Follow Me (37 page)

NOVEMBER 22, 1963
.

There they were, the both of them, thirty-three years old,
impossible!,
Sally posing inside the mirror, and Sally on the outside, observing.

Good morning to me.

Good morning to you.

Touch of eyeliner on the top lid, curling up,
like this,
whiskery tip at the edge, and mascara, then puff-puff of rouge over the foundation, coat of hair spray,
that’s nice,
lipstick on pouting lips,
mmm,
slip on that plaid kilt, white blouse, a Mr. John hat in pink felt wired into a narrow dome and topped by an ivory button.
Flash a smile, that’s good,
and tug on the chain to turn off the light.

“Come on, Miss Penelope Bliss, we have to go!”

“I’m not ready.”

“Well, get ready!”

“You get ready.”

“I am ready. Now hurry up, you’re going to make us late.”

“Just stop bugging me.”

Of all the young girls she’d ever met, she’d never known one to be as hotheaded and stubborn as her own daughter. Tap, tap,
tap, one minute, two, five minutes… finally, now scurry along, hurry up, hop-hop down the steps and rush the seven blocks
through the cold drizzle to Penelope’s school, but the doors were already closed, she’d have to sign her daughter in again
and come up with a new excuse, the second time this week they were late. And then she missed the 8:11 bus and had to wait
in the cold.

Damn that bus. Damn the rain. Damn time for passing too fast for her to keep up with it.

She resigned herself: it was going to be one of those days. As she spun through the revolving doors into the lobby of the
Terminal Building, she imagined the onslaught of fresh inconveniences awaiting her. She heard the echo of her own heels clacking
over the marble tiles as an annoyance, and she was so absorbed by her irritation that she forgot to say hello to Freddy Balin,
the Terminal’s janitor, passing in wordless concentration right beneath his outstretched arm as he fluffed a feather duster
across the elevator’s dial.

Good morning, you’ve reached the offices of —

Say
Kennedy, Kennedy and Caddeau
five times fast, and it becomes
Kendycandyc’doo.

And how may I direct your call?

She fielded a call for Arnie from an executive at the Union Trust. The name of the bank reminded her that she was two days
late with her rent. Funny how she had more money than she’d ever had in her life, and it wasn’t enough. The more she had,
the more she saved, and the more she wanted to spend. She wished she had enough money to make both her offspring rich — the
daughter she was raising and the son she’d left behind. And she wouldn’t mind earning extra cash to spend as she pleased.
At the same time, she wished she’d never revealed to Mr. Griffin Marcus that Bennett Patterson was her daughter’s father.

The phone was ringing. The newest associate, Mr. Lipton, was standing at her desk. His own secretary had called in sick, so
could Sally type a letter for him? Could Sally make the coffee? Could Sally find the report that the other associate, Mr.
Tweet, had mislaid? Yes and yes and yes, Sally could do lots of things. But goddamn it, would you look at that! The carbon
paper ripped when she pulled it from the typewriter, and she had to type the letter all over again. And then the paper wore
through beneath the pressure of the eraser’s wheel. And then it was lunch break, rain beat against the windows, and the two
other girls in the office both had appointments, so instead of fighting the weather and going alone to one of the diners along
Court Street, Sally ordered a pastrami sandwich and ate it at her desk, paging through an old copy of
Life,
pausing over the travel ads with their photographs of white sandy beaches fringed by palms.

Wouldn’t it be nice to spend a week in the sun with a darling beau? She was thirty-three years old, an old hag with missing
teeth, men didn’t even look twice at her anymore, construction workers didn’t whistle, and she hadn’t been on a date for so
long she’d lost track of how much time had passed. Poor Sally. Lonely Sally. How did she come up with that stupid name
Bliss
anyway? For a moment she couldn’t remember. Was it even worth remembering? Her own insignificance felt immense right then.
She was notable for her high-speed typing, for ripping the carbon paper when she lifted it from the typewriter, for making
coffee that others found weak. She was one of a kind — hardly. Obviously, she was replaceable. Even her daughter, now that
she had a doting father, could have managed without her. And her son, wherever he was — to him she would never be more than
the absent benefactor who kept adding to his college fund. Did he have a college fund? It was unbearably sad not to know what
her son was doing with the money she sent him regularly. Everything was unbearably sad — the unforgiving light of the ceiling
bulb, the rain beating against the windows, the greasy pastrami, the crumpled paper in the wastebasket representing all the
dull letters she’d had to type twice.

