by Hood, Ann
On the television, the presidential motorcade moved slowly up Pennsylvania Avenue. Claire saw the car with JFK and Jackie come into view. He wore a silk top hat. Jackie wore a hat too, a seamless wool felt one in taupe. Taupe? Claire thought. She strained to see if she could tell what color Jackie’s outfit was yet. But she couldn’t make out anything but their beautiful faces smiling out beneath their hats. Roberta had thought Jackie wouldn’t wear a hat at all, even though all of the other women had insisted that protocol demanded it. And here she was in a hat tipped to the back of her head rather than sitting straight on top. Claire smiled to herself. Now they would all have to start wearing their hats that way.
“She’s hanging in there still,” the man beside her said.
At first Claire didn’t recognize him, but then she realized this was the doctor they’d spoken to earlier.
“Doctor!” she blurted. “My goodness, I almost forgot. I came here to get you.”
He glanced at the television, and then back at Claire.
“She spoke to us,” Claire said. “She sat up and spoke.”
Once again, the doctor glanced at the TV.
Then he sighed. “Let’s go take a look,” he said.
As Claire and Dr. Spirito walked down the hallway, Claire begged off, pointing to the ladies’ room.
“Of course, of course,” Dr. Spirito said, continuing on his way.
But instead of going into the ladies’ room, Claire ducked into one of the phone booths that lined the wall. Inside, she sat on the small stool and emptied her change purse. Almost five dollars in nickels and dimes. Surely that would be enough to call Rose. The idea had struck her as soon as she saw the bank of phone booths, their wooden doors lined up in a neat row. Rose had popped into her mind so frequently since they’d left yesterday that Claire decided to call her old roommate.
The operator found Rose’s number in New London and told Claire how much money to deposit. Like magic, there was a brief pause, then the shrill ring of the phone in her ear.
“Hello,” Rose answered, her voice the same husky one Claire used to envy.
“Rose, it’s Claire Fontaine,” Claire said, returning to her maiden name easily.
“Claire!” Rose shrieked.
Then, away from the receiver, she called, “Honey, it’s Claire Fontaine on the line,” and Claire heard Ed exclaiming what a wonderful surprise this was and how the hell was old Claire?
Claire had stood up for Rose and Ed at their wedding, and Rose had done the same for hers six months later. That was the last time they’d seen each other. Ed wrote Christmas letters, long funny ones about his layovers with TWA and what Rose had redecorated that year and which exotic location they’d hiked or biked, Ireland and Argentina and Greece. At first, Claire had sent Christmas cards, beautiful paper cuts of snowflakes or winter scenes, a quick note written inside, a photo of Kathy in a baby Santa suit trimmed in white fake fur one year, the next a snapshot of her in the snow in her red snowsuit. But nothing this past Christmas. Claire had been too overwhelmed by everything that had happened to pretend they were still a happy family.
“It is so funny that you’re calling today,” Rose was saying. “Ed and I were just talking about you after the news last night.”
“News?”
“Aren’t you still down in Alexandria, Virginia?” Rose asked. “We didn’t get a card from you at Christmas—”
“I know,” Claire said, remembering how in his Christmas letter this last time, Ed had actually written in rhyme. “I’m sorry. Life has been—”
“Well, then you know about that boy who was kidnapped down there,” Rose said.
“Dougie Daniels? Oh, Rose, it was just awful. He lived two streets away from us. In fact, I saw the car that afternoon.”
“She saw the car that took that boy,” Rose said, away from the phone again.
“No shit,” Claire heard Ed say.
“But you didn’t hear that they caught the man?” Rose said to Claire.
“What? They did?” Claire said. Odd that Dot hadn’t mentioned that when they’d spoken earlier.
“He lived in . . . where did he live, Ed?” Ed’s reply was muffled. But then Rose said, “He lived in Arlington. The Shirley Park Apartments. Do you know them?”
“No.”
