Page 134 of Jackie

I inhale, and the cigarette brings back a little of my mind.

White has stopped writing. “I think I have enough.”

“There’s more,” I say. I suddenly find I don’t want this to be done.

“Let me start with what I have.” He smiles then. A strange sad smile.

I show him to a small room, a typewriter on the desk.

—

When he returns with typewritten pages, I’ve sharpened two pencils. I read on the sofa. He’s written eloquently. Beautifully. Nothing graphic. No blood, brains, gore. On the one hand, I’m grateful. At the same time, there’s a great deal missing. I work over each line, the pencil marking up the text.

At two in the morning, White stands by the wall phone in the kitchen and dictates his story to the Life offices in New York.

“The Camelot bit?” he says into the receiver but glancing at me. “You’re saying you want to strike that? Or tone it down?” He catches my eye. I shake my head.

“No,” he says into the phone. “That stays.”

—

Then he is gone. They are all gone, and the house is empty again. Just me and the children. A glass of water on the nightstand. I lie on the bed and sleep without sleeping.

It is almost tomorrow, I think.

December 1963

At the White House, they’ve laid out Jack’s clothes on the bed. For me to decide what to keep.

Trunks and boxes, lids flung open. Such a disarray.

—

I put the Lincoln book back. Not where it belongs. Just flat on a shelf. Mr. West will find it. He will set it in its place, and all will continue.

—

The day before the children and I leave, I walk through the house with Mr. West. In the doorway of the state dining room, I pause.

“Mr. West.”

“Mrs. Kennedy.”

“I love this portrait of Lincoln.”

“As do I, Mrs. Kennedy.”

“I love that it was at first rejected for not being enough, but then his son bought it, because he saw his father in it, and his wife sent it to Roosevelt, and now it is here. Things don’t always happen in a straight line, do they, Mr. West?”

—

I told you once I wanted the children to understand it would be temporary, living here. But in the end, it was ours, wasn’t it, Jack? This house I never loved. It grew up with us. Became beautiful with us. Restored to something it never was before but was always meant to be.

—

“Mr. West, do you think you could do something for me?”

“Of course, Mrs. Kennedy.”

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