Meanwhile in the World where Kennedy Survived Page 2

  Chapter Two

  October, 1964

  Her mother, Selma, was out on the front porch wearing an apron. Jacy shook her head as she rounded the corner and coasted toward the long, curving driveway in her rented navy blue Ford. She parked over to the side of the driveway, beside the house, so that her father would be able to get past her and into the garage later. For now, she would leave her luggage in the back seat and the trunk and enjoy the feeling of coming home.

  Sunday would be her thirtieth birthday.

  For a moment she stopped to gaze upward and enjoy the southern California sun and warmth on her face. Back in New York, the jet had taken off through gray, drizzly skies and the air had already taken on its autumnal chill.

  She had been away since the end of last year. When she approached the front porch she felt an ache in her throat when she saw her mother’s beatific, smiling face. They hugged, one of the long, tight hugs that had always soothed her when she was growing up. Once they relaxed, they held hands and looked at one another. Her mother said “It’s great to have you back, honey.”

  Selma was cooking a huge roast for that evening’s dinner. “Relax,” she said. “Get yourself some tea and I’ll meet you out by the pool.”

  Jacy complied and eased herself down onto the chaise longue, feeling seventeen again as her saw sunlight dance in sparkles atop the aqua pool water. Moments later her mother scurried out onto the bright patio, her smooth forehead knitted up in an expression of worry and bewilderment. She sat on the edge of one of the padded wrought iron chairs beside her daughter.

  “You’ve gotten quite a lot of phone calls over the last couple of days.”

  Jacy nodded. “Jake? Yes. Now that he knows I’m back he wants to pounce on me with all kinds of wacky stuff.” Jake Whitehead was her agent.

  “Yes, yes, I know Jake,” her mother said. “And Rita called, too. But there was somebody else...” Her voice trailed off as she gazed down at the concrete, hesitant.

  Jacy reached out to touch her arm. “What, mother? Who else was there?”

  “Someone else. A man. He said his name was Jack.”

  Jacy laughed with a snort. “Oh.”

  Selma leaned even further into her, to get her attention. “This Jack fella said he wanted you to call him. That you had the number.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “There was something else.” Her mother glanced left and right and then started to whisper. “He had a distinctive Eastern accent. From Boston.”

  Selma paused for dramatic effect.

  She then said “This ‘Jack’ isn’t who I think it is honey, is it?”

  Jacy nodded, pausing to sip her iced tea.

  “Oh my dear sweet Lord!” She lifted her hands and allowed them to flop down while gazing heavenward. “How do you know the president?”

  Jacy laughed. “Oh it’s nothing, ma.” She started to get up. “Is the phone still in the sitting room?”

  Selma looked up as her daughter walked away, flabbergasted. “Are you going to call him now?”

  “Na,” Jacy called back over her shoulder. “I’m going to see what Jake wants.”

  Once inside the steak house style restaurant, she felt a burst of nausea as her eyes adjusted to the dim light from the bright, sunny California afternoon. It was a Friday and she knew that a swankier place like this would be crowded. Her eyes searched the tables illuminated by tiny golden lamps. Suddenly a voice boomed from one of the tables toward the rear: “Jacy! Over here!”

  Jake Whitehead, her short, stocky agent had gotten to his feet and was bouncing up and down on the hard wood. Jacy walked toward him slowly, feeling a smile come to her face as she drank in his enthusiasm. When they came together, he reached up with his active, chiseled hands and aggressively took the back of her head in them and pulled her down to his level so he could kiss her quickly. It was the move of an Italian man, though Jake had always reminded her of an Irish boxer instead.

  When they sat down and caught their breath, Jake kept looking at her and smiling. He was sipping on a martini and had ordered a wine spritzer for her. He had also ordered a house salad and onion soup for her while he went for a three pound porterhouse. “I know you’re not going to eat anything but that rabbit food, anyway,” he explained.