“Apparently he was some kind of a handyman there. Franklin Smythe. Not Smith. Smythe.”
Claire shook her head. “Such news,” she said.
“His picture’s been plastered all over the newspapers. And they showed him on Huntley-Brinkley last night. Gorgeous.”
“What?”
“He’s gorgeous,” Rose said. “Looks like a movie star. Like that young actor. Ed?” she called again away from the phone. “Who’s that actor I like so much? The young guy?”
“Robert Wagner?” Ed said.
“No, not Robert Wagner. I’ll think of it as soon as I hang up,” Rose said, back to Claire now. “Gorgeous,” she said again.
“Wait until Peter hears.”
“Is Peter there?” Rose asked.
“That’s the thing. We’re at the hospital in Rhode Island. His mother,” she added.
“As I remember,” Rose said, “I didn’t much care for her. Kind of stuck-up. Pretty, but kept to herself.”
“I just thought that since we were so close, I should call,” Claire said.
“Did you have to drive in that blizzard?”
“We did. And I’m pregnant. Fat and swollen and uncomfortable,” Claire said.
“Again?” Rose laughed. “Do you two know what’s causing them?”
Claire laughed along with Rose. But the laughter seemed to strangle her, and she coughed to clear her throat and before she knew it she was crying.
“What’s the matter?” Rose was asking, but Claire couldn’t find her voice.
“Can I do anything?” Rose asked.
Claire shook her head, as if Rose could actually see her. Claire thought of all of Rose’s flippant advice, delivered so matter-of-factly, about affairs and blow jobs and men and life. She tried to think of the question she needed an answer to, something that Rose might be able to know how to handle. An affair, yes. But getting caught like that. Being pregnant now.
“Oh,” Claire said finally, “it’s all such a mess.”
“Did he cheat on you?” Rose said quietly, and Claire could imagine her friend stretching the cord of the phone as far as she could so that Ed wouldn’t hear. “Is that it? I know some women get pregnant when they catch their husbands. It’s a way to keep him, they think.”
Claire laughed.
“What?” Rose said.
“Rosie,” Claire said, still laughing, “the thing is, I had the affair—”
“What?”
“—and he found us together and now I’m pregnant—”
“Claire,” Rose said, “I don’t know what to say.”
“You always said it was all right. That affairs were all right.”
“That was before I got married, I guess,” Rose said, her tone no longer warm and caring.
“But, Rose—”
“I think you’d better get ahold of yourself,” Rose said. “Jesus, Claire. You’re Peter’s wife. You’re a mother.”
Claire rested her head against the wall. Bored people had carved their initials in the wood. Someone had written HELP!!!! in pen. The hot, airless phone booth reeked of perfume and sweat mixed with the hospital odors. She tried to picture Rose on the other end of the phone, in her home in Connecticut. Hadn’t she told Claire once that she could see the ocean from her living room window? Is that where she stood now, her face creased with judgment, Ed looming somewhere in the background?
“This baby,” Rose began, but she stopped herself.
“Rose,” Claire said, breathing in the strange phone booth smells. “Maybe I could come and visit you. I would like that.”
There was a silence that seemed to go on forever.
“Rose?” Claire said.
“
That would be swell. But Ed’s got a flight to Rome and I think I’m going to go along.”
“Oh.”
“Remember that crazy place where we used to get Chanel bags? Down that alley?”
“I should hang up,” Claire said.
“I can get you one, if you want,” Rose said. A peace offering. “Nothing cheers a girl up like a new bag.”
“Thanks,” Claire said.
After she hung up, Claire sat in the phone booth, her head pressed against that wall, taking slow deep breaths.
She didn’t know how long she stayed there before the accordion door opened.
“Oops,” a man said. “I didn’t know you were in here.” He was holding a jar of dimes.
“I’m finished,” Claire said.
“You sure?”
“Yes,” she said, standing.
Her pregnant belly made it hard for her to squeeze past him. For an awkward moment they stood wedged half in and half out. Then the man angled his body, making room for Claire to leave.
