Page 152 of Jackie

The Look magazine commemorating Jack is coming out on November 17. They send over proofs with photographs and the words I wrote. Those passages from literature Jack loved that I compiled. It is beautiful, and it is heartbreaking.

I spend November 22 with John and Caroline. I’ve canceled the Times subscription until November 24. I don’t read the tributes in the newspapers or magazines. There are requiem Masses I don’t attend. Television documentaries I don’t watch.

I eat a quiet dinner with the children. I put them to bed. I stay up late and write letters.

—

A flash as that piece of your head shot away, and I saw it flood out—vision, brilliant spirit, light.

—

Then the day is over. It is midnight. The next day. And I have gotten through it.

—

On November 25, John turns four. He wakes up early and hurls himself into my arms, asking when are the presents, when is the cake, when is the party. Breakfast first, I tell him. We walk into the dining room together. I sit down with my coffee and unfold the newspaper. On the front page are excerpts of my testimony to the Warren Commission—my “what ifs” and “if onlys.”

1965

The sun rises, then sets. The last of the leaves fall. The trees are bare, waiting for snow. Smoke from a chimney, fires snap, lights turned down at bedtime, then snuffed out. The windows darken and the sky is bright with stars—their disordered burning without design, stars flung around like dice.

—

Christmas in Aspen. Skiing with Bobby and the children in Vermont. In February, I go to Puerto Marques, then rent a house in Hobe Sound. I read the papers. The assassination of Malcolm X; the attacks on King and flights of protesters marching from Selma to Montgomery. They are met by police, tear gas, and nightsticks; they’re beaten at the bridge.

“This isn’t someone else’s country,” I tell Bobby.

—

In New York that spring, I go out with a string of escorts—intellectual, witty, gentlemanly gentlemen. I sleep with one or two of them once or twice. Even if it were more than that, it would mean nothing. These men are friends. I talk and laugh with them. I trust them. Only one feels more serious—the architect Jack Warnecke. Bobby warns me it’s too soon.

“Too soon?”

He doesn’t answer.

“Are you jealous?” I say, teasing. “You, with your nine children, and your lovely live-wire wife, with her cheery faith in you and God and all things Kennedy. Bobby, you couldn’t be jealous.”

He’s been moody recently, brooding over Johnson, who’s taken the high road on civil rights that Bobby had staked for his own. On national TV, Johnson pledged support to King and the marchers at Selma. He called for the passage of a new voting-rights bill. All things Bobby would have done.

“It’s good Lyndon’s taking a stand,” I tell him. “What matters is that the bills get passed.”

He doesn’t answer.

Dropping ice into a glass, I say, “Ethel doesn’t need people going around saying you’ve been seen leaving my apartment in the early morning.”

“Ethel’s fine.”

But it comes out hard. The fine.

—

David Ormsby-Gore calls from England to ask if I’ll attend a memorial ceremony in May. The queen wants to dedicate a tract of land at Runnymede in Jack’s name. I tell David I’ll think about it, but only because he’s the one asking.

“Harold Macmillan could speak in my stead,” I say.

“I don’t know,” David says. A pause. I remember then: the Profumo affair. Macmillan’s secretary of state, John Profumo, lied about a scandal and was caught in the lie, and though Macmillan had done nothing wrong, the incident drove him to resign. There was a young model involved and a Soviet attaché.

“Harold wrote me a wonderful letter last February,” I tell David on the phone. “Fifteen pages about his time in the war. I tried to write back, but nothing I wrote made sense.”

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