Jackie and Me(80)
“I know I disobeyed orders,” she said.
282
LOUIS BAYARD
“That’s okay.”
“I won’t stay long.”
“That’s fine.”
In the silence that followed, she absorbed, in a half seeing way, the pistachio green walls, the tartan curtains drawn across the casement windows, the TV set on a tripod in the
corner—before settling at last on the blue chevrons of Jack’s hospital gown.
“You look fine,” she said.
“Fit as a fiddle.”
“Do you—”
“What?”
“Need anything? A soda. There’s a machine downstairs.”
“No, I’m fine.”
“How about . . .”
A snack, she was going to say, but then her eyes snagged on the peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, largely uneaten, resting on a tray at the end of the bed. She remembered
then, with a peculiar sharpness, all the dinner plates he had pushed away during their times together. (“Late lunch.”) All the stairs he’d had to brace himself for, like Hillary climbing Everest. The way his collar kept drawing away from his neck, the strange ocher tones that bled through his Palm Beach tan.
“It isn’t malaria,” she said.
He made a quiet study of his fingernails.
“It’s no worse,” he said.
“Are you sure?”
“Course.”
“Then you can tell me what it is.”
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She would later try to parse his pause. It wasn’t a case of his being unwilling or unready, more a matter of setting the right tone. For the only way he could explain it to her was to rejigger it as an existential joke, delivered in Brooklynese.
“See, when a guy’s adrenal glands ain’t workin’ right, it’s a terrible thing. The ticker don’t always beat like it should, so he faints like a fairground tent in a high wind. The immune system don’t always show up for work so he catches whatever germ’s hitching a ride in his general direction. The gut gets screwed up in knots, so he can’t eat like he’s s’posed to. All a gentleman can ask in those specific circumstances is to figure out what he’s got so they can get it under control, like.”
“And is it?” she asked.
With that, the true Jack voice returned.
“Is it what?”
“Under control.”
“Mostly.”
“How?”
“Cortisone injections. Back of the thigh, twice a day.”
“Who does it?”
“Me.”
“Does it hurt?
“Only like hell.”
“Can other people do it?”
“I’d rather they not.”
With a feeling of embarrassment—as if she’d found somebody’s cast-aside dentures—she stared at the exact point
where the intravenous tube entered his arm.
“Sometimes the cortisone doesn’t work,” she said.
284
LOUIS BAYARD
“Well, yes.”
“And you end up here.”
“Wherever they’ve got a bed. Not too long ago, I got to
know the Tokyo general hospital quite well. Even picked up
a little Japanese. Yes, ma’am,” he said, with an uprush, “you throw in my bum back, and I’m a regular piece of human flotsam in multiple hemispheres. The good news is I catch up on my reading.”
Now for the first time she noticed the books. Not on his
side table, where you’d expect them, but rising up from the floor in a hardback plinth. All the company a boy needs.
“Why do you tell people it’s malaria?” she asked.
His head seemed to tilt toward the question.
“Dad thinks, if they knew, it would be the end of things.”
“Politically.”
“Well, there’s no cure, you see. And nobody’s going to
vote for a dead man.”
It was all the more appalling for being delivered with the
full Kennedy grin.
“So it’s something you could die from,” she said.
“That’s not out of the realm.”
“And it could happen any time.”
“I guess that’s so.”
“And didn’t you think I should know?”
The question seemed to catch them both off guard, for
they fell still before it.
“I guess I figured I’d lose your vote, too,” he said.
“For something that’s not your fault?”
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“Oh,” he answered easily. “I’ve got plenty of faults, too.
You needn’t worry about those.”
Digging her heels into the floor, she dragged her chair
closer—closer—until it was almost touching his bed.
“Were you afraid, if you told me, that I’d want to leave?
Or were you afraid I’d want to stay?”
Now, for the first time since she arrived, he looked genu—
inely discomposed.