by Braver, Adam
“And?” William asks. “Well?”
Cordenia’s head stays bowed.
“Speak.”
She raises her eyes, just enough to meet his. “I guess there’s not much to tell. It was last August. In Hyannis Port. He was there with Mr. Rusk. They were on their way overseas.”
“That’s not telling us much, Cordenia.”
“I guess there’s not much to tell.”
William says, “I’m talking about working for him, Cordenia. Not just seeing him.”
“Well, he was nice enough to the children. Polite to me, too. He’s louder than President Kennedy, though. I remember that. Louder.”
William shakes his head. “All I can say is that you’d better watch out. Get yourself planning tonight. This is a different man about to come in here. Different wife. There won’t be no children running through the hallways. No classrooms upstairs. None of us can say what it is, but you can be sure it’ll be different. On that you can plan. And I don’t know about you, but I’m not counting on myself fitting in to that. Not especially when the only information I’ve got on Mr. Johnson is that he’s louder than the president.”
We might have told William to move along. That we wanted no part of this conversation or attitude. But maybe we know that part of what William is saying is right. The president and his wife have made us feel like part of their family, part of their circle, making us forget that most of us work for the White House, not for them. But maybe William is altogether right. Once Mrs. Kennedy takes the children out the White House doors for good, this will all just be a story we tell. One that we’ll all remember a little differently. About how we used to know the Kennedys.
Helicopters are coming and going from the White House lawn. Each time one arrives, John says, “La-pa-ca. La-pa-ca.” He goes to the window, cupping his tiny hands against the glass and then looking back to Miss Shaw. “Daddy? Home. Daddy’s home?” he asks. She shakes her head and tries to smile.
Caroline has looked suspicious since she was brought back from the country. She was scooped up and taken home with barely a word. Then the Bradlees showed up at the White House. Playing with them in the Oval Room. Chasing John around the house. And the helicopters keep coming and going. “La-pa-ca. La-pa-ca.” And Caroline tries to look normal, politely telling Mrs. Bradlee about her day. Then her grandparents Auchincloss arrive, and her grandmother announces they’ll be having dinner at their house, and that Miss Shaw will meet them back at the White House. And everybody is too nice. Too normal. As though there’s no space between their gestures.
Miss Shaw can see that Caroline knows something is wrong. Maybe doesn’t know, rather senses. But she hasn’t asked a single question. Maybe she’s afraid of what she might hear. Maybe she’s detected the subtlest nuance that Miss Shaw has been trying to hide—sucking in short breaths, telling herself to project normalcy and calm, when John looks out the window again, saying, “Daddy’s home?”
We can’t seem to move. Though there is work to be done, we don’t have the will. Or maybe it’s that none of us wants to be alone. Instead, we all prefer to stand here in the hallway and shake our heads. We’ve heard people are trying to get into the White House. Just to find out what’s going on. See if they can help. But the White House police have closed off all the entrances, and we hear that they’re having to monitor every gate, telling each person that everything that can be done is being done, and that someone from the White House certainly will call if assistance is needed. William wants to know, “What people? What kind of people are just showing up at the gates thinking we can use their help?”
“Government people, I’d guess,” Lucinda says. “People who have business here.”
“I was thinking it was just regular folks. Just coming and banging on the door.”
“That’d be okay if it was, don’t you think? William, don’t you think it’d be a good thing that regular folks want to help out with a kind like the Kennedys? Don’t you think that’s a good thing, William?”
William looks down. His toe grinds into the carpet like it’s the one doing the thinking. “So long as they don’t really think anybody will take them on. Just as long as they understand it’s only a gesture.” And what he doesn’t say is that’s the reason why we’re here. The true representatives of the people. Although it will be menial work—sweeping, dusting, changing linens, serving food—we understand that we’re the ones called on to help out in any way we can. And as difficult as William can be, we can all see his point, and share in his pride.
William says, “I suppose we ought to get to work. It’s what we’re here for. Certainly not family.”
