Jackie, page 44
“So all those push-ups I did were sort of a waste of time,” I say.
They map a course of treatment.
“We think it’s curable,” the doctor says.
Define think, I almost say.
“I still want to work,” I tell Maurice quietly as we wait to take the elevator down.
* * *
—
He is next to me in the living room when I tell John and Caroline. I brace myself for the sudden devastation in their faces but can’t bear it when it comes. They cry and hug me, their arms as tight around my body as they were when they were small—these two extraordinary beings, each the split half of my heart, and for a moment I feel the careful walls I’ve made weaken as my children’s grief and fear wash into mine.
…
“I’ve decided it’s just something else to get through,” I tell Arthur Schlesinger on the phone. “I’ll wear a turban and start a new trend. The nurses are good to us. When I have scans, Maurice and I sneak in before seven in the morning. I wear a hooded cape and wait outside in the car. He checks to make sure the waiting room is clear before he walks me in.”
I listen to my voice recounting this, like it’s happening to someone else. I think suddenly of Clint Hill. Where is he now?
“What do the doctors say?” Arthur asks.
“I’ve been through hard things before, as you know. Now I just need to get through this.”
Hanging up the phone, I go into Caroline’s old room, the one I use for yoga. The walls are as Caroline left them, one filled with black-and-white photographs of Jack. Everything is as she left it, the school notebooks and horse-show ribbons, every knickknack on the bureau and the shelves, as if my daughter, fifteen again, might walk in, throw herself down on the bed with a question and her father’s eyes and that mane of dark-blond hair.
“Why should I be a public figure?” I overheard her complain to a friend once. It was not the question I found thrilling but the defiance in my daughter’s voice—an anger I recognized that she would sharpen to carve her own life. I roll my yoga mat out, leave the overhead off. I lie down and pull my knees into my chest, the curve of my spine pressing into the floor, feeling vertebra by vertebra, those slight interlocking knobs of bone with just enough space between them.
* * *
—
I never quite did what they wanted, did I? I wasn’t who they thought or who they needed me to be. I chose to fail them. Even during those four days, I was not brave….
* * *
—
I listen to the tiny pop of vertebrae as they release. My legs rise, lifting over my head, the long exhale as the bones of my cervical spine shift.
* * *
—
I was not strong. I did not hold the country together. In a way, I was barely there. To me, it was not about dignity or majesty or theater. It was never the way they told it. I only did what I thought was right, and I did the best I could. I did what anyone would have done to honor the integrity of someone they loved.
* * *
—
I never loved anyone the way that I loved you.
* * *
…
Doris Kearns Goodwin once mentioned to me how remarkable it was that I’d been able to raise my children in such a way that each developed as a free, independent spirit even as the three of us shared such a deep bond.
I smiled and said, “It’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”
I could have added, I’ve often felt it was the only thing.
* * *
—
I talk with my friend Nancy Tuckerman about how to present my illness to the press.
“You don’t think we should say anything about the stage, do you?” Tucky asks.
“You could say early stage.”
“Is it?”
I smile. “Well, I only recently learned about it, so in that sense at least.”
Tucky studies the draft. “We could say apparently early.”
“Yes, that’s good. I like that. Apparently.”
* * *
—
The world has divided my life into three:
* * *
—
Life with Jack.
Life with Onassis.
Life as a woman who works because she wants to.
* * *
—
My life is all of these things, and it is none of these things. They continue to miss what’s right in front of them. What has always been there. I love to work. I love books. I love the sea. I love horses. Children. Art. Ideas. History. Beauty. Because beauty blows us open to wonder, and wonder is what allows us to shift and love and ache and grow and change. Even the beauty that breaks your heart.
* * *
…
I am in the shower when the first strands of hair fall out. A slight dark nest in my fingers. I put my hand to my scalp and pull.
* * *
—
I go to work with Band-Aids on my hands and arms. Once there is a bruise from the infusions that I watch bloom and fade—a lopsided exploding star.
* * *
—
John has moved from his downtown apartment into a hotel down the street from me. He visits every day. I ask if he remembers me teaching him to ski when he was a child. He fell and started to cry. Bobby skied up and said sternly, “Now, you stop that. Kennedys don’t cry.”
“This Kennedy cries,” John had lashed back at him.
“Do you remember that?” I ask John, even knowing that he must, whether or not he does, because it’s a story I’ve told so many times.
“How happy you made me that day,” I say.
* * *
…
The proofs of Peter Sis’s new book are in. The Three Golden Keys. It has the kind of magic I love, the story of a balloonist who lands in the ancient city of his childhood and goes home. The streets of the city are empty and dark, and he comes to a locked door where a cat is waiting for him.
