Page 28 of Jackie

“It’s a good position Michael’s been offered at the embassy,” Lee says, but her voice is uncertain, like she’s trying to convince herself. “I’ll miss you when we move to London, Jackie.”

“You’ll love it there. You’ll go out every night with interesting people, and you’ll know I feel a splitting envy, bored to tears back here in the swamp.”

—

“You should absolutely go to the coronation,” says my mother a few days later. We’re down at the barn with the horses. Spring sunlight falls in sheets through the open stable door.

“What about Eunice’s wedding?” I say.

“Jack has plenty of time to find another date, if that’s what he wants.”

“Well, I’m not sure that’s what I want.”

My mother frowns. She doesn’t quite like Jack or trust him. But there are many things my mother doesn’t trust. My wit, for example. Or what she calls my stubborn streak. She made her own mistake once—that’s how she sees it—when she fell headlong for my father. It broke her, then made her cold.

She shifts the bridle now and runs the flat of her hand down the horse’s neck. “Jackie, if you’re really in love with this man, he’ll be more likely to find out how he feels about you if you’re across the ocean doing interesting things rather than trotting back and forth with his lunch.” She adds, “Aileen Bowdoin could go with you.”

“I don’t want to talk about this.”

“Just call Jack. Tell him you’re sorry but you’ll have to miss his sister’s wedding. Tell him you’ll see him when you get back.”

—

In England, pictures of the young Queen Elizabeth are everywhere, pasted on the windows and doors of every house we pass on the boat train between Southampton and London.

I write one short feature piece every afternoon, longhand, and send it off airmail. I write about the American crowds that fill London, about dancing at the 400 Club, its walls lined with velvet. I write about the clambake ball thrown by Perle Mesta of the National Woman’s Party, a highbrow “hostess with the mostest.” I write about Lauren Bacall waltzing with General Omar Bradley, then moving on to a foxtrot with the Marquess of Milford Haven. She is the belle of that ball, her long body poured like water into a strapless lace dress, dancing away with the marquess until her Bogie ambles over in his old white-tie-and-tails, cutting in to steal back his wife.

Aileen Bowdoin and I stay in a friend’s flat in Mayfair. The apartment is unheated, and when it’s cold at night, we fill the bathtub with scalding water to warm our feet. I drag Aileen to bookstores in search of titles I can’t find in the states. Aldous Huxley, books on Churchill, Irish history, two small volumes of British poetry. I’ve brought along an extra suitcase for the books, but by the time we’re packing to leave, it’s full.

“Who on earth are all those books for, Jackie?” Aileen asks as I sit on the lid, working to buckle it closed.

“Hughdie, mostly.”

A knock on the door. I hop up to answer it.

“Telegram for Miss Bouvier,” says the messenger.

I thank him and, closing the door with my hip, open the telegram. I can feel Aileen’s eyes, the quickened silence in the room.

Articles Excellent…But You Are Missed.

I slip the telegram into my pocket.

“Jack again?” Aileen says.

“Yes.”

I stand above that stubborn overfull suitcase. Books, and more books. Books he’ll read for pleasure. Books with ideas that might be useful to him. I’ve started to admit I want to be useful to him, necessary. In that whole suitcase, there’s not one book for anyone else. Not my mother or Hughdie. Not even for my stepbrother Yusha. Only Jack.

—

I meet an old friend, Demi Gates, for dinner at a small restaurant. We ran into each other at the post-coronation reception at the American embassy. He had traveled up from Spain to London. Tomorrow he’ll leave for Paris. We order our food and catch each other up on other people’s news. We talk about one summer years ago when we all met in the south of France. Yusha was there, and my friend Solange. There was a nightclub where we used to go dancing.

“Do you remember the violin music?” Demi asks. “Everything was right that summer.”

“It’s Paris I miss,” I say. “Strolling down the Champs-Élysées at midnight. Drinking grasshoppers and getting swanky at the Ritz.”

“Then come with me for a few days, Jackie. Before you go back. We’ll hit all the places we used to go: Chez Allard, L’Elephant Blanc.”

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