We nod our heads. But none of us go. We just wait here, as we’ve been doing for some time. Milling. Waiting for something. Like all those folks out in Lafayette Park, out there gathered in small circles, stunned and feeling useless. Maybe they’re some of the ones coming up to the gates. The ones asking how they can help. They just need someone to tell them what to do. Give a little direction. And, we suppose, that’s our story, also. We just need someone to tell us what to do.
William shoves his hands into his pockets and backs up into the group, not saying anything more. Occasionally one of our voices might rise high above the rest, but then it falls back. Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe it’s bad. But none of us ever really speaks to each other. We just speak for each other.
And together we wait. Waiting for someone to tell us what to do.
We pity Miss Shaw the burden.
She’s just come down the stairs from the third floor, on her way to the first. As she passes, someone says, “Godspeed to you, Maud.”
Miss Shaw stops and looks back. Her body is staid. Solid and sure. But her eyes look stunned. Almost as though she is blind. “The children are here,” Miss Shaw says. “They’ve just come back from Mr. and Mrs. Auchincloss’s house. They’re downstairs now.”
“The children love you, Maud.”
“I don’t question that.”
“We just want you to know that we understand, Maud.”
She says, “Thank you,” and starts to walk away. Then she turns around. “Some of you remember the hamsters Caroline had, I imagine. Particularly the little mother that was with her young, separated from the others, as was proper. When the president came in, he looked at her all alone and said that he wanted the male to be put in the cage. We said it was too soon. But he insisted, saying that everybody needs a mate, no one should have to be alone. So we put the male back in—much too soon, I’ll remind you—and the male nearly clawed her to death, while she lay still, protecting her children.”
Then William, of all people, says he remembers a saying from the ancient Greeks. He’d heard it in church. It’s a rule. A guideline. “Assist a man in raising a burden,” he says to us more than to Miss Shaw, “but do not assist him in laying it down.”
She nods. And while we want to believe in this moment that we all shoulder the burden, we still know that Miss Shaw will be alone in that room. She can take as much of our spirit as she can manage, but when it comes down to it, she’ll be the one facing those children. By itself, that thought makes us mourn.
“John and Caroline are downstairs,” she says. “They’re waiting for me. They’re waiting.” She stares right at us, but she still looks blind.
“Godspeed to you, Maud. Godspeed.”
One voice. But all our voices.
They were the only two in the room, but as we understand it Miss Shaw could barely look at Caroline, tucked firmly in bed under the canopy of rosebud chintz, forcing a confident expression, though it was clear she knew something wasn’t right; and Miss Shaw’s eyes were tearing while Caroline stared at her, almost demanding an explanation other than Miss Shaw taking her hand and apologizing for the tears; and Miss Shaw knew she could wait until morning (Mrs. Auchincloss told her Mrs. Kennedy said it was up to her to gauge what the children did or didn’t know), but she looked at Caroline and something told her it wouldn’t be fair to
send the girl to sleep, to let her wake up full of promise—better for the girl to wake up as part of the grief, and that way maybe she’ll mourn more purely; then Miss Shaw inhaled so deeply her gut almost burst, and on the exhalation she said that there had been an accident; then she paused, realizing the sound of hope in the word accident, and corrected herself to say, “He’s been shot, and God has taken him to Heaven because they couldn’t make him better in the hospital,” and then closed her eyes, praying that when she opened them she wouldn’t see Caroline crying—that this had all been a dream.
If there’s any spot of pleasure in this day, it’s in looking at William’s face. He’s just delivered the news that all of us are invited to a mass for President Kennedy, being held in the East Room in the morning. Apparently the invitation has come from Mrs. Kennedy herself, and she’s also extended the invitation to our family members and friends. There was humbleness in William’s expression as he told us. He spoke softly.
