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Preparing for her new role, Jackie has been reading every available book on the White House, is "riveted" by the multitudes of facts that are giving her a connoisseur's knowledge of the place. The shortcomings of the household budget astound her ("It's stone broke, this White House"). She hotly denies the story that she will hang modern paintings everywhere: "The White House is an 18th and 19th century house, and should be kept as a period house. Whatever one does, one does gradually, to make a house a more lived-in house, with beautiful things of its period. I would write 50 letters to 50 museum curators if I could bring Andrew Jackson's inkwell home." Under Jackie's direction, the old mansion will change in subtle ways: the elephantine official functions will be held to an irreducible minimum. The dinners will be more intimate, the menus more French. The guests will be variegated—artists, writers and professors joining the politicians and diplomats. To the family quarters, Jackie will bring some of her own delicate Louis Quinze furniture, her books and paintings.
Sometimes Jackie shows signs of panic at the prospect of her own new frontier. "I'll get pregnant and stay pregnant," she told a friend, only half in jest. "It's the only way out." But when she considers the alternative—if Jack had lost the election—she surveys her fingernails as if ready to bite them, and admits that there are worse prospects than the White House. "How could you fill his life? If he had lost, he'd have been around the world three times and written three books. But it wouldn't be the same.
"Happiness is not where you think you find it. I'm determined not to worry. So many people poison every day worrying about the next. I've learned a lot from Jack." And Jack Kennedy, this week to become the 35th President of the U.S., has plainly learned a lot from Jackie.