  She knew that it would be awhile, at a high-end restaurant on a busy day, before they would see their food. Over the phone when they had discussed lunch, Jake had promised they would discuss several juicy projects she was in line for. Jacy rushed that conversation along. Jake said “No, no honey. Let’s enjoy some first class vittles, first. Then we can talk about that all you want.”

  Jacy persisted. “Jake, please?”

  Her agent poked at a dinner roll nestled into the bread basket. “Some British producers are very interested in you,” he replied, speaking softly.

  Jacy leaned forward. “And?”

  “They want you for one of the leads. It’s a great payday.”

  She mentally ran down the list of what it could be: cat-women on Mars. Happy hookers in a New Orleans jail. Or the bimbo in the latest Stephen Blade international extravaganza. “Okay, I’m listening.”

  Even in the dimness, she could see him wince.

  “It’s for Stephen Blade.”

  Jacy exhaled in exasperation and slumped back against the back of her chair.

  “But it’s a killer part. Lots of face time”

  “Yeah. In a bikini. How long do I get to wear the top part?”

  “Jacy, it’s not like that. Not this one.”

  She snorted in disgust, taking a long swig of water laced with lemon. “They’re all like that, Jake.” Aware that she’d raised her voice a tad, she glanced around at some of the other tables for telltale signs of someone eavesdropping and taking notes.

  “You play an arms expert, fluent in six languages,” Jake went on. “Brains and beauty. They practically begged me for you.”

  She didn’t care if it was Mrs. Gandhi. The Stephen Blade films were all about intrigue interspersed with sex. “It’s not what I want,” she murmured. “Hasn’t there been anything else? Something where I can act for a change?”

  Two waiters appeared with the platters carrying their food.

  After receiving his succulent, steaming steak, Jake made one last, impassioned plea. “Honey, I know how we discussed how you want to prove yourself, to touch people, and make them laugh. You’ll get there, believe me. But, trust me, there are hundreds of screaming up-and comers who’d kill for the role they’re giving you.”

  Jacy shrugged, reached for her fork and speared at a piece of endive. Between the lines he was saying the same thing as always: Shakespearean tragedy or British tea room drama isn’t in the cards for you. Take this gravy train and run with it. While you’re young. While you’re attractive. It just wasn’t what she wanted. What did she want?

  She wanted to be a healer.

  A few short weeks later, Jacy found herself on one of the tiniest Bahamian islands which had been taken over by Cheswick and Dunn, the producers of the wildly popular Stephen Blade movies. After all, she had her mortgage to pay on the penthouse and all those wardrobe and dry cleaning bills. A girl, even a thirty year old one, had to be practical.

  The name of the movie was “Red Tide,” and just as Jake said, her role as Sonia Hartenteit was a bit more complex than the average set ornament. She would have to speak German in one scene, Russian in another, and French in a third. The rest of her lines would have to be delivered in a teutonic accent, nothing too difficult for her since she’d already nailed a flawless Swedish accent for a whole year while on Broadway.

  She had to learn to scuba dive for the climactic scene at the end of the movie. It would be so intricate and detailed, she was told, that it would take two whole weeks of shooting. An Australian lady named Gillian met with her one morning at one of the villa’s pools and two stagehands lifted a metal tubular monstrosity over her and strapped it to her back. She felt like she was wearing a fire hydrant!
Gillian helped her strap a face mask onto her head, which gave her a touch of nervous claustrophobia. One of the guys lifted a convoluted rubber hose that looked like a circular vacuum cleaner attachment over her head. It contained a mouthpiece that she would breathe through while she swam underwater.

  Gillian was wearing the same kind of a setup yet appeared and at ease with her tubular metal backpack, as if she’d been born with it. After she’d strapped on her mask, it caused her normally melodic speaking voice to sound clipped and nasal: “We’re going to drop down to the bottom, love. To get you comfortable breathing under the water.”

