I don’t know the rules of conduct in this situation.
But I no longer feel any pain. I don’t remember that I have knees, that everyone has knees or what knees are even for. I’m completely mesmerized by her hair, blown back and resting gently on her shoulders, and a demure smile both shy and radiant. I look down at the ground as if I’ve dropped something, convinced when I look up again it will be someone else, a look-alike, perhaps, a woman who molded her style after hers.
But when I look up it’s still . . .
It’s her.
◆ TWO ◆
It’s you. I almost say it out loud.
She’s immediately recognizable. Her posture, her eyes—there is no mistaking her. Of course I know who she is. But that’s an understatement. I try to breathe. Have I not been breathing? In fact, it’s perhaps the biggest understatement in the history of understating things. Which on its face sounds hyperbolic, but in this case I don’t think it is. It’s not even whatever falls just shy of hyperbole. Embellishment? Overstatement? No. It’s a simple declaration of fact.
Because everyone knows who she is.
Now I try to remember how to breathe. What is breathing? The process of moving air in and out of your lungs. It involves the diaphragm? Something expands, something collapses, the blood gets what it needs. Oxygen in, CO2 out. My inner dialogue is as deafening as it is dull.
“James,” she says. “Lovely to make your acquaintance.” Her voice is breathy, impossibly feminine, even in her . . . I try to attempt some quick math . . . late fifties? She’s wearing dark slacks. A cashmere pullover. A jacket. It has shoulder pads. Chanel, maybe. Something distinguished like that. I’m not good with designers or labels. Daniel would know. He knows these things. She’s very still and her gestures are small, her arms stay close to her body; it’s as if she’s spent a lifetime trying not to make sudden, attention-grabbing moves. When she steps farther into the room, she glides with a seamless light-footedness.
“I’m Jacqueline,” she says, somewhere between the French and American pronunciations. That voice! Is it real? Is it really addressing me? She holds out her hand and I watch as my arm rises reflexively (lifted, perhaps, by an invisible bouquet of helium balloons), and as my hand reaches out for hers, I try to say something, but words fail me. That’s not good for a writer. She looks at me quizzically before moving her hand the rest of the way to meet mine. We shake. Her skin is soft. My only thought is that she uses lotion. “You are James, aren’t you?”
I blink. My own name somehow passes my lips. “James.” I manage another word. And my last name. “Yes. Smale.”
She smiles and our hands drop back to our sides. “Very good. And you were offered something to drink?” She pulls back a chair for herself but hesitates before sitting.
“Not anything strong enough for this.”
“I’m sorry?” Her apology has an airy lightness; it’s not clumsy like mine. It’s less an expression of regret and more a cue for me to make yet another apology myself.
“No, I’m sorry. I may be in the wrong place. I was told by Lisa to wait here for an editor regarding my manuscript.” It’s a sentence, but it ends on an upswing, impersonating a question.
“Lila,” she corrects. Goddammit, Donna! “You’re in the right place.”
I look at her, because it feels like I’m on one of those hidden-camera shows that are becoming increasingly common because they’re cheap to produce. “Are you in the right place?” I say it hesitantly.
“Oh, yes. My office isn’t very accommodating, and closing the door for privacy just makes it seem that much smaller. I thought we would both be more comfortable in here.”
I can’t hold it in any longer. “You’re Jacqueline,” I say, although my pronunciation is entirely American. “Jacqueline Kennedy.”
“Onassis.”
“Onassis. Right. And I’m . . .”
“James Smale. How nice of us to recap.” She offers another shy smile.
“Yes. I guess we’ve covered that ground already. And, believe me, it’s very nice to meet you. I’m just not sure what we’re doing here. Right now. In this room.” And then, to drive the point home, I say, “Together.”
She takes a seat and motions for me to do the same, so I pull back my chair and sit and she reaches out and rests her hand on top of mine. It’s motherly, calming. She’s wearing a distinctive bracelet that rattles softly like a tambourine. “James, I’m the editor who liked your book.”