Dr. Spirito and Peter stood in the hallway outside her mother-in-law’s room.
“I can’t be optimistic at this point,” the doctor was saying when Claire approached them.
“But she sat up,” Peter said, and the desperateness in his voice made Claire want to go to him and wrap him in her arms.
Peter looked at Claire and said, “She just asked for a cup of Darjeeling tea and some cinnamon toast.”
“I don’t have a crystal ball,” Dr. Spirito said. “I wish I did. The damage to her heart is substantial.”
“I’m sorry,” Claire told the doctor.
Peter turned to her, his eyes hard. “Why are you sorry?”
“I just meant . . .” Claire began. But what did she mean?
“Look,” the doctor said, “why don’t you both just come upstairs, watch the inauguration. Then go home and rest up. See where we are tomorrow.”
“That’s a good idea,” Claire said. “We don’t want to miss his speech.”
“Fine,” Peter said.
He hesitated. “Is it all right to just leave her?”
“She’s a bit confused,” the doctor said. “Not really dementia, but more like temporary amnesia. The nurse will keep her company, try to get her back to 1961. She talked about some poor kid who died of the Spanish flu, and taking the train to Denver, and all sorts of things from the past.”
“Are you sure it’s temporary?” Claire asked.
“I’ve seen it go both ways with old folks.”
Amnesia, Claire thought. It didn’t sound like a bad thing to her.
Crowded into that hospital solarium, everyone’s eyes fixed on the television that hung in a corner of the room, Claire imagined Dot’s party. She could picture the couples squeezed onto the Colonial sofas and armchairs, so many that people probably perched on the armrests. Some men, polite, would stand, hands on their wives’ shoulders. Then she imagined all of the living rooms across the country, every citizen watching this very same moment, and imagining it, Claire shivered.
Peter rubbed her arm. “Cold?” he asked her.
She couldn’t think of how to describe this feeling overcoming her, this sense of unity, of hope. Hadn’t her mother described the years before the Great Depression this way? There was hope then, she’d said. Hope that made people fall in love and feel optimistic. Hope for a bright future.
Uncharacteristically, Peter wrapped his arms around her, and rested his chin lightly on the top of her head.
John Kennedy was raising his hand now. He was taking the oath of office.
“He’s not wearing his hat,” someone in the room said.
“There go hats,” another person said. “Out of style as of 12:52 p.m., January 20.”
Disappointed, Claire saw Jackie in a taupe wool dress with a matching coat. The coat had a sable fur collar and a matching muff, her hands tucked inside it. And that pillbox hat, tipped jauntily back on her head.
Taupe. No one would ever guess taupe.
When Kennedy began his inaugural speech, the solarium went still. Behind him, LBJ sat frowning, his oversized ears practically moving with the wind. Claire listened, trying to keep her mind from going to her lover, standing perhaps this very minute in Dot’s living room, his hands on his wife’s shoulders, listening to these very same words.
“So let us begin anew,” JFK was saying, “remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.”
Claire felt Peter step away from her, ever so slightly. She resisted turning around to look up at him.
“Let both sides explore what problems unite us,” Kennedy continued, “instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.”
At this, Claire did turn to glimpse her husband, who stood with his jaw set hard, his hands shoved into his pockets.
She focused again on the new president’s speech, and when he finished, she applauded hard along with everyone else in the room.
“It’s truly a new beginning,” an elderly woman standing beside Claire said in an Eastern European accent. She said it as if she were speaking directly to Claire.
“It feels that way,” Claire said, wondering why she had this lump in her throat, why she felt so empty.
“No, no, it is. That boy, he’s going to change the world.” The woman pointed to the television. “You watch.”
“I hope so,” Claire said.
Nurses and doctors were pushing their way out now. The hallway outside the solarium came alive with calls over the PA for Doctor this and Doctor that.
The whole hospital had held its breath for this moment, Claire thought.