We were tempted to put it back in his face, all his commentary about how the Kennedys don’t care about the servants. If he thinks working under them is bad, he should’ve seen it during Eisenhower, when the servant’s place was not to be seen and not to be heard. When President Kennedy first got here, he had been walking down the hallway with an aide, and two of us were vacuuming, and because of having worked for Eisenhower, we knew to shut off the vacuum cleaners and turn to face the wall until he passed. After President Kennedy had walked a little farther on, we heard him whisper, “What is that all about?” William, we want to say, there wasn’t so much as an invitation for us to breathe before President Kennedy got here. That’s what we’re tempted to put in William’s face. Not so much as an invitation.
Some glance at Cordenia to see if she looks vindicated, but she stays poker-faced. There’s already enough shame going through William.
We don’t need to say anything. Nor will we ever.
Tomorrow morning we’ll all go to the mass. We’ll stand side by side with each other, and shoulder to shoulder with others from the White House, praying over the president’s body. We know we’ll have to leave early, maybe only get to hear the beginning, because we’ll have to prepare the breakfast, polish the silver, serve the food, and clean up afterward. But we’ll be there tomorrow morning as it starts, once President and Mrs. Kennedy have come back.
Until then, we’ll work into the early hours.
Line up kerosene lamps spaced out evenly along both sides of the driveway.
Drape the North Portico in black crepe, hanging from ladders, in full view of the people standing outside the gates.
We’ll sweep the East Room.
Clean the hallways.
Prepare the bedrooms.
Set the State Dining Room.
And look after the children. Refusing to leave their sides until their mother comes home. On a chair at the side of the bed. Watching out the window, while the clouds fill in the sky, and the last ray of moonlight can still light the room.
BREAKING AND CRUMBLING FROM THE SEVENTEENTH FLOOR (facts & stories)
A Wearied Sleep.
As the story goes, when Fleetwood Lindley of Springfield, Illinois, died in 1963, he was the last living person to have seen Abraham Lincoln’s remains. That was in 1901, when Fleetwood Lindley was only thirteen years old. There had been several attempts to steal the president’s body for ransom, and Robert Lincoln, the sole survivor, decided it was best to encase the casket ten feet deep, under a metal cage and a layer of concrete, making it forever impossible to reach. After some debate, it was decided that the remains should be checked before the casket was permanently entombed. There were still rumors and claims that Lincoln’s body had vanished long ago. So on September 26, 1901, Leon Hopkins, a plumber, and his nephew, Charles Willey, were charged with opening the casket in front of twenty-three witnesses. Fleetwood Lindley’s father, who understood the historic significance, had pulled his son out of school for the occasion. There they stood before the pine casket, in a room with the windows papered shut, while Hawkins and Willey knocked their crowbars against the floor, testing their strength before going to work. When the upper part of the casket was opened, Fleetwood Lindley was sickened by the smell. But once he gathered the courage to look, he couldn’t stop staring at the corpse. The brown complexion, pasted white by the undertaker’s chalk. Lincoln’s trademark beard was still intact, the whiskers poking out from the chin. The familiar mole in place. Instantly recognizable. The only noticeable change was that the president’s eyebrows seemed to have disappeared completely. But maybe most memorable to Fleetwood Lindley was Lincoln’s melancholy air, which suggested a wearied sleep. Somehow he’d expected to see an expression of shock, from the surprise of a bullet going through the brain.
Polished.
At about 5:00 PM the ambulance left Andrews Air Force Base, headed for the Bethesda Naval Hospital. The sirens were screaming. Lights blazing. Along with the president’s remains, the car ferried Jackie, Bobby Kennedy, and the president’s physician, Admiral George Burkley, who had been in the second car in Dallas. Off in another direction, a man was dispatched to the White House to bring back one of Jack’s suits and a pair of shoes. He told himself to remember to make sure the shoes were polished. President Kennedy wouldn’t accept anything less.
It’s Mandatory.
The issue of the autopsy had come up while Air Force One had been in flight, somewhere between the swearing-in and the planning of the funeral. Jackie is sitting by the side of the casket, her voice just above a murmur. Maybe she’s humming, it’s a long and slow melodious howl that vibrates from her chest. She’s been trying to think, not about anything in particular, just think, wanting to organize a thought in order to find some footing. The rumble of the airplane unsettles her, but she tries not to think of that. The physics of flight requires too much trust.
