‘We are not getting a dog.’
This part of the fight went on so long and was so familiar, Sam and Elisabeth ignored it and waved to strangers in other cars. Sometimes people waved back, which made them laugh hysterically, as if they’d played a trick. Sometimes teenage boys flipped their middle finger, which was not as funny. When a truck was alongside, they tried to catch the driver’s eye and pump their right arms, and sometimes the driver obliged by pulling his horn. More giggles.
‘Aren’t you two getting a little old for that?’
‘Oh, leave them alone, Jack. They’re bored.’
After a while, they played a languid game of naming the fifty states. They had fifteen more to go. Billie half listened and tried to visualize a map of the United States. What were the names of all those little states up in the right-hand corner? Eventually, Sam fell asleep and Elisabeth dozed off too, her mouth hanging open and her head jerking on the sticky seat back. When she woke an hour later, she said:
‘Stop the car, I’m going to be sick.’
‘Jack, did you hear her? Stop the car.’
‘I can’t right now. There’s no shoulder. She’ll have to wait.’
‘Can you wait a minute, honey?’ said Billie. ‘Put your head out the window. Breathe deeply.’
Elisabeth couldn’t even open her mouth to answer, the sick was so imminent. She swallowed convulsively.
‘Jack, you’d better pull over.’
‘Goddammit!’ as he swerved onto a rough embankment and someone honked. Elisabeth got out of the car, leaned over and retched dryly. Nothing. Billie stood just behind her, thinking: Oh no, not again.
‘Has she been sick yet?’
‘No. Come on, honey, hurry up and throw up. Your dad wants to get going.’
‘I can’t.’
‘What do you mean you can’t. Just do it.’
Elisabeth leaned over and tried to trick her stomach into emptying by making the noises of vomiting.
‘I can’t, Mom. I don’t want to any more. I feel fine.’
‘Are you sure? We aren’t stopping again for a while.’
‘I’m sure.’
They both got back in the car and Jack turned back on the highway. Billie felt good now, but couldn’t trace the source at first. Her daughter’s carsickness? Why would that lift her heart? But there was something about the familiarity of what had just occurred. The way it instantly dissolved tension between herself and Jack. They seemed to nip at each other all the time now; it was background music. Bickering and then noticing an absence of bickering. When had the habit started? She reflected, not for the first time, that if they hadn’t married so quickly, so romantically, if they’d waited till they’d really known each other, they might never have married. Maybe the whole point of marriage was to make those promises before you really knew the other person. Maybe marriage had to be undertaken while sedated with lust.
Well! So be it. Probably every new wife woke up one day and suddenly noticed her husband didn’t much resemble the man she married. That he was really very annoying, that he farted loudly and all the time, and slurped his cereal repulsively. And this was where married love really came into its own, she thought. Love, while he farted long and loud and accused you of bad driving again. While your daughter tried and failed to vomit by the roadside, again. Not getting dizzy, while going round and round the same old circles.
Billie half smiled, not at Jack, but out the side window. She felt wise. And superior to her sister, who just last week had said about her husband: ‘I’m not saying I’m leaving him today, I’m just saying – I ain’t waiting till the cows come home to do it. Every day, I wake up and feel ready to roll, then I go to the grocery store instead. I’m going stir crazy.’ Clearly Loulou did not have sticking power, and was never going to discover what Billie had discovered. That a veteran marriage could be hell, but it could also have shiny moments like this.
‘Mom.’
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘She’s not about to throw up, is she?’ asked Jack.
‘Do you feel sick again, Elisabeth?’
‘No. Yes. A little.’
‘We’ll stop at the next rest area. Ten miles,’ said Jack. ‘Can you wait ten minutes, honey?’
She nodded and closed her eyes.
‘Don’t close your eyes. Look straight ahead and – oh my God. Stop the car, Jack.’
‘Goddammit.’ More cars honking. ‘Did she do it in the bag?’
‘No.’
‘Why not – oh Christ, it’s everywhere.’
‘I didn’t have a bag. Sorry.’
