Jackie, page 32
* * *
—
Upstairs is chaos. Children hopping around, paper hats and streamers, balloons and noisemaker horns. I watch little John go from kneeling to standing, then balance on one foot like a pelican on a chair. I take my mother aside.
“Will you do something for me?” I say.
“Of course.”
“Find Pam and have her send a message. I want the tack of the riderless horse. Have it saved for me—saddle, bridle, blanket, boots, sword. Instruct them not to clean it.”
My mother nods, and the party continues. The adults look tired, but the children plunder on. John, with bits of cake and frosting ground into his shirt, is tearing through his gifts. My heart quickens, watching him.
* * *
—
They will say I was calculating, dispassionate, an actress. They will say I kept that tack for show. They will say that day was theater, as if my grief were some kind of charade. They will not know how much I craved it—that sweet stink of horse mixed in with oiled leather, that trace of the dance and the fight. How much I wanted to sink my face into that smell and remember.
* * *
…
Midnight again. Everyone is gone, asleep, or they’ve left, flown off. The day is done. Bobby and I are alone in Jack’s office. The lights are off. The curtains open. I asked for them to be left open. I wanted to look out at the night, the stars in bloom.
Bobby stands with me by the long windows. Neither of us can sit for any length of time. The sky so clear. Moonlight rakes the floor.
“Well,” he finally says. “Shall we go?”
I pick up the phone. “I’d like to speak to Mr. Hill, please.”
* * *
—
The flame is visible as we cross the bridge, the rows of stones bright against the hill. At the grave, Bobby stands beside me, his hand woven through mine.
* * *
—
“What are you thinking?” he asks when we’re in the car again, driving back.
A day, years ago. Jack and I were out sailing. I’d caught sight of a bird—some kind of hawk. The light was in my eyes and the bird was a distant shape. I tried to identify the lines of its wings and flight. I shielded the light from my eyes and tracked the bird as it shifted course, heading toward the coast behind us. The boat tacked, and a sea rushed under the hull. The bow rose, then dipped. “Hang on, Jackie,” Jack said. I turned. He was just sitting there, open water behind him, managing the lines, one hand on the mainsheet, one on the tiller, his face bright, that casual beauty of him so brisk and alive, like he was cut right out of the wind, the salt air, and the light.
“What are you thinking?” Bobby asks again as the car turns onto the avenue. I don’t answer. The memory fades. His asking dimmed it. I lean my forehead against the window glass to close my mind.
* * *
—
I can’t sleep. I can’t even lie down without seeing his head destroyed in my lap. I wander around, sit in a chair, smoke. The room has a terrible wrongness. I take one of the little blue pills. I still can’t sleep. The stars drift.
Later that night, I hear Bobby cry out again from a bedroom down the hall.
I should go to him, I think.
* * *
…
At the desk in the West Sitting Hall, I write to Lyndon.
Thank you for walking yesterday—behind Jack. You did not have to do that—I am sure many people forbid you to take such a risk—but you did it anyway.
Thank you for your letters to my children….
I pause. Bobby still doesn’t trust him. Just yesterday he called Johnson “the usurper.”
“You’ve never liked him,” I said. “But we weren’t always fair. We ridiculed him.”
“He never knew.”
“It was still awful.”
Bobby looked at me, his eyes level. “I won’t let him take credit for what Jack did.”
“He and Lady Bird have been kind to me, and I am grateful. They’re going to let the White House school stay open so Caroline and her friends can finish the year.”
“He wants your support. Ask him to rename Cape Canaveral after Jack. Jack would’ve wanted that.”
“Jack wouldn’t want me to ask.”
“He dreamed of putting an American on the moon. Renaming Canaveral is a way to say that.”
Then, because it is Bobby, I agree.
* * *
—
I learn that the caparisoned horse is called Black Jack. The night after Caroline’s birthday, I write to the secretary of the Army to inform him I’d like to buy that horse when it is retired.
* * *
…
Thanksgiving Day. We go to visit Jack at Arlington, then fly to Hyannis Port.
Rose meets us downstairs. “I have to keep busy,” she says. “I can’t stop praying.”
I go to find Joe. He is in his room, waiting for me. This man who cannot move or walk, can barely speak. The ambassador. The king. The maker of legends. We were all so certain then. His face brightens when I come in. I sit in a chair by his bed, hold his hand, and I tell him the story of his son’s death. I talk around the gap of time where my mind is still scrubbed out.
