Jackie and Me(90)

I felt. And so, without a word, I tottered after her, losing her briefly and then finding her again, a vision of unrav-ished stillness, in the area just behind the fourth trumpet.

She turned back to me then, crackling with the shock of

being discovered, and I saw her stillness for the lie it was. A disturbance, large and general, had overtaken her.

“Jackie,” I said.

Did she even recognize me? Did she know that I had

come to save her?

“Jackie,” I said, sinking to one knee. “Darling.”

I reached into my pocket. Not knowing even what I was

reaching for and realizing, as my hand closed around it,

that I’d been carrying it, like a rabbit’s foot, ever since that night on the Ferris wheel. Without another thought, I slid it onto her finger and marveled again at how it glided without obstruction past the first and second knuckle and rested with a purr against the gold ring that Jack had deposited there hours earlier.

“It still fits,” I murmured.

Her eyes widened. Then the fingers of her right hand

began to claw softly at the fingers of her left, and the ring went flying in a parabolic arc that subsided somewhere in the sod of Hammersmith Farm. At once I began to grope

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for it and heard the voice, small but peremptory, cutting

toward us.

“Jackie.”

It was Bobby. Doing what he always did: correcting a

situation.

“Is everything all right?” he wanted to know.

I kept groping through the grass.

“Lem’s helping me find something,” said Jackie.

And still I kept groping, a perfect madman in a morning

coat. I heard her say:

“Please don’t bother, Lem. It’s not important.”

THIRTY-FIVE

W as it important? I wonder now. And what exactly

did I have in mind for Jackie and me? Was there a

particular route picked out?

Surely in the back of my mind there lay imprinted that flat blazing Grenoble plain, at the foot of the Alps. Rows of poplars, short spiky palm trees with blazing red flowers—all preserved for me as clearly as if I’d seen them myself—and if Jackie had lifted me to my feet in that moment and said, “Yes, let’s go,” well, I don’t think anybody alive could have stopped us.

What would we have done for money? I’m sure Jackie

could have charmed us into some hostel or pension, and

from there, we would have done the necessary scrounging.

Under these conditions, I might have discovered much earlier my talent for flipping houses. Yes, I think I could have

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developed quite a good line turning barns into chambres d’hotes. My French would have remained clumsy, but my clients would have known what I was talking about and, without admitting it, would have appreciated my American

penchant for deadlines. As for Jackie, well, I imagine her

becoming a writer for real. The French correspondent for a

string of prestigious U.S. publications. She would take lovers with my blessing; I would do the same. The thought of marrying would never cross our minds. Mr. Kennedy’s engagement ring would have long since been returned by parcel post or else deposited in the back of a secretary drawer.

That’s a lot of alternative reality to construct from a single crossing. All I can say is that, in the way of recalled time, those ten seconds grow endlessly elastic. Jackie’s face alone—for I had a clear view—seemed to toggle through every response.

Confusion, that goes without saying. Surprise, we grant that.

A note or two of horror because somebody—somebody besides

her—was making an unscripted spectacle at her wedding. But I can’t ignore the possibility of a tiny spark of fellow feeling, for we were both outsiders to this clan and would always be.

Did I honestly think she’d say yes? Throw up her bouquet

and chase after me into the clear blue sky of a Newport

afternoon? Perhaps I only hoped, and that’s a different bird.

I think of all she would have missed by jumping with me into the nearest cab. Her whole epoch of glory on the world stage.

Her two beautiful children—who would wish them unmade?

Not me. That’s why I cling instead to the alongside life, where new laws take hold, and she and I gather each evening at six at an old farmhouse in the Quartier Saint-Laurent, a little

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back in the hills to escape the tourists, not too far from the old Gallo-Roman walls. We have a clear view of both the Isère and the Alps, which never shed their white scalps even at the height of summer. We sit under the plane tree, nibbling on walnuts and slathering our baguette slices with Saint-Marcellin cheese and persimmon. One of us—me, I’m thinking—has become a cook and has prepared raviole du Dauphiné. We talk of Mitterrand and le parti socialiste, of Thatcher and Reagan and Sakharov and Bobby Sands—and Tom Selleck and the two pandas struggling to get knocked up at the National Zoo.

Nothing we say solves anything. At the end of the evening, we go to our separate bedrooms with a book and a chaste kiss and a cordial of Chartreuse. The cathedral bells wake us every morning, always a little earlier than we’re expecting.