‘Why didn’t she have a bag, Billie?’
‘Because she didn’t, that’s why. Just shut up and give her your handkerchief.’
‘Jesus, why am I always the only one to ever have a handkerchief in this family?’
‘Because you’re so darn perfect, of course.’
Aside from the car overheating twice in the afternoon, and Sam being caught cheating on naming the states by looking at the out of state licence plates, the rest of the trip passed uneventfully. It took eight hours instead of six, but so what. Jack and Billie had used all the usual words with each other and subsided into dulled silence. Sam half read an Archie comic, while Elisabeth half stared at the road. All day she’d kept some distance from Sam, but now she was splayed out so her legs rested against his. The ghost, or idea, of their missing brother skirted round the edges of Billie’s thoughts, but not theirs. No one talked to them about Charlie any more.
By five o’clock, it was not a lot cooler but it was not as glaringly bright and everyone felt more human. Jack especially felt good. He kept thinking about his new twenty-foot sailboat, and wondered which varnish to buy for the decking – the cheap one or the expensive one. And what to call it. Dream Come True? No, that was corny. How about something classier like Nora, from Ulysses? Or Epiphany. God, he loved James Joyce. He’d call his boat Epiphany. You couldn’t get more Joycean than Epiphany, and anyone who didn’t get it, well, that’d be their problem. And he’d get the expensive varnish. Home seemed very far away and the world had shrunk up to the size of his family and thoughts about varnish brands. The drive, which always seemed interminable, now had an end in sight. On the horizon were the minuscule buildings of his mother-in-law’s town.
‘At last,’ said Billie, brushing her hair.
‘At last,’ echoed Sam. ‘I can’t wait.’
‘Huh,’ grunted Elisabeth, stretching her arms above her head. ‘Well, I can. I can wait just fine. I kind of like this right now.’
‘You numbskull,’ said Sam. ‘You just puked your guts out, and now you’re saying you want to keep going?’
‘Well, yeah.’
Jack looked at his daughter in the rear-view mirror. She caught his eyes, stared blankly, then abruptly smiled. He smiled back, and it felt as if there was an adult secret between them.
‘I don’t get you,’ mumbled Sam. ‘You’re nuts.’
‘Ah, leave her alone,’ said Jack, because all of a sudden he felt the same way she did. That actually, he could wait too. The wheels of the car were bumping over the heat cracks in the highway and the air rushing in his window smelled of exhaust fumes and overripe fruit. For the first time this spring, he noticed the poppies; they dotted the verges along the highway, humble wisps of orange. It was good to see them again. His family was safe and near him and quiet, and soon he’d teach them all how to sail. Ernie had been showing him; it was easy. His body felt relaxed and alert now, the same way he’d felt after that first day sailing. Tension and nausea, then a wonderful loosening and energy. Behind him was home, the office, daily commuting, friends; ahead lay white bread salami sandwiches with the crusts cut off like Billie never made them, Easter Sunday Mass, endless sports on television, his mother-in-law bringing him cold beer and the house full of those marshmallow eggs no one ever ate. But right now, just driving the car at dusk, just letting his thoughts float in the haze and not ar
riving yet, well – this would feel fine for ever.
Two Years Earlier
Billie and Jackie
Oct 2nd, 1963, Sacramento
10:29am
After the kids had gone to school, Billie sat at the kitchen table and made a list. Making lists was something Jacko had taught her to do. At first she hadn’t seen the point, but now she was addicted. At the top, in big loopy letters, she neatly wrote:
Things Me & Jackie Kennedy Have in Common
(Then underlined it.)
Things Me & Jackie Kennedy Have in Common
Names – 2 syllables. Both names end in eee sound. Billeee. Jackeee.
2 kids, boy & girl
Kids are two years apart
Caesarean both times
My Charlie. Jackie’s Patrick.
Catholic Church
Camelot – Fav musical
Fathers absent since we were seven. (Jackie’s due to divorce, mine to death.)
One full sibling, a sister (like Jacko too)
Birthdays – 10 months apart, same year
Same patent leather purse. Almost.
