Jackie and Me(62)

“Have you ever seen him tender? I mean, really tender.”

I told her then that when Jack and I, still college boys, did our grand tour of Europe, I came down with a bad virus in 220





LOUIS BAYARD


Cannes. My temperature spiked to a hundred and three, and

I lay tossing on a bare mattress in a run-down pension. Now, Jack had spent half his life in hospital beds, so he wasn’t used to being on the other side, but when he saw I was in a bad way, he draped a wet handkerchief across my forehead and ran downstairs and, with his miserable French, scared

up a bowl of beef broth and spooned it into my mouth. He

piled on a stack of blankets and sat by me for hours, mopping my brow and telling me it would be all right. And the

next morning, it was.

This seemed to satisfy Jackie for the time being, yet even

when she’d rung off, I sat a while thinking about what it

meant to be tender. In those days, of course, if you were a man, feelings were either to be reviled or drowned. You swallowed down pain, your fondest wishes, like Bromo-Seltzer, and sent it all back up again when nobody was looking.

I thought back to Choate, when upperclassmen, feeling

a little lonely, might scribble messages to each other. On

toilet paper so they might, in an emergency, be swallowed

or flushed down. Meet me by the stables. Meet me in the library lav. Now, one June, purely as a joke, I sent Jack a toilet-paper letter. Wadded it up in one of his Oxfords while he was still sleeping. I didn’t stick around to watch him read it, but later that evening, while we were changing for dinner, he looked at me and, in a starchy, affronted voice, said, “I’m not that kind of boy.” Well, we had a good laugh about it because, of course, we understood it for the joke it was, and we valued our friendship too much to complicate it. And yet, looking back, I can see that I was seeking—well, there



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221

isn’t a better word than tenderness. From a boy who didn’t

necessarily have that to give. At all times.

That’s why, when Jack called me the day after New Year’s

and asked me to come over for backgammon, I didn’t think

it was my chance to draw him out on a particular subject for the simple reason that, in 1953, men weren’t to be drawn out.

The whole reason Jack played any game was not for the crev—

ices of confession it afforded but for the opportunity to stomp you into the ground. It wasn’t personal; he wanted to do that with everybody and so never played anything—tennis, golf, swimming to the nearest buoy—without betting on it. If, in

the course of playing, you tried to bring up an unrelated subject, he would accuse you of trying to distract him. So I was surprised when, during the second game, he shook the dice out of their cup and reached for his checkers and said:

“LeMoyne, I should like to consult with you.”

“I charge.”

“Apply it to whatever you’re about to lose. It has to do

with Our Miss Bouvier. How would you describe her current state of mind?”

“Uh, a little confused.”

“On my account, you mean.”

“On your account.”

“She’s waiting on me.”

“To . . .” The phrase came back in a second. “To declare

yourself.” And when he showed no signs of understanding:

“Fish or cut bait. Shit or get off the pot.”

“That’s some metaphors you’re mixing.”

“It is.”

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LOUIS BAYARD


“Seems to me I might be excused a little absentmindedness.

Being a national figure, you know, it takes it out of a fella.”

“Sure.”

I said nothing more, waited. But whatever had inspired

him to take up the subject fell away now in a brown study.

“You’ve created expectations,” I said at last. “In light of that, I think it would be the kindest course to resolve them.”

“Cut her loose, you mean?”

Startling, to have that be the first option out of his mouth.

“Or . . . give her what she wants,” I suggested.

“And what’s that?”

“You, God help her.”

“Does anybody care what I want?”

I was about to retort but poured myself a glass of Scotch

instead.

“I’m curious,” I said. “If you could imagine your way

into being a married man . . . .”

“This is getting sinister.”

“What would it look like?”

“Not Dad and Mother, that’s for sure.”

“They’re still together.”

“That’s a funny word for what they are.”

“I won’t dispute you, but they each have what they want

from life. They have their freedom.”

His eyes lit up, his face opened into a grin.

“In your usual doltish way, you’ve put your finger on it,

LeMoyne. If I could be sure of being free, that would make

all the difference in the world.”

I studied him for a space. “By free, you mean . . . ”