Page 52 of Jackie

“I was curious.”

“You liked the Christina.”

“It was a little bright.”

“You mean gaudy.”

“I said bright.”

“You liked the story I told.”

“I’ve always loved stories.”

“That night we met, I noticed the unusual way you have of making men look at you.”

I smile.

“And I noticed that Kennedy had no idea.”

Something snaps between us.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

But the moment is severed, and I don’t answer.

Fall 1958

Things begin to shift in the Senate campaign. The same men gather in our living room—cigarette butts in the ashtrays, papers on the table, glasses of juice, and coffee mugs. But this year feels different. This run-of-the-mill reelection race is only a prelude to the real campaign. And Jack is different—his ambition sharper, not just on the surface but melding into the ideals that drive him. I can feel it in how he talks, thinks, listens.

They want me to go with him to Omaha in September, where he’ll speak at a gathering for the Democratic Party. They send Bobby to ask me.

“I’ve always dreamed of spending my fifth wedding anniversary in Nebraska.”

“You’ll enjoy it, Jackie.”

“Maybe for you, I’ll go.”

—

The crowd in Omaha is double the size they anticipate.

“Twice as big with Jackie here than if you were alone,” Kenny O’Donnell says to Jack on the plane home.

“That true?” Jack says.

“Yep.”

“Well, for Pete’s sake, don’t tell her,” Jack says, and when I glance up, he’s looking at me, that little look. He smiles.

We’ve been happy. It startles me to realize this. Some new brightness has slid between the careful walls I’d constructed to keep my heart safe.

—

I take a few more trips with him that fall, but I don’t like to be away from Caroline. It’s a pull in my body, missing her, her voice, smell, those slight hands on my neck, long hours with her in the warm autumn sun on the lawn.

His team asks me to do another campy show for television, At Home with the Kennedys. A living room shoot in Hyannis Port. Rose and I sit together. She asks how I’ve liked campaigning.

“So much,” I say brightly, the good wife, my hands in my lap. “Jack and I have been traveling through the state, trying to meet as many people as we can….”

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