Page 115 of Jackie

“Take off your glasses, Jackie,” he tells her. He sees her squint—the sun hot, bright.

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You can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you, Mr. President….

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A boy standing on the curb with his father stares as they pass by, a newsboy cap, scrubbed face; slowly moving, a tentative smile surfaces through the freckles and pale skin, a small hand creeping up, starting to wave.

A motorcycle backfires, scorched air, the light blinding, that sound and its echo, the world contracts. The boy on the curb is gone. He turns to find her, his wife, the turning a reflex to anchor the sound; she is facing away from him, toward the crowd on her side of the car, her hand raised, sunlight bright off the bracelet on her wrist, her gloved hand moving back and forth like a tiny flag. He starts to turn back, his eye skimming hers as she turns in his direction even as he is turning away, his hand raised now, wavingat the people cheering from the curb. The air cracks again, the backfire from somewhere behind them. He jerks forward. Arms twitch. Hands lurching up. Someone is shouting. He goes to answer; a sea fills his throat, the pain searing. He turns again to her, his mouth open to ask, and her face is near his face, her eyes dark, wide, the strangest expression, terror, her hands grip his arm, her body lifting, as she tries to force his arms down—the sound again—

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Night blooms in his head.

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The sound deafening, now only silence. As he watches, the world picks up speed, the sky above them on a tilt, clouds, a hem of buildings, trees, the edge of what might be a park floods by, the rush of the car underneath, and she is there.

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Jack.

He reaches for her—

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Jack,

her voice a tether

Can you hear me, Jack?

I love you.

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Reach

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The echo of that sound still, her face gone to pieces right before his eyes.

…

At the border was light.

A photograph. She is with him, standing in the doorway of an airport. He is a senator, and it is June 1957. The year of the Pulitzer, the year of the Famous Five. He is boarding a plane and leans in to kiss her goodbye. Her skirt is full of wind, his face half in shadow, only the edge of his jaw lit. That soft knock of sun. Behind them there is brightness, the blurred nose of the plane, tarmac, the fatal and glorious sky. Her back is to the camera, but he remembers her face, her searching eyes; she had wanted something from him in that moment, in the rush of hot wind, a yearning he closed himself to, and the soft dusk of her voice. Jack. She was asking him something. He tries to remember now and cannot. What was it in that moment she had wanted?

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Why can’t he remember?

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I’ll be home soon, he must have said, something easy, bland, his mind already ticking off lists for the days ahead.

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