Chapter 41
It bothers him. The way she left. The fact that she needed to. That there was no other choice.
He’s at his desk, looking over a memo draft. He scribbles a note in the margin. Dust streams through sunlight. He thinks about Mary Meyer. It’s been months since her last visit, since he told her he had to end it.
He pushes the memo aside, pulls out a sheet of paper…
Mary,
Why don’t you leave suburbia for once—come and see me—either here—or at the Cape next week or in Boston the 19th. I know it is unwise, irrational, and that you may hate it—on the other hand you may not—and I will love it. You say that it is good for me not to get what I want. After all these years—you should give me a more loving answer than that.
Why don’t you just say yes.
Halfway down the page, a wave of what feels like nausea hits.
When Jackie went into labor with Patrick, he was in the air. It was the seventh of August, twenty years to the day since he and his crew, marooned in the Pacific, were rescued. Patrick was born six weeks premature, with the film around his tiny lungs and a 50/50 chance of survival. As the plane turned around, heading back to Otis, to Jackie and Patrick, all he could think was:I’m never there when she needs me.
On his desk now: the black alligator pad, pencil holder, blotter—a gift from De Gaulle on his first state visit to Paris. Next to that, his calendar, the Steuben glass etching of a PT boat, his inaugural medal, and leather-bound copies of Churchill’sMarlborough and Stendhal’s The Red and the Black. There’s a small 1963 congressional directory, the Hercolite lamp, and an ashtray J. Edgar Hoover gave him as a gift. He has to deal with Hoover. Bobby said that. Hoover and his tapes on King. Hoover hates King. “We’ve got to manage him, Jack,” Bobby said. Manage Hoover; finalize the test-ban treaty; deal with Vietnam—the growing storm between Diem and the army generals who want him gone.
Every hour, some new crisis.
Why not slip Mary in? Take a break.
Years ago, during the Senate campaign, when Jackie was pregnant with Caroline, he was leaving to board a plane. He remembers that day without remembering where he was going. Jackie walked him to the door of the Hyannis airport. She said his name. He turned to her. “What?” His voice impatient. She didn’t answer, or if she did, he can only remember how she scanned his face, like she was looking for some way into him. Her eyes dropped, she looked away.
He hates the sense of “without her” in the house. It fills him with an odd dread.
When did she leave? he wonders. When did that door inside her close? When did she vanish, standing right in front of him, the children turning somersaults on the rug as she called them to come brush their teeth, get their shoes tied?
All of this was happening. Years of his life transpired, while part of her, he understands now, was absent all along.
He looks down at the unfinished letter to Mary Meyer. He puts it away in the drawer.
That night, he calls Caroline. She and John are in Newport with Janet.
“I’ll be there soon, sweetheart. How’s your brother?”
“He misses you.”
“And you?”
“I understand.” She says this in her grown-up voice, which makes him smile.
“Is the water still warm enough to swim?” he asks.
“I jumped in, but it might be too cold for you.”
“Never. I love you and I’ll see you soon.”
“When?”
“This weekend.”
“Not until then?”
“That’s Friday.”
“Well, Friday is soon.”
On the phone table, there’s a homemade pink valentine she made for him, a cardboard backing to keep it upright.