Me – Homecoming Queen ’46. Jackie – Debutante of the Year ’47.
Profile. Same chin. Forehead. (well, everyone says so!)
Hair style. Left parting.
Hair texture. Different colour, but same depth of colour, the same thickness.
On the front page of the Sacramento Bee, Jackie Kennedy was wearing a hair clip which was exactly like the one Billie was wearing right this very instant. Clipped to the right side of her head, holding her hair off her forehead.
Same hair clip!
Sixteen similarities. Uncanny, that’s what it was. So not surprising, really, that they were both married to charismatic powerful men. Jacko and John. And wasn’t John sometimes called Jack? Mr MacAlister and President Kennedy. Mrs J. MacAlister and the First Lady. Billie and Jackie!
Okay, so their backgrounds were not similar. And their income. And the Kennedys, it had to be said, were a well-established American dynasty, whereas the MacAlister dynasty was still being created. But the affinity was there, and Billie knew, just knew, that if she and Jackie were to ever meet, they would be instant friends. She felt closer to her than she did to her own sister. Louise, well, of course Billie loved her…but let’s face it, Louise lacked class. Not only did she not aspire to it, she made fun of it!
In the two years since the Kennedys moved into the White House, Billie’s personal style had changed from timidly garish to confidently muted. Corduroy featured a lot now, and 100% cotton had become something to look for on labels. Cotton madras was her new interest, as well as seersucker for hot weather. And if she ever had any more babies (and here, Billie stopped and sighed), she’d name them Caroline and John. And it was a fine time to be Catholic! To sit in a pew every Sunday, with healthy children and a handsome successful husband. Weren’t lots of people on their block the same – solid Catholic families with names like Gilotti and O’Reilly and Cincotta. Okay, MacAlister wasn’t exactly Catholic sounding, but everyone knew Scotland and Ireland were practically the same island. And anyway, her maiden name was Molinelli – very Catholic. The bottom line was, if she wasn’t in the life she was, she would be insanely jealous of herself. Goodness me, she thought giddily, I would hate myself.
A photograph of John Kennedy on his sailboat had been pinned to the kitchen bulletin board for six months. She’d cut it out of Life magazine and Jacko had teased her. Said she had a crush on the President. But now he wanted to get a sailboat too. Not a motorboat, they were tacky. A wooden sailboat, to take his children out on. And Billie would go too, with her Brownie box camera, and take lots of photographs of them all, with the wind filling the sails and their sunburnt freckled faces all beautiful with smiles. God bless families. God bless Catholic families. God bless Catholic families in America.
The MG Jacko drove when Sam was a baby was gone. They had one car again, a green four-year-old Hillman which Jacko used to commute to his new job as sub-editor at the Bee. Oh! Another similarity.
John Kennedy and Jacko – both wore white collars to work.
But unlike John, Jacko’s job involved quite a lot of typing on his Remington, and phoning. And unlike Jackie, Billie did not have servants to clean her house and provide clean clothes for her family. Actually, she didn’t even have a washing machine or a dryer. Ah, the price of living beyond one’s means. But didn’t they own the sweetest little white house on Cherry Blossom Way, at the centre of the coveted Land Park neighbourhood?
White houses
But life behind the facade was hot dogs for dinner, home-sewn dresses and a drawer full of Blue Chip stamps all carefully pasted in books. The Blue Chip Catalogue was her most frequently read book. Their vacations were either trips to her mother’s in Redding, or camping. Camping! Arriving with tired children, everyone cranky from the hot drive and from packing up, and then having to put up the tent and unpack before you did anything else. All that scrabbling around in dirt, picking insects out of food, hearing mosquitoes like jet planes inside the tent.
It suddenly occurred to her that marriage was a bit like their tent. When Jacko brought it home, it had nestled neatly in a shiny clean bag. After the first use, they couldn’t fit the tent back in, no matter how hard they tried. It would not go! And by the fourth use, they’d lost seven pegs, the zip stuck sometimes, and there was a little mould growing in the corner where they’d all slept in a familial heap. Nope! No matter how closely they read the instructions, that darn tent was never true to its promise. And she’d never be able to squeeze the days of her marriage back into that neat orderly way she’d imagined them.
