The Editor

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 the 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.

I shrug and grin more. I must look like the Joker. Or at least Jack Nicholson.

“You’re not going to defend him, I hope.”

“Clinton? Nope.” Then I burst out laughing. It’s orgasmic, like a release for the whole day.

“What, then?”

Daniel and I met when we were both trying to get rush tickets to the Broadway revival of Cabaret. I made a crack about Joel Grey getting top billing for playing the emcee. I mean, he had won an Oscar for the role, but he was still the emcee. Daniel overheard me gripe and said it was like reviving Grease as a starring vehicle for Doody and I laughed. I had noticed him earlier on line for the box office and wanted to sleep with him the moment I laid eyes on him. It was the way he jumped up and down while pleading for a ticket, any ticket, like a dog on its hind legs, begging for scraps. We were unsuccessful that day but left far from empty-handed.

I snap off the TV.

“I was watching that,” he protests.

“It’s CNN. It’s on all day.” I take off my gloves and my coat and throw them on the chair. “I think I sold my book.”

Daniel stares at the blank TV screen until that sinks in. “Wait, you what?”

“Well, the offer will go to my agent and I’m sure there will be some back-and-forth and we’ll have to come to some agreement on terms. He may be on the phone with them now. Did Allen call? And there’s work to be done on it still. Hard work, she called it. On the ending, mostly.” I bite my lip. “But … yeah. I think I sold my book.”

Daniel’s legs swing around and his feet plant firmly on the ground. He pushes himself up with his fists and hovers just over the couch, preparing to leap up if necessary. “To a publisher?”

“To a doorstop salesman.” If it’s going to take him so long to catch on to this bit of the news, the rest of it will be a Sisyphean task of explanation on my part.

“Obviously to a publisher. To a good publisher?” Daniel doesn’t leap, but at least he stands. “Who?”

The grin is back. This is going to knock his socks off. “I sold it to a giant.”

“A giant,” he says skeptically.

“That’s right.”

“A literary giant?”

“A GIANT giant.”

Daniel crosses over to me and puts his hands on my shoulders, concerned. I peripherally glance down at his hands. “Wait, I’ve heard this before,” he says. “You sold your book for a handful of magic beans.”

Daniel is going off the deep end. “What?”

“And we no longer have a cow. But I shouldn’t worry, because you’re going to grow a beanstalk!”

“No. Stop it. Not a giant. An icon. But I’m sure she hates that word. She’s a really big person.”

“Like, obese?”

This is coming out all wrong. “Okay, I’m ready to move on from this part. Jackie. I sold my book to Jackie!”

Daniel thinks on this for a minute. “Karen’s friend? The lesbian who works at Reader’s Digest?”

“KENNEDY. Jackie. Kennedy.”

He freezes. Finally. The reaction I was looking for. “Oh,” he says, quietly. But he’s still not quite there.

“Oh …” I repeat. And then I coax, “Na-ssis.”

Finally, magic happens. In unison: “Jackie … Kennedy … Onassis.”

It’s just like out of a movie, us saying it together: a scene that would strain credulity but would still be an audience favorite and get high marks in test screenings.

“Get out!” Daniel removes his hands from my shoulders and pushes me in the chest. Hard.

“Ow.”

“You’re kidding.”

“You just punched me in the sternum.”

“Jackie fucking Kennedy.”

“Onassis. Except I don’t think that’s her middle name. And she says Jacqueline, but like in the French pronunciation.”

“You’re joking.”

“Non, non,” I say, mustering my best French. “Je ne …” I can’t think of the word. “Joke pas.”

He looks at me, scrutinizing my face, just as he did the first time I told him I loved him, to see if I am recklessly toying with his emotions or if I’m indeed telling the truth. He scans my eyes, perhaps to check if my pupils are dilated in the throes of some drug-fueled hallucination. At last he smiles, a recognition that I am of sound mind, just as he did upon I love you.

“Oh my God! When do you meet her?”

“I just came from there.”

“From where?”

“From meeting her. At Doubleday.”

“Her office. You just came from there.” This is two steps forward and one step back. I try to be patient; it took me time to catch on to all this and it happened with me in the room. “You just entered our apartment door, coming straight from Jackie fucking Kennedy’s office.”

“Yes. Well, no. A conference room. Her office was too small.”

“Her office is too … small.”

“That’s what she said, yes.”

“She’s the widow of Aristotle Onassis, who was, for a time, the richest man on the planet.”

I fail to make the connection. “So?”

“She could probably buy Doubleday. And the building it’s in. But you’re telling me her office is small?”

