Page 21 of Jackie

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I wait, then hate that I’m waiting. I have dates and parties, weekend trips to Newport. During the week, I carry my camera and notebook through the stifling heat up to the Hill to pick off anyone who hasn’t skipped town for August. I have dinner one night in Georgetown with my stepbrother Yusha, who remarks, “You seem a little out of sorts, Jackie.”

I love Yusha. He is genuine, kind. The only son of my stepfather Hughdie’s first marriage to a Russian noblewoman. Of all the steps and half-steps, as Lee and I call them, Yusha’s my favorite.

“Sometimes I just think I made a mistake,” I say. “Not taking the job at Vogue.”

“You like working at the paper. You’ve said that. Having your own column.”

“But I lived in France for only that one year. I was just a student. Sometimes I think I made a mistake not going back.”

“Then go back,” Yusha says. “Just because you made one choice doesn’t mean you can’t make another.”

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I hurl myself into work. The season turns, the start of fall. The city begins to hum. Work at the paper picks up. As the days cool, I hear things about Jack Kennedy. He won the Massachusetts primary. No challenge, really, when you basically run unopposed. I dump his book on Indochina into a drawer. I cancel him out of my thoughts. Two days later, he calls, saying he’ll be in town the weekend after next.

“You want to get lunch?” he says.

“I’m afraid we’re too busy.”

“We?”

“The paper.”

“Oh. What about Sunday?”

“I am going in to work that day.”

“On a Sunday?”

“Yes.”

“Leave a little early. Say one o’clock, Martin’s?”

“One-thirty.”

“Great,” he says. “See you then.”

I hang up, annoyed I’ve said yes, then annoyed I would care either way. It’s only lunch.

I arrive ten minutes late.

“I thought you might have stood me up,” he says, as I slide into the booth, across from him.

I’m happy to see him, excited, and I keep trying to talk myself out of what I feel. I skim the menu, sip my drink, drag my french fries through the ketchup, and I try to push off the butterfly giddiness—that flush of desire I always seem to feel when he’s across the table from me. Even when he’s just talking about the campaign or politics, no matter how dry the topic is, he seems to make everything interesting. Foolish, Jackie, stop being so foolish, this is nothing more than a schoolgirl crush on the older, more popular boy. Jack Kennedy’s not looking to settle down. He’s not that kind of man. Though I’m not really looking for that either. When I graduated from high school, I wrote in the yearbook, under Ambition in Life: Not to be a housewife.

He reaches for the check the waitress brings.

“Thank you,” I say.

“I remembered my wallet this time.” He looks almost sheepish for a moment, that lonely, sunlit smile. “I’m glad you came.”

After lunch, we walk the towpath along the canal and across the little bridge. Children lean against the rail, two boys throwing sticks. We sit down on a bench. It’s cool in the shade. He asks about my family. I ask about his. He tells me he read my column last week.

“I love my job,” I say.

“Do you think you’ll stay with it?”

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