Free Jackie After O by Tina Cassidy Page A

important lunch with Jackie—the Sulgrave Club, in Dupont Circle. And there she waited, at a corner table, where they would meet in quiet and safety in a city full of journalists and power lunchers. And while it was not Baldrige’s intent, the restaurant, a women’s club, was also a poetic choice for the conversation the two were about to have. The club was part of what had once been a grand home on Massachusetts Avenue owned in the early 1900s by a wealthy couple, Herbert and Martha Wadsworth. Martha Wadsworth, like an earlier version of Jackie, had been an exceptional horsewoman, a prolific photographer, a presence on the social scene, and had more than an eye for architecture, designing, and furnishing her Beaux-Arts style house, built of light-yellow Roman brick and cream-colored, molded terra-cotta. 1
    Sitting there alone before her famous friend arrived, Baldrige remembered the various aspects of Jackie’s life—many of them lived in public—that had shaped her, and led her to this crucible of middle age, with no husband, no career, no real agenda beyond her newfound preservation work. Jackie had decided to keep John in school in New York, at Collegiate, before releasing him to boarding school. Come September, Caroline would be gone, studying in London, and Jackie would be much more alone. And then what? What was she going to do with the rest of her life? The point of the lunch was clear, at least to Baldrige. Jackie needed to find meaningful employment, both to engage and distract her.
    Although the two of them had precisely the same education—Miss Porter’s and Vassar, followed by time in Paris, the outcomes so far had been different. Baldrige, tall, forthright, and tireless, had delayed starting a family during her around-the-clock White House career, despite what she was taught at Miss Porter’s. Jackie, even without a career, was always hungry for knowledge and found it instead in her social interactions, soaking up history at the opening of the races at Longchamps, sitting in the Bibliotheque National, walking the ruins on an island. Jackie never wanted to be trapped in that life—but she wasn’t going to be trapped at work, either. And in reality, she never really needed to be.
    Jackie had been astounded after graduation when Baldrige had chosen a career, something Tish believed was necessary for happiness. Jackie had respected her friend’s decision—but then lured her away from a position as a public relations executive in Milan by asking her to work in the White House, where Baldrige enjoyed having lunch in the mess hall so she could argue with men. Jackie respected her friend, but was “exhausted” by her. 2 When Baldrige left her White House job in 1963, JFK told her she was the most “emotional” woman he had ever met. 3 Fine if Tish wanted a job, but “working” was not for Jackie.
    By 1975, the world had changed significantly. Burning bras was no longer new. The Mary Tyler Moore Show , one of the first on TV to portray an independent career woman (Mary was a producer at a television news station), was already in its fifth season, and had just won an Emmy for Best Comedy Series a few weeks before Jackie and Tish met for lunch. But Jackie still belonged to a different generation and social class in which ladies of good families apologized for being at work—if they worked at all. Jackie had always been protected by men. But now she had a daughter about to launch on her own trajectory. Perhaps Jackie thought that Caroline would have to be the one trying to figure out this strange new world, this thing called feminism, where women, even those who did not have to, pursued a career—and not just for the money, but for their own self-worth.
    Baldrige, her napkin in her lap as she waited for Jackie to arrive at the Sulgrave Club, continued an internal dialogue to hash through her friend’s options. 4 The corporate world was