Page 144 of Jackie

“William.”

“Yes,” I say, but I won’t use his first name. “You were in World War II, like my husband.”

A veil across his eyes draws closed.

“Did that change you?” I ask.

He shrugs. “You see things differently. Afterward.”

“You mean you can’t stop seeing it.”

“Yes.”

“That day in Dallas, Mr. Manchester, I see it over and over in my mind. Every night.”

“Tell me.”

—

It’s fascinating and also repellent—how he wants to get right inside that day, into the backseat of the car, those eight seconds. He wants me to take him into that gap of time when time blew apart. He wants to feel every moment of slow-motion horror, the shock of the sound that threw me right out of the world, the metallic wash in my mouth I could taste for days after.

—

“What about the film stills?” he says. He pulls out the photographs of the woman crawling over the back of the car. The Zapruder images. I can’t look at those pictures. He spreads them on the coffee table. I pretend to look. I know I’m the woman in the photographs, but I have no recollection of doing the things they claim I did.

I shake my head. “I stayed right with Jack. That’s what I remember.”

“There must be more underneath,” he says.

He’s gaining confidence, his tone more aggressive. He pours another drink and sets it in front of me. Don’t drink it, I think, watching the sprawl of color over the ice cubes as they melt. He is more like Mailer than I thought.

—

- Then you climbed onto the back of the car.

- I don’t remember that.

- What happened next?

- That’s all I remember.

- You don’t remember climbing onto the back of the car?

- Is that what happened? They keep telling me I did that.

- Yes.

- I don’t think I did that.

- You were asked “why” shortly after, and you said you were going after a piece of the president’s skull.

- I don’t think I said that.

- Or were you trying to get out of the car?

—

I feel myself shake my head. White sunlight. Heat. The sound of the sky blown apart. The writer stares at me, ruddy cheeks, relentless eyes, focused to the point of being cruel.

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