looked over at Tony and saw a stranger—someone with whom I could never share these thoughts, these memories. I’d never told Tony a thing about our relationship. He’d never met him. Tony and I had no common ground to grieve about the President or even to talk about him.

  I suddenly felt isolated and walled off from the man I was about to marry.

  The world rushed by outside the windows as we neared Southport, Connecticut.

  Tony reached over and squeezed my hand in sympathy but I hardly felt it. I opened the passenger car window and tried to breathe in the cool November air. More bulletins were coming in now. The President had been shot in the head.

  I dreaded walking into the house and seeing my future in-laws. The Fahnestocks were staunch Republicans who made a sport out of disparaging the President, and their barbs got nastier when they had a drink in hand. The cocktail hour had already started when we pulled into their driveway off Sasco Creek Road at about four o’clock, but the President’s death seemed to have a sobering effect even on them. Mr. Fahnestock gave me a long hug, which was unusual. He said something nice about the President, acknowledging that I knew him and that I might be suffering more than most people.

  “We’ve opened the bar a little early today, Mimi,” Mr. Fahnestock said.

  He handed me a glass of Dewar’s.

  “This is what you need,” he said.

  The television set in the den was on, but Mr. and Mrs. Fahnestock seemed uninterested in further news. Tony’s mother insisted that we sit and chat in their living room, which looked out over Southport Harbor, as if nothing had happened. It was bizarre. The most momentous event in a generation was receiving blanket coverage on television and radio, and my future in-laws coped with it by ignoring it. They preferred to make small talk about our wedding. I remember sitting there, but I didn’t hear a word Mrs. Fahnestock said.

  I struggled with my emotions that night. I wanted to get up and watch television. I wanted to know everything. My numbness had been replaced by a bottomless sense of loss, not only for myself but for all the people at the White House, especially Dave Powers. What would he do without the President?

  Meanwhile, we moved from the living room to the dining room for the traditional Friday-night roast chicken. It became nearly unbearable. I felt like I would break down in tears right at the table. My thoughts also turned to my parents, but speaking to them would have been an expensive long-distance call, so I abandoned the idea. I would be seeing them the next day, anyway.

  At about nine-thirty the Fahnestocks finally went off to bed, taking their usual nightcaps with them. Tony and I went into the den and watched the television.

  He stretched out on the couch and I sat directly in front of the TV on the floor.

  Every network was carrying the news, endlessly playing the black-and-white footage of the President and Mrs. Kennedy arriving in Dallas, Mrs. Kennedy being given a bouquet of roses, the motorcade as it left the airport.

  Mercifully, there was no footage of the actual shooting. (That, of course, would come later.) So network anchors such as Walter Cronkite resorted to showing photographs of the Kennedys smiling and laughing in the car, then the President clutching his throat as the second bullet passed through him and went on to wound Governor Connally. There was no image of the final shot, which shattered the President’s head. The most indelible photograph from that day was of Lyndon Johnson taking the oath of office on Air Force One while Mrs. Kennedy stood beside him in her bloodstained suit. Cecil Stoughton took that famous photograph, the same White House photographer who had taken my engagement picture just two months before, as a personal favor.

  I wasn’t calm, but I wasn’t losing control, either, even as we watched the live, grainy television images of Air Force One landing that night at Andrews Air Force Base, returning from Texas with the President’s body. I heard Mr.

  Fahnestock come down the steps to refill his glass. “Just a splash,” he said, as he looked in on us.

  What Tony and I, as well as the entire nation, were watching was slow, mournful, and surreal. Only when I saw the coffin come off the plane did I finally accept that President Kennedy was gone. What sent me over the edge was the image of Dave Powers with his hand on the casket, standing in front of it as if he were guarding the President, then lifting it with other aides into the waiting Navy ambulance.

  I remember getting up from the floor, standing off to the side between Tony and the TV. I was crying, looking back and forth from the TV screen to Tony, alternating between the image of the dead President and my fiancé.

  My tears turned into violent, racking sobs, and Tony was concerned. As far as Tony knew, I was just someone who had spent two summers in the press office, so my reaction must have seemed extreme.

  “Are you all right?” he said.

  I shook my head.

  “What’s happening to you?” he said.

