Page 175 of Jackie

“For the record,” I say, “my life is very dull right now. I shop at the local A&P. Excuse me, please. I need to go. My son is on his way home from school.”

—

I tell Tish about this over lunch a few days later.

She laughs, then says, “But how are you, Jackie?”

“Oh, Tish, you always ask the tricky questions.”

How would I explain it? It’s not the loss of Ari. It’s not the children growing up and into their own lives. I wouldn’t want that any other way. It’s not that I’m lonely or bored. I have plenty of dates and events, theater and concerts and readings. What then?

I study the menu. When the waiter returns with our drinks, I order a hamburger.

“Tish, I’ve decided that as long as you do your push-ups and jog around the reservoir, you can never go wrong with a hamburger.”

“You can never go wrong with a hamburger.”

I laugh, but I’m thinking about an article I read in the paper this morning about the fall of Saigon. Communist tanks rolling up to the palace, the boulevard strewn with burning cars. U.S. troops were picking up Vietnamese who fled in boats. Former soldiers blended in to lose themselves in crowds. One soldier walked up to an army memorial and shot himself. That stopped me. I read those lines twice. The war was over, to the extent that something that never should have been started can be over. More complex than any dark hell Shakespeare looked into. That’s how Bob McNamara described it once. But isn’t there something after every end?

“I want to work, Tish,” I say, “but I haven’t had a paying job since I married Jack.”

“What about Viking? You love books.”

“Loving books and being qualified for a publishing job aren’t the same.”

“You know Tom Guinzburg. Wasn’t he a friend of Yusha’s in college and part of your Paris Review circle?”

“I only wish it were mine,” I say.

When Lee married Michael Canfield, I’d felt a twinge of envy, not because my younger sister was racing ahead to the altar but because Lee was marrying into a publishing family. I couldn’t imagine anything more thrilling than spending breakfast, lunch, and dinner talking about what books were being acquired, critiqued, reviewed. Funny. A twinge like that, so easily dismissed.

“You were a reporter,” Tish says as she picks up her fork and starts on her salad.

“A quarter of a century ago.”

“You’ve lived through an important part of history.”

“I suppose.”

“Just call him, Jackie. Call Tom and talk to him. See what happens.”

—

Years ago, there was a letter in a book you showed me, written by Einstein to the grieving family of his closest friend:

Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

—

Which is the equivalent of saying that the dividing line that marks “what happened” from “what will happen” is no more substantial than the fog of a child’s breath on glass.

…

I don’t call Tom Guinzburg. Not that I wouldn’t want the work. I’d love it. But what if I can’t handle being out in the world that way? How would I act? How would the world act toward me?

A few weeks ago, my friend Peter and I went to the opera, and Peter remarked that taking me anywhere was like taking King Kong to the beach.

I drive out to New Jersey to ride. When I get back to New York, I realize there are no eggs in the refrigerator. I walk to the store. On my way home, I run into Jimmy Breslin. He takes the bag of groceries and walks with me for a few blocks.

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