My entire life I’ve been waiting to hear someone at a New York publishing house say these words. But in the thousands of ways I may have imagined this moment, not one time did it look anything like this. Tiny fireworks are exploding in my head like it’s the Fourth of July. For some reason I can’t take my eyes off her earrings, which are pearl. “This is a lot to take in. Maybe I should have accepted that glass of water.”
“Of course.” She pats my hand twice and then stands. “I’ll get it for you.”
I start to protest—I can’t have the former First Lady of the United States fetch me a glass of water—but she’s already gone. Am I crazy? I scramble to pick up the phone, push the button for the dial tone, but who am I going to call? Lila? Even if I had her extension, wouldn’t I just be humiliating myself further? What’s more, she’s obviously enjoying this, wherever she is. She could have prepared me—that would have been a small act of kindness—and yet she didn’t. This is not off to a good start. I retreat to the corner and do ten jumping jacks, a coping mechanism I’ve developed for writer’s block: ten perfect jumping jacks and blood moves to your brain (in theory, at least). Was my agent really not in on this? He’s a practical joker, the type that likes other people to squirm—it helps, I guess, in negotiation. But would he do that to a client? Would he do that to me? I barely finish my jumping jacks when Jacqueline—JACK-well-in? Zhak-LEEN?—returns, holding a glass of water. She doesn’t notice me at first in the corner.
“Ah. There you are,” she says. I cross back to my chair and she hands me the glass. “I thought perhaps you had jumped out the window.” She nods at the view and I lean in to make sure I heard her correctly, then laugh, probably too hard. Should I explain why that’s so funny?
I hold up the glass of water as if to say “Cheers,” then down most of it in several gulps, and she gestures for us to retake our seats.
“All set, then?” she asks.
I nod and watch her position herself gracefully in her chair, cross her legs, and pull herself in toward the table. When I take my seat, the chair unexpectedly drops several inches and I have to fuss with a lever underneath to bring it back to a proper height. Flustered, I try to say something, anything, to mask this awkward spectacle. “My middle name is Francis.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“Francis, my middle name is . . .” I slow to a stop like a windup toy whose crank has run down.
Jacqueline Onassis studies me; I watch her eyes sweep across my face. After an interminable silence she says, “Bobby.”
“Yes, sorry. That needed some prefacing. My middle name is Francis. After Robert Kennedy. I’m . . . I don’t know why I’m saying this. Your time is valuable. I will focus.” Deep breaths. “I can’t believe you read my book.”
“I read it twice,” she says. She says nothing about my predicament with the chair as I fidget underneath and somehow sink farther, in a second humiliating display.
“Twice?” I try to sound nonchalant.
“Does that surprise you?”
“I’m still getting used to your reading it once.” I finally master the chair’s mechanics and lock it in a respectable raised position. I pull myself into the table and take another sip of water.
She flips through some notes on a pad of legal paper, and I wonder if they are notes about me, about my book. I strain to see, without looking like I’m straining to see; I’m dying to know her every th
ought. “It’s quite difficult to put down. Once it gets going.”
“A friend told me it’s slow to start.”
“Not slow. Deliberate. In order to deconstruct the American family, you must work diligently to construct it.”
“That’s what I said!” I brighten, and for the first time feel like I find my footing.
“I’m wondering if we could discuss the book, the two of us.” The way she adds “the two of us.” Persuasion. Just us. Alone in a room. Is she doing this on purpose? Is she luring me in only to lowball me with an offer? How can I think of business at a time like this? Whatever she’s doing, it’s artful. I’d be happy to sit here and talk books—my book, any book—until the afternoon is gone.
Until all of the afternoons are gone.
“I would be honored.”
“The Quarantine,” she says. It’s an almost out-of-body experience to hear the title of my book in her unmistakable voice. I can hear the word’s Italian origins, the way she says it. Quarantina. Forty Days.
