Page 149 of Jackie

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I spend September with my mother and the children in Newport.

On September 12, I come downstairs early. The light is ragged, the morning overcast and cool. Alone in the dining room, I skim the headlines. Hurricane Dora, school bussing, Vietnam. In two days, the children and I will move to New York. The apartment I bought at 1040 Fifth Avenue is nearly finished. I’ve chosen what furniture to keep. The Louis XVI bureau where Jack signed the test-ban treaty; my collection of miniature paintings from India; my father’s Empire desk. I find it easier to inverse edit, choose what I want and let go of the rest. Caroline will start school, and the new agent assigned to John will bring him to the zoo and the park. He reminds me of Agent Foster. I’ll have to tell him not to spoil John, not to throw him up in the air every time he asks.

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A year ago today, it was our tenth anniversary. We were here, in Newport, and you set out those gifts, including the snake bracelet, and asked me to choose.

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The memory cuts.

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Later that afternoon, when the children and I are driving home from the beach, I take the longer route. The speed is a visceral comfort, the road pulling under the car as the wheel twists lightly in my hands. Behind me on the long vinyl backseat, they are asleep, a sprawl of legs and arms, sweet lips sticky from ice cream, Caroline’s fair head, John’s dark one. I tilt the mirror to catch them in the rearview, and a sudden warmth floods my body. There’s a dirt turnoff up ahead. I pull in and park on a lip of packed gravel that washes out with every storm, the car idling, windows unrolled halfway, the scent of beach rose, sweet pepperbush, the salt smell off the marsh. I can hear the light sound of the children’s breathing. I don’t want it to end. I cut off the engine. There is nothing else I need to do, nowhere else I need to be. Only with them. Only here.

…

Onassis writes to me. I wait a few days before I answer.

Dear Ari,

I received your note, and yes, I would enjoy dinner sometime. Let me know when you’ll be here, and we will see….

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Lee told me months ago that things between them had cooled, then ended. It was short-lived, their affair, as my sister’s flings often are. The children and I have moved to Manhattan—it has felt uncanny, being here, in this city, like time has folded back on itself. The week we arrived, I took them rowing in Central Park. As we walked toward the boathouse, it struck me how alive the city is. No one noticed us, or if they did, they paused only for a moment, then moved on. The children were happy, and it felt like just a week ago I was their age. Lee and I used to go for walks in Central Park with our nurse. One day I wandered off. I was careful to let it appear unintentional; I didn’t want the nurse to notice I was gone. I looked back once, walking backward until she and Lee fell out of sight. A curious sensation, I remember how I loved it even then—that sheer sudden thrill of being unseen, unaccounted for.

I am going to the new Broadway show about the Jewish immigrants, which just opened, Fiddler on the Roof.

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One day in October, I stop with the children at the news shop on the corner for two chocolate milks, and it’s there: Time magazine, with a photograph of Oswald. A banner of text: The Warren Commission: No Conspiracy, Domestic or Foreign.

John is tugging at my hand. “Mummy.” I look up, over him, to the wall lined with chips and cans. My eyes drop. Caroline is watching me. She picks up a travel magazine and places it squarely on the rack to cover Oswald’s face. Then she takes the lollipop from John’s hand, puts it on the counter, and says to the cashier in her grown-up voice, “We will take this, please. How much will it be?”

The spell snaps. I fish through my coat pocket for a quarter. I hand it to Caroline, who pays the man and doesn’t wait for change, and the three of us walk outside. Bells on the shop door ring as it shuts behind us.

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I remember what I said to Bobby that last day of the interviews—the day the writer Manchester left.

“I need to get out.” That’s what I said.

I’ll never get out. I realize that now.

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One day bleeds into the next.

rise after not sleeping

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