  I couldn’t answer. My eyes darted between the TV and Tony, as if I were watching a tennis match. It was disorienting. But I thought for sure that Tony could see through me and understand why I was crying. I thought for sure that it would finally dawn on him why he was at Fort Meade in Maryland, not in Louisiana—that he knew why the President interceded on his behalf. I was sure he was making a connection between that bit of favoritism and my relationship with the President. All the guilt I had been feeling about deceiving Tony was coming to a boil as I went back and forth between the sight of Tony relaxing on the couch and the images of JFK on the TV screen. My sense of guilt was expanding with each passing second. I was convinced that Tony not only saw it but comprehended it completely—and that it started the wheels of suspicion turning in his head.

 
He knows everything, I thought. I have to come clean and be honest with him. I was not thinking clearly. I’m sure of that. But I had no idea how the scene I was about to create would play out.

  “There’s something I have to tell you,” I said.

  “What?”

  “The President …”

  “What?” he interrupted.

  “It’s more than you think.…”

  “What?”

  “I’m not as innocent as you think.”

  “What?”

  “There’s a reason I quit school.”

  “What?”

  “You have to let me finish, please.”

  I stopped crying and tried to gather my thoughts.

  “I was closer to him.…”

  “What are you telling me—that you slept with President Kennedy?” I don’t know how he made that leap from my distress to my infidelity, but I nodded yes, relieved that I didn’t have to say the words out loud.

  Then Tony’s tone shifted into a harsh interrogation.

  “Since when?” he asked.

  “Last year.”

  “Even after you met me?”

  I nodded.

  “Even after we were engaged?”

  I nodded again.

  “How many times?”

  “I don’t know. A lot.”

  Then there was silence. I think Tony realized that the more questions he asked, the more pain he would be inflicting upon himself. A primal sense of self-protection kicked in, and he went quiet, turning away from me and staring at the TV.

  I turned my back to him for a second, then spun around and returned to my place on the floor, near his feet, with my back against the sofa. I hoped he might put his hand on my shoulder, do something to comfort me, to tell me that he forgave me.

  Of course, this was too much to hope for. (If our roles had been reversed, I know I would not be so forgiving.) I absently gazed at the flickering TV screen, waiting for a consoling gesture that never came.

  I had finally shared my secret with someone. But there was no catharsis, no relief. I had merely traded one problem for another, of possibly greater consequence. I had hurt Tony.

  After a few minutes, Tony got up, turned off the TV, and said, “I’m going to bed.”

  Turning off the TV was a signal that I should be coming upstairs as well, but I couldn’t move from the couch. I wanted to be alone and gather my thoughts. I tried to sort out what I had just done, and how it might affect Tony. I was terrified that I’d lost him, that the next morning he would call off our engagement. I went over the scene between us, reproaching myself for being so honest and blunt with him, for dropping the news on him so suddenly. I realized that maybe a better course would have been to hold on to my secret, to get a grip on myself and plan a more considered approach at a more appropriate moment, when it would be less of a bombshell—if it could ever be less of a bombshell. But the President’s death and the crescendo of strange and powerful emotions I was feeling forced my hand. I couldn’t suppress the truth. I had no choice but to tell Tony everything.

  I had no idea what would happen next—or what Tony would say the next morning. Frankly, I wouldn’t blame him for saying he never wanted to see me again.

  We were sleeping in separate bedrooms at the Fahnestocks, as we had at my parents’ house in New Jersey; such was the custom then for unmarried couples, even those who were engaged. I closed my door and lay on the bed, nowhere near sleep, my heart pounding. I was no longer thinking about President Kennedy—and the immense sadness of his death. I was fretting about the next twelve hours.

  There was a bathroom connecting the guest room, where I was, and Tony’s small bedroom. I heard the bathroom door open into my room and saw Tony standing in the doorway. Saying nothing, he yanked back the covers, climbed into my bed, and, without a word, initiated our first sexual encounter. I was so desperate to keep him, I didn’t resist. It was forceful and clumsy—and I had no idea how to behave, neither how to express my sorrow at hurting him nor how to offer my love to heal the pain. He then left the bedroom as abruptly as he had entered it. I just lay there, dazed. I realize now he was laying claim to me, just as the President had done those many months before. It was sex, but there was no love.

  The next morning was bizarre. Life with Tony as I had known it just twenty-four hours earlier had been tossed out the window, replaced instead by a brittle formality and awkwardness. At the breakfast table with his parents, we made small talk about wedding logistics and the weather. Incredibly, the subject of the President’s assassination never came up.