I tell him that Bobby and I will make good decisions about Jack’s library. I tell him they want me to tell the story, not just of Jack’s death but his life, because if we don’t tell it, others will, and those others might tear him apart and try to dismantle his legacy. So they’re asking me to do this. We’ve chosen a writer named William Manchester to create an official account. I ask Joe if he remembers Manchester and that other book he wrote, Portrait of a President, the one Jack liked.
I stare at the bureau as I tell Joe these things, tracing the knobs and inlay, whorls of wood through the lacquered finish.
Joe makes a little sound. Tears flood his face.
“I’m so sorry,” I say. “I’ve said too much, haven’t I? You see, there is just so much in me right now, and I feel you should know everything. I want to make sure this all makes sense to you.”
His eyes search mine and, in his eyes, I can see that for him, as for me, everything is meaningless now.
* * *
…
The morning after Thanksgiving, I call Theodore White and arrange an interview.
“I will do this,” I tell Bobby. “I’ll do all these things you’re asking me to do, because that’s what Jack would want. But when it’s over, I need to disappear.”
* * *
—
Theodore White arrives that night in a heavy rain. I sit on the low sofa. He sits across from me.
“How can I help you?” I say.
He reminds me we spoke in the morning on the phone. I called and asked him to come.
“I will tell you the story,” I say.
* * *
—
The biggest motorcade from the airport.
It was hot. Wild. Like Mexico or Vienna.
The sun was so strong on our faces….
* * *
—
I tell him about the gap of seconds between seconds.
I do not cry. I keep my hands folded, everything in me very still except the words. They are bright and molten, flowing out of my mouth. I see it like it’s still happening. A perfectly clean piece of skull detaching itself from his head, rising away as I reached.
* * *
—
It was not repulsive to me for one moment. Nothing was. Your head was so beautiful. I was just trying to keep it in. That wonderful expression on your face you’d get when you were asked a question, just before you answered.
* * *
—
“I would have done things differently,” I explain to White. “Turned sooner—after the first shot—and pulled him down, but I was so taken by that expression on his face, that abstracted, puzzled look I’ve always loved. What is it, Jack? I went to say, and then the next shot came.”
I go on talking. White goes on writing. There are others in the room. They listen like trees, and the rain strikes the window, and bits of my words and his questions float, parsed smaller, splintered to powerless dust, rings of smoke shot through with sickening yellow lamplight.
“Jack was magic.” I use that word, then stop.
* * *
—
We never pay attention, do we? To what we should.
* * *
—
In the downstairs room that night with Theodore White, his notepad, pages wrapped thick around the top edge, pencil flying fast across, and the darker shadows of Bobby and the others, silent at the hem of things, faces half lit, ghostly, obscure, a quiet word exchanged, they watch and wait, the occasional bright orange glow of a cigarette.
The children are asleep upstairs.
* * *
—
We imagine time will clarify our intention. Who we were, how we lived, what we achieved. We want to believe we will be treated with integrity, with fairness and compassion. But history is not so forgiving, is it?
* * *
—
“When did farewell really come?” White is asking me now.
* * *
—
Turn on the lights so they can see Jackie—
* * *
—
Take off your glasses, Jackie, so they can see you.
* * *
—
These moments, I could explain, these little things Jack used to say when he was asking me to be more visible, to play my part—these are the lean, sharp cliffs of my mind where I walk.
“When did farewell really come?” White asks again.
How dark in the room it’s grown.
“It’s become almost an obsession with me,” I say. “This one small thing I want to tell you. At night, before going to sleep, Jack loved to listen to music. He loved the record from the musical Camelot. I’d play it for him on the old Victrola. His favorite lines, near the end: Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot.” I pause. “You imagine I’m making things up.”
I inhale, and the cigarette brings back a little of my mind.
White has stopped writing. “I think I have enough.”
“There’s more,” I say. I suddenly find I don’t want this to be done.
“Let me start with what I have.” He smiles then. A strange sad smile.
I show him to a small room, a typewriter on the desk.
* * *
—
When he returns with typewritten pages, I’ve sharpened two pencils. I read on the sofa. He’s written eloquently. Beautifully. Nothing graphic. No blood, brains, gore. On the one hand, I’m grateful. At the same time, there’s a great deal missing. I work over each line, the pencil marking up the text.
At two in the morning, White stands by the wall phone in the kitchen and dictates his story to the Life offices in New York.
“The Camelot bit?” he says into the receiver but glancing at me. “You’re saying you want to strike that? Or tone it down?” He catches my eye. I shake my head.
“No,” he says into the phone. “That stays.”
