Page 20 of Jackie

The clouds are bone-gold shapes passing near the moon. They seem to rush, gauzy, weirdly lit. We head toward the open tent set by the clubhouse; music drifts out, the clink of glasses, laughter. Lanterns are strung along the roof of the tent and woven up the halyards of the boats moored offshore. Paper-bag luminaria mark a path from the tent to the clubhouse stairs.

He drops my hand as a man steps out of the crowd toward us. His cousin Joey.

“Where’ve you been, Jack?”

We are swept into the tent, then apart, knots of people milling through the space. I recognize some from Virginia and New York. Jack moves away, shaking hands, working the crowd. Here is the younger Hatton, pushing his way through to see me, to say hello. And Lila, whom I know from the horse shows, has my arm and is turning me toward a pretty brunette with a pixie cut, who apparently knows Lee and is asking how Lee is and is it true she’s working for Diana Vreeland at Harper’s Bazaar?

“Right now she’s in Rome,” I say, “with her new English beau, Michael Canfield.”

“How serious is it?”

“Well, nothing’s really serious until it is.”

Jack is a short distance away, with a fellow in a gray sports coat. Jack is talking to him but looking at me, the way he does, the way I love, with that little fixed look. His eyes pass over my body, slow, more intentional. I feel my flesh burn.

“Jackie—” Lila’s saying.

A sudden boom as the sky breaks apart, fireworks; an “Oooohhh” erupts from the crowd; we move in a wave toward the dark at the edge of the tent as raw chains of color and light trail down. Rafts of aftersmoke.

He finds me, his mouth near my cheek. “Are you okay?” he says.

“Yes.” I want him near me. I want this.

A Roman candle shoots up, a rising hiss on the ascent. I feel the length of his arm against mine, the touch warm, light.

By the time the fireworks end, a low fog has rolled in, but the high night sky, still, is bright as water. The band starts up, the crowd regathers. A few cars pull away, headlamps stripe the lawn. Jack catches my eye, nods his head to go. We walk in silence toward the car. He takes my hand. The stars are wayward, spinning out there above the fog. I feel like we’re on the edge of that night.

In the car, his hand moves over the shift onto my thigh. In the light off the dash, I see him smile; I can feel what it does to me—that smile, his touch—driving fast down that blue night road. We are less than a mile from the house when he pulls off into the grass and kills the lights.

“Come here,” he says. He holds my face in his hands as he kisses me, his mouth on mine, that electric touch. I feel my skin rise, his fingers drawing the edge of my blouse open.

August 1952

He doesn’t call that week, or the week after. Finally, in August, he calls.

“How are you, Jackie?” he says.

“Just so busy,” I lie. “You?”

“Nonstop. The campaign. Say, you haven’t had a chance to look at that French book, have you?”

“I started it.”

“Well, let me know.”

“What exactly do you want translated?”

“I’d love a sense of his take on Indochina.”

“Sure.” I heard he was in town last week. Some kind of dinner. I don’t mention it. The silence on the line feels awkward.

“I’ll give you a call when I’m back in D.C.,” he says. “It’ll be tough, though, from now until the election. We need to hit every town up here.”

“Of course.”

“I’ll call you soon.”

He uses it a lot, I’ve noticed. That word. Soon.

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