There was a radiotelephone on the yacht, but you couldn’t dial direct. The operator had to request a time slot to transmit through the nearest shore station, so it depended on their location. She recited Bobby’s number from memory, and Janet rose to make the call, as if glad to have something to do. She still hadn’t uttered a word of comfort, but Jackie knew her better than to expect it.
WHEN JACKIE CAME to after the operation in late afternoon, Janet was gone and Bobby was by her bedside. Straightaway he took her hand and said, “I’m so sorry. What a sad loss for you, and for the whole family.”
Jackie closed her eyes to stop the tears from leaking out. She didn’t want Bobby to see her cry. He was being kind, but he must think she was a failure. He already had four children, and Ethel was pregnant with their fifth. She seemed to give birth like a vending machine: pop in the sperm, and out popped a fully formed, squalling baby.
“I’ve left a message for Jack asking him to call the nurses’ station when there’s a connection,” he told her. “A nurse will come to fetch me.”
“Thank you,” Jackie whispered. She was glad he was there, taking charge.
Although more reserved than Jack, Bobby had enough of the family charm that people fell over themselves to help him. She knew the nurses would be fluttery and coy around him.
Jackie wondered what Bobby thought of her deep down. He had always been friendly, although Ethel thought her “hoity-toity.” She’d overheard her complaining about the way Jackie set a table, of all things. Seemingly Ethel didn’t think it mattered whether the knife blades were facing inward or outward and scoffed at Jackie for adjusting them. She would crow now: she was the successful wife who could produce heirs by the handful.
Jackie was still woozy from the anesthetic and drifted into a doze, but she awoke when she heard Bobby’s voice in the corridor outside. A nurse was bustling about in the room, checking her temperature, clattering instruments on a metal tray, so she missed some of the conversation, but what she heard was unmistakable.
“Jack, you have to come back. . . . Your wife’s just had surgery. She needs you. . . . Don’t be an idiot. . . . Of course she’s upset, but you know Jackie—she doesn’t show it. . . . It will be in the papers tomorrow for sure. There’s nothing I can do about that. . . . Just think how it will look politically: ‘Wife loses baby while senator suns himself in the Med.’ Is that the headline you want to see? Well, get your ass back here . . .”
Jackie was stunned. She clutched her throat, finding it hard to breathe. Jack didn’t want to interrupt his vacation. That’s how much he cared about her. She shivered. Everyone had warned her before they got married that he needed his own space, and she had been willing to allow that, but she hadn’t realized till now that his heart was quite so cold.
Chapter 4
Washington, D.C.
August 28, 1956
Five days after their baby died, Jack arrived in D.C. Jackie was recovering at home in Georgetown, where she lay on top of her bed with a fan blowing cool air on her legs. Her sister, Lee, had flown in from London and was bustling around, fetching drinks and tidying the bedside clutter of books and lotions, wearing an immaculate silk polka-dot dress from Jean Patou’s spring/summer collection.
Jackie regarded her critically. It had been kind of her to drop everything and rush over to play nursemaid, but who wore a brand-new designer outfit to look after an invalid, for heaven’s sake? Lee always strove to be the better dressed of the two of them, no matter what the occasion, and her competitiveness could get tedious.
“How are you, kid?” Jack asked, leaning over to kiss her, a concerned expression on his face. “Are you okay? We had a stopover in Paris and I bought you some perfume.” He put a gift-wrapped package in her lap but she didn’t touch it. How could he think of perfume at a time like this? “Hi, Lee,” he continued. “Good of you to help out.”
Lee beamed at him. “Hi, Jack. Great tan!”
“The funeral was last Saturday,” Jackie interrupted, poker-faced, trying to snap them both into some respect for the solemnity of the occasion. “She was a girl. Your daughter. I called her Arabella.”
Jack nodded, at last serious. “I like the name.”
“Bobby made the arrangements,” she continued, her voice like a knife.
“Good man,” he remarked. “I’ll call and thank him, but first I need a sandwich. I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”
“Let me get your sandwich,” Lee insisted, heading for the door. “Ham and mustard okay?” She was dippy about Jack; nothing was too much trouble for her darling brother-in-law.
Once they were alone, Jackie waited for him to apologize for not returning sooner, to tell her how sad he was about the loss of the baby, to share the grief that was lodged inside her, hard and implacable as a bullet—but instead he began talking about some journalist he’d met on the plane. She watched him, his hair bleached from the sun, his skin as dark as walnuts, and marveled at the electricity he exuded. He had no idea what was going through her mind. None whatsoever. Maybe he never had.
He finished his story before sitting on the edge of the bed and pulling her into his arms. “It’s so sad about Arabella,” he said. “I can’t take it in yet. After all those months of waiting . . .”
His face pressed against her shoulder and she heard him stifle a sigh—or could it have been a sob? He did seem upset now, but he didn’t feel the loss; not like she did. Her grief was dark and solitary, and it was mixed with bitter anger at him for being overseas when their baby died and then not coming home immediately.
He broke away before long, the moment over, and she watched as his mind flipped to the next matter to be dealt with. “I’m glad Lee is here for you. It was good of her to come.” He glanced at his watch. “Do you mind if I drop by the office this afternoon? Just to pick up messages.”
Jackie was so shocked he could consider it that she was lost for words. She kept her feelings buried, but surely Jack must know how devastated she was, and how much she needed him to comfort her? Down the hall there was a beautifully decorated nursery with no baby to put in it.
“I won’t be long,” he promised, standing up. “We can have dinner together.”
The problem was that she had married a man who was an iceberg. A glacier. Deep down, did he care about anything apart from politics and power? It was hard to tell.
Once Jack had gone, Jackie eased herself out of bed, waving away the maid’s protests. He had left his suitcase on the floor and she lowered herself to sit beside it, gasping at the tug in her stitches. She didn’t know what she expected to find as she rummaged through his sandy swim shorts, casual shirts, and musty towels, but she knew there was something Jack wasn’t telling her.
And there it was: when she picked up a copy of a Saul Bellow novel, a Polaroid fluttered out. A girl with white-blond hair sitting on his lap, wearing a skimpy hot-pink bikini. She looked Scandinavian, with a high forehead, laughing eyes, and a slim figure.
Jackie’s stomach heaved. This was what he was doing when their baby died. Holding the photograph between thumb and forefinger, as if it might contaminate her, she rose, hobbled back to bed, and dropped it into her handbag.