I see his point, but I can actually answer this one. “She doesn’t want to buy Doubleday. She doesn’t want special treatment.”

“She told you that?”

I try to recall our exact conversation. She said something along those lines. And could she buy Doubleday? I seem to remember something about Onassis’s daughter getting the money. “We didn’t go over her financials or anything. It’s all kind of a blur, to be honest.”

“But you know this because you just came from there.”

“Exactly.”

“And you had a meeting—not in her office, which is small, but in a conference room, where she made an offer to buy your book.”

“It took me a while too. You’re doing great.” Daniel rolls his eyes. He thinks I’m being patronizing, but I’m really not. I’m being sincere. So I wrap my arms around him, nuzzle my face in his shoulder, and excitedly scream.

“Did you just spit on my shirt?” He stretches the fabric for evidence.

“Daniel! Focus!”

He returns his attention to me. “So. What did you talk about? You and the former First Lady.”

“I asked her about Charles de Gaulle.”

“The airport?” Daniel peels me off of him.

“The French president.” I bang my head against his shoulder several times, embarrassed.

“As in how he’s doing? Because I think Charles de Gaulle is dead.”

I laugh, because that’s the man I fell in love with. The man who makes me laugh every night before we fall asleep holding hands. “I asked if he was tall.” I kind of throw my hands up as if to say, What else are you supposed to ask her about? and also, I know! in recognition of my own ridiculousness.

“You asked her a question that rhymed?” Daniel is incredulous.

“I don’t think I phrased it as a couplet.”

“But it was about the physical stature of the former president of France.”

“I couldn’t think of what else to say!”

“And that’s what popped in your mind. Not ‘What do you do in your spare time? Is that an original Oleg Cassini design you’re wearing? Do you have any shirtless pictures of your son?’”

“Who is Oleg Cassini?”

“My point is—”

“Your point is clear,” I interrupt. “But what else are you supposed to say to someone who wants to publish your book?”

Daniel takes a lap around our minuscule living room. Since the couch and the coffee table and the TV and the one accent chair we found on the curb near Ninth and Forty-Third take up most of the space, he basically turns in a very tight circle, careful not to trip on the edge of the oriental rug, which is folded in half because it’s too big for the room. When he stops he says, “What I don’t get is why. Why does she want to publish your book?”

I mime a dagger going into my heart.

“Oh, come on. I don’t mean it like that. I’ve read your book. I love your book!”

“But you can’t imagine anyone wanting to publish it.”

“In fact, I can. I just didn’t think she published fiction.”

“It’s a memoir. Sort of. Just fictionalized.”

“It’s a novel, genius, and I didn’t think she did that.”

“What did you think she did?”

“I don’t know. Art books.”

I blanch at the thought, but I don’t know why. If you asked me yesterday what kind of books Jackie Kennedy published I would have had no idea. I had only a vague recollection that she even worked in publishing. Today I have no sense of her list either, but I’m feeling oddly defensive of it.

“You know,” Daniel continues. “Coffee-table books. Like on the history of tatting.”

It’s infuriating at times, the things he knows. In the middle of our worst arguments he’ll produce a fact that makes me want to hit him in the face with a shovel.

Daniel can read my bewilderment. “Lacemaking.”

“The history of lace?” The idea is almost absurd.

“The history of making lace.”

I glare at my boyfriend. “You frighten me.”

Daniel does another turn in place, the way a dog might before lying down.

“Well, I don’t know what to tell you other than she’s interested in publishing my book. We’re going to work on it. Together.”

Daniel chews the inside of his cheek. “And what if she wants to change it?”

“I imagine she will want to change it. That’s her job. It’s called editing.”

“But what if she wants to change it and you don’t agree with how she wants to change it, but you can’t say anything because she’s Jackie fucking Kennedy?”

“You’ve really got to stop calling her that.”

“I’m serious. What if she wants to set the story on Cape Cod?”

“You could try being excited for me.”

“What if she wants to set the story on Cape Cod and add schooner racing as a leitmotif because that’s what she and Ethel did off of Nantucket.”

“She and Ethel discussed leitmotif?”

“No. Raced their … lady schooners.”

I want to laugh but also bang my head against the wall. “Please don’t say ‘lady schooners’ again.”

“But …”

“She doesn’t.”

“You just know.”

I nod. I don’t know how else to explain it to anyone who wasn’t there. We talked a little about characters and relationships and motivation, and I know we will talk more. And even if we hadn’t, we definitely discussed my ability to tell her no.

Daniel finally relents, his engines out of steam. “Well, congratulations. I mean it. Bravo.” This time he hugs me.

