Page 48 of Jackie

“Don’t overdo exercise while I’m gone,” he says.

“Exercise is good for me.”

“Just not too much.”

“Someone’s going to have to run after this baby.”

It makes him happy, every time I say that word.

“I feel like I’ve forgotten something,” he says, looking through the battered leather briefcase. He moves some papers into a folder, then snaps the briefcase closed.

“Just don’t forget to come home,” I say.

He leans in to kiss me at the door that leads out to the airstrip; I can feel his breath faintly cool, the white rush of the sky behind.

I stay in New York while he’s gone. I take long walks in the park. Every morning, I read the papers: Eisenhower sends in the 101st Airborne to protect nine Black children at a Little Rock high school; the Russians shock the United States by launching Sputnik, the first satellite, into space. I read Faith and History by the philosopher Reinhold Niebuhr. I cut a passage from The Observer to give to Jack when he comes home, a quote from the French filmmaker Jean Cocteau:

…what is history after all?

History is facts which become lies in the end; legends are lies which become history….

—

I watch the leaves turn, and I think about my father, how he will never meet my baby. Loving him was like trying to put my arms around the sun—I could never quite keep up with the speed of the loss, even knowing it was coming, too fast, too soon, and no matter what I did or how much I wanted, I would not be ready. There would be loose ends, always, for what I had not said, for what I could not bridge or hold or save.

Lee and I had decided there would be summer flowers strewn across his casket. Black-eyed Susans, cornflowers, lilies, too, for the heartbroken beauty of their scent. Fierce colors, wild blooms. And those summer flowers are what I hold in my mind as I let go to the rising pull of anesthesia the day before Thanksgiving.

“Please, let all be well,” I say quietly. “Let my baby be well, whole and safe and beautiful. Let all things be well.”

—

I will always look back on the day, November 27, 1957, as the happiest of my life. Jack bending toward me, our sweet baby girl in his arms, an expression on his face I’ve never seen—it kicks my heart over.

“How lovely she is, Jackie.” Light pours from his face toward the tiny being wrapped in a blanket in his arms, his hand cupped around her skull. He sits on the edge of the bed, flowers he brought on the table behind him, and it is just the three of us, alone—floating on a raft cut loose from the world. He will always look at our daughter just that way, like he needs to map each detail, each feature—the bond between them tensile, changeless, transcendent.

In the hospital room, her tiny face scrunches up. She opens her mouth to cry.

“Shhh,” he whispers. She quiets at his voice.

1958

We move into the house on N Street. I hire a housekeeper and a nanny for Caroline. It’s a simple, informal life we begin to build. When Jack is home, we go to the movies with our friends Ben and Tony Bradlee. We host small dinner parties, games of charades, and cutthroat Monopoly tournaments. Charley Bartlett will invariably complain, “Pull no punches, Jack. You play like those little hotels are real.” Every other month, I drag Jack to the Dancing Class at the Sulgrave Club. He doesn’t love it, but he goes. He’ll dance a bit, stay near me for a while, then peel off in search of some like-minded political soul to hash over the current state of affairs. If he doesn’t find anyone, he’ll drift back to ask how long I want to stay. I send him on another lap around the room—glorious and bored, a tiger in a cage.

—

“A drink, Mrs. Auchincloss?” Jack asks one afternoon that spring. My mother’s come to visit.

“I came for a baby,” she says.

“Caroline’s sleeping.”

“Then I’ll wait.” Her smile is tight and cool. She’s liked Jack less since we lost Arabella—the fact that he wasn’t there, that we couldn’t reach him, and that he didn’t rush home when we did. “You’ve made some lovely changes to this room, Jackie,” my mother says.

Jack smiles. “Bunny’s helping.”

“Adele Astaire introduced me to Bunny Mellon,” I tell my mother.

“The Listerine family?”

---