Jackie and Me(72)

“Lem,” she said. “I know you told me to leave, but this seems extreme.”



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“It’s the Northern Hemisphere, isn’t it? Here’s the thing

to remember. When you tell Jack, he won’t raise an eyebrow. He’ll tell you how fortunate you are, what a fascinating experience it’ll be. He’ll share anecdotes from his dad’s embassy days. The tame ones. If I know him, he’ll give you a list of book titles to buy while you’re there. He’ll promise to repay you, but keep all the receipts.”

She called back two nights later.

“God, Lem, you’re a prophet. It was just like you said,

right down to I’ll pay you back. Here’s what I’m wondering, though. If he’s playing it so cool, how will I know it’s even bothering him that I’m gone?”

“You’ll know when he does. First will come the telegram, then the transatlantic call. Be sure to keep the phone close to your bed, and have all the fun you can manage, darling!”

In the last Inquiring Camera Girl column she filed before

she left, she asked: “Does absence make the heart grow

fonder?” It was, I think, the one question she posed during that brief career of hers that was directed strictly at herself.

I’ve kept the articles she filed in an acid-free cardboard box at the back of the Amish pie safe. The pages are separated by alkaline-buffered tissue, and I wash and dry my hands

before touching them. When I scan the headlines—“Crowds

of Americans Fill ‘Bright and Pretty’ London”—I feel I’m

staring at another moment in Jackie’s history when it might have gone either way. There was the night, for instance, she was covering Perle Mesta’s clambake and watching Lauren Bacall, scarlet-nailed in a white-lace dress, dance with

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Omar Bradley and then the Marquess of Milford Haven

until Humphrey Bogart, gangster-lean in white tie and tails, inserted himself. Imagine now that, having dressed herself with such professional care, having gauged her assets against all rivals, she impulsively casts aside her reporter’s notebook and, like a nearsighted ingénue, stands blinking before a new romantic destiny. Dukes and earls rush in. A North Sea oil tycoon, the foreign minister of a Central American dictator.

She bats her raw, enormous eyes, the more seductive for being so unused to glare. She considers her options and departs from that great gold-and-white ballroom on the arm of— Or else she leaves with nobody but imbibes the spirit

of Dorothy Parker and casts an agate eye across the room,

every room, the whole ball of Windsor wax. She notes where the portrait of Lord Castlereagh has gathered a pelt of dust. Where the Mayfair dance floor has shrunk down to

the size of a human fist. The peculiarly overwhelming smell of roast oxen at a time when meat rationing is still in force.

The drenched cockatoo finery of the Queen of Tonga, who

declines to raise her carriage roof during the processional rain because how else will she be seen? One apercu is piled on the next, and a humorist is born, specializing in short sharp shocks.

I suppose what I’m saying is that, over the course of that

week in London, Jackie might have wandered down any

number of avenues, toward any number of contingent destinies. A fashion model, or the private muse of an Ealing

Studios cinematographer. A gaily dressed sidewalk artist

along the Pall Mall.



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Then I pause to consider how things really work. I recall

how, four days after Jackie sailed, the Emerson Drug operator put through a particularly urgent call from Palm Beach.

“Lem,” said Mr. Kennedy. “The girl appears to have

bolted.”

I sat up straighter in my swivel chair.

“It’s just for a short time, sir.”

“That still makes her gone.”

“Well, it was rather a—a plum assignment, as I’m sure

you appreciate. I don’t think anyone could have asked her

to—”

“You keep bringing up her career, Lem.”

“Only because it’s something she brings up. As in taking it seriously.”

“So you’re telling me this is a professional move on her part? It’s not about punishing Jack?”

“Well, I—”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, Jack deserves everything he’s

getting and more. Here’s this girl waiting on him hand and

foot—brown-bag lunches, for Christ’s sake—and he can’t

be bothered to seal the deal.”

“With all due respect, sir, it sounds like he may not want

the deal.”

“You think I did? A man seals the deal, then works

around if need be. Listen, Lem?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If she gets in touch with you, I need you to tell her to

hold on.”

“Hold on.”

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“That’s all you have to say. Hold on.”

“For how long, sir?”