Page 80 of Jackie

I continue to feel it—that curious sense of dislocation, like I’ve moved into a separate space, and though Jack and I are closer, when he leaves at the end of each weekend, I don’t feel the piercing ache I used to feel.

“Who’s in charge of a woman’s life?” I asked John White, years ago, when I was working at the paper and he’d made some remark about one of my columns.

Once, I thought I understood what I was willing to give up when I married Jack. My work, the freedom to go where I wanted or see who I wanted whenever I wanted. But the deeper sacrifice, I’ve come to realize, is about power and the accommodations a woman is called on to make. To shrink enough, to be small enough, to fit into the corners of a man’s world, to file down her own edges to be the kind of wife he’ll need, that he and others expect her to be.

…

Back in Washington that fall, I’m deliberate in how I map my time. There are always things to do. Events to attend or create, lists of tasks I need to address. I work better, with more intention, when there’s the pressure of an upcoming trip, even just a weekend with the children to Glen Ora.

“Little trips away keep me light,” I tell Jack. “And out of your hair.” That makes him laugh, but I can feel it also unsettles him.

I plan a Shakespeare production in the East Room for the president of Sudan and scribble a memo about it to Pam.

Let’s please include a scene from Macbeth. And some half scenes from the comedies, to capture both the light and the dark.

I invite cellist Pablo Casals to play at a November dinner in honor of the governor of Puerto Rico. Jack and I throw a black-tie dinner dance for Lee and the Agnellis.

“What about Stas?” I ask my sister. “Is he coming too?”

“He might,” Lee says, “or not.”

I know what that means. “Oh, Lee.”

“It’s my marriage,” she snaps.

“Well, you alone are a beautiful excuse for a party, Pekes.”

At that dinner dance, I ask Oleg Cassini to introduce the Twist. As he’s out on the floor, trying to teach a man how to use his shoulders to get the right twisting motion in his hips, Pierre Salinger walks up to me and looks pointedly at Oleg and the couple laughing on the dance floor.

“Too risqué,” he says.

“Oh, please don’t worry, Pierre. You can send a denial to the press tomorrow. Claim we engaged in nothing more suggestive than the foxtrot.”

Stas, as expected, does not attend. Jack raises a glass in a toast: “To Stas, wherever you are.”

Around eleven, I’m in the Blue Room when my stepbrother Gore wanders in. He comes over to sit with me, but there’s no second chair, so he kneels by mine. He’s rather drunk and says a few snide remarks about Lyndon Johnson—“the lox,” he calls him, as Lyndon tries to do the Twist, nearly knocking the lovely Helen Chavchavadze to the floor.

“A Mad Hatter evening you’ve made, my dear Jackie,” Gore says. “I do admire it. Though Lem went after me for not being at the Arts Council. He is a—”

“Don’t say it, Gore,” I warn. “You love to pick fights. I don’t want it tonight.”

“My lovely step-step, don’t pretend you’re not half charm, half malice, like me.”

“Those aren’t your percentages tonight, Gore. You’re drunk, all malice, and that’s just dull.”

He seems briefly contrite. He stands up, wavering on his feet; his hand falls on my shoulder. A moment later, his hand is knocked sharply away, and Bobby steps between us.

“Impertinent son of a bitch,” Gore says, throws a punch. Bobby catches his fist mid-swing. We get Gore packed into a car, heading home. I tease Bobby for being so protective on my behalf.

“Was it the hand on my shoulder?” I say. It makes him flush.

“He was upsetting you,” he says, but glances away as he says it. I touch his hand.

“Thank you,” I say.

—

We’re with Joe in Palm Beach in December. Jack has a brief trip to Nassau to meet with Harold Macmillan. The day he leaves, I’m swimming with Caroline in the pool when Joe comes out onto the patio.

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