“You must have more questions for me.”
I do. I have eleventy million questions, but synapses are firing, or misfiring—if synapses even fire (or misfire)—and all that comes out is one of those passing non sequiturs that are embarrassingly easy to access in moments of great awkwardness. “How tall was Charles de Gaulle?”
She cocks her head, like I’ve started speaking in tongues, before finally emitting a laugh. “How tall was . . . ?” She stops to give it some thought. “Tall.”
“I don’t suppose that’s the kind of question you had in mind.”
“No, it was not.”
“I didn’t want to be obvious.”
“In that you’ve succeeded.”
“I’m sort of a Francophile. I love Paris. Which sounds dumb now that I say it—I mean, who doesn’t love Paris. But here you are and you’ve met Charles de Gaulle.”
“Well, he was very tall. He . . .” She starts to say more, then stops. She studies me, scanning my eyes to see if I can be trusted. She proceeds, but does so with caution. “This is neither here nor there, but I suppose I will follow your lead and be unexpected. He struck me as somewhat sad. He rode with President Kennedy and me through Paris, and when we got out of the car I remember thinking of Shelley’s Frankenstein monster. It was something about the way he moved, slowly, deliberately, and the streets were lined with villagers. I tried my best to be charming. At the time I was very focused on bringing the Mona Lisa to the United States—it had never been on loan before to a foreign nation. I wanted to be bright, sunny, for my mission. As for the monster himself, it was hard to pierce that sadness.”
I’m struck by her answer, the way she attributes Frankenstein to Shelley—in case anyone listening would miss the literary nature of the reference; I want to linger on it, but there are so many other things I want to know. About today, and every other day. About history. About the world and our place in it. About everything she’s witnessed. About why she says “President Kennedy” instead of my husband or Jack. But I can’t delve into any of that so I simply ask “Were you successful?”
“In getting the Mona Lisa? Oh, yes. I can be quite persuasive when I want to be. Even to monsters.” This time she winks.
I understand that in being allowed to ask questions I’m being further persuaded. But I can’t stop. “How long have you worked at Doubleday?”
“Fourteen years.” She crosses her hands in her lap. “And several at Viking Press before that.”
“That’s probably more in line with what you were expecting.”
She dips her head in agreement.
“And you have an office? In this building?”
“I have an office here, down the hall. It’s a regular size and stacked high with manuscripts. I get my own coffee and wait in line to use the copier, same as anyone else.”
“And, this is embarrassing. But what do I call you?” Is there a title for former First Ladies? “Ma’am?”
“I think Mrs. Onassis would be appropriate, if you agree.”
I nod. I’ve been nodding a lot in this meeting, overwhelmed to find all the right words.
I lean in, set my arms on the table, and join my fingers. “And you want to work together.” I should feel awkward for retracing so much ground, but surprisingly I don’t.
“I see great promise. The work needs polishing, if I may be blunt, but now that I’ve met you I’m confident we will accomplish good things together.”
My cheeks grow flushed and I start to sweat and it dawns on me that we could be spending some real time together, beyond this meeting, beyond today. And if she opened up to me about Charles de Gaulle, even momentarily, she might open up to me about much, much more. That maybe she sees me as some sort of kindred spirit. That we might become . . . friends. My brain marches ten steps ahead of me and I do all within my power to reel it back.
I see Mrs. Onassis glance at the clock on the wall, and it’s obvious from that one small signal that our time is almost up.
“So.” It’s that awkward moment at the end of a first date. “What do we do now?”
She stands and offers her hand and I leap up to take it. We shake. I lean in, just a little bit, just enough to absorb her intoxicating presence a heartbeat longer; her hair smells like perfume and also, surprisingly, of cigarettes.
“Why don’t I have a conversation with your agent to work out the details. And then the hard work begins.”
I laugh nervously, realizing how difficult—crushing, even—it might be to hear real criticism, constructive though it may be, from this woman. When she lets go of my hand, I desperately try to think of anything to prolong this good-bye—clamber to name other mid-century heads of state and devise pressing questions about them. Alas, my mind roars only with the flat hum of an ocean, a momentous sound for a consequential occasion.
“We will be in touch.”
I open the conference room door for her, as any gentleman would, and as quickly as she entered my life she is gone.
◆ THREE ◆
I manage to stay collected until I reach the bank of elevators, even though I can feel everyone’s eyes on me as I walk down the hall, back through the paper and push-pins and cubicles and past the framed book covers; I trip and pause only when it hits me that my cover will perhaps one day be among them. Miraculously, I get an elevator to myself for four floors, leaving just enough time for me to self-defibrillate before the doors reopen and three chatty coworkers enter the elevator and join me for the rest of the ride to the lobby, complaining the whole way about a new brand of powdered coffee creamer that leaves a residue in their mugs. I wonder if they have any idea what just happened. I’m curious if they can glimpse my secret, if they can smell it on me, my own residue, and the coffee-creamer conversation is a cover. I try to smell myself, to see if there is some trace of Jackie’s perfume, or, better yet, some faint whiff of American decorative arts from her White House restoration, leather or oils or fine upholstery. It occurs to me they think I’m crazy, a man in a corner with a stunned expression, smelling himself for any trace of 1962.
