Edge of Eternity (61 page)

“Yes,” George said. “The president has been shot.”

“Is he dead?”

“I don't know.” There was no radio in George's car.

The salesman approached the open window of a Buick. “Is the president dead?”

George did not hear the reply.

The traffic was not moving.

George turned off his engine, jumped out of the car, and started to run.

He was dismayed to realize that he had got out of shape. He always seemed too busy to work out. He tried to think when was the last time he had done some vigorous exercise, and he could not remember. He found himself perspiring and breathing hard. Despite his impatience, he had to alternate jogging with fast walking.

His shirt was soaked with sweat when he reached the White House. Maria was not in the press office. “She went to the National Archives Building to do some research,” said Nelly Fordham, whose face was wet with tears. “She probably hasn't even heard the news yet.”

“Do we know whether the president is dead?”

“Yes, he is,” said Nelly, and she sobbed afresh.

“I don't want Maria to hear it from a stranger,” George said, and he left the building and ran along Pennsylvania Avenue toward the National Archives.

•   •   •

Dimka had been married to Nina for a year, and their child, Grigor, was six months old, when he finally admitted to himself that he was in love with Natalya.

She and her friends frequently went for a drink at the Riverside Bar after work, and Dimka got into the habit of joining the group when Khrushchev did not keep him late. Sometimes it was more than one drink, and often Dimka and Natalya were the last two left.

He found he was able to make her laugh. He was not generally considered a comedian, but he relished the many ironies of Soviet life, and so did she. “A worker showed how a bicycle factory could make mudguards more quickly by molding one long strip of tin, then cutting it, instead of cutting it first, then bending the pieces one by one. He was reprimanded and disciplined for endangering the five-year plan.”

Natalya laughed, opening her wide mouth and showing her teeth. The way she laughed suggested a potential for reckless abandon that made Dimka's heart beat faster. He imagined her throwing her head back like that while they were making love. Then he imagined seeing her laugh like that every day for the next fifty years, and he realized that was the life he wanted.

He did not tell her, though. She had a husband, and seemed to be happy with him; at least, she said nothing bad about him, although she was never in a hurry to go home to him. More importantly, Dimka had a wife and a child, and he owed them his loyalty.

He wanted to say:
I love you. I'm going to leave my family. Will you leave your husband, live with me, and be my friend and lover for the rest of our lives?

Instead he said: “It's late, I'd better go.”

“Let me drive you,” she said. “It's too cold for your motorcycle.”

She pulled up at the corner near Government House. He leaned
across to kiss her good night. She let him kiss her lips, briefly, then pulled back. He got out of the car and went into the building.

On the way up in the elevator he thought about the excuse he would make to Nina for being late. There was a genuine crisis at the Kremlin: this year's grain harvest had been a catastrophe, and the Soviet government was desperately trying to buy foreign wheat to feed its people.

When he entered the apartment, Grigor was asleep and Nina was watching TV. He kissed her forehead and said: “I was kept late at the office, sorry. We had to finish a report on the bad harvest.”

“You shit-faced liar,” said Nina. “Your office has been calling here every ten minutes, trying to find you, to tell you that President Kennedy has been killed.”

•   •   •

Maria's tummy rumbled. She looked at her watch and realized she had forgotten to have lunch. The work she was doing had absorbed her, and for two or three hours no one had come into this area to disturb her. But she was almost done, so she decided to finish off, then get a sandwich.

She bent her head over the old-fashioned ledger she was reading, then looked up again when she heard a noise. She was astonished to see George Jakes come in, panting, his suit jacket wet with perspiration, his eyes a little wild. “George!” she said. “What the heck . . . ?” She stood up.

“Maria,” he said, “I'm so sorry.” He came around the table and put his hands on her shoulders, a gesture that was a little too intimate for their strictly platonic friendship.

“Why are you sorry?” she said. “What have you done?”

“Nothing.” She tried to pull back, but he tightened his grip. “They shot him,” he said.

Maria saw that George was close to tears. She stopped resisting him and stepped closer. “Who was shot?” she said.

“In Dallas,” he said.

Then she began to understand, and a terrible dread rose inside her. “No,” she said.

George nodded. In a quiet voice he said: “The president is dead. I'm so sorry.”

“Dead,” Maria said. “He can't be dead.” Her legs felt weak, and she sank to her knees. George knelt with her and folded her in his arms. “Not my Johnny,” she said, and a huge sob erupted from inside her. “Johnny, my Johnny,” she moaned. “Don't leave me, please. Please, Johnny. Please don't leave.” She saw the world turn gray, she slumped helplessly, then her eyes closed and she lost consciousness.