“Yes.”
“Did you live through such a thing?”
“An actual quarantine?”
“An isolation.”
“With my mother?”
“With anyone.”
“No. Not as such. Not formally.”
Jackie nods. “How did you come to it as a framing device?”
I take a deep breath. “We all feel isolated, don’t we? At one time or another?” Does she? Oh, God. “People yearn to connect—it should be easy, and yet it seldom is. That’s true with my own mother. We talk, often past each other, somehow unable to convey meaning. It’s fantasy, I suppose. Putting two characters in tight quarters. Eventually they can’t avoid saying the things they desperately need to say.”
She scribbles a thought on her pad. Scribble is the wrong word; I doubt she’s careless with anything. “And that . . . fantasy, you call it . . .”
“I wasn’t going to get my actual mother in a room for any length of time.”
“That led you to write a novel.”
“I didn’t set out to. I considered myself more a writer of short stories. I thought I might have one published in The New Yorker one day, like many of the writers I admire. Updike. Cheever. Mavis Gallant. Dreamed I might, not thought.” Ugh, thought has an element of presumption. I bite the inside of my cheek to slow myself down. “So, one of the early chapters in the book? The one after the service? With the argument over pie? That’s the one I wrote first. When I finished it, I imagined this, finally, was my New Yorker story. And then I showed it to a friend, who encouraged me to write more.” I pause here, expecting her to interject; she looks at me, poised and unblinking. “I realize now how unsatisfying it would have been as a short story. That it was inherently . . . incomplete.”
“What a delightful note to receive as a writer. More.”
I smile at her like a child asking for juice.
“And you. Are you . . .” She checks her notepad. “Russell?”
“The character in the book? I’m not not Russell.” Check yourself, James. Now is not the time to be cute. “He is a version of me, I suppose, in that we are both seeking and searching—yearning to understand.”
“I would love to know more about the mother.”
“What would you like to know?”
“What would you like to tell me?”
Afraid this is some unanswerable riddle, a test I’m doomed to fail, I revert to her previous question. “If you’re asking if she’s my mother, she would say no.”
“Has she read the manuscript?”
“No.” As soon as it comes out of my mouth I realize just how harsh it sounds on its own, so I say it again, softer this second time. “No.” And then, because it’s a point of contention between us, I add, “Not even once.”
Jacqu—Mrs. Onassis taps her pen twice on her notepad. “Why not?”
“I wish she would. I suppose she’s afraid of what she’ll see.”
“I saw something quite lovely.”
My eyes are growing wet. Mortifying. It’s a little early in the year to pass it off as allergies; I blink twice in an effort to stop it. “I thank you for saying so, but it’s almost beside the point. She doesn’t want to be written about.”
Mrs. Onassis sets her pen down. “Well, your mother’s in good company there.”
“I suppose so,” I say, smiling so that she knows I understand she’s referring to herself.
“So why did you choose to write about her?”
“I’m not sure I did. Choose. I thought I would have endless stories. Deep, complicated, rich narratives that had profound things to say. I started a half-dozen novels centered on characters I thought would jump right off the page. But after numerous starts and stops they all seemed kind of flat in comparison to the most complicated character I knew.”
“Your mother.”
“My mother.” I glance down at the pad between us and it reminds me of the terror of blank pages. “So, desperation, I guess?”
Mrs. Onassis raises an eyebrow. “Well, I think you’ve observed her quite eloquently. I admired her.”
I look down at my nails and am embarrassed to see it’s been a while since I’ve cut them. I quietly move to sit on my hands.
“Since I’m not asking her, I’m asking you—is she your mother?”
“Absolutely.” And then, since I’m also deeply protective of her, I add, “A carbon copy. One that I can place just outside our relationship and stretch and mold and make malleable. Get inside. One that serves the novel, I hope. And one that I can possibly come to understand.”
