Page 46 of Jackie

Someone tells someone there’s trouble in our marriage. Or someone takes a wild guess and hits a bit of truth. However it happens, a rumor finds its way into the papers that I’m planning to leave him and Joe’s offered me a million dollars to stay.

“Did you see that garbage?” Joe says to me.

“I thought it was a fine idea, but why one million? Let’s make it ten.”

Joe laughs. “I’m on your side, Jackie. Jack needs you.”

“For his political career?”

“And a lot more than he seems to realize.”

“Well, I hope he figures it out sooner, rather than—you know—later.”

Silence then. He waits for me to elaborate. We’re sitting in the living room of his house in Hyannis Port. It’s late afternoon. Everyone else is somewhere else.

He stretches out his legs. “You and Jack should take a trip,” he says. “The two of you, maybe around the New Year. Antigua?”

“Are you trying to placate or bribe me, dear Joe?”

He smiles. “Whichever you’d prefer.”

Your son never apologized, I want to say. He never said to me, I’m sorry for leaving when the baby was coming, I’m sorry for not coming home when she died.

“You need this marriage, don’t you?” I say. “Particularly now that plans are being laid for Jack to run.” I don’t have to say which race. There’s only one race that matters to Joe.

“This is no joke, Jackie. Divorce, or even the whiff of it, will kill his chances.”

“Then we’ll have to make this fun,” I say, “so I can be sure to survive it.” I smile. “I’ll need a small house at some point, and Jack will need new suits. He can’t get the hems so short. He can’t keep wearing those tired scuffed loafers in the evenings.”

“Did you hear what I said?” He peers at me through those thin wire-rimmed glasses. His eyes don’t dance.

“No unpleasantness, Joe. I’ve been heartbroken, and I need to climb out of it. Let’s think of things we can celebrate: Jack will have new suits, I will have a little house, and it looks like the Supreme Court is going to uphold desegregation.”

—

From then on, I am careful with my heart. I’ll stay in this marriage, at least for now. But I’ll keep myself slightly apart. Oddly, Jack doesn’t seem to notice. In fact, things between us seem lighter, like he’s relieved I’ve split myself and now he only has to reckon with half. How much simpler things become once I withdraw, once I’m less passionate, less present, less open and honest. Less in love. From time to time, it occurs to me with a stab of sadness that it might be precisely the less that makes me more the right kind of wife.

1957

That spring, we learn Jack will be awarded a Pulitzer for Profiles in Courage, and we learn that I am pregnant. I want a baby so much. I’m afraid to trust the joy.

We go to the Paris Ball at the Waldorf Astoria. Marilyn Monroe is there on the arm of Arthur Miller, her body like a vase in her black-halter sequined dress.

“That woman is outrageously beautiful,” I say to Jack in the car afterward.

“She’s a wreck.”

I feel a wave of anger. “A wreck brave enough to stand by Miller during his McCarthy inquisition.”

“Investigation. Besides, they were already having an affair.”

“Does that make her less brave?”

We ride in silence. The car pulls up to a traffic light. Two more blocks to the hotel.

“Lee is leaving Michael,” I say.

“What?”

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