•   •   •

Onstage at the Jump Club in London, Plum Nellie performed a storming version of “Dizzy, Miss Lizzy” and came off to shouts of: “More!”

Backstage, Lenny said: “That was great, lads, best we've ever played!”

Dave looked at Walli and they both grinned. The group was getting better fast, and every gig was the best ever.

Dave was surprised to find his sister waiting in the dressing room. “How did the play go?” he said. “I'm sorry I couldn't be there.”

“It stopped in the first act,” she said. “President Kennedy has been shot dead.”

“The president!” said Dave. “When did this happen?”

“A couple of hours ago.”

Dave thought of their American mother. “Is Mam upset?”

“Terribly.”

“Who shot him?”

“No one knows. He was in Texas, in a place called Dallas.”

“Never heard of it.”

Buzz, the bass player, said: “What shall we do for an encore?”

Lenny said: “We can't do an encore, it would be disrespectful. President Kennedy has been assassinated. We have to do a minute's silence, or something.”

Walli said: “Or a sad song.”

Evie said: “Dave, you know what we should do.”

“Do I?” He thought for a second, then said: “Oh, yeah.”

“Come on, then.”

Dave went onstage with Evie and plugged in his guitar. They stood at the microphone together. The rest of the group watched from the wings.

Dave spoke into the microphone. “My sister and I are half British, half American, but we feel very American tonight.” He paused. “Most of you probably know by now that President Kennedy has been shot dead.”

He heard several gasps from the audience, indicating that some had not heard, and the room went quiet. “We would like to play a special song now, a song for all of us, but especially for Americans.”

He played a G chord.

Evie sang:

O say can you see, by the dawn's early light,

What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming,

The room was dead silent.

Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight

O'er the ramparts we watch'd were so gallantly streaming?

Evie's voice rose thrillingly.

And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,

Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there,

Several people in the audience were crying openly now, Dave saw.

O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

“Thank you for listening,” said Dave. “And God bless America.”

M
aria was not allowed to go to the funeral.

The day after the assassination was a Saturday, but like most White House staff she went into work, performing her duties in the press office with tears streaming down her face. It was not noticed: half the people there were crying.

She was better off here than at home alone. Work distracted her a little from her grief, and there was no end of work: the world's press wanted to know every detail of the funeral arrangements.

Everything was on TV. Millions of American families sat in front of their sets all weekend. The three networks canceled all their regular programs. The news consisted entirely of stories linked to the assassination, and between bulletins there were documentaries about John F. Kennedy, his life, his family, his career, and his presidency. With merciless pathos they reran the happy footage of Jack and Jackie greeting the crowds at Love Field on Friday morning, an hour before his death. Maria recalled how she had idly asked herself if she would change places with Jackie. Now both of them had lost him.

At midday on Sunday, in the basement of the Dallas police station, the prime suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald, was himself murdered, live on television, by a minor mobster called Jack Ruby; a sinister mystery piled on top of an insupportable tragedy.

On Sunday afternoon Maria asked Nelly Fordham if they needed tickets for the funeral. “Oh, honey, I'm sorry, no one from this office is invited,” Nelly said gently. “Only Pierre Salinger.”

Maria felt panicky. Her heart fluttered. How could she not be there when they lowered the man she loved into his grave? “I have to go!” she said. “I'll speak to Pierre.”

“Maria, you can't go,” Nelly said. “You absolutely can't.”

Something in Nelly's tone rang an alarm bell. She was not just giving advice. She almost sounded scared.

Maria said: “Why not?”

Nelly lowered her voice. “Jackie knows about you.”

This was the first time anyone in the office had acknowledged that Maria had a relationship with the president; but in her distress Maria hardly noticed that milestone. “She can't possibly know! I was always careful.”

“Don't ask me how, I have no idea.”

“I don't believe you.”

Nelly might have been offended, but she just shook her head sadly. “From what little I understand of such things, I believe the wife always knows.”

Maria wanted to deny it indignantly, but then she thought of the secretaries Jenny and Jerry, and the socialites Mary Meyer and Judith Campbell, and others. Maria was sure they all had sexual relations with President Kennedy. She had no proof, but when she saw them with him she just sort of knew. And Jackie had feminine intuition too.

Which meant Maria could not go to the funeral. She saw that now. The widow could not be forced to face her husband's mistress at such a time. Maria understood that with total, miserable certainty.

So she stayed at home on Monday to watch it on TV.

