Jackie and Me(70)
She knew he read her column because he always mentioned it when he called—the same with the translated pages
248
LOUIS BAYARD
she dutifully dropped off at his office—but how closely? As for the picnic baskets, they were now ending up in the steely grip of Mrs. Lincoln, who promised to hand them over as soon as the senator returned. From? The Senate floor, the
Senate cloakroom—surprising perches for someone who’d
missed as many votes as he had. Every so often, Mrs. Lincoln would simply declare him to be in transit—from where, to where, Jackie was never sure, and it surprised her to consider how many hours a public figure could spend out of plain view. Yet she knew him to be in the world; she read about it in the papers. He was lunching at the 1925 F Street Club. He was shaking hands at the Peruvian Embassy. He was rubbing shoulders with Perle Mesta, ambassadress to Luxembourg.
One morning, Jackie gazed in fascination at a blind item
from Drew Pearson: “Which handsomest of all pols has
been voted ‘Senate’s Gay Young Bachelor’ by the Saturday Evening Post? Our money’s on a certain ambassador’s son.”
She bided her time until Wednesday, when they had a
fish-fry supper at Duke Zeibert’s, a half hour after it was supposed to have closed.
“Well, it’s not my fault,” he said, with a clouded face.
“I didn’t say it was.”
“What I mean is I didn’t know they would use that
headline.”
“So they didn’t run it by you first.”
“Of course not. I would have told them.”
“Told them what?” She heard the faint straining in her
voice. “If they’d read that to you over the phone, how would you have corrected it?”
JACKIE & ME
249
“I would have said, I’m not so young.”
“And as to your being a bachelor.”
“Well . . .” He drew up the question like sap. “I would
have said that’s only technically correct.”
Only technically correct. If he’d shaken the entire English lexicon like an apple tree to see what fell out, he could have found no more wizened fruit. What, she wanted to know, did correctness have to do with a man’s heart?
And why couldn’t she demand an answer of that heart in
the exact moment he was withdrawing it? Instead, to her
dismay, she withdrew, too, into stung silence, and felt herself becoming just one more extra on his life’s soundstage.
Oh, Jack . . .
That weekend, she invited me to a touring production of
The Fourposter, a comedy whose subject was, by some cruel quirk, marriage. There must have been only so much she could take because, at the second intermission, she asked in the most direct possible way if we could go somewhere and get stinking. We adjourned to the bar at the New Willard
and put away six Gibson cocktails between us.
“I know what you’re going to say,” she said, in a thickening voice.
“You do?”
“You’re going to say—you’re going to say Jack’s not the
sort to wear his feelings on his sleeve.”
“Well, true.”
“You’re going to say just because he doesn’t call you his
girl doesn’t mean you aren’t.”
“Also true.”
250
LOUIS BAYARD
“Here’s the thing. Here’s the thing, Lem. If he doesn’t call you his girl, how can you possibly know if you are?”
“Well, you go about it in a different way. You ask yourself a certain set of questions.”
“Okay.”
“To begin with, is he dating anybody else?”
The scent-memory of jasmine must have rushed in, for a
fierce crease bisected her forehead.
“I’ll take that as a no,” I sped on. “Does he call you
regularly?”
“Enough.”
“How often?”
“Four . . . five times? A week?”
“That’s a lot.”
“Is it? Yes,” she said, with a sudden rush of certainty.
“That’s a lot.”
“Is he—oh, very well, you don’t have to answer, but is he
physically affectionate with you?”
“Is he . . .” Her head dropped an inch. “Yes.”
“Here’s the real question. Do you make him laugh?”
“Laugh?”
“Yes.”
“I sometimes make him laugh.”
“I mean, really laugh? Catch him off guard. Double him
over, even.”
She thought.
“This has happened,” she said.
“Well then. He’s yours.”
JACKIE & ME
251
Although that made no sense because I had made Jack
do the same thing, on numerous occasions. Then I heard her
ask what it even meant to be his and heard myself answer, more brutally than I intended:
“Is it a ring you’re after?”