Page 121 of Jackie

“Nothing.”

I let it sink in.

“So he died for nothing. That’s what you’re saying.”

He reaches for my hand, but I can’t feel it, I can’t feel or hear or see anything, only Jack—that puzzled look, his beautiful mind, and the life flooding out of it.

“We’re going to have to make some decisions,” Bobby says. “You don’t have to. I can take care of it.”

“It’s all in the book on Lincoln,” I say. “The lying-in-state, the rotunda, the riderless horse. I asked Pam to call Mr. West to ask him to find the book. Everything is there.” The force and clarity in my voice is surprising. Not the soft voice, but the voice I used to have.

Bobby tells me then he was eating lunch when Hoover called.

“I could have done something,” I say.

“No, Jackie. There was nothing.”

He shifts, and I push into him like he is ground that will keep me from falling.

“Please,” I say. “Cut it out of me.”

…

My mother and Hughdie are waiting for us on the seventeenth floor at Bethesda. The Bradlees are there, Mary Gallagher, Pam, Ethel, the McNamaras. Bob McNamara is arranging a house where I can live with the children in Georgetown. We can move in anytime. I murmur my thanks. Dave Powers is mixing drinks. One appears in my hand. A smoky liquid like amber. I take a sip, taste nothing. I put the glass down and pull Kenny O’Donnell aside to explain that, at the hospital in Dallas, I made a mistake. The ring I tried to put on Jack’s finger didn’t fit; it wasn’t meant to be there, I know this now. I’d like it back. Can he take care of this for me? He nods and heads toward the door. He seems grateful to have something to do.

I learn the children were taken to my mother’s house at Merrywood.

“No,” I say. “Their lives shouldn’t be disrupted, now of all times. Tell Miss Shaw to bring them home so they can sleep in their own beds.”

Someone will have to tell them. I should be the one to do it. I want to be with them. I want to get them from my mother’s house and bring them home. But then I’d have to leave Jack, and I can’t do that.

I start to cry. My mother holds me until I’ve pulled myself together. The grief is a brick in my throat.

—

They are all so careful. They handle me like I’m a bit of glass. Ethel touches my arm. Her sincere, pretty face, telling me Jack went right to heaven, no stopovers.

—

The little blue pill I’m given doesn’t work, so Dr. Walsh gives me a shot. Shortly after midnight, Dr. Walsh has fallen asleep in the chair, and I’m wide awake, hunting around for a cigarette.

—

They’ve learned things about Oswald. Bob McNamara tells me this, not because he offers it but because I ask. He seems surprised I’d want to know.

These are the things they’ve learned:

The kind of gun he used.

That he spent thirty-two months in the Soviet Union.

That he was married to a woman named Marina.

McNamara sits with me while the rest of the room buzzes on, more slowly now because everyone is tired, but Bob, like me, is awake. As he talks, I feel like he’s holding me up with his eyes. The soft rectangle of his face, the neat circle of his glasses. Everything about him is ordered, calm.

“Do you want me to tell you again what happened?” I say.

“Yes.”

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