Page 168 of Jackie

The mothers, the daughters, the wives. And sometimes, that’s when the play begins.

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I am someone who did not die when I should have died.

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Hecuba said that. The Trojan king’s widow. She’d watched her husband, sons, and daughters killed. She was destined to be exiled, enslaved.

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Yes, I remember thinking when I read those words, I do know that feeling.

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One day took a world away.

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Yes, that too.

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But the dream of the story continues. In some gorgeous zone of the imagination, told and retold, as if some new incarnation might shape a keener sense of meaning out of what was broken, burned, slain.

I have already decided by the time the children and I walk down the aisle of St. Patrick’s for Bobby’s funeral. The organist playing Mahler’s symphony, Teddy standing up there alone to speak, holding such a mantle of weight on his shoulders. His voice shakes and I feel his mind veer.

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I have already decided as we leave the church and a woman turns to me, extending a hand in sympathy—Lady Bird? Is that who it is? I’ve already begun to recede from this world with such speed and distance that in that moment I’m not sure I know her.

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After nine that night, Teddy and I kneel beside the coffin on the hill at Arlington, the same hill. Candles light that same dark, the night like a hand on my shoulder, the smooth chill of the coffin, the reflection of the moon on wood, slipping over the surface. I stand up and it startles me—that fallstreak hole of the actual moon perfectly round in the sky, the rush of air on my face like I’m hurtling away from the rest of them toward it.

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Back in New York, I write to Ethel. Crumple up a first draft, a second, then finally I get down what I want to say, about her children. I want her to know that I’ll take them around the world + to the moon + back. I want her to know that if she needs me, I’ll be there, now and always. Then it’s finished, the envelope sealed. I look up. It is my apartment—chairs, sofa, curtains, desk—but everything seems a shadow of what it was before. Even the view from the window. The maze of streets and park and city. The books on the shelves. Spines flat. Closed.

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I’ve told no one what I’ve decided when I’m sitting with Rose in Hyannis Port and she says to me out of the blue, “You deserve happiness.”

Late June. The day lilies in bloom.

I tell Rose I’ve asked Teddy to go to Greece with me in August. Ari wants to host a party for him, to show his support for the family. “Teddy and I will go together,” I say. “We’ll stay at Ari’s house in Athens.” I haven’t said anything about what I’ve decided to Ari either.

The chintz in Rose’s living room is essentially the same as when I first came that Fourth of July sixteen years ago. Rose is asking if I’d like another cup of tea. Her hands are veined, with a grace in them I’ve never really grasped. Those hands lift the teapot and start to pour as John rushes into the room, clutching three toy planes—a jumble of wings, noses, tails—long-boned contraptions of paper and tin. He holds one out to me but won’t let go of the others. There’s something he needs me to see, a wheel that has loosened and a place where the wing is bent. What kind of tool to fix it, he wants to know, and where would he find such a tool?

I study the plane, turning it over. “I think I know, John,” I say. “I’ll help you in a moment.”

I take the planes from his hands, set them on the table, and draw him to me. I can feel his little body squirm to get loose. You are my joy, I say, breathing in his skin, his softness, his smell, which will be mine for only a while.

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And the next time Ari asks me, I say yes.

Away.

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