She touched Peter’s arm lightly. “I’m going to call Dot,” she said. “Then I’ll meet you downstairs?”
He nodded, and joined the stream of people exiting. Claire couldn’t read his expression. Was he unable to stop belaboring what had divided them? She left with the stragglers, wondering if she was able to stop.
Back in the phone booth, the operator connected her to Dot, reversing the charges.
“Taupe!” Claire said as soon as Dot accepted. “Can you believe it?”
“I picked cornflower blue,” Dot said. “Wouldn’t she have looked beautiful in cornflower blue and that black hair of hers?”
“I didn’t even hear who designed it.”
“Cassini,” Dot said. “And the hat was someone named Halston. Apparently he does hats for Bergdorf Goodman in New York.”
“I wish I was there with all of you,” Claire said.
“We missed you, darling. You did get to hear the speech, didn’t you?”
“Every word,” Claire said.
“Magnificent, wasn’t it?”
Claire could hear the voices of Dot’s guests raised in excitement. She strained, trying to hear one above them all. But they remained a blur.
“I should get back,” Claire said.
“I hope she doesn’t die today,” Dot said. “It’s not a day to die. Not at all.”
“Dot? I almost forgot to ask. Did anyone pick taupe?” Claire was already laughing at how ridiculous a question she’d asked.
“Yes!” Dot said.
“What? Taupe? Don’t tell me Trudy won?”
“Not Trudy, no. The wife with the appendix. Peggy. She actually guessed taupe. Not beige or camel or ecru. Taupe.”
“How could she?” Claire managed to say.
“She’s brilliant, that’s all,” Dot said. “Hurry home, you hear?”
Peggy. His wife’s name was Peggy. And she was brilliant.
The baby inside Claire kicked hard. Claire put one hand lightly on her stomach, feeling the little foot banging there, kicking, as if she were trying to get out.
10
The Man in Denver
VIVIEN, 1919
“Tell me about Pamela,” Vivien said to Lotte.
Lotte looked at her with vacant eyes, eyes that
made Vivien want to look away. She had seen eyes such as these before, of course. Many of the people who showed up on her doorstep asking her to write an obituary had this very look, as if the life had been extinguished from them. Lotte, like all the others, vacillated between this vacant dead stare and a wild, out-of-control one in which her eyes blazed and jumped around, only landing briefly on people and things as if they were searching for something they could not find.
“You know her,” Lotte said, her voice as flat as her gaze. “You know all about her.”
They sat together on the long sofa where Lotte had spent most of her time since the funeral two days earlier. Vivien had a stack of thick paper on her lap and held a fountain pen. The two women’s knees touched. Vivien couldn’t help but remember the afternoons they had sat close like this as girls, each lost in a book, the slight pressure of Lotte’s knee on hers the only reminder of the world outside the novel. Perhaps that was why Lotte had settled so close to Vivien now, to keep her centered, to remind her that there was a world outside the one of grief that she now inhabited.
Vivien laid her hand on Lotte’s leg. “Of course I do,” she said. “But I find that when I write a . . . a . . .”
She stopped. For some reason, she couldn’t say the word obituary. It was as if by saying it out loud, Pamela would be more dead somehow.
Lotte turned that awful gaze on Vivien.
“An obituary,” Lotte said without emotion. “Pamela’s obituary. Because she’s dead she needs an obituary.”
Vivien found she held her breath as Lotte spoke, afraid at any moment the other grieving mother would appear, the one that thrashed and scratched at herself, and wailed. Yesterday, Lotte had screamed, I want to get out of my skin! I want it off! She was wearing her grief, Vivien realized. If she could take off her skin, she might be able to inhabit the right one.
“The way I proceed,” Vivien began, hating the formality in her voice but unable to speak otherwise, “is to ask you to tell me about . . .”
Again she faltered.
She took a breath. “About Pamela,” she said, “and while you talk I write down the things that strike me.”