The body had been lying in state in the rotunda at the Capitol. At half past ten the flag-draped coffin was carried out of the building and placed on a caisson, a type of gun carriage, drawn by six white horses. The procession then headed toward the White House.

Two men stood out in the funeral cortege, being inches taller than the rest: French president Charles de Gaulle, and the new American president, Lyndon Johnson.

Maria was all cried out. She had been sobbing for almost three days. Now when she looked at the television she just saw a pageant, a show organized for the benefit of the world. For her this was not about drums and flags and uniforms. She had lost a man; a warm, smiling, sexy man; a man with a bad back and faint wrinkles in the corners of his hazel eyes and a set of rubber ducks on the edge of his bathtub. She would never look at him again. Life without him stretched long and empty ahead of her.

When the cameras zoomed in on Jackie, her beautiful face visible despite the veil, Maria thought that she, too, looked numb. “I wronged you,” Maria said to the face on the screen. “God forgive me.”

She was startled by a ring at the door. It was George Jakes. He said: “You shouldn't be alone for this.”

She felt a surge of helpless gratitude. When she really needed a friend, George was there. “Come in,” she said. “I'm sorry I look like a slattern.” She was wearing a nightdress and an old bathrobe.

“You look fine to me.” George had seen her worse than shabby.

He had brought a bag of Danish pastries. Maria put them on a plate. She had not had breakfast but, all the same, she did not eat a pastry. She did not feel hungry.

A million people lined the route, according to the television commentary. The coffin was taken from the White House to St. Matthew's Cathedral, where there was a mass.

At twelve noon there was a five-minute silence, and traffic stopped all over America. The cameras showed crowds standing silent on city streets. It was strange to be in Washington and hear no cars outside. Maria and George stood in front of the TV set in her little apartment. They bowed their heads. George took her hand and held it. She felt a wave of affection for him.

When the five-minute silence ended, Maria made coffee. Her appetite returned, and they ate the pastries. No cameras were allowed in the church, so for a while there was nothing to watch. George talked to distract her, and she appreciated it. He said: “Will you stay in the press office?”

She had hardly thought about it, but she knew the answer. “No. I'm going to leave the White House.”

“Good idea.”

“Apart from everything else, I don't see a future for myself in the press office. They never promote women, and I'm not going to spend my life as a researcher. I'm in government because I want to get things done.”

“There's an opening in the Justice Department that might suit you.” George spoke as if the thought had just occurred to him, but Maria suspected he had planned to say this. “Dealing with corporations that disobey government regulations. They call it compliance. Could be interesting.”

“Do you think I'd have a chance?”

“With a degree from Chicago Law and two years' experience in the White House? Absolutely.”

“They don't hire many Negroes, though.”

“You know something? I think Lyndon may change that.”

“Really? He's a Southerner!”

“Don't prejudge him. To be honest, our people have treated him badly. Bobby hates him, don't ask me why. Maybe because he calls his dick Jumbo.”

Maria giggled for the first time in three days. “You're kidding.”

“Apparently it's large. If he wants to intimidate someone, he pulls it out and says: ‘Meet Jumbo.' That's what people say.”

Men told such stories, Maria knew. It might be true and it might not. She grew serious again. “Everyone in the White House thinks Johnson's behavior has been callous, especially toward the Kennedys.”

“I don't buy that. Look, when the president had just died and no one knew what to do next, America was terribly vulnerable. What if the Soviets had chosen that moment to take over West Berlin? We are the government of the most powerful country in the world, and we have to do our job, without a second's pause, no matter how deep our sadness. Lyndon picked up the reins immediately, and a darn good thing he did, because no one else was thinking about it.”

“Not even Bobby?”

“Least of all Bobby. I love the man, you know that, but he surrendered to his grief. He's comforting Jackie and he's organizing his brother's funeral, and he's not governing America. Frankly, most of our people are just as bad. They may think Lyndon is being callous. I think he's being presidential.”

At the end of the mass, the coffin was brought out of the church and again placed on the caisson for the journey to Arlington National Cemetery. This time the mourners traveled in a long line of black limousines. The procession passed the Lincoln Memorial and crossed the Potomac River.

Maria said: “What will Johnson do about the civil rights bill?”

“That's the big question. Right now the bill is doomed. It's with the rules committee, whose chairman, Howard Smith, won't even say when they will begin discussing it.”

Maria thought of the Sunday school bombing. How could anyone side with those Southern racists? “Can't his committee overrule him?”

“Theoretically, yes, but when the Republicans ally with the Southern Democrats they have a majority, and they always defeat civil rights, no matter what the public thinks. I don't know how these people can pretend they believe in democracy.”