Mrs. Onassis makes additional notes and I wonder if she’s writing down what I’m saying, which fuels my self-consciousness. Are these thoughts worth recording? When she looks up she asks, “One you can come to set free.”
Your mother’s in good company. Sitting across from someone so well known, I can’t help but conjure a slideshow of every image I have of her, that every American has. The iconic moments, the idyllic portraits. Any one of them is imposing; together they are irrepressible. I try desperately to clear them from my mind—to focus on the woman in front of me—but in person she’s no less an artfully framed photograph: stoic, quiet, still. The exotic bird, caged for voyeurs like myself. Have I done that to my mother? Cataloged her in snapshots? Confined her to a lifetime of observation? “One I can come to set free. I like that.”
A man with a beard and wide tie opens the door, startling us both. “Oh, I’m sorry, Jackie. I didn’t realize anyone was in here.”
“That’s quite all right,” she says, and the man quietly closes the door. It’s all so normal—he calls her Jackie, he sees her every day, they probably sit in staff meetings—I want to call after that man just to make sure he knows who his coworker really is.
I take advantage of the interruption. “May I ask you a question?”
“I would be happy if you did.”
“Why am I here?”
Laughter. It’s almost indescribable, the feeling of making her laugh. Like somehow all is right with the world, even if this laugh is at my expense.
“Are we speaking existentially?”
“No, no. Despite how my question sounds. I’m genuinely asking.”
“Why are you here, as opposed to another author?”
“Why my book?”
Mrs. Onassis flips back the pages that are folded over the binding of her legal pad and sets her pen down on top of it. “Well, books are a journey. And I’m always excited to embark on a journey I haven’t taken before. So I wanted to meet you, James.”
“Thank you.”
“I found your book to be very mature for a first effort. I have some ideas, if you are open to hearing them.”
“Of course.”
“Ideas that would strengthen the work and amplify the bo
ok’s central themes. It’s a wonderful setup, and there’s work to be done on the ending, but we can fix all that. In short, I would like to acquire this novel for publication. It is my sincere hope that you’re willing to work with me.”
And just like that, I’ve completed the slow climb to the top of a roller coaster. I’m about to experience the first drop and people all around me are clutching their hats and sunglasses and screaming in both fear and exhilaration and my mouth is open to scream as well, but no sound comes out. The feeling is so intense I have to look down to make sure my chair hasn’t collapsed again.
“James?”
I close my mouth in a vain attempt to appear sane. “It would be an honor to work with you.”
“Would you like to take some time to think about it?”
“Should I think about it?”
“My father always advised me to sleep a night on important decisions.”
“My father had no such counsel.”
“Well, if I may.” The way she asks permission suggests both a timidity and a deliberate command in steering our conversation. “It’s a rare editor anymore who is more . . . well known, shall we say, than her authors. So, immediately, there’s that to consider.” She pauses, as if to make sure I’m following. “It would also mean you saying ‘no’ to me when you believe I’m wrong. Do you think you could do that?”
“Oh, no.”
She leans back, hopefully amused. “Is that a joke?”
I have to think about it. “Perhaps. A lame attempt at one rolled in the truth. I could learn to.”
“Make a joke?”
“Say no.” It feels like a little rapport we’re building. Daniel’s heart is going to stop when I recount this bit for him later.
“I would like us to have a conventional editor/writer relationship. And that means I’ll stand up for the things I believe in strongly, and you’ll stand up for the things you believe in strongly. And we’ll debate until there’s a victor.”
For a brief second, I picture us going toe-to-toe in a boxing ring, performing the most delicate pas de deux, me too afraid to ever throw a punch. “I would like that too. For us to have a normal relationship.” No boxing gloves. “Although, it might knock my friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt down a peg.” I say the roo in Roosevelt like in kangaroo, as that’s how Dustin Hoffman says it in the movie Tootsie, and it always makes me laugh. Mrs. Onassis, however, doesn’t. Laugh. “Another joke,” I clarify.
The Editor Page 2