“Thank you.” This is what I’ve wanted. I grip him tight. His T-shirt smells like dryer sheets from the fluff-and-fold we splurge on sometimes when we have money. But more than that. It smells like him. Daniel breaks the hug first to look me square in the eyes and I bite my lip to avoid a toothy grin.

“You had me going there for a moment,” he says. “The bit about Charles de Gaulle was a nice touch.”

Huh?

“Can you imagine if you ever did meet her and that’s what you asked?”

“I did meet her and that is what I asked.”

Daniel laughs. “Is Charles de Gaulle tall? Was he on the ball or off the wall? Did you two break bread on the National Mall? Tell me, Jackie, is the frog the opposite of small?”

I punch Daniel in the arm. Normally when I do this it’s meant to be playful. This time I’m not so sure. “I asked that for my mother. She used to talk about the presidential visit to Paris like she was there and not stuck in rural New York with three children under the age of ten. I knew she would love whatever the answer was. Oh! And there’s a whole story about the Mona Lisa that I can’t wait to tell her.”

“Your mother …” Daniel says.

“You may remember her. You’ve been introduced on numerous occasions.”

“Your mother, who has adored the Kennedys for most of her life.”

Oh, shit.

“Your Irish Catholic mother whom you wrote a not entirely flattering, although, to be fair, not entirely unflattering, book about? The one who named you Francis? The one who will have a book about her edited by Jackie Kennedy?”

At least he doesn’t say “fucking” this time.

And then it hits me. As frustrated as I have been with Daniel for not immediately getting it, there are layers to this bonanza that even I have yet to process. I’m still scooping my chip through the top layer of a fourteen-layer dip. There are thirteen more layers of mush and fattening sludge to get through before I reach the bottom. As I chew on that image I realize it’s a horrible metaphor—with each passing moment, I feel more like the dip, in another sense of the word.

“Come here.”

Daniel motions for me to step closer, but I’m frozen in place.

“Come. Here.”

I take two steps in his direction and he hugs me again, this time for real. “You really did this. You really met Jackie Kennedy.” He pauses, the truth now undeniable. He cups the back of my head, massaging my scalp.

“I thought you didn’t believe me.”

“I do now! It’s written all over your face. You bastard.” I can feel him smile, his cheek pressed against mine. “I’m so proud of you.”

He squeezes me even tighter.

“What’s more, I think this is a terrific marriage.”

“You don’t believe in marriage,” I say, halfheartedly. I’m hundreds of miles away.

“I don’t believe in monogamy and the subjugation of women, but I’m not so worried in this case.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“This could be a great creative marriage.” He leans back to see if I’m paying attention. “You’ve worked so hard. Been so disciplined. This is your moment. I’m really happy for you.” He musses my hair. “Seriously, though. How are you going to tell your mother?”

“I don’t know.” I’m certain the words fall out of my mouth, but in my head I just say Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, over and over again until my mind goes dark.

FIVE

I wake to the sound of my mother crying. I grasp and find one of the buttons sewn on the mattress, the one that I cling to when I wake from nightmares of monsters grabbing my feet, but the button fails to provide familiar comfort for a simple reason—I’ve never heard my mother cry. Not like this. And it’s more frightening than any demon.

“Mom?” I call, but no one answers.

I study the contents of my bedroom in the morning light to distract myself. I can see my dresser and my toys and the needlepoint fire engine my grandmother stitched. The curtains flutter and float on the breeze sneaking in the open window. I know where I am and I know my name and that I am seven years old and I’m comforted by at least that much. Still, I feel apprehension, bordering on anxiety—what news could this crying possibly bring?

I look down under the bed like I always do to make sure it’s safe before planting my feet on the floor, and slowly slink out of my room. My mother is in the living room chair where my father usually sits, smoking a cigarette. She’s watching our small TV while clutching a mug, as she does in winter when she wants to warm her hands. The news people on the screen seem especially somber, more so than usual. The volume is low and I can’t make out their words, but their expressions need no interpretation.

“Mom.” I say it again, real quiet this time, in case I am not supposed to see this.

I fidget with the snaps on my pajama pants, grasping for an activity so that I’ll appear casual when I am eventually seen (and I will be seen). I count the seconds, as I somehow know they are the precious foundation of a future important memory; the more seconds I can count, the stronger the memory will be. There won’t be many. My mother has eyes on all sides of her head.

… nine … ten … eleven … twelve …

“You should be getting dressed for school.” Her head remains perfectly still, encased in a cloud of dancing smoke.