1400069106Secret Read online

  “Thanks,” I said, accepting the glass with a polite sip.

  “Welcome to the White House staff,” Dave said, raising his glass, almost making it sound as if this cocktail hour was staged solely to honor my arrival at the White House.

  “It’s great to be here,” I managed to say.

  I drank down the daiquiri and, feeling a little more relaxed, did not protest when Dave filled my glass again. I may not have been an experienced drinker, but I knew enough to eat some food. I plunked myself down in a chair by the puffed cheese hors d’oeuvres on the coffee table—and listened in on what Jill and Fiddle were discussing with Dave and Kenny. Among the more interesting tidbits I overheard was the news that Mrs. Kennedy and the two children, four-year-old Caroline and eighteen-month-old John John, had left for Glen Ora, the house the Kennedys rented in Virginia, where the First Lady kept her horses.

  Suddenly, everyone rose to their feet, as if “Hail to the Chief” had begun to play, and into the room walked President Kennedy. I’m not sure why I was surprised to see him for the second time that day. After all, he lived here. But I had gotten so caught up in my daiquiri, it slipped my mind that he might show up.

  The President greeted us, took off his suit jacket, sat down on the couch, and put his feet up on a coffee table. I could feel the center of gravity in the room shift immediately. We stopped talking among ourselves and turned ever so slightly toward the President, making him the center of attention. He was, no doubt, aware of this; it must have happened to him dozens of times a day.

  I savored the idea that I had been included in the President’s most trusted White House circle, those with whom he chose to relax and take a break from the relentless responsibilities of the day. Honestly, it was thrilling. I felt as if someone had pinned a medal on me or that I had been tapped to join the most prestigious club at school. But I was also uncomfortable. Despite the good cheer in the room and the overwhelming glamour of being on the second floor of the White House, a space very few people ever get to see, I knew I didn’t belong to this group. I hadn’t done anything to earn it. I didn’t know if I should stay or go. I kept my eye on Fiddle and Jill, and determined I would leave when they did.

  Then the President rose from the couch and walked over to the chair I was sitting in. “Would you like a tour of the residence, Mimi?” A private tour of the White House from the President of the United States. This was an extraordinary invitation. Mrs. Kennedy had made it her highly publicized mission to restore the White House’s tired and drab interiors. On her own, she had raised money and persuaded wealthy contributors to donate prized art and furniture to restore the White House to her vision of understated elegance. I had been interested in design since the moment I was given my dollhouse at thirteen. I was well aware of Mrs. Kennedy’s efforts. The invitation was impossible to resist.

  As I stood up, the daiquiris went immediately to my head. I looked around, tipsy, expecting the entire group to join us for the tour. But no one else moved.

  Of course not, I told myself. They’re always up here. They know every room by heart.

  President Kennedy was already leaving the room, and I followed after him, as if pulled by a magnet. He opened the first door along the hallway, explaining that it had once been a guest bedroom, which Mrs. Kennedy had converted into the family dining room. Standing with the President in the doorway, I tried to take in the newly installed antique wallpaper panels, decorated with scenes of the American Revolution. But I got the sense that the President had done this tour many times before and was in no mood to linger. He then led me across the central hall and opened another door, stepping aside for me to enter.

  “This is Mrs. Kennedy’s bedroom,” he said.

  That was odd, I thought. Her bedroom? Where did he sleep? It was a beautiful room, decorated in a light powder blue with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the South Lawn. The bed, with a draped canopy, was really two beds—a hard mattress for the President, because of his back, and a softer one for the First Lady. There was a sitting area in front of the fireplace with a small white couch. Together we looked out the window in the fading June sun.

  “Beautiful light, isn’t it?” he said. I agreed. He walked me through the personal memorabilia in the room: a pastel of Caroline, a terra-cotta bust of a young boy.

  I noticed he was moving closer and closer. I could feel his breath on my neck.

  He put his hand on my shoulder.

  “This is a very private room,” he said.

  The next thing I knew he was standing in front of me, his face inches away, his eyes staring directly into mine. He placed both hands on my shoulders and guided me toward the edge of the bed. I landed on my elbows, frozen halfway between sitting up and lying on my back. Slowly, he unbuttoned the top of my shirtdress and touched my breasts. Then he reached up between my legs and started to pull off my underwear. I couldn’t believe what was happening. But more: I couldn’t believe what I did next. I finished unbuttoning my shirtdress and let it fall off my shoulders. He pulled down his pants and then he was above me.

  He paused briefly when he felt some physical resistance.

  “Haven’t you done this before?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said, and he resumed, but more gently.

  “Are you okay?” he kept saying.

  I nodded, propped up on my elbows.

  After he finished and hitched up his pants, he smiled at me and pointed to a door in the corner.

  “There’s the bathroom if you need it,” he said.

  I gathered my underwear off the floor and my dress off the bed. I was still wearing my bra but nothing else as I walked across the room to the bathroom.

  When I came back he was no longer in the bedroom.

  “I’m out here,” he called, from outside in the West Sitting Hall, where our evening had begun. I walked out to join him—he was sitting on a sofa—and looked around to see if anyone else was there, but the residence was empty. It was just the two of us.

