Jackie & Me by Louis Bayard

Author:Louis Bayard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2022-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-one

Shortly after eleven, she was shown to the last in an endless row of doors. Opening it, she found a curious mélange of décor: oyster white walls and a hunter green coverlet, a chintz-covered headboard and a wooden icebox, a pair of unengraved victory cups, a badminton racket and, on the dressing table, a perfume bottle, nearly empty, with a mighty stopper. The bed itself was no wider than the back seat of a car and no more comfortable. She sat, a little dazed, in the cane-bottom chair by the window, smoking a cigarette, only to stub it out when a knock came at the door.

It was Jack, poking his head around the corner. “Comfy?” he asked, closing the door softly after him.

“Oh, I’m just wondering whose room this is.”

“Nobody’s.”

“So it’s a guest room?”

“Every room is a guest room.”

It was her next lesson in the Kennedy way. No matter where the family hung its hat—Bronxville, Hyannisport, Palm Beach—no child had a lock on any room. Depending on when your boarding school let out, you came back to whatever space hadn’t been claimed. No point putting up a picture or squirreling away a stamp collection, not when you’d have to drag it out again a month later. You simply joined the nomad caravan. To someone like Jackie, who kept her room as sealed and curated as the British Museum, the news landed with a soft horror.

“You mean there’s nothing anywhere that belongs to you?”

“Oh, sure,” he answered easily. “Books and clothes and stuff. Scattered about.” Then, not missing a beat: “There’s you, maybe.”

What a shock. To be claimed all over again. The feeling wasn’t too different from what had rolled through her in that gravel driveway, only there was nowhere to put it. She rose from the chair and, after an interval of uncertainty, seated herself on the bed. He joined her there a moment later. Sat next to her, took her hand and, frowning down, said:

“He likes you.”

“Oh,” she said. “That’s nice.”

“It’s what he told me, anyway.”

“Then it must be true. I mean, he speaks his mind, your father.”

“It’s his tragic flaw.”

She sat awhile, wondering how long it would take for one of her flaws to be declared tragic. Perhaps that was just the province of old men.

“Are you glad you came?” Jack asked.

“Of course. Are you?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

Her eyes grazed toward the window. “Did you wonder if I wouldn’t?”

“I guess I didn’t . . . one way or the other . . . ”

Something had lodged in him, she couldn’t say what. She could only wait for it to jar loose.

“Did he make moves on you?” he asked at last.

“No,” she answered. “I . . . no . . .”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

The scene in the doll room flashed once more upon her. From that nightmarish swirl of unblinking eyes, a single question fought itself clear.

“Who’s Gloria?”

There was, about his mouth, just the lightest tightening. “He mentioned her?”

“Oh, yes.”

“In a euphemistic way or—”

“Not a bit.”

“Huh.” Jack glanced away. His mouth relaxed into a half grin.

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