On television, Jackie Kennedy lit an eternal flame to burn perpetually over the grave. George took Maria's hand again, and she saw tears in his eyes. They watched in silence as the casket was slowly lowered into the ground.

Jack Kennedy was gone.

Maria said: “Oh, God, what will happen to us all now?”

“I don't know,” said George.

•   •   •

George left Maria reluctantly. She was sexier than she knew in her cotton nightdress and her old velvet bathrobe, with her hair naturally curly and untidy instead of laboriously straightened. But she no longer needed him: she was planning to meet Nelly Fordham and some other girls from the White House at a Chinese restaurant that evening for a private wake, so she would not be alone.

George had dinner with Greg. They ate at the dark-paneled Occidental Grill, a stone's throw from the White House. George smiled at his father's appearance: as always, he wore expensive clothes as if they were rags. His slim black satin tie was awry, his shirt cuffs were unbuttoned, and there was a whitish mark on the lapel of his black suit. Fortunately, George had not inherited his slovenliness.

“I thought we might need cheering up,” said Greg. He loved high-class restaurants and refined cuisine, and this was a trait George
had
inherited. They ordered lobster and Chablis.

George had felt closer to his father since the Cuban missile crisis, when the threat of imminent annihilation had caused Greg to open his heart. George had always felt, as an illegitimate child, that he was an embarrassment, and that when Greg played the role of father he did so dutifully but without enthusiasm. However, since that surprising conversation he had understood that Greg really loved him. Their
relationship continued to be unusual and rather distant, but George now believed it was founded on something genuine and lasting.

While they were waiting for their food, George's friend Skip Dickerson approached their table. He was dressed for the funeral in a dark suit and a black tie, which looked dramatic against his white-blond hair and pale skin. In his Southern accent, he drawled: “Hi, George. Good evening, Senator. May I join you for just a minute?”

George said: “This is Skip Dickerson, who works for Lyndon. For the president, I should say.”

“Pull up a chair,” said Greg.

Skip drew up a red leather chair, leaned forward, and spoke intensely to Greg. “The president knows you're a scientist.”

Now, thought George, what the heck is this about? Skip never wasted time in small talk.

Greg smiled. “My major in college was physics, yes.”

“You graduated summa cum laude from Harvard.”

“Lyndon is more impressed by that sort of thing than he should be.”

“But you were one of the scientists who developed the atom bomb.”

“I worked on the Manhattan Project, that's true.”

“President Johnson wants to make sure you approve of the plans for the Lake Erie study.”

George knew what Skip was talking about. The federal government was financing a waterfront study for the city of Buffalo that would probably lead to a major harbor construction project. It was worth millions of dollars to several companies in upstate New York.

Greg said: “Well, Skip, we'd like to be sure the study isn't going to be pruned in the budget.”

“You can count on that, sir. The president feels this project is top priority.”

“I'm glad to hear that, thank you.”

The conversation had nothing to do with science, George felt sure. It was about what congressmen called “pork”—the allocation of federal spending projects to favored states.

Skip said: “You're welcome, and enjoy your dinner. Oh, before I go—can we count on you to support the president on this darn wheat bill?”

The Soviets had had a bad harvest, and they were desperate for
grain. As part of the process of trying to get along a little better with the Soviet Union, President Kennedy had sold them surplus American wheat on credit.

Greg sat back and spoke thoughtfully. “Members of Congress feel that if the Communists can't feed their people it's not up to us to help them out. Senator Mundt's wheat bill would cancel Kennedy's deal, and I kind of think Mundt is right.”

“And President Johnson agrees with you!” said Skip. “He sure doesn't want to help Communists. But this will be the first vote after the funeral. Do we really want it to be a slap in the face for the dead president?”

George put in: “Is that really President Johnson's concern? Or does he want to send a message saying that he's in charge of foreign policy now, and he's not going to have Congress second-guess every nickel-and-dime decision he makes?”

Greg chuckled. “Sometimes I forget how smart you are, George. That's exactly what Lyndon wants.”

Skip said: “The president wants to work hand in glove with Congress on foreign policy. But he would really appreciate being able to count on your support tomorrow. He feels it would be a terrible dishonor to the memory of President Kennedy if the wheat bill passes.”

Neither man was willing to say what was really going on here, George noted. The simple truth was that Johnson was threatening to cancel the Buffalo dock project if Greg voted for the wheat bill.

And Greg caved. “Please tell the president that I understand his concern and he can count on my vote,” he said.