Page 131 of Jackie

“Jack wanted very much to be a friend of France,” I say, “but it didn’t quite work, did it?” I’m on the verge of adding, You didn’t let him, but Jack would not have wanted me to be bitter, and now it’s too late. De Gaulle knows what he did, and he knows what I wanted to say even without my saying it.

“I am sorry,” he says, and in his eyes, there is shame.

“I have to leave now. You see, it’s my son’s birthday. We are going to try to have a little party upstairs. This is what I have left to do.”

—

Upstairs is chaos. Children hopping around, paper hats and streamers, balloons and noisemaker horns. I watch little John go from kneeling to standing, then balance on one foot like a pelican on a chair. I take my mother aside.

“Will you do something for me?” I say.

“Of course.”

“Find Pam and have her send a message. I want the tack of the riderless horse. Have it saved for me—saddle, bridle, blanket, boots, sword. Instruct them not to clean it.”

My mother nods, and the party continues. The adults look tired, but the children plunder on. John, with bits of cake and frosting ground into his shirt, is tearing through his gifts. My heart quickens, watching him.

—

They will say I was calculating, dispassionate, an actress. They will say I kept that tack for show. They will say that day was theater, as if my grief were some kind of charade. They will not know how much I craved it—that sweet stink of horse mixed in with oiled leather, that trace of the dance and the fight. How much I wanted to sink my face into that smell and remember.

…

Midnight again. Everyone is gone, asleep, or they’ve left, flown off. The day is done. Bobby and I are alone in Jack’s office. The lights are off. The curtains open. I asked for them to be left open. I wanted to look out at the night, the stars in bloom.

Bobby stands with me by the long windows. Neither of us can sit for any length of time. The sky so clear. Moonlight rakes the floor.

“Well,” he finally says. “Shall we go?”

I pick up the phone. “I’d like to speak to Mr. Hill, please.”

—

The flame is visible as we cross the bridge, the rows of stones bright against the hill. At the grave, Bobby stands beside me, his hand woven through mine.

—

“What are you thinking?” he asks when we’re in the car again, driving back.

A day, years ago. Jack and I were out sailing. I’d caught sight of a bird—some kind of hawk. The light was in my eyes and the bird was a distant shape. I tried to identify the lines of its wings and flight. I shielded the light from my eyes and tracked the bird as it shifted course, heading toward the coast behind us. The boat tacked, and a sea rushed under the hull. The bow rose, then dipped. “Hang on, Jackie,” Jack said. I turned. He was just sitting there, open water behind him, managing the lines, one hand on the mainsheet, one on the tiller, his face bright, that casual beauty of him so brisk and alive, like he was cut right out of the wind, the salt air, and the light.

“What are you thinking?” Bobby asks again as the car turns onto the avenue. I don’t answer. The memory fades. His asking dimmed it. I lean my forehead against the window glass to close my mind.

—

I can’t sleep. I can’t even lie down without seeing his head destroyed in my lap. I wander around, sit in a chair, smoke. The room has a terrible wrongness. I take one of the little blue pills. I still can’t sleep. The stars drift.

Later that night, I hear Bobby cry out again from a bedroom down the hall.

I should go to him, I think.

…

At the desk in the West Sitting Hall, I write to Lyndon.

Thank you for walking yesterday—behind Jack. You did not have to do that—I am sure many people forbid you to take such a risk—but you did it anyway.

Thank you for your letters to my children….

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