“Sometime in spring. I don’t really know when it happened, so . . .” Claire held up her hands in defeat.
Connie nodded again. Something in the way she looked at Claire, appraising her, made Claire feel like she knew everything about her.
“So sad about Birdy,” Connie said, and Claire could see that she really did feel bad.
“What was she like?” Claire asked. “When Peter was young?”
“Glamorous,” Connie said. “Exotic. She didn’t look like any of the other mothers on the block, I can tell you. But older too, which we found really curious.”
“Peter always says she was, I don’t know, shy?”
“Maybe,” Connie said, frowning. “We all thought she was just kind of fancy, you know? Our mothers were making spaghetti and meatballs for dinner and Birdy was cooking these little bites of chicken and exotic vegetables in a wok. You know what a wok is?”
Vivien admitted she wasn’t sure.
“It’s like a big steel bowl that you put on the stove and cook food in really fast. We used to all stand around and watch her. And the smells! Ginger and I don’t know what.” Connie shook her head, remembering. “We all wished she was our mother, in a way.”
“So she was fun to be around then?”
“Not fun,” Connie said. “Just different from anybody I ever knew before. She was always kind of sad, even when she smiled. My mother said that once and I realized she was right. ‘Birdy,’ my mother told me, ‘has suffered something great and mysterious.’ That’s what we all thought. But she loves Pete. Whenever he came inside, her face lit up. We could see how pretty she must have been once.”
“What color do you think Jackie will wear tomorrow?” Claire asked, suddenly wanting to change the subject.
Connie looked surprised. “Um . . . red?”
“Really?” Claire said politely. Jackie was not going to wear red to the inauguration. Red was too déclassé. “My neighbor Dot is having a little contest—”
“The dryer lady.”
“What? Oh. Oh, well, yes. All of the ladies in the neighborhood cast a vote on what color Jackie is going to wear and whoever chooses the right one wins.”
“Wins what?” Connie said, frowning.
“It’s silly but the winner gets a little party with daiquiris and tea sandwiches and her favorite dessert. Like queen for the day.” Dot had even made a tiara out of cardboard, spray painting it gold and covering it in glitter.
“So what color did you pick?”
“Pink,” Claire said.
Connie wrinkled her nose in distaste. “She won’t wear pink,” she said.
“Well, I think she will. With her dark hair, she’d look beautiful in pink.”
“I think she’s homely,” Connie said. “Too horsey.”
Claire couldn’t think what to say. Jackie Kennedy homely? No one thought that. She was beautiful and stylish and sophisticated. Everyone Claire knew wanted to be just like Jackie. Dot and Roberta and Trudy had all gotten their hair cut like Jackie’s. Trudy read in Time magazine that Jackie spoke fluent French, and she went to the library and got French tapes so that she could learn too. She peppered her conversation with French phrases, and ended her sentences by saying, “n’est-ce pas?”
“Her jaw,” Connie was saying, “is too big.” Connie jutted her own jaw and lower teeth forward to demonstrate. Laughing, she poured herself more scotch, and topped off Claire’s glass too. “She’s from here, you know.”
“Well,” Claire said, “Newport.”
Connie rolled her eyes. “Okay,” she said. “That’s still Rhode Island. Her father, what do they call him? Black Jack or something? He’s a drunk and a gambler and a womanizer. It’s true.”
“I don’t know anything about that,” Claire said.
“I don’t like womanizers,” Connie said. “Thou shalt not commit adultery, right?”
Again Claire got the feeling that Connie knew. She fussed with the buttons that ran down the front of her nightgown, avoiding Connie.
“I told Jimmy if I ever caught him with another woman, I’d cut his balls off.”
Claire looked up.
“I would too,” Connie said evenly.
“I don’t think we can say what we would do in hypothetical situations,” Claire said. Her mouth and throat had gone dry. “We just don’t know until it happens.”
Saying this, she thought of the look on Peter’s face that day. She had opened her eyes and caught sight of Peter over her lover’s shoulder. He was on top of her and they were naked and Peter stood in the doorway of Kathy’s room looking surprised, as if he could not make the details add up.
“Really?” Connie said. “Maybe you don’t know what you’d do, hypothetically, but I would cut his balls off.”
“Well,” Claire said.
“Did you ever meet Angie Fiori?”
Claire shook her head.
“Lived down the street. Pete knows her. We all went to high school together. Anyway, you’re not going to believe this, but she was doing her brother-in-law.”