Page 156 of Jackie

Last night I dreamed of you, and in my dream, I was with you again, and you washed through my body like a wave.

Lessons I’ve learned since you died:

How to pack certain things away with precision—heartbreak, of course, grief and regret, but also anger—the kind you always told me I should bite back.

—

The rituals of summer. Cooking fires on the beach, lobster, corn, blueberries, and peaches. Early-morning swims and being barefoot all day long.

I read the book of Cavafy’s poetry.

On my birthday, I call Ted Sorensen.

“I miss Jack,” I say. “Even the stupid things that used to irritate me, like when he’d track sand into the house in the cuffs of his pants.”

“Can I take a ride over?” Sorensen asks.

“Please.”

He brings doodles Jack made during the missile crisis. Sheets of yellow lined paper with little pictures and words staggered among the drawings—Khrushchev, Soviet Submarines. On one page, the word Missile circled over and over.

“Before, we would’ve just thrown them away,” he says.

You loved him, I almost say, but it’s so obvious, I feel ashamed.

—

Sometimes I can feel those layers of other summers when you were here. Collateral moments—the warm green shadows and how the sunlight fell across your shoulders and your face. I could see you aging, but I’d still catch that unmistakable careless grace I always loved. Sometimes I see it still, even with you gone, even as the seasons change and new rituals begin to rewrite the hours, erasing you, as summer moves toward fall.

When I feel you close to me—your presence and the loss—I just wish I’d given more, said and trusted more. It’s like breathing in lightning, the want and the regret.

—

The man accused of shooting Mary Meyer is acquitted. It’s in the papers that August. A Black female lawyer took his case and argued that the man accused wasn’t the size of the suspect a witness had seen. Mary Meyer was shot twice, once in the head, once in the shoulder, by someone who knew how to push a bullet straight to the aorta; her mind went dark in an instant. Both shots were mortal. This detail, more than any other, haunts me.

I swim in the ocean, and my mind turns: Mary Meyer, two shots, a Black man fishing, the chiffon dress, its hem soaked with snow, drunk lovesick Mary wandering the White House lawn.

—

One evening, when the sky is bright, I take the children for a walk. The street is empty. John pulls at my hand while Caroline skips ahead. John stops, squatting down beside a puddle in the road.

“John, that’s dirty,” I say as he starts to reach for the water.

“No, Mummy, I want it. The moon.”

It strikes me then—a sudden feeling I almost don’t recognize. I am happy. That’s what it is, the feeling.

“You’re crying again,” says Caroline.

I pull my daughter to me, and John as well. I hold them both. John’s hands wrap my neck, but Caroline’s arms stay tucked by her side, her body like wood, that rigid sorrow. She’s holding her breath, holding everything in.

“It’s okay, sweetheart. Caroline, my love, it’s okay.” I feel her body give, a tiny sob in her throat. “He was our world, my love. That’s why we cry.”

…

That fall, I rent a house in Far Hills, New Jersey. Simple, clapboard, down a dirt road. Almost every weekend I drive out with the children to ride. Coming back into Manhattan late one Sunday, we get stuck in traffic. It’s after eleven when we finally reach 1040. John’s asleep in my arms, and as I walk in and turn on the hall light, I’m startled to notice how the apartment has become home. The old-world curtains, blue-and-white lamps, long shelves of books, the cherry-blossom screens. Near the window, my easel with a canvas. My eyes sweep the photographs: horses, dogs, the children, Jack.

—

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