She pretends not to see Pam and Kenny come into the room. They won’t leave. Kenny puts two fingers on her shoulder. She thinks they might break right through her bones. He says that Dr. Burkley needs to speak with her, and she turns around, about to say, It takes two of you to tell me? But she nods, seeing the White House physician waiting in the doorway.
“Mrs. Kennedy,” Burkley says, “I’m sorry to bother you at such a time.” He glances down for a moment, but then raises his stare, drawing it right into her eyes. “I don’t know how to be anything but frank here.” He pauses. Looking for her response.
She nods. Her whole world is now frank.
“We’re going to have to do an autopsy,” he says. “When we get back to Washington.”
She shakes her head. “That won’t be necessary.”
“I’m afraid it’s mandatory.”
“Well, I say it doesn’t have to be done.”
“It’s mandatory,” he repeats, and looks up at Pam and Kenny, as though for assistance. As though she is too dumbstruck to notice.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t know.”
“We can do it at Walter Reed. Or Bethesda . . .”
“Kenny . . .”
“Even a private hospital, I suppose.”
“Kenny, tell him no.”
“I’ll supervise the whole procedure, if you’d like. Take care of all the arrangements.”
“I don’t know.”
“I do have to be honest, Mrs. Kennedy. I believe the procedure should be done at a military hospital. President Kennedy was the commander in chief, so I think it makes the most sense, regarding personnel, security, and clearances. Again, I’m sorry for the frankness. But it is mandatory.”
She tries to protest one more time, picturing those stories about how an Indian could rip out your heart so fast that you could still see it beating outside your body, but Dr. Burkley keeps repeating that it’s mandatory, it’s mandatory, it’s mandatory, and neither Kenny nor Pam seems willing to contradict this, until she can’t stand to hear it’s mandatory one more time, and finally says, Okay, then do it at Bethesda, and before she’s fi
nished speaking, she feels like that ripped-out heart, thumping on its own, looking back at a body so alive it doesn’t know it’s dying.
The Memory of the Lens: Part One.
There is clotted blood on the external ears but otherwise the ears, nares, and mouth are essentially unremarkable. The teeth are in excellent repair and there is some pallor of the oral mucus membrane. (Page 3, Pathological Examination Report, 11/22/63)
It’s one of the photos of the autopsy. His head. Photographed from the neck up, with just a trace of his shoulders and chest, enough so that you can tell he’s undressed. It’s a simple picture, one snapped by the medical photographer John Stringer on a four-by-five Graphic camera. But what’s so amazing about the picture is how dead Kennedy looks. And it’s not Hollywood dead, with passively closed eyes and a nodded head that suggests the sleep of the just. In the photo, his head is tilted back, eyes wide open, and his mouth ajar, without any sense that he’s ever lived. A tracheotomy tube pokes out of his throat, as though his survival had been just a matter of extra air. His teeth look a little bucked. You can stare and stare and stare, noting how the tiles in the floor frame the definition of his collarbone and the tufts of chest hair. There certainly are characteristics of the Kennedy you’ve come to recognize, but when pressed, you’d have to admit that you’ve never seen anyone look so dead before.
Of course, there was Dominic’s father, a big Italian American you barely knew while in college, who was slightly intimidating in his silence, yet who died suddenly and weakly from a heart attack. You went to the funeral because all of Dominic’s friends were going to the funeral. You’d never seen a dead body before. It was an open casket, and it felt as though you stared harder and longer than anyone else, because you couldn’t get over how different he looked, his face made up and shaded orange, thinner than normal, as though a lesser artist had crafted him from wax. Within the year you would attend two more funerals, but both with closed caskets. In the case of Susie it was because she’d died from her own shotgun blast in her bedroom, surrounded by notes and disappointments and teddy bears. And in the case of your grandmother it was because of the disfigurement of the auto accident (although they did hold a viewing; but, remembering Dominic’s father, you elected not to go, too afraid that the distorted image of the repaired face would become the everlasting memory).