Does Jackie (surely she’s not Mrs. Onassis in my thoughts) drink office coffee with powdered creamer out of a foam cup—does she like it, or just choke it down to fit in? Does she talk about her weekend in dreamy terms (“How was your weekend, Mrs. Onassis?”; “Fine, I reframed the Chagall and then got some sun in Belize”)? Or is she just one of us, stretching her lunch breaks when spring is in the air, stealing uni-ball pens from the supply closet to use at home.
When the elevator reaches the ground floor I let the others off first, then push through the lobby and revolving door, almost forgetting to exit on Fifty-Second Street. The sharp February air enters my lungs and jolts me like a shot of ice-cold vodka. I line up in front of the first hot dog vendor I come to, even though I don’t eat hot dogs; when I get to the front of the line I pretend not to have my wallet and continue toward Times Square as I start to replay what just happened.
I lied to Jackie in our meeting, about how I came to write about my mother. Because it was a choice, even if I said it was desperation. We were once close—very close—and slowly as I grew older we were not. She blames me for the end of her marriage, for my father. She never said so explicitly, but honestly how could she not? My father was a difficult man, older, not just from another generation but from another time. He never knew what to make of me. He certainly didn’t approve of me, my sensitive nature, my creative ambitions, my wanting to live in the city, my insistence on being myself. He called me foppish once, and I think we both knew it was a placeholder for another derogatory f-word. My mother spent a lot of time running interference. I think she thought she was doing what was best—shielding me from him—but it cost my father and me any chance at a real relationship and she paid a price for it too.
I retreated into adolescence; a casual observer would say I was barely there as my pare
nts’ relationship crumbled. But I was ever-present, lurking in the shadows, an aspiring writer already reading Tennessee Williams, fascinated by human behavior. I mastered the spell of invisibility, at least as much as a powder keg could. I knew instinctually I was the catalyst, the spark for the fury around me. I dimmed my light as long as I was able, but gunpowder is made to ignite—especially when that gunpowder is repressed teenage sexuality. The explosion was not something the three of us survived.
After they divorced, my mother withdrew and she became a mystery for me to unravel. A more patient son might have waited for this to self-correct. I could have led by example as I grew into the man I was meant to be, been a beacon for truth that somehow lit the way. But the more closed off she became, the louder the invitation was to unscramble her; I would pursue, she would retreat—it became an endless, vicious loop. Eventually I chose fiction as a way toward fact. It was inevitable that she would become my subject.
“I’m writing a book about Mom,” I remember telling my sister, Naomi, when I completed a particularly inspiring writing intensive. It was a three-day workshop and I came out feeling the time for a novel was now.
“Oh, God. Why?” was her response.
It was so obvious to me. “Have you met her? C’mon. Why not.”
I thought I could show my mother how much I understood her, how grateful, in fact, I was for everything she had sacrificed for me. My brother Kenny told me there were certain questions about Mom that were just going to remain unanswered, and the sooner I accepted that, the happier I would be. He was able to make peace with it. Naomi was able to go about her life just fine. But a child wants to be close to his mother, and I was forever the baby. I think Kenny and Naomi felt that by not kicking the hornet’s nest, they would be just close enough. Not so for me.
I started writing and I didn’t stop. I was obsessive, writing for an audience of one. I stayed up nights, wrote through lunch breaks, and canceled plans with friends. Daniel had to remind me to eat, and even at times to sleep. Nine months later, right on cue, I delivered a novel I called The Book of Ruth, after the mother character, despite the heavy-handed allusion to the Hebrew text. Because of the Jane Hamilton novel I settled on a new title, The Quarantine, after the self-imposed isolation (literal and figurative) at the heart of the book.
Did I say any of this to Jackie? No, because I lied and said it was desperation. Although, wasn’t it? Just not desperation for a subject, desperation for something else. Reconciliation. Repatriation. Damn. Why wasn’t I better prepared for this meeting?
My agent!
Allen sent me walking into the lion’s den with no warning of the lioness. I pass a pay phone by a Sbarro pizza and empty my pockets of their contents. I fish dimes from a pool of pennies and subway tokens, then pick up the receiver, making as little contact with it as possible. How many drug dealers and prostitutes and (worse) tourists have used this phone before me today? I dial my agent’s number, which I memorized after our first meeting. The phone rings three times before his assistant picks up.
“Donna? It’s James Smale. Could you put Allen on the line?”
Donna laughs. “He said you’d be calling.”
I hate being obvious (should I ask him about former French presidents?), but there’s no way around it. “May I talk to him, please?”
“How was your meeting with Lisa?”
“It was Lila, Donna. Her name was Lila.” Actually, that wasn’t her name at all.
“I can never read my own chicken scratch. Anyhow, he’s on another line.”
“Have him hang up!” I’m shouting, but I can’t tell if it’s from excitement or from the din and chaos around me.
“What? It’s hard to understand you. Where are you? Do you want me to interrupt him?”
