Page 83 of Jackie

Earlier that day, shortly after his arrival, I met him for a tour of the National Gallery. As we walked through, he told me he was haunted by one of the Rembrandt oils there, La Balayeuse. We stood in front of the painting—a young girl with a broom leaning over a wooden fence; she stared directly at us. I asked Malraux to tell me what he saw, and he pointed out the nuanced shadow on her face and hands, the strong bravura brushstrokes on her sleeves. I gave him a gift—two rare nineteenth-century books of political caricatures. I’d inscribed the inside of one, How strange to give a book to someone whose books—and words—have given so much to me.

That night at the dinner in Malraux’s honor, I can feel a heady magic working through the room. Between the tapered candles on each table are vases of lily of the valley mixed in with tulips, blue iris. I made sure the vases are low enough so the guests can see one another across the table, talk, debate, laugh.

Lamplight, candlelight, strains of music—words tossed in the quick play of light—strung through the space to mark this singular, intimate stretch of time. I want the night to stay with them days later, like silver through their minds.

Tish finds me at one point to say that George Balanchine almost wasn’t let in when he pulled up in a taxi and stepped out in a tattered raincoat.

“Bring him to me, please,” I say. “Make sure I see him before he leaves.”

Jack is a short distance away, that firm pumping handshake, that flash of smile. His face lit, alive. No matter what other turmoil might be moving underneath, there’s no trace of it in his face.

We are good like this together.

As if he hears me thinking this, he looks up, that smile, conspiratorial, as if to say, We’ve made this, you and I, this night, this world, a fast, luminous mix of art and politics, music and ideas. I hold his eyes for a moment and feel a quiet thrill pass through me. This evening has been all I’d wanted it to be.

At the same time, even as the night ends, I can’t escape the faint sense that something is amiss. But what? It all unfolded according to plan—the food, program, music. Everyone is milling around, laughing, happy. The air rings, and they linger, they don’t want to leave. What is it, then, missing?

It’s not until later, when the guests are gone, the rooms empty, dishes cleared. The staff left some of the candles lit on tables in one corner of the room, as I’d asked. I wanted to be the one to blow them out, and as I go from light to light, my hand cupped around each, wick after wick extinguished, just as I used to love to do in those quieter simpler evenings after the dinners at our house in Georgetown, I hear a sound in the doorway. I look up. Jack. I smile at him and continue with the candles, realizing then, with a strike of sorrow, that what is missing is my heart.

—

I want her back—that girl who craved a sense of wonder. That girl who was not always nice, who swore and laughed at dirty jokes and pranks and scorned sentimental earnestness—that girl who loved irreverence, who loved to push that dull line of what a young woman was supposed to want and say and think and be—that girl whose mind was wicked in interesting ways—the kind of girl who imagined how much fun it would be to place a tack on Zeus’s chair, any Zeus, just to watch how he’d jump, see his blustery rage. That girl who sometimes felt she was a mass of brooding want and mischief held in by nothing more than skin. That girl whose faith burned—that girl who wanted a life made of future, an edge of horizon she could hurl herself toward.

And then that girl met you.

You

—

The next day, when Jack and I are at lunch, talking about my ideas for preservation work in Lafayette Square, Nanny Shaw marches in, a stern expression on her face and holding Caroline by the hand. Miss Shaw explains that one of the trainers came to leash Pushinka for a walk, and when Caroline went to pet the dog goodbye, Pushinka growled and bared its teeth. Caroline gave it a kick in the rear end.

“Excellent work, Buttons,” Jack says. “That’s giving it to those damn Russians.”

Miss Shaw looks put out. “But, Mr. President—”

I sit at one end of the table, half a sandwich on my plate. They never quite hit it off, Jack and Miss Shaw. She thinks he’s too lenient. Ordinarily I’d intercede, but today I decide to let Jack solve it. I’m thinking about the Mona Lisa. At a pause in the concert the night before, André Malraux, sitting beside me, said in a low voice, Je vais vous envoyer La Joconde. “I will send you the Mona Lisa.” I felt a surge of triumph. The Mona Lisa has never left France.

…

An article by Norman Mailer appears in Esquire. “An Evening with Jackie Kennedy.” He’d requested an interview months ago, around the New Year. I turned it down. Now, though, I find the article chilling. Not that he chose to write about me: not only a woman looking for privacy but an institution being put together before our eyes. I know I am fair game. It’s the intimacy of the article that haunts me, the details he brings forward, with visceral precision, of that summer day two years ago when he first came to Hyannis Port. The August before the election. He has recalled it all: the hectic weather, the lawn of chaos—cameramen, aides, journalists, family, friends, tourists peering in for a glimpse of Jack. Then his focus shifts to me. His first impression: a college girl who was nice; his second: a cat, narrow and wild, fur being rubbed all the wrong way. It’s uncanny how he remembers exactly what I said, how I looked, smiled, stood up, left the room, came back. It’s not unflattering, but there are elements that feel derogatory, invasive, and his recall is so clear, I feel sick. A day I imagined was behind us—he’s conjured it back.

“A violent love letter to you.” That’s how my friend Diana Vreeland describes it.

There’s a phrase toward the end of the piece that I have to read twice: She had perhaps a touch of that artful madness which suggests future drama.

I put down the magazine, a ticking pressure in my chest.

Jack

“You’re not going to Italy to get back at me, are you?” he says.

“Of course not.”

“But it’s August.”

She hesitates, the surface of her eyes shift. There’s something she’s not telling him. Some secret.

She is not unlike him. He realized that when they first met. Leaving is something she knows how to do.

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