Page 157 of Jackie

On November 2, a young man named Norman Morrison sets himself on fire to protest Vietnam. I read about it in the papers the next day. I’ve had a fever, and I am still in bed. Morrison was a Quaker, the secretary of a Friends Meeting, and he set himself on fire by the river entrance to the Pentagon, forty feet below McNamara’s office. Not yet thirty-two years old. Three children. His baby daughter in his arms as he doused himself in gasoline and struck a match. As the flames caught his clothes, he set the baby on the wall behind him. A bystander swept her out of reach.

Below the article is an advertisement for a sofa and the caption Have your Danish with a martini, and there, what I don’t expect, a tiny news story: Mrs. John F. Kennedy ill with the flu.

Good Lord.

I think about Bob McNamara. I should call him about that man Morrison. In my gut, I know he was in his office when it happened. He would have stayed by the window and made himself see it.

The phone rings. It’s Bobby. A first draft of the Manchester book will be finished next month. They’re going to send a copy for me to read.

“I don’t want to read it,” I say. “It’s been two years, Bobby. I am just starting to breathe.”

Silence then.

“You read it,” I say. “You’ll know what we should cut.”

—

John’s birthday falls on Thanksgiving Day that year. I drive with the children out to New Jersey on Wednesday morning. The next day is Thanksgiving, then a dinner celebration for John’s birthday, gifts, cake, a song. Two days later, we celebrate Caroline’s. Driving back into the city, I decide that every year from now on, it will be this: the long Thanksgiving weekend, the three of us together, each of their birthdays celebrated on its actual day. Just this way.

1966

The world begins to spin again.

In June, I take the children to Hawaii. Jack Warnecke is living on Oahu. He’s designing the new state capitol—an open courtyard, columns, a reflecting pool. I fall in love with Hawaii. I can go to a beach or a luau, I can walk into town, eat at an open-air restaurant, paint watercolors, or wear a bikini. No one seems to see me, or if they do, they don’t care.

“I’d forgotten what it was like,” I tell Warnecke, “to explore a new place and be unnoticed.”

—

The children and I come home to the Cape in July. The day after we arrive, Bobby walks over to tell me about the sale of excerpts from Manchester’s book to Look. They’re going to publish in the fall.

“That can’t be on every newsstand,” I say. “Tell them no.”

“You said you wanted me to handle it.”

“Just remind them that publication can only take place once we’ve given our permission. We haven’t done that yet.”

“Jackie.”

It’s how he says my name. I realize then. He’s already given permission.

“What exactly did you tell them, Bobby?”

“The Kennedy family will place no obstacle.”

I sit down on the sofa, my head in my hands. Rage, heat, fury, tears. It all pours into my hands.

“You told me to handle it, Jackie,” he says.

“I can’t do this,” I say. “I’m just getting out from under it.” I don’t look at him. I know I’m being unfair. “Please tell them you misunderstood.”

“But I didn’t.”

The room feels airless.

“Tell the writer to come,” I say.

—

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