Page 147 of Jackie

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“Is that all?”

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The way you said my name.

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“Thank you, Mr. Manchester,” I say as I see him out.

“Never again,” I tell Bobby after the door is closed.

I take Caroline and John to Hyannis Port for a long weekend. I bring them to the beach. They run into the water up to their knees, then back to me, shrieking with the cold. I put my arms around them, and they push into me, shivering. John wants me to dry him off; I wrap him in the towel, dusting off bits of the sea. His small shoulder blades like wings.

“Come on, John,” Caroline says. Grasping her brother’s hand, she pulls him off, and they run back into the surf, his little legs churning to keep up. I feel a sudden fear in my throat. I want to cry out, Come back.

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I spend June and July on Squaw Island. In a sense it’s like every other summer, only Jack doesn’t come on weekends. Bobby tells me there’s going to be a short film about Jack at the Democratic National Convention. It was supposed to be on the first night, but he’s learned it’s been moved to day 4. He blames Johnson.

“You don’t know it was Lyndon,” I say.

“Who else would think they had a right to move it?”

The two of them are still at it. Trying to catch me up in their tug of war. It’s Jack they’re fighting for, each trying to pick up his legacy, because they don’t understand—they’ve never quite understood—that politics and power are palaces of breath and want and air. Only as real as we believe them to be.

“One more thing,” Bobby says.

I smile. “You always say that.”

“Look wants to do a memorial issue.”

No is my answer. But he needs me.

“All right,” I say. “For you.”

“For Jack.”

“Yes, but you’re the one running for Senate, and I want you with me in New York. So we each get a something.”

He starts to laugh, then stops.

“Will you always look after me, Bobby?”

“Always.”

“It’s a thankless job.”

“Not to me.”

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I pose with the children for the Look photographer. Carefully designed shots, where I pretend to be serene, coming back to life.

I tell the editor I hope this piece might capture the way Jack loved words, how even while he was working through the challenges of nuclear disarmament, he’d lie on the boat, reading poetry.

“I want people to understand there was a man behind it all,” I say.

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