It occurs to me he might be on with Doubleday, that the call might be about me. “No, no!” I say, both to her and to someone who has just approached with a cigarette, harassing me for a light. “Just have him call me. I’ll be home in twenty minutes.”
I hang up the phone and turn around to see a black man dressed in drag as the Statue of Liberty approaching, torch in the air and all. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, honey,” he says.
I smile and think of the last line of the poem, which has stuck since I learned it in Mrs. Chaddon’s sixth-grade class. “I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
“That’s right you do, baby,” he says, before disappearing into a tour group wearing green-foam Statue of Liberty visors exiting the Sbarro.
A bus stops at the red light in front of me with the high-pitched squealing of poorly maintained brakes. I glance up at the people on board before noticing that the bus sports a tattered poster for Oliver Stone’s JFK, released in theaters this past Christmas. The poster is faded and torn, as if some drunk NYU student tried to pry it off for his dorm room wall and abandoned the theft halfway through.
I can hear my heartbeat in my ears. I just met a woman in a conference room who is also somehow everywhere, even in the image of a tattered American flag draped over Kevin Costner’s face on the side of this bus.
It’s impossible to reconcile.
Across Seventh Avenue, I spot a mother holding her child’s hand. Her eyes dart from one potential danger to another, and she places her other hand on the boy’s shoulder so as not to lose him—that single touch a time machine for me. My first ever visit to this neon circus, I think I was seven. My parents decided to drive us into the city from our sleepy upstate home so we could feel the energy, walking us all the way up Fifth Avenue from the Empire State Building to Central Park. On the way back to the car, my father charged forward, insisting that Times Square was a sight everyone should see. Kenny and Naomi were teenagers, able to withstand the bustle of the city and seemingly unfazed by it all. But my mother held me so tightly, at times I thought I might bruise.
“Keep up, Aileen. The boy’s fine,” my father bellowed. And then, “What we should really do is see the subway. A marvel of urban transportation.” Those were the things that interested my father, tunnels and bridges and trains.
But I didn’t want to go underground, like rats—I could barely breathe above; I looked desperately for patches of sky. I glanced to my mother for help, prayed she would never let go, and she leaned down and whispered in my ear the words that would one day change my life: “You know, all the great writers live in New York.” And just like that, the city transformed from menacing commotion to inviting possibility.
In eight years of living here, I’ve lost the sensation of my mother’s excited whisper and firm grip. Times Square came to mock me—symbolic of the dismissal I faced trying to make it as a writer. It was every rejection letter, every failed job interview, every face that chuckled when I revealed my dream, every horrible, soul-crushing temporary job. It led to my hating New York. Hating myself. I never felt the same energy of that day again.
Until now.
I count to ten to just “feel the energy,” giving my father at least that much, then blow into my cupped hands to warm them. Gloves! I have gloves. I find them in my coat pocket and put them on before scurrying west across Forty-Ninth Street. I have to get home to Hell’s Kitchen. I have to get home to tell Daniel and to be there when my agent calls.
I have to get home before I wake up.
◆ FOUR ◆
I bound up the steps of our five-story walk-up, two at a time from floors one through three, then individually until I reach the top. On the fourth-floor landing, my messenger bag swings forward and I almost eat one of the steps that leads to our door. It’s then that I realize just how grungy our building is, the stairs thick with years of grime and grease from whatever unpleasant bits of the city people track in on their shoes. I brush myself off, but not the troubling realization that we really do live like this. It’s not at all suitable to entertain these new circles I may be traveling in. When I reach th
e apartment door, it’s locked. I mean, of course it’s locked. Even though this is David Dinkins’s New York, we’re not animals. Usually I have my keys in hand, but I ran up the stairs too quickly to retrieve them. I reach in my pocket and pull out a crumpled gum wrapper. Please tell me I wasn’t chewing gum during the meeting! I check my mouth. No gum. Breath not great, but no gum. This brings some small relief. I find my keys, but it takes me three attempts to open the door.
Inside, Daniel is lying on the couch.
“I was hoping that was you. I thought we were being burgled.” Daniel is the type of person who says “burgled” instead of “robbed,” and he’s not even a writer—or a lawyer. He directs theater. I stare at him, his maddeningly thick hair and dark features, unsure of what to say. Not what to say so much as how to begin to say it. Also because my heart is pounding from my sprint up the stairs and I taste something coppery and I may be having a stroke. “You’re not going to believe this.” He gestures toward our nineteen-inch television. “There’s another one.”
I start to catch my breath. “Another one what?”
“Another bimbo. It was just on CNN.”
“Another one?” Strike that. I don’t want to get engaged in conversation about politics, something I don’t particularly care about at this moment.
“I think this is the end of his campaign.” Daniel looks up at me and notices my chest heaving. “Jesus. Did you run up the stairs?”
And that’s when I break into a huge, cat-who-ate-the-canary kind of grin.
“What?” Daniel has this look on his face that I love. I remember he made it on our first date, maybe even in response to my smiling devilishly at him. Brown eyes wide, lips slightly parted, hinting at the whitest teeth behind them, one of his pronounced Latin eyebrows slightly higher than the other. Five years later, that look still slays me.
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