Page 67 of Jackie

It’s after three when Jack wakes me up and pulls me down the hall in a sort of hobbling waltz to the Lincoln Bedroom. He hurls onto the bed.

“We are sleeping here!” he cries. “Here!”

We stay there for the rest of that night, and in the morning we talk in bed with the extra pillows kicked onto the floor, the blankets drawn up around our chins, sunlight streaming in.

…

Boxes of our things fill the rooms.

He carries photographs of me and the children from the Residence to the Oval Office, which begins to assume the design of a captain’s quarters: ship models, paintings of rocky coasts, a plaque engraved with the mariner’s prayer. His bits of scrimshaw are set around the room.

The day after we move in, I walk into his office and ask Dave Powers to please leave. When we’re alone, I ask Jack if it’s true what my chief of staff, Tish Baldridge, just told me, that three days before the inauguration someone in Jack’s camp called up Sammy Davis, Jr., and disinvited him and May Britt.

“I told you he wasn’t going to perform,” Jack says.

“You didn’t say he was asked not to.”

“We barely won this election.”

“You did win, and he supported you.”

There’s an uncertain look on his face, and I realize that whether or not he knew in advance it was going to be done, he doesn’t feel good about it.

“We still need the South, Jackie.”

“That man campaigned for you because you asked him to.”

“Then he went and married that woman.”

“A woman he loves.”

“Who’s white when he isn’t.”

I look at him for a long moment.

—

Later that afternoon—almost five—I’m in the Residence with Tish and Pam when the folded note arrives.

Jackie,

Let’s declare war on the toilet paper.

Where is it?

I smile. His olive branch. He might not apologize for what happened to Sammy Davis, Jr., and May Britt, but the note is his way of saying he heard what I said.

I continue working, going through boxes, unpacking and sorting, until I come across an unframed photograph in a box from the Georgetown house. The two of us at the Hyannis airport. I don’t remember the photograph being taken, but I remember the moment. In the picture, my back is to the camera, Jack is leaning in to kiss me goodbye, an awkward unclaimed intimacy between us, captured in those nuanced dark shapes against the white sky behind.

—

For those first weeks, the halls ring with the sounds of hammering, smells of paint and linseed oil. Though the house isn’t ready for them yet, the children are the focus of my days. I miss them desperately, their skin, their smells, Caroline’s voice and laughter, John’s sweet sleepy face and how his hands grip and uncurl. He’s still so fragile.

“I want my children to have a routine,” I tell Pam as we unpack Caroline’s books and toys, “a sense of an ordinary life outside the spotlight and fairy tale. Do you think that’s possible? To construct a normal childhood for them?”

“It seems to me,” Pam says quietly, “you can build whatever you want.”

“I’d like to keep my station wagon. I don’t want to always drive around in one of those long black cars.”

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