Page 136 of Jackie

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Bobby comes. He has breakfast with the children and brings Caroline to school. He comes again at the end of the day. He reads to the children and puts them to bed. He tucks them in and teaches them prayers they did not learn. Then he comes to find me.

“How are you?” he asks.

Everything hangs by a thread. The world, I could explain, is split. Terrifying. Simplified. Every night I lie down with fear and a clarity so sharp it cuts behind my eyes. Jack was killed by American violence, he called it that once, the hatred that built this country.

“We’re soaked in it, Bobby,” I say, “this violence we pretend we’ve outrun.”

—

I tell him again, detail by detail, the story of what happened. Like Scheherazade. Each night extending into morning. Only each night, here, the story is the same.

—

“I have to tell it until it is out of me,” I say.

—

We lie on the bed, fully clothed. He has taken off his tie. We are close, his hand on my face, fingertips moving lightly. He does this sometimes, touches me without seeming to realize. It is not sexual or intimate but like he’s trying to remember what touch feels like.

—

Through the window, the moon.

—

We talk about the library and about some papers I need to sign. I ask about Ethel and his children. I tell him how I want a Christmas in Palm Beach with lights and stockings, like every Christmas, where John and Caroline can ask the questions they always ask: How big is my present? How many will there be? At the same time, I don’t want Christmas at all. Then he leaves and everyone is gone. Even the room is gone. The bureau. The bookshelves. The bed. All that remains is the window.

—

Sometimes after midnight, in the blue dark with my cigarette smoke, I will say Jack’s name. The one hard syllable carries. I call to him quietly as though he might come back to me.

…

Bob McNamara sends over two portraits of Jack, with a message saying he’d like me to keep one as a gift and he will keep the other. He’s asking me to choose. As I look at the two paintings, it gets harder to remember Jack in my mind, to see, for example, his face as it was that day I walked in on his bath a year ago wearing only my boots and the long riding shirt. How intimate it was—the surprise in his face—one of those small nothing moments in a marriage where everything happens.

I leave the portraits propped outside my bedroom door. I’ll ring McNamara tomorrow, thank him, and explain that for now I need to return them both.

That night, John comes into my room with a lollipop, looking for his toy train.

“In the basket in your closet, darling?”

“Not there.”

“Downstairs in the kitchen?”

“No.”

There’s a stain of lollipop around his mouth. I am suddenly exhausted.

“Time to brush your teeth, my love. Go do that, then come kiss me good night.”

“My train.”

“I’ll help you look in the morning.”

He studies me for a moment.

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