Jackie and Me(10)

“Well, New York won’t be so bad as all that. We know

plenty of people there.”

“Not those people,” said Janet. “Photographers. Models.

The very finest bookies, your father knows them all. I assume you told him,” she suddenly added. “First thing.”

“No,” lied Jackie.

“Won’t he be happy to get his hooks into you at last?

Why, you could stay with him the whole time. Meet all his

tramps and help him crawl into bed every night and clean

the vomit off his shoes. It’ll be just like old times, won’t it, darling?”

“My dear,” protested Hughdie. “The children.”

“No, I want them to see! Little darlings, this is what a

socialite career girl looks like. I don’t blame you for saying nothing; she’ll be a conversation stopper with every man she meets. She’ll end up as barren as a Carmelite, and aren’t we pleased? I can bring home all her magazine articles from the beauty salon, and you can line your sock drawers with them.

Wave bye-bye now, darlings. Say bye-bye to Jackie.”

The next Sunday was Mother’s Day, and it was precisely to escape her own mother, whose reproaches trailed

her like exhaust, that she ventured out to Charlie Bartlett’s Georgetown row house, where she met a disheveled Congressman from Brookline, whose every response, right

34





LOUIS BAYARD


up to and including following her out of the house, suggested he’d seen something in her she hadn’t, that she wasn’t really looking to escape to New York or Paris but to settle down right here in her adopted town with the first handsome and eligible man who made eyes at her. The presumption both baffled and offended her—in part because there was

a chance it had originated in her—and after she’d dropped

the never-to-be-seen-again Michael O’Sullivan at his group

home in Clarendon, she drove back up Chain Bridge Road

with the gloomy sense that she’d been following her mother’s dictates after all. It was only when she reflected upon the nature of this particular Congressman that she concluded Mrs. Auchincloss would hate him and his arriviste origins

just as much as her daughter’s pursuing a career, and that

cheer carried her all the way to the following afternoon,

when he did, in the end, phone, just ten minutes before the dinner bell. She took the call on the upstairs extension.

“How nice to hear from you,” she said.

“I—ah—I hope you don’t mind, I asked Charlie for your

number.”

“Not at all.”

“It was a real pleasure meeting you last night.”

“You as well.”

“I told Charlie you were far and away the best charades

player. Except for me.”

Her laugh was brief and spasmodic. “Well now, I believe

that remark demands a rematch.”

“By all means. I understand you’re moving to New York.”

This caught her short. How had it been leaked?



JACKIE & ME

35

“Oh, I guess so. In a week or so. I mean, it’s just a little job with Vogue. Mummy’s perfectly furious, I don’t know why. I mean, I might be back any day, it’s hard to know.”

If he says don’t go, I won’t. And felt in the very voicing of the thought how wretched a woman’s life was.

“Well now,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll have a great professional success and become a real credit to your education,

and I—ah—I wish you the best of luck, Miss Bouvier.”

Miss Bouvier. What surer sign that she had been scratched off his list? Even now his finger was scrolling down the memo pad to Miss Hickey Sumers, that other option from the Bartletts’ dinner party: her lips war-painted, her very name a provocation. You’re so good to make time for us, Congressman. What an honor. Ten to one she was already, from pure prescience, moisturizing herself in anticipation of the call.

Well, there was no point in heaping scorn on poor

Hickey, not when the memory of her own words was such

a torment. Little job with Vogue. Might be back any day.

She’d all but copied out her own declaration of dependence.

Meanwhile, Janet Auchincloss was reconsidering her strat—

egy. Perhaps it was better to meet a daughter’s resistance

with tacit surrender, the better to conserve one’s energies for the long game. Thus, she became quite suddenly a font of solicitude.

“Darling, do you need any help with the packing? Are

you sure? Well, do let me know, and is it all right if we drive you to the station tomorrow? It’s such a bother getting a cab, and Hughdie can help the redcap with your bags.”

36





LOUIS BAYARD


Jackie answered curtly, in her usual fashion, and was surprised to find, upon boarding the Congressional the next

day, that the sight of Mummy waving goodbye produced

a clutch in her throat. Since graduating college, she had

gazed upon her mother simply as an obstruction, and she

was seized now by the thought that, the entire time, without either of them knowing, Mrs. Auchincloss had been a