The art is extraordinary.
“Just let it be dark, Peter,” I’d said to him before he started. “Because every good fairy tale—no matter how lovely—has a dark, violent shard at its heart. That’s where we learn who we are. Be as free as you want with this book. If it’s going to be dark or scary or strange, you do it.”
And he has. It’s a haunting story, lit with an unruly, luminous flare.
I start to write him and find I don’t quite know how to say what I want to say. I’ll call instead, I decide. But then he’ll ask how I’m doing. They all ask now: How are you? How is it going? These are questions I learned to answer without really answering years ago. It’s harder now.
I’ll tell Peter we must start thinking about his next book.
I start to dial, then hang up. I’ll try another day.
* * *
…
It snows, a blizzard, ten-foot drifts. The office is closed. The snow tapers off. The wind shifts and blows off the clouds; the sky rushes in. Caroline comes over, and we take the girls outside to play, their little selves stuffed into snowsuits. We cross the street to the paths through the park. We tramp through the drifts and pack snowballs. “GrandJackie, catch!” Rose shrieks.
We spill back into the apartment, their little cheeks red, lips blue, wet clothes in puddles on the floor. “Just leave it,” I say. That careless mess feels like a handwriting that is theirs, and I want it to last.
Caroline makes the girls cinnamon toast and big mugs of hot chocolate. They stir in the marshmallows, sticky streaks down their faces. A brief squabble over a cookie. “There are more,” I say, but their fingers are grasping after the last one on the plate, which has a crooked extra band of icing, and the light is in their eyes, that sudden fight mixed with laughter and the smell of chocolate and falling bits of snow blown into the sunlight pouring down through the long windows. Sunlight strikes their cheeks, their mouths, their chocolate-smeared chins. Sunlight bright on their dark hair.
* * *
—
A funny twitch like a blade against my throat. This is the life I will miss.
* * *
—
That night in bed, I close my eyes and feel my granddaughters’ hands again as they were leaving, kissing me goodbye, their sweet small fingers through my hair.
* * *
…
I begin to work from home. Maurice sets up an office for himself in my apartment, so he’s nearby if I need him. I still try to go into the office for Wednesday editorial meetings. I wear a beret to cover the wig, and I bring edited manuscript pages to be sent off to writers, my typed memos attached, pencil scrawl along the margins.
* * *
—
There is less of me now.
Each day.
Less.
* * *
—
I write letters to friends: I shall look forward to our doing something together when all this first part is over…. I write to Louis Auchincloss: Your beautiful letter. I was touched by your writing it. All will be well, I promise…. I write to John Loring: Everything is fine. Soon we can have another festive lunch at Le Cirque. Six desserts each. Seeing you is always like champagne…. I write to one of my authors, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala: Isn’t it wonderful the way our friendship is growing?
Finally, because I haven’t been able to pick up the phone and call him, I write Peter Sis: Your book is magnificent. Each drawing looks into the well of an artist’s mind…. It is like nothing I have ever seen before.
I write these letters on the same blue stationery I’ve had for years, 1040 Fifth Avenue embossed in white. Blue for the sea and the sky, white for the shell and the bone and the breath that continues to rise. That which is left over.
I fold the letters, envelopes sealed and addressed. I set them with the mail to go out.
Outside, spring has begun. The trees melting into themselves, buds like tiny fists coming slightly apart, grass smudged in the warmer air, color blending into color, even the streets and the edges of buildings starting to blur.
* * *
…
The scans say they have gotten all of it from my neck and chest and abdomen—all but a tiny crumb that has run off and escaped to my brain. They can drill a hole in my skull, they tell me.
* * *
—
“If it can work, that would be fine,” I say.
* * *
—
I begin to divide my things. Boxes of papers and notes, bunches of letters bound in ribbon. Things I haven’t looked at in years. Some I’ll keep. Others not. There are many letters in the pile of Not.
Once in a while, reading through them, I’ll stop and remember who I was on a particular day. It will hit in a rush, right down to the sounds and the smells, those older layers of my life still there.
Maurice comes into the room. He glances at the fire, then at the heap of papers to be burned by the chair where I sit, the astrakhan blanket over my lap. He stops, a question in his face, as if to ask, Are you sure? I smile at him. He touches my shoulder and heads in the direction of the kitchen.
* * *
—
Novalis once wrote that fiction arises out of the shortcomings of history. But I’ve come to realize no matter what truths I leave for the world to rifle through, they’ll concoct the stories of my life they want to tell—to worship me or tear me down, their ice queen or their whore.
