Jack's Widow by Eve Pollard Page B

president was on his way up to see her.
    “No, no, really. I don’t want any fuss,” she said.
    “Tell him I’ll come right down. I do, of course, know my way and—”
    Surprisingly the switchboard operator interjected.
    “Please, ma’am. Please stay where you are. I have just been informed by his secretary that he’ll be right up. She says it is important that you wait for him.”
    She smiled. Like many powerful men, he had deliberately chosen a tough disciplinarian as his personal secretary to keep everyone in line, himself included.
    She had heard that unlike the more relaxed behavior of her predecessor, this secretary insisted upon knowing exactly where the president was at all times.
    So she sat and waited.
    When she had redecorated the White House she had installed bookshelves in all the bedrooms. She idly started to look through a book full of Michelangelo’s drawings.
    It took nearly six more minutes for the president to appear.
    Surprisingly, he was with the attorney general. They looked gray and extremely nervous.
    As they entered neither of them smiled.
    She looked at them. For a second no one spoke.
    Not another tragedy on this day, she thought.
    “Not something else bad?” she whispered.
    She had left the children with their nanny at her sister’s house in London.
    “The children?” she blurted out.
    “No, no, no,” said the president. “They’re fine. But I am afraid Nicholas here does have what might be some”—he hesitated—“very unwelcome news.”
    “Well,” Nicholas said. “It seems that this morning…”
    He paused as the door opened and the First Lady slipped into the suite. The president looked daggers at her for the interruption.
    First Lady and ex–First Lady nodded to one another.
    “Well,” Nicholas started again. More slowly this time. He looked back at the door.
    The president, without looking around behind him at the door, barked: “Shut the door and let no one else in.”
    A hand emerged and closed the door.
    He nodded at his subordinate to continue.
    “Well”—he looked straight at her—“the facts are, Marilyn Monroe died this morning.”
    Wishing to look away from two shocked brown eyes, he withdrew a piece of paper from his pocket.
    Good God! she thought. The blond bombshell has finally exploded.
    Instantly, a well-known picture of her husband and the sexy film star filled her mind.
    It had been taken at a Democratic fund-raiser. She was in the lineup and he was shaking her hand looking down, seemingly equally attentive to her upturned eyes, nose, and breasts. To be fairthere had been nowhere else for him to look. They were being served up on a platter.
    Everyone here in this room had been in the audience of that fund-raiser when later, wrapped in a tiny scarlet dress, with a long side slit that had been dipped in diamonds, she had breathed out a song. She had been part of a cavalcade of stars saluting the new chief. Some columnists wrote that although the curvy Monroe could hardly have worn less, the movie star’s appearance had been largely overlooked because the new First Lady had looked like royalty. But a few months later the actress starred in a new movie about politics and the White House.
    Billboards across America had featured advertisements for the film. The poster consisted of a full-length picture of M.M., as she was known, wearing a swimsuit made of nude-colored chiffon strategically splattered with gossamer sequins. She was emerging from a cake painted with the Stars and Stripes. Behind this scene were cartoon drawings of famous presidents, the most prominent of which looked a lot like the current holder of that office.
    This started a round of rumor and innuendo in which her concert appearance was reprised in light of the poster.
    At the time Jackie had dismissed it all, explaining that the filmmakers were obviously encouraging this publicity. Anything that could be used to link the supposedly sexiest woman in the world with the powerful U.S.