Page 27 of Jackie

The next time I come home to a message from Jack, I don’t return the call. He calls again, twice, the calls less spaced out. Finally, I call him back.

“I’m so sorry it took me so long,” I say. “How are you?”

—

We go out more frequently after that: art galleries, museums, parties. We go for dinner at La Salle du Bois, which he immediately contends is too French-fancy.

“We like some fancy,” I say.

“Like what?”

“At Eisenhower’s ball, we decided we like inaugurations.”

He laughs. “That’s different.”

“Inaugurations are fancy, Jack.” This makes him laugh more, and I love the way he looks at me through the laughter, that mix of collusion and desire. We debate who will win what Pulitzer. I invite him to a Fellini film. “Long-haired crap?” he says. I answer, “You only get to judge if you go.” I write him notes on the salient points I’ve culled from those French books on Vietnam so he can weave them into his Senate speeches, which I offer to proof.

One weekend, we meet in New York for lunch with my father. They talk about the stock market, movie stars, sports. Jack sips his drink while my father throws back four, but they order the same steak, cooked the same way. The room is airy. Sunlight filters through the long windows.

They talk about the changing landscape of New York.

“We were on Park Avenue when Jackie was young,” my father says. “Now I’m up in Lenox Hill.”

It pinches my heart, that faint shame in his voice, the vanished wealth he tries to be easy with. My father has always been a man of extravagance, but if he had only a penny left, he’d break it in his teeth and give me half. When I was at boarding school, he’d appear on weekends with armfuls of presents, stockings, magazines. Once a bouquet of fresh gardenias he laid in the snow by my dorm window. He conspired to have my horse stabled near the school so I could take my friends for sleigh rides. In spring, when he came to visit, we’d drive around in his little two-seater. I never tired of feeling that sudden jolt of the car, a burst of untame life, as we hit the open strip of highway. I was the keeper of his secrets. He told me details of his affairs.

“What about that one there, Daddy?” I’d ask at a school event, pointing out one of the mothers.

“No, I haven’t had her.”

“That one, then?”

“That one, yes,” he said.

And I’d laugh. It felt like that was what I was supposed to do.

—

“Keep her on a horse,” my father tells Jack that day we’re at lunch. “Then you’ll have her in a good mood.”

It takes me aback—that he’d talk about me that way, like he’s giving Jack license to do the same. I almost say something, a cool witty thing to draw a line. But the waiter is there, and their steaks have arrived. My father cuts into his, suave manicured hands deft with the knife, neat thin slices—a more nuanced precision than one might expect. I glance at Jack. He is looking at me. That look. My father pretends not to catch it. I smile and Jack smiles back, that curious incandescent thing about him that makes the edges of the world feel suddenly so bright.

Spring 1953

“I wish it hadn’t rained,” Lee says. Her wedding day, but she isn’t happy. My younger sister, her exquisite body like blown glass, sinks into the vacant seat next to me. “I hate this miserable weather, Jacks. I should have waited until June.”

Our father is dancing with our mother. They spin close to us. He lowers her into a dip, then draws her up, a gallant turn. She catches my eye as he sweeps her away.

“She looks like she’s ready to die,” I say.

“Michael wants to dance,” Lee says, “but I can’t dance while they’re dancing. Daddy acts like he still loves her.”

“He acts. But he was determined to cut a dash for you today. He’s been getting in shape for months. Jogging around the reservoir in that absurd rubber suit.”

She looks at me. “I’m sorry Jack couldn’t come.”

“Senate life. But he invited me to Eunice’s wedding in May.”

I don’t mention to Lee that the city editor at the Times Herald just asked me to cover Queen Elizabeth’s coronation. I almost said no. To go would mean I’d miss Jack’s sister’s wedding. I asked the editor if I could have a few days to think it over.

---