Page 32 of Jackie

“I have a girl,” my mother says smoothly. The white heat of the sun bores through the glass.

“Jack, open your window, please,” I say.

“This window here?”

“Yes.” I smile. “Yours.”

He gives a push at the handle, glances at me, that puzzled look. “It doesn’t seem to work.”

“Of course it works.”

He tries again.

“That’s the wrong way,” I say. “Clockwise. No, I mean counterclockwise.”

“I’ve tried both ways. It won’t budge.”

I lean across him, grip the window handle, and start to crank it down.

“What are you two up to back there?” my mother says.

“I was having trouble with the window, Mrs. Auchincloss.”

“Call me Janet.”

“Janet. The handle seems tricky. Jackie’s helping me figure it out.” His hands are underneath me, touching me, the window halfway down; his fingers run along my waist, my ribs, the edge of my breast, and the salt wind blows through the window, that cooler sweet summer air—bright and hard and fast off the sea. The car turns onto Ocean Drive, and we are falling over each other in the backseat, laughing and trying to stifle it but not trying too hard, and there is only silence, tight-lipped and prim, from the front. My mother’s cool dagger eyes in the rearview.

—

At the beach club, we spill out. I grab my bag and towel.

“A hamburger for me, please,” I say.

“A club sandwich,” says Jack. “Chowder too, if they have it. Thank you, Janet.”

We race past the steps that lead up to the veranda and down to the shore. We drop our clothes in a pile. The water is cold.

“Dive in,” I say.

“You first.”

I look at him for a moment, then ask.

Jack

“Do you love me, Jack?” she said.

“Of course. I’m marrying you.”

“That’s not what I asked.” Her voice with that flip edge, like she might have been testing him. The water was cold and clear. He’d seen that smile before.

—

It’s not that he doesn’t love her. Not that at all. The marriage is useful. He knows that, and everyone reminds him. Her breeding, the sheen of wealth. Well read, well traveled, well mannered, well bred. Not malleable, Bobby once remarked. Their father laughed at that, then said, “No, but she knows how it works.”

And she’s different. From his sisters, from other girls and women, the ones he still goes after. She is curious. A fiery wit. Ruthless insight. She makes him think. And when she’s quiet and he can see her thoughts tick, he feels a kind of thrill—the same thrill he felt when he first recognized the magnitude and reach of her mind.

No one else.

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