  I was in shock. He, on the other hand, was matter-of-fact, and acted as if what had just occurred was the most natural thing in the world.

  “Would you like something to eat?” he said. “The kitchen’s right here.”

  “No, thank you, Mr. President,” I replied.

  What I really wanted to do was leave, and he must have sensed that. He asked where I lived, made a phone call, and then explained that a car would pick me up at the South Portico entrance. He showed me to the private elevator.

  “Good night, Mimi,” he said as the door opened. “I hope you’re okay.”

  “I’m fine, Mr. President.”

  Downstairs, a guard showed me to the South Portico, and there, as promised, was the car to take me home.

  Chapter Five

  It was still early in the evening on the third Thursday in June 1962, a few days before the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. Through the rear window of the town car, I could see the White House reflecting the golden hues of the setting sun, and could make out the lights through the windows of the rooms in the second-floor residence. As we drove out of the gate, I thought to myself, I was just up there. With the President.

  I wasn’t being wistful or self-congratulatory or smug. I had looked back to assure myself that what had happened had, in fact, happened, that I wasn’t dreaming.

  It wasn’t a dream.

  I quickly turned back and stared straight ahead as the driver glided through D.C. traffic. I was oblivious to the government buildings and tourist sites passing by, lost in my own head, trying to make sense of the previous two hours, to piece the events together so that my moments with the President could be understood as … what? Inevitable? Enjoyable? Unusual?

  Incomprehensible?

  At nineteen, I didn’t have the ability to connect the dots into a narrative that made sense. So I focused on the most obvious truth: I wasn’t a virgin anymore.


  It kept echoing in my head: I’m not a virgin anymore. I had always imagined that my first time would be with the man I loved on my wedding night. I wasn’t

  “saving” myself out of religious or moral conviction. This belief was simply the conventional—and widely accepted—ethos among girls my age. And I was as conventional as anyone I knew.

  But the circumstances surrounding my “first time” were hardly conventional.

  Not even in my most florid imaginings did I think it would be with an older man—let alone someone of my parents’ generation. Let alone the President of the United States.

  How did I get myself into this position?

  I reran the scene in the residence, recalling the laughter around the living room and the giddy effect of the daiquiris. Nothing in the scene suggested an air of sexual intrigue or menace. In recalling it, I tried to locate Fiddle and Jill, but they remained on the margins, out of the picture. I tried to locate Dave Powers but he, too, was stubbornly hidden from view. The only lasting image was that of the President in his shirtsleeves with his feet propped up on a coffee table.

  He was incredibly handsome and commanding and alluring.

  That’s what I felt as I gathered my thoughts in the back of the town car: I had been overwhelmed by the presence of the President.

  Wendy Gilmore wasn’t home when the town car pulled up at my door, which was a small relief. I didn’t want to face her, in case she asked me about my day.

  It wasn’t that I was afraid of breaking down in front of her, I was simply exhausted and wanted to be alone. I went straight upstairs to my bedroom and looked at my face in the mirror. It didn’t look any different. I hadn’t been transformed from “girl” to “woman” in an evening. The smell of the President’s 4711 cologne still clung to me, so I stepped into the shower. As the hot water washed over me and I looked down at my body, I had the thought that other women of my generation who were shielded from knowledge about their own bodies must have had: So that’s sex? I didn’t know if it had been good, bad, or indifferent. I didn’t know if it was meant to be slow or fast. I didn’t have an opinion about it being “caring” or “meaningful.” I had nothing to compare it to.

  As I toweled off, I continued to retrace my actions from the day. I reexamined the impulse behind Dave Powers’s suggestion for that lunchtime swim. Had he orchestrated the whole thing to give the President a chance to look me over?

  And what about Fiddle and Jill? Were they somehow involved as well?

  At the time, I didn’t have the stomach to try to answer those questions.

  I’ve wrestled over the years with other questions about that day. I’ve wondered why the small group in the residence left after the President took me on the tour and whether they knew what was going to happen in the bedroom. I suspect they did. I’ve wondered, too, about the unsolicited offer of my internship and why I’d been invited to work in the White House in the first place—was it because the President had a thing for Farmington girls? He’d married one, after all, and there were Farmington graduates scattered all over the White House. The truth is, I’ll never know.

  One thing I didn’t wonder about is whether I had led him on or in some way seduced him. On the face of it, that was laughable. My skills as a seductress were so nonexistent that the thought of intimacy between us didn’t occur until after the intimacy had begun. As I say, I was incredibly sheltered and naïve. But there’s no doubt that up there in the residence, I was the direct object of his skills at persuasion. He was a man adept at—and accustomed to—getting his way. He had that politician’s gift of making you feel that when you were in his company you were the most important and interesting person in the world.

  After all, here was a man who, just months before, had mesmerized the nation with his personal style and glamour, his quick wit, and his élan.

  All of which makes me wonder if I could have resisted him. It’s a germane question, and my honest answer to it is “No.” When we were in the bedroom, he had maneuvered me so swiftly and unexpectedly, and with such authority and strength, that short of screaming, I doubt if I could have done anything to thwart his intentions.