* * *
—
Then he is gone. They are all gone, and the house is empty again. Just me and the children. A glass of water on the nightstand. I lie on the bed and sleep without sleeping.
It is almost tomorrow, I think.
December 1963
At the White House, they’ve laid out Jack’s clothes on the bed. For me to decide what to keep.
Trunks and boxes, lids flung open. Such a disarray.
* * *
—
I put the Lincoln book back. Not where it belongs. Just flat on a shelf. Mr. West will find it. He will set it in its place, and all will continue.
* * *
—
The day before the children and I leave, I walk through the house with Mr. West. In the doorway of the state dining room, I pause.
“Mr. West.”
“Mrs. Kennedy.”
“I love this portrait of Lincoln.”
“As do I, Mrs. Kennedy.”
“I love that it was at first rejected for not being enough, but then his son bought it, because he saw his father in it, and his wife sent it to Roosevelt, and now it is here. Things don’t always happen in a straight line, do they, Mr. West?”
* * *
—
I told you once I wanted the children to understand it would be temporary, living here. But in the end, it was ours, wasn’t it, Jack? This house I never loved. It grew up with us. Became beautiful with us. Restored to something it never was before but was always meant to be.
* * *
—
“Mr. West, do you think you could do something for me?”
“Of course, Mrs. Kennedy.”
The sun is low. Afternoon rays shoot like arrows through the windows as we make our way upstairs. We come to the bedroom.
“I’d like a mantel carving for this room,” I say. “Do you think that would be possible?”
“Yes, Mrs. Kennedy.” A gentleness in his voice I almost can’t bear.
From my pocket, I draw out a folded piece of paper.
* * *
—
In this room lived John Fitzgerald Kennedy with his wife, Jacqueline—during the two years ten months and three days he was president of the United States, January 20, 1961–November 22, 1963.
* * *
—
“Thank you, Mr. West.”
I hand it to him. How many lists I’ve made on yellow lined paper just like this. Lists of names and plans.
* * *
—
The next day is Friday, the sixth of December. It’s the slightest thing, the sadness I feel, the children’s small hands in mine as the three of us walk out the door. Fresh cold air snaps my face.
No photographs of him. Not yet. I still can’t bear to see his face.
* * *
—
I lie upstairs in the house in Georgetown with books, cigarettes, magazines. Everyday sounds unfold around me. Provi and Nanny Shaw getting the children dressed, my children, their little sweaters and coats, Caroline’s bag packed for school. I want to be with them. But I’m still too far off to the side.
* * *
—
I regret that flimsy trope of Camelot already. So desperate. Saccharine. You would have hated it. Even if you did like the song. I should have chosen something heroic, about greatness, strength, risk—something to do with the Greeks.
* * *
—
In the afternoons, I let the room grow dark. I watch how the last of the daylight retreats and the dusk begins to rise, the room by increments destroyed.
* * *
…
At first there’s a constant stream of visitors. I keep thinking I’ll be happy to see them.
Joe Alsop, Betty Spaulding, Ben and Tony Bradlee. I tell them the story.
I should have done it differently, I say. Turned sooner, after the first shot.
I’ve said the same words so many times, and each time, I feel closer to saying it for the last time. Each time I feel something lighten inside me. But an hour later, the dark of it is back.
* * *
—
If only I’d looked right instead of left
If only I had pulled him down, the second shot would not have hit
If I’d been paying more attention
If I had not been complaining in my head about the sun
If I hadn’t been wanting so much, the cool promise of the tunnel ahead, the green of the park beyond.
And why red roses in Dallas? Everywhere else they were yellow. I should have known then.
* * *
…
Bobby comes. He has breakfast with the children and brings Caroline to school. He comes again at the end of the day. He reads to the children and puts them to bed. He tucks them in and teaches them prayers they did not learn. Then he comes to find me.
“How are you?” he asks.
Everything hangs by a thread. The world, I could explain, is split. Terrifying. Simplified. Every night I lie down with fear and a clarity so sharp it cuts behind my eyes. Jack was killed by American violence, he called it that once, the hatred that built this country.
“We’re soaked in it, Bobby,” I say, “this violence we pretend we’ve outrun.”
* * *
—
I tell him again, detail by detail, the story of what happened. Like Scheherazade. Each night extending into morning. Only each night, here, the story is the same.
* * *
—
“I have to tell it until it is out of me,” I say.
* * *
—
We lie on the bed, fully clothed. He has taken off his tie. We are close, his hand on my face, fingertips moving lightly. He does this sometimes, touches me without seeming to realize. It is not sexual or intimate but like he’s trying to remember what touch feels like.
