Page 10 of Jackie

“Heavens,” I said, “how did it end?” And John White told me that when a photo of Inga with Hitler surfaced at the FBI, Joe stepped in and got Jack transferred to a desk job in South Carolina. Lovely Inga was heartbroken. She got a divorce, tossed herself at Hollywood, and married a millionaire cowboy.

—

“I think we should keep up the pretense,” Jack Kennedy is saying now.

“Of?”

“Meeting again for the first time.”

To keep me a novelty. New.

John White is at my elbow. He takes my glass of water and hands me a glass of wine. “I’m sure it’s not the best you’ve had, Jackie, but it’s the best I’ve got.” He looks at Jack. “Whatever you’re angling for, pal, you missed your chance. She’s fallen into the sad trap of a diamond ring. Yale fellow, right, Jackie? Works on Wall Street?”

“Johnny Husted.”

“I’m entirely thrown over,” White says.

“Well, congratulations,” Kennedy says. “So how long will you keep working at the paper?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Won’t you quit now that you’re engaged?”

“Why would I?”

“Most girls would.”

“I like journalism. Just because a woman chooses to marry doesn’t mean she has to hang her life up on a coat hook. Weren’t you a journalist once, Congressman?”

“It was fun. But I didn’t have the leverage I wanted. In politics, I can get things done.”

“You like history.”

“I do.”

“News today is tomorrow’s history. You know what words can do.”

“Look how well I’ve taught her,” White says.

I’m annoyed with them both for their presumption. Kennedy is looking at me, though, a raw electric light in his eyes. I just stare back. There’s no reason, anymore, to be discreet. I can do what I want. Say what I want. Be as scathing as I want. I’m marrying someone else. Oddly, that was my first thought when Johnny Husted offered me his mother’s ring at the Carlyle: It was out of the blue and exactly what I swore I didn’t want, but it suddenly occurred to me that if the marriage question was neatly settled, to a perfectly respectable catch, I might not be more trapped but free.

Once, at a party in Newport, there was a boy I flirted with. He was brutally handsome and knew it. I sat next to him on a long sofa set between two potted ferns. He lit a cigarette for me. I listened and oohed and aahed after every stupendously brilliant and arrogant thing he said, and when he finally shut his mouth, I gave a little swooning sigh and went to stub my cigarette out, just brushing his hand with the lit end. He jumped, that boy,spilling his drink right down the face of his white shirt. I pretended it was a terrible accident.

A part of me now wants to tell Jack Kennedy this, to see how he’d react, what he’ll say, if he’ll frown or, more likely, get that little smile. I like that smile. More than I want to.

“So what do you do,” he asks, “when you’re not making up questions for the paper about Chaucer and Marilyn Monroe?”

“I make little drawings to go with my questions.”

“Cartoons?”

“Sometimes.”

“What have you got for the coming week?”

“Do you think a wife should let her husband think he’s smarter than she is?”

“Never.”

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