  Tony and I left after breakfast. He would drop me off at home in New Jersey and then continue on to Fort Meade. We drove in stony silence. As mile after mile ticked by, not once did Tony glance my way.

  When we exited the Garden State Parkway, a few miles from my home, Tony abruptly pulled over at a bank of public telephones. For the first time since departing Southport, he spoke to me.

  “Give me the phone number of the White House,” he said.

  I automatically rattled off the number—202 National 8-1414—not understanding why he wanted it or what he was going to do. He repeated the number to himself, got out of the car, and went to the phone. When he returned, he claimed he had told the press office that no one at the White House should ever contact me again.

  I realize now he must have been lying. The President had just been killed. The White House switchboard was undoubtedly jammed with calls, and even if he had gotten through, I can’t imagine anyone in the press office taking, let alone dignifying, a message from an angry stranger about little Mimi Beardsley. The press office was dealing with the death of one president and the first day in office of a new one; surely they had their hands full. But I was so traumatized at the time, I believed him.

  Then the trauma became permanent.

  As we sat on the side of the road, Tony added another punishing layer of secrecy to my affair with the President. He made it a condition of my marriage to him.

  “You will never, ever say anything to anyone about what you told me last night,” he said. “Not your parents or your sisters or brothers or friends. Nobody. Ever.” I had been holding back tears all morning, but with the combination of my guilt and Tony’s anger and the fear that our wedding plans—my future life—were collapsing around me, I started sobbing.

  “Do you hear me?” he said.

  I was too upset to open my mouth. I stared ahead and nodded up and down in agreement.

  “Good,” he said.

  I felt relieved as he pulled back onto the road. I took what he’d said to mean that if I obeyed him, then the wedding would go ahead. There would be no scandal, no disgrace, no tearful explanations of why the wedding had been canceled.

  Tony had taken charge, and in a real sense, I was grateful. He wasn’t going to let anything derail his plans, and his plan at the moment was to get married.

  For a long time I liked to think he was protecting me by demanding my silence, but I have come to realize that he was protecting only himself and his own ego.

  My revelation had embarrassed him. He must have hated the fact that the President had claimed me before he did. He must have felt humiliated that I continued to see the President after we met. He must have felt he’d never measure up to someone so charismatic and powerful. Perhaps he even felt I was mocking him. So his response was understandable. He was wounded.

  But I, too, was in pain. The President I knew, admired, and, yes, even loved in my own misguided way, was dead, and I had nobody to talk to about him, no one with whom I could share my grief. And now I was being ordered to erase him from my life, to act as if he had never existed? I had already gotten a glimpse, the night before, of the dark force my secret could unleash in Tony.

  After all, I had told no one for a year and a half, and sharing it for the first time engendered nothing but anger, recrimination, sexual violence, and shame.

  Is it any wonder I agreed so easily to Tony’s demand?

&n
bsp; I think often, even now, of that moment in the car. For years, I saw Tony’s ultimatum, much like Dave Powers’s second invitation to the President’s residence, as another pivot point in my life. But only recently, in the process of writing this book, did I come to realize that it was a false one. And it was false because I didn’t have any room to maneuver. Looking back on it, I see that I had only two options—agree to keep the secret or call off the engagement. It doesn’t now, and didn’t then, seem like much of a choice.

  And what if I had never told Tony in the first place? I’m not sure that would have been possible, given how much distress I was in when I told him. But if I had managed it, I know enough now about the toxic effects of keeping a shameful secret to know that it would have eaten my insides on our wedding day, and on our honeymoon, and on the day I gave birth to our first child, and on every other momentous day in our marriage. Not telling him was not an option.

  We might have talked it out more honestly and rationally. Tony and I, indeed, should have been able to talk about it, and if there ever was a time to do that, it was there in the car on the side of the road. It would have been the adult thing to do, certainly. I could have deflected his demand to keep silent and said, “We can’t brush this under the rug. We need help with this. We need to talk about this.” But we were so young—I was twenty and Tony was twenty-three—and we didn’t have the emotional tools to address it. It didn’t occur to either one of us then that burying the issue would not make it go away.

  I can only imagine how devastated and betrayed Tony must have felt, and how the best way for him to deal with that pain was simply to delete it. For my part, I was feeling enormous insecurity and vulnerability. My biggest fear was the idea that I would fail at the simple act of getting married. Not only would I have to tell family and friends that the wedding was off, but how would I explain our sudden change of heart without mentioning the President?