  I don’t say this to excuse my passivity at that moment—because, frankly, I don’t think I need an excuse. I’m not ashamed of what I did. I’m just trying to make sense of it now, fifty years later.

  I’m also not trying to make excuses for President Kennedy. He was, no doubt, a charmer, a seducer, an insatiable lothario, as I and everyone else would eventually learn, each in our own time, some more quickly than others.

  In sharing the details of that night with others, I always get the same reactions about President Kennedy’s behavior. At first, the response comes in the form of dismay—at the President’s sinister intentions. “You must see it, Mimi,” they say.

  “You were set up! He was a predator!” Then, when I don’t agree, the response changes to disappointment—in me. Others take the argument a step further.

  They are not shy about bringing up the R word—rape—to describe what happened to me. I don’t see it that way.

  That night, in the midst of my shock and confusion, I felt for the first time the thrill of being desired. And the fact that I was being desired by the most famous and powerful man in America only amplified my feelings to the point where resistance was out of the question. That’s why I didn’t say no to the President.

  It’s the best answer I can give.

  There was a moment, right after the President realized I had never had sex before and was in some discomfort, when he became more tender and solicitous, more aware of me, and I actually felt close to him. I wouldn’t describe what happened that night as making love. But I wouldn’t call it nonconsensual, either.

  Chapter Six

  The next morning, I walked into the White House trying to affect a casual manner, as if I didn’t have a care in the world. It was the only way I could mask my profound sense of dread that everyone in the press office would intuitively know what had happened the previous night up in the residence. I was particularly anxious about running into Fiddle and Jill. What would they think?

  What did they know? They were playful and carefree young women who were extremely comfortable in the President’s company—and vice versa. Would they regard me as an interloper who had overstepped her bounds or would they greet me with knowing smirks? I wasn’t sure which would be worse: their resentment or their approval.

  It turned out my dread was misplaced. As I walked into the office at nine o’clock sharp, everything was normal, nothing out of place. There were no glares or knowing glances. Two of my colleagues, who had arrived a few minutes before me, were already at their desks, removing the covers from their typewriters. They said hi to me and went right back to what they were doing.

  Pierre Salinger wasn’t in his office. The whole scene was oddly, eerily quiet, which reminded me that it was a Friday in summer—and people had other priorities besides being chained to their desks. In general, most people in the White House tended to observe a nine-to-five workday—which is funny, when you think about it now. They arrived on time and, unless something urgent was afoot, clocked out at a decent hour, well before the sun went down. Although everyone I saw in the West Wing worked hard and the offices crackled with energy and brisk conversations, it was a far cry from the all-consuming chaos I would later see in TV shows such as The West Wing, where staffers pulled all-nighters and tended to charge rather than walk down hallways while arguing about a congressional vote count or some ominous Bureau of Labor statistic. Exciting as the JFK White House was, it wasn’t Hollywood-level intensity by any stretch of the imagination. Not in those days.

  All of which reminded me of my insignificance in the scheme of things. I was a summer intern, a shadow off in a corner, clipping teletypes and manning phones, hardly on anyone’s radar. Any apprehension about my experience with the President becoming an issue at work was purely in my mind—because I was not taking up any space in anyone else’s m
ind.

  And I surely wasn’t on the President’s mind, either.

  A week or so earlier, he had endorsed his brother Ted for his old Senate seat in Massachusetts. Ted had just turned thirty that February, the minimum age to be a U.S. senator, and would soon find himself in a tough primary fight against Massachusetts attorney general Edward McCormack, who had powerful Washington, D.C., connections of his own; his uncle John McCormack was the newly installed Speaker of the House. Ted’s campaign was being run out of the White House and occupied much of the President’s attention. In the meantime, he was also trying to walk a fine line on the issue of civil rights, fending off pressure to sign an executive order prohibiting racial discrimination and to introduce a national voting rights act. He had made health care for Americans sixty-five and older one of his Administration’s top priorities, and his signature program—called Medicare—was about to go through three weeks of intense Senate debate before being voted down, 52 to 48. And, of course, there was the perennial focus on reviving the economy, avoiding a recession, balancing the budget, controlling inflation, and appeasing American business’s need to know that the President was pro-business. The Dow Jones Average had hit a low on JFK’s forty-fifth birthday, which inspired the business press to call it the “Kennedy Crash.”

  In short, there were quite a few pressing issues occupying the President’s attention in early summer 1962. I had no illusions that I was among them.

  That Friday morning, I settled in at my desk and lost myself in the tasks at hand. When I overheard one of my co-workers say that the President would be joining the First Lady at Glen Ora for the weekend, a wave of relief washed over me.

  I remember that weekend more for what I didn’t do than for what I did.

  I didn’t call my parents.

  I didn’t call my older sister.

  I didn’t see any friends.

  I didn’t talk to my roommate, Wendy, who, thank goodness, was away that weekend.

  Which isn’t to say that I spent the weekend hiding or feeling sorry for myself.