* * *
—
The world does not need more of me than it thinks it has.
* * *
—
I’m nearing the end of a stack of papers when a loose sheet falls out. I look more closely—my handwriting from when I was younger. These are the bones of desire. A few lines crossed out. The paper is torn. Only a fragment. I wonder why I would’ve kept it. For a moment I can’t place the context, then I do. A day years ago; we were not yet married. In Georgetown, at the corner of N Street, as Jack said goodbye, he touched my waist, leaned in, and kissed me briefly on the cheek. Something so pedestrian—a boy, a girl, a street corner. I’d filled pages, I remember now. Far more than just these lines. I start to shuffle through that pile, then untie the next and go through that too, but I find nothing else. I leave the papers strewn around. No neat ribboned bundles now, no order. I stand up, thirsty, but my head is light; I sit back down.
* * *
—
One night years ago, at a dinner party, you were talking to Ben Bradlee about biography.
“What makes that kind of writing so fascinating,” you remarked, “is the struggle to answer the single question: What was he really like?”
* * *
—
In history, you told me once, we turn toward what was lost because we crave the dream of a world that might have been.
* * *
…
I write out a will.
For Bunny Mellon, the eighteenth-century Indian miniature Lovers Watching Rain Clouds.
For Maurice, the Greek alabaster head of a woman.
For Alexander Folger, a copy of Jack’s inaugural address, signed by Robert Frost.
The White House things still in my possession will go to the Kennedy Library; the furniture, knickknacks, and other tangibles to Sotheby’s to be sold. My books I’ll leave to the children. My books and my houses and some money. And the vastest sky. And all the time in the world, which, when sooner turns to later, is the only currency we have.
* * *
…
In April, Carly invites me to lunch at her apartment on Central Park West. Joe Armstrong is there, as are my friends Peter Duchin; his wife, Brooke Hayward; and Ken Burns. I ask Ken about the documentary he’s finishing on the history of baseball.
“Is it true that Carly’s going to sing ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game’?”
“Could we have it any other way?”
I laugh. “We could not.”
Joe asks how I’m feeling.
“It’s a nuisance,” I say. “Four more weeks, this treatment will be done, and I’ll get my life back. I’m going to spend the summer on the Vineyard.” They go on talking. I half listen, settling back into the sofa. I’m tired. But Caroline is bringing the children to visit tomorrow. I look forward to that. There are so many things, it seems, to look forward to. Carly is laughing now at something Joe said. Her extravagant strong-hearted laughter lights a room. I love how Carly laughs—without caution or distance or fear. We’ve talked together about how you can’t live your life on eggshells and live it well.
A few years ago, Carly and I were sitting in this same room. We’d decided to go to the movies. She was flipping through the listings, theaters, and showtimes. We were looking for something in the late afternoon, planning for dinner after.
“What about that new film JFK?” Carly said.
“I don’t actually think I could see that,” I said. Her head snapped up, eyes wide, horrified. Her hand flew to her mouth.
“Oh, Jackie, I’m so sorry. I just forgot. I can’t believe I forgot.”
“And you have no idea how much I love that you forgot.”
* * *
—
“I’ve dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas: they’ve gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind.”
Catherine Earnshaw said this in Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.
It’s a passage I’ve always loved. It’s different to me now because of you.
* * *
—
How simple it’s become.
That transcendent mythology that was ours.
* * *
—
Who we were, what we wanted, what we dreamed and made, believed, and failed to be.
* * *
—
Once, desire clung to us like heat
We were bodies of light falling through time
* * *
…
I wake to the world in white and beige, unfamiliar faces. The room comes into focus. A window, a shelf, a chair; Caroline is there, stepping out of the white-beigeness to tell me I collapsed at home. I was brought here. John is coming. He is on his way.
Maurice, I notice then, is here too, behind Caroline, who has sat down on the edge of my bed and is holding my hand.
“Could you call the office, please, Caroline,” I say. “Call Scott and ask him to let Peter Sis know I won’t be able to make our appointment today but that we will reschedule soon.”
* * *
—
Sometimes, looking at our daughter’s face, I see through the woman she’s become to the girl with the wind in her eyes. I see through that inimitable strength and penetrating intellect shaped out of a deep and lasting sorrow, honed by what she remembers and what she has endured.
She has your easy grace—that casual ferocity and burning faith. But in her, it’s tempered with restraint, more aware and more humane. From the time she was young, she seemed to understand that the present moment is a thing to take our time with.
