Page 133 of Jackie

The biggest motorcade from the airport.

It was hot. Wild. Like Mexico or Vienna.

The sun was so strong on our faces….

—

I tell him about the gap of seconds between seconds.

I do not cry. I keep my hands folded, everything in me very still except the words. They are bright and molten, flowing out of my mouth. I see it like it’s still happening. A perfectly clean piece of skull detaching itself from his head, rising away as I reached.

—

It was not repulsive to me for one moment. Nothing was. Your head was so beautiful. I was just trying to keep it in. That wonderful expression on your face you’d get when you were asked a question, just before you answered.

—

“I would have done things differently,” I explain to White. “Turned sooner—after the first shot—and pulled him down, but I was so taken by that expression on his face, that abstracted, puzzled look I’ve always loved. What is it, Jack? I went to say, and then the next shot came.”

I go on talking. White goes on writing. There are others in the room. They listen like trees, and the rain strikes the window, and bits of my words and his questions float, parsed smaller, splintered to powerless dust, rings of smoke shot through with sickening yellow lamplight.

“Jack was magic.” I use that word, then stop.

—

We never pay attention, do we? To what we should.

—

In the downstairs room that night with Theodore White, his notepad, pages wrapped thick around the top edge, pencil flying fast across, and the darker shadows of Bobby and the others, silent at the hem of things, faces half lit, ghostly, obscure, a quiet word exchanged, they watch and wait, the occasional bright orange glow of a cigarette.

The children are asleep upstairs.

—

We imagine time will clarify our intention. Who we were, how we lived, what we achieved. We want to believe we will be treated with integrity, with fairness and compassion. But history is not so forgiving, is it?

—

“When did farewell really come?” White is asking me now.

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Turn on the lights so they can see Jackie—

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Take off your glasses, Jackie, so they can see you.

—

These moments, I could explain, these little things Jack used to say when he was asking me to be more visible, to play my part—these are the lean, sharp cliffs of my mind where I walk.

“When did farewell really come?” White asks again.

How dark in the room it’s grown.

“It’s become almost an obsession with me,” I say. “This one small thing I want to tell you. At night, before going to sleep, Jack loved to listen to music. He loved the record from the musical Camelot. I’d play it for him on the old Victrola. His favorite lines, near the end: Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot.” I pause. “You imagine I’m making things up.”

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