Page 4 of Jackie

“I’m reading a first novel now. Lie Down in Darkness.”

“I saw that review. Who’s the author?”

“William Styron.”

“That was it.”

His hand rakes the flop of hair from his face, and he’s just looking at me like he’s waiting for me to say more, and I’m looking back at him, waiting for another question, because I’ve completely fallen out of the conversation, and now there are others—Charley, Pat—watching the two of us to see where this will go and how it might end. No one says a word. Just a funny starched silence.

“Shall we head in for dinner?” Martha says brightly.

“Yes,” someone answers. Beyond the French doors in the new night, the patio lights bounce down, striking off the stone terrace, as the clock inside chimes the quarter hour, and Jack Kennedy is just standing there, looking at me, still waiting, that little smile. Six feet of casual stardust.

…

“What was he like?” Lee asks the next morning at breakfast.

“More awkward than I expected,” I say. “In need of a haircut and a square meal.”

“Rich,” my mother says, drinking her orange juice. “Irish, and something of a Lothario.”

“Lothario was Spanish,” I say.

“And your father hates his father.”

“Which hardly matters.” I reach for a piece of toast. “I have no plans to see him again.”

My sister glances at me, that slightly wicked look so altogether Lee, her face with its delicate bones and structured beauty—the kind of beauty that feels almost irretrievable, autocratic, because as a woman you’re told it’s precisely the type of beauty you’re supposed to want and be.

The phone rings. My mother leaves the room to answer it.

Lee sets her coffee cup down.

“Come on, Jacks,” she says. “Tell me. What was he really like?”

The reception room at Vogue. High ceilings, tall windows, a shiny black floor. Large potted plants mixed in with white wicker furniture. Elegantly coiffed women drift by, carrying notebooks and clipboards. Two young secretaries, slim and graceful, sit behind equally graceful Chippendale desks, kitty-corner to one another. One of them hands me an employment form. I sit down on one of the sofas.

- Permanent address?

I write my mother’s and Hughdie’s address at Merrywood in Virginia. I am only the poor relation, I could scribble in the margin. Yes, we come from once-upon-a-money.

- Spouse? None

- Minor children? None

- Religion? Catholic

- Can you type? Yes

- Take shorthand? No

- Do you own a house? No

- Are you communist? No

- Have you ever joined a group plotting to overthrow the government? Not today

I sign the bottom of the form, hand it back, and return to the sofa to wait.

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