Page 13 of Jackie

“I have to leave now,” I say. “I have to be at the Hill by eleven.”

“Are you free Thursday?”

“No.”

“He’s understated, but don’t let that fool you. And I told you once, he’s ruthless when there’s something he wants.”

I point to the middle button on his tweed jacket. “That button’s hanging by a thread, John. Pop it off before you lose it.” I drop my pencils into the drawer, close it, then open it again and take out two.

“You like him,” he says.

“I’m engaged, John.”

“To a good catch who’s too dull for a girl like you.”

“That’s an awful thing to say.”

“You like Jack Kennedy.”

“I appreciate that his mind never seems to let up.”

“Like yours.”

“We’re nothing alike, John. If I was drawing a man like that, I’d draw a tiny body and an enormous head. I have to go.”

“What about Thursday?”

“I am very busy Thursday.”

“You are lying, Jackie Bouvier.”

“Honi soit qui mal y pense,” I say.

“What does that mean?”

“Shame on him who evil thinks.”

I almost walk out the door without my camera. I smile at John White as I walk back to my desk, pick it up, then leave.

A long wolf whistle as I walk out of the building. Two boys from the fourth floor. The redheaded one and the one with the scrubbed prep school face. Heading up the stairwell, they lounge around the banister, watching me.

—

I don’t go to John White’s that Thursday. Johnny Husted is coming down from New York, a quick trip to D.C. We have dinner together. The next morning I drive him to the airport. A blinding rain. The windshield wipers sweep the world left to right to left, and as we drive, I tell him I think we should postpone the wedding. He asks if “postpone” is what I really mean. We reach the airport; I leave the car running. I get out to see him off. He pulls his collar up against the rain, sets his hat. “I’m sorry, Johnny,” I say, slipping his mother’s ring off my finger. I drop it into his pocket. “I’m so sorry.”

—

“He wasn’t good enough for you,” my mother says when I tell her.

“Or rich enough for you?”

“He just wasn’t enough.” She looks at me over the rim of her teacup, the curved edge of china against her face. “This isn’t about that skirt-chaser, is it?”

—

There’s a photograph of my parents that someone took when they were still married. Black Jack leans against a fence, rakishly gorgeous as he was back then, in a summer-weight suit. He’s holding hands with a woman who sits on the fence beside him, while my mother sits near them facing away—smartly dressed in her riding gear, a stoic turn in her face, pretending not to know what she knew.

—

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