Acceptance of imperfect marriage.
Billie slipped the list into the Blue Chip stamp drawer. Jacko never looked in there.
Twice a week, while the kids were at school, Billie filled a suitcase with dirty clothes and headed to Sunny Suds Laundromat. They’d only lived in this neighbourhood six months; routines like this made it seem much longer. The suitcase was awkward and heavy. She switched hands now and then, so each leg had bruises. Today was hot. Hotter than Piggleston, where they’d been living this time last year. The two apartments they’d briefly rented before buying this house had been much less convenient for the laundromat. It had been a forty-five-minute hike from the first one. She’d hated that apartment. Snot-green stucco, with their apartment on the fifth floor. No elevator and no air conditioning, just a ceiling fan that made an irritating whine. All their boxes had still been in storage, and for months they’d lived out of the suitcases they’d driven down with. Like camping.
Most of those mornings Jacko would shower, while she ironed the shirt she’d washed the night before in the bath. Then she’d serve up eggs and bacon for them all. He’d kiss her goodbye, ruffle the kids’ heads, and go off to his air-conditioned adult world, briefcase swinging to beat the band. He never complained, and she always complained. The kids kept asking for the toys which were still in storage, she had no friends, and Jacko was often out.
The lease had been short – it was more a boarding house really – and they’d moved to a better apartment for a few months, and now they were in their own house, 1910 Cherry Blossom Way. All the boxes had been unpacked and friends had been made. Well, Jacko had some friends at the office, and they’d been to three cocktail parties, at which she’d been able to finally wear that empire waist dress with the poppies, spitting image of the dress Jackie wore to her nephew’s christening. Robert and Ethel’s eighth child. The Robert Kennedys were classy too, but Ethel couldn’t hold a candle to Jackie. It was Billie’s feeling that Ethel was holding Robert back from the political success of his brother. Her eyes were…too small, and she’d let her figure go. She had the look of, not exactly trailer trash, but definitely housing tract. Not that there was anything innately bad about housing tracts. In fact, Billie and Jacko were living in one right now. But at least it was an old one, and the houses had long ceased to be clones of each o
ther. In fact, Billie had fallen in love with 1910 Cherry Blossom Way because it was different from the other houses on the street. For one thing, it had a huge sycamore tree in the front yard, and the attic had been converted into a tiny bedroom with a multi-paned window peeking out to the sycamore branches. There were lemon and orange trees in the small backyard, with grey squirrels continually leaping from branch to house roof to branch. Yes, it had cost too much, barely enough for groceries after the mortgage, but it was worth every penny, every sacrifice.
She was nearly at Sunny Suds, and her arm couldn’t wait to let go of the suitcase. She passed Vic’s Ice-Cream Parlour, and out drifted that song. She paused here, putting down the suitcase. Suddenly, no other songs were on the radio. I want to hold your hand! Just kids, the Beatles. Cute, though, she had to admit. Jackie had admitted to liking them too, just recently. Paul McCartney was twenty-one years old, over a dozen years younger than Billie. This made her feel old. She sighed. The sky was a flat white, too polluted and windless to be blue. She thought the sky looked unwashed. A rush of vanilla-scented cold air hit her from the open door of Vic’s Ice-Cream Parlour. She was accustomed to constantly telling herself: No, not yet. She walked on, her mouth tasting the Jamaican almond fudge she loved, and she didn’t miss a beat, the sweat staining her pretty pink blouse. So self-sacrificing! So mature! So thin and classy! Well, wouldn’t Jackie do the exactly the same? She’d suffered so much, had Jackie, but did you ever hear her moaning about her lost babies? All the miscarriages, the stillborn daughter, the son who died at three days old? Not a word. Always the bright smile, the controlled serenity. Jackie knew how to endure, how to not let life get you down. Darn it, there was no two ways about it: Jackie Kennedy had style.
Wait For Me Jack Page 22