Chapter 56
The world begins to spin again.
In June, I take the children to Hawaii. Jack Warnecke is living on Oahu. He’s designing the new state capitol—an open courtyard, columns, a reflecting pool. I fall in love with Hawaii. I can go to a beach or a luau, I can walk into town, eat at an open-air restaurant, paint watercolors, or wear a bikini. No one seems to see me, or if they do, they don’t care.
“I’d forgotten what it was like,” I tell Warnecke, “to explore a new place and be unnoticed.”
The children and I come home to the Cape in July. The day after we arrive, Bobby walks over to tell me about the sale of excerpts from Manchester’s book to Look. They’re going to publish in the fall.
“That can’t be on every newsstand,” I say. “Tell them no.”
“You said you wanted me to handle it.”
“Just remind them that publication can only take place once we’ve given our permission. We haven’t done that yet.”
“Jackie.”
It’s how he says my name. I realize then. He’s already given permission.
“What exactly did you tell them, Bobby?”
“The Kennedy family will place no obstacle.”
I sit down on the sofa, my head in my hands. Rage, heat, fury, tears. It all pours into my hands.
“You told me to handle it, Jackie,” he says.
“I can’t do this,” I say. “I’m just getting out from under it.” I don’t look at him. I know I’m being unfair. “Please tell them you misunderstood.”
“But I didn’t.”
The room feels airless.
“Tell the writer to come,” I say.
I serve iced tea on the porch.
“Do you water-ski, Mr. Manchester?”
He shakes his head and for a moment looks uncomfortable.
“We’ll just go for an hour,” I say. “Then we’ll have some lunch and talk things through.”
I ski off the back of the boat, carving back and forth; I cross the wake, then cut the opposite way. After twenty minutes, I drop the tow. The boat circles back.
“Do you want a turn, Mr. Manchester? I’m sure you’ll have fun.”
“No.”
“All right, then. We can just swim.”
“I’m afraid I’m not much of a swimmer.”
“Oh, don’t be modest, Mr. Manchester.”
He follows me reluctantly over the side. I wave the boat off and start in. Within fifteen strokes, I’ve left him behind. He straggles onto shore half an hour later, still out of breath when he reaches the porch. I hand him a towel. A puddle on the floor where his trunks drip.
“Why have you asked me to come here?” he says.
“You can’t do this, I’m afraid.”
“You’re talking about the serialization.”
“I’m talking about all of it.”
“We have an agreement.”
There’s a pitcher of iced tea on the table and a plate of sandwiches. I unwrap the sandwiches and refill his glass.
I want to ask about things I’ve heard: how, as he wrote that book, he worked all day and night, gripping his pen so tightly, it forced blood from under the nail; how he was hospitalized for weeks from nervous exhaustion, didn’t eat, didn’t sleep; how, in Dallas, he crawled across the roof of the book depository to put himself into Oswald’s sixth-floor view; how he asked to see the clothes I wore that day. He unfolded the white towel my stockings were in, blood flaked off in grains.
When Bobby told me this last detail, I’d pushed for more. In some terrible way, Manchester wanted something no one else really did.
“Please read the book, Mrs. Kennedy,” he is saying now. “Then you can tell me what you object to, and we can make changes.”
I glance at Bobby—I’d almost forgotten he was there, and has been since we came in. His chin rests on one hand. He stares at the porch rail. A wave of rage hits me. These men. Moving me around like a piece on a game board, with their egos and ambitions. They want to take my private grief and torque it for their own ends. I’ve let them. Bobby glances up.
“I am going to fight this,” I say, looking at Bobby.
“That’s a mistake,” Manchester says.
I turn to him. “It’s all a mistake, Mr. Manchester.”
He doesn’t leave. He stays sitting where he is, half a sandwich on his plate, mayonnaise squeezing from the corner. His eyes dark and angry, rims with scattered bits of red fatigue.
“The only thing you want,” he says, “is the one thing you can’t have. One blank page for November twenty-second, 1963.”
“We’re going to sue,” I tell Bobby a month later back in New York.
He shakes his head. “That would be a disaster.”
“For whom?”
I know the question will hurt him and it does, but even through the hurt, he can’t look away, and there’s a part of me that wants to reach across the deep rift between us, run my fingertips along his cheek. Cutting and bizarre, the unique desire I felt for him, that sometimes I still feel, a desire I once thought might be enough.
“You failed me,” I say, because I just need to end it.