  The first time they submerged, Jacy anxiously hyperventilated, causing thunderous whirlpools of bubbles, stirring up the water. For a moment the turbidity obscured her view of Gillian, who’d dropped down just a few feet in front of her. Gillian was giving the “thumbs up” signal, for them to expel all their breath and head for the surface. “Just think of it as being home in your rocking chair. Relax!” Still, it took almost the whole morning and two tankfuls of air before Jacy could submerge and breathe normally, with just graceful trickles of bubbles, like Gillian.

  They moved from there to the deeper end, staying down for longer and longer periods of time, running through drills similar to the scenes Jacy would perform in just a few short days. Gillian instructed her to think of herself as a dolphin, to allow her fins to gracefully propel her through the water, as she watched her circle the pool countless times. They practiced a maneuver called “buddy” breathing, where they both breathed out of the hose on Gillian’s tank, pretending that Jacy’s equipment had failed. Finally, at the end of a long day at the end of an exhausting week, Gillian patted Jacy on the back and said “By cracky, I’ve think you’ve got it, love!”

  That helped Jacy feel more at ease about the upcoming action scene shots to be filmed in an ocean lagoon. On the first day of shooting, however, the wardrobe department poured her body into a black, sealskin wetsuit so tight it squeezed her ribs closed and made her limbs feel stiff, board like. She complained to Hazel, the wardrobe matron who shrugged and said “They want to be able to see your curves, honey. It’ll feel much better in the water. Less constricting.”

  On the first day of shooting, Jacy noticed that all of the other, men actors would be wearing hoods with their wetsuits. When she questioned Sid, the director about this, he said “We want to be able to see your glorious hair, billowing in the current.”

  That first day, they’d settled for mostly swimming and reaction shots, mostly getting pictures of Jacy swimming toward a shipwrecked destroyer that hid a cache of stolen gold. Tuesday, April 5, 1965 she arrived at the set to find all the actors and stagehands jovially enjoying a hearty breakfast spread. “Today’s the big day, doll,” Sid told her. “You get to be a bitch with a knife.”

  The action called for her to swim up to a group of men diving around the destroyer, searching for the gold and slice their air hoses one by one. Gillian would drop down with her, out of camera range to feed her hand signals for direction. You’re not really going to be slicing their air hoses, she’d been told over and over again. They would be using something called a re-breather that military frogmen used, with the air tanks for show. When Jacy would slice the air hose, the actor would trip a carbon dioxide canister that would send bubbles through the hose while they twisted toward the surface in agony.

  The hoses were made to give way easily when Jacy would pretend to slice through them. Still, disaster struck the first time she swam toward a scuba diving actor and aimed the knife at his hose. She thrust her fist back to lunge forward and slice the hose but on the forward stroke, caught the release valve string on her buoyancy compensator vest. The carbon dioxide capsule fired, filling the bladder with air, causing her to rocket helplessly toward the surface. They had been more than forty feet under water.

  When her face and shoulders broke the surface, she felt as if her lungs had exploded. She gasped for air and flailed her arms. A moment later Gillian broke the surface, tossed back her mask and hose and frantically swam for Jacy, barking loud, shrill orders to the men on the trawler. “It’s going to be okay love! It’s going to be okay!” she kept saying over and over as she put her arms under Jacy’s shoulders and kicked them both toward the trawler. Jacy was aware that a couple of men jumped into the water to help. Four people helped her out of the water and onto the boat deck. Someone started an engine and drove them very quickly toward the harbor ship. A stressed sounding male voice said “Tell them to get the chamber ready!” After that, Jacy lapsed into and out of consciousness and could only sense images whizzing past, like a slide show rapidly firing images of concerned faces onto a screen.

  She lost consciousness. When she woke for a moment she found herself laying in something resembling a steel tomb.

  A short while later, at twelve o’five in the afternoon on April 5th, 1965, the Russians dropped an atomic bomb on Cape Canaveral, only three hundred miles away. Through the porthole in the chamber, she could see the glow.