“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 thought. “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