Living History Unknown (best books to read fiction .txt) 📖

It was Ann and Vernon Jordan who persuaded us to come to the Vineyard, where they had been vacationing for years. They found us the perfect spot, a small, secluded house that belonged to Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and Johnson.

The two-bedroom Cape Cod cottage sat on the edge of Oyster Pond, one of the large saltwater ponds off the southern coast of the island. I slept and swam and felt the months of tension beginning to melt away.

The Jordans’ party to celebrate Bill’s forty-seventh birthday on August 19 was filled with old friends and new people who made me laugh and relax. It was one of the best times I’d had since the inauguration. Jackie Kennedy Onassis was there with her longtime companion, Maurice Templesman. The always gracious Katharine Graham, publisher of The Washington Post, came, as did Bill and Rose Styron, who became trusted friends.

Styron, a wry, deeply intelligent Southerner with a wonderful weathered face and piercing eyes, had recently published Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness, recounting his struggles with clinical depression. I talked to him about Vince at dinner, and we continued the conversation the next day during a long walk on one of the Vineyard’s beautiful beaches. He described the overwhelming sense of loss and desperation that can grip a person until the desire for release from the daily pain and disorientation makes death seem a preferable, even rational, choice.

I also spent time with Jackie. Her house, surrounded by several hundred of the most beautiful acres on Martha’s Vineyard, had books and flowers everywhere and windows looking out over the gentle dunes leading to the ocean in the distance. The house had the same unpretentious elegance that characterized everything Jackie did.

I loved seeing her and Maurice together. Charming, smart and well read, he radiated love, respect and concern for her, as well as delight in her company. They made each other laugh, one of my criteria for any relationship.

Jackie and Maurice invited us to go sailing on Maurice’s yacht with Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg and her husband, Ed Schlossberg, Ted and Vicky Kennedy and Ann and Vernon Jordan. Caroline is one of the few people in the world who can understand Chelsea’s unique experiences, and from that visit onward, she became a perceptive friend and role model for my daughter. Ted Kennedy, Caroline’s uncle and the paterfamilias of the Kennedy clan, is one of the most effective Senators who has ever served our country and is also an expert sailor. He kept up a running commentary about pirates and naval battles, while his intelligent, effervescent wife, Vicky, provided additional color.

We motored out of Menemsha Harbor on a glorious, sunny day and anchored next to a small island to go swimming before lunch. I went below to put on my bathing suit, and by the time I came back up on deck, Jackie, Ted and Bill were already in the water. Caroline and Chelsea had climbed up to a platform about forty feet above the water. As I looked up, they jumped together and landed in the ocean with a splash.

They came up laughing and swam back to the boat for another jump.

Chelsea said, “Come on, Mom, try it!”

Of course, Ted and Bill started yelling, “Yeah, give it a try―give it a try!” For reasons that escape me to this day, I said okay. I am not all that athletic anymore, but the next thing I knew I was following Caroline and Chelsea up a narrow little ladder to get to the top. By now I was thinking, “How did I get myself into this?” As soon as Caroline and Chelsea reached the platform-boom! Off they went again. Now perched up there alone, looking down at the tiny figures below me treading water, I listened to their shouts, “Come on, come on! Jump!”

Then I heard Jackie’s voice rising above the rest: “Don’t do it, Hillary! Don’t let them talk you into it. Don’t do it!”

I thought to myself, “Now there is the voice of reason and experience.” I’m sure that there were countless times when Jackie said, “No, I just won’t do that.” She knew exactly what was going through my mind, and she came to my rescue.

“You know, you’re right!” I shouted back.

Slowly I climbed down with as much dignity as I could summon. Then I got into the water and went for a swim with my friend Jackie.

THE DELIVERY ROOM

When we returned to Washington a week before Labor Day with an important budget victory under the Administration’s belt, it was time for the White House to focus fulltime on the health care initiative. Or so I hoped. Bill’s one-hundred-day target had long since passed, the task force had disbanded at the end of May, and health care had been relegated to the sidelines for months so that the President and his economic and legislative teams could focus on the deficit reduction package. During the summer I had phoned members of Congress, working hard to help Bill pass his economic program, the key to everything he hoped to achieve for the country.

But even with the crucial budget victory behind us, health care still had to compete with other legislative priorities. Since the beginning of the Administration, Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen had warned about the timetable for health care, skeptical that it could be passed in less than two years. By late August, Bentsen, Secretary of State Warren Christopher and economic adviser Bob Rubin were adamant about postponing health care reform and moving forward with the North American Free Trade Agreement, known as NAFTA. They believed that free trade was also critical to the nation’s economic recovery and NAFT’A warranted immediate action. Creating a free trade zone in North America―the largest free trade zone in the world―would expand U.S. exports, create jobs and ensure that our economy was reaping the benefits, not the burdens, of globalization.

Although unpopular with labor unions, expanding trade opportunities was an important administration goal. The question was