How sorry for herself she felt. And wasn’t self-pity a comfort in itself? Just to think about how she deserved more than she
had — this was something. She’d been through it, that’s right, ever since way back when Georgie of Fishkill Notch had told
the truth about her. But who would have guessed that having a baby and running away from home was only the beginning, and
the story would go on and on, until she couldn’t take it anymore, and then —

And then?

Then she would humbly beseech the Lord to comfort her and pardon her iniquity and bring good tidings and subject her not to
diverse temptations in all Thy grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Amen.

Whatever that all meant.

It meant Sally was looking for love.

Sally was looking for a man. A nice man. Mr. Right.

There he was.

But that wasn’t Mr. Right. That was just Mr. Caddeau returning from a late lunch —

Coming through the door, rushing rain-drenched and red-faced, slurring, stuttering, mashing words into a pulp of garble as
he tried to say, he was trying to say, to tell Sally, to convey the news with the correct words, simple words, just say it:
“They’ve shot Kennedy!”

Kennedy? As in Kendycandyc’doo? That’s all Sally could think of right then: Arnie was announcing that ancient Mr. Kennedy,
son of the firm’s founder, had been shot. But wait a second — wasn’t Mr. Kennedy already dead?

“What did you say?”

It would be understood only as a simple declaration: “President Kennedy has been shot!”

President Kennedy, the perfect lover of Sally Bliss’s dreams, shot on a Dallas street and soon to be declared deceased over
national news. What did it mean? It meant, didn’t it, that the Soviet armada was afloat, the Cubans were angry, and missile
silos all over the world were opening their hatches to the sky? Stop! Say it’s not so. Please, hold Sally, take her in your
arms, let her indulge in the luxury of fear for a moment.

“That beautiful man. It’s unbelievable,” Sally whispered. Yes, Arnie agreed. It was unbelievable. There was a tremor in his
voice, and even as he blotted the tear on her cheek with his thumb, she saw the swell of tears in his eyes. He had never seemed
nobler than at that moment. Despite his shock, he was steady enough to support her as she folded all her weight against him.
What a comfort he was, this good man, her boss, offering solace that was more affectionate than Sally would have ever allowed
herself to expect, offering a hint of intimacy as if it were a natural response, brushing his lips against hers, pressing
his lips more firmly in an effort to tell her that it would be all right, they’d get through it, the nation would recover
from the blow and the two of them, why, they’d have each other from here on in, so kiss him back, Sally, go ahead, lock your
mouth to his and become familiar with the taste, to savor later.

After the others had returned to the office bearing the news that the president’s injuries were catastrophic, after it was
agreed that they should all go home early and Sally had started walking to the bus stop, she thought about the meaning of
that kiss. The crackling from a transistor radio at a corner newsstand was the sound of chaos. The president was dead. What
the consequences of the assassination would be for the country and the world, Sally didn’t want to contemplate. On the other
hand, she was sure that she could predict what would follow from the moment her lips touched the lips of Arnie Caddeau.

There had been more to it than his attempt to comfort her. She’d understood this in a vague way even as she had clung to him,
and she experienced a more expansive realization as she walked along Court Street. She pictured how he’d come rushing into
the office; as she rehearsed the memory, it seemed that he’d chosen her to hear the awful news. He’d plunged breathlessly
through the door and toward her as though, at that moment, she was the only one who mattered to him. And now, because of the
subtlest communication they had shared in each other’s arms, they were in agreement about something that they didn’t dare
put into words.

Oh, but look at her crossing the Court Street Bridge in the drizzle, floating more than walking, not noticing the sidewalk
stained with mud, the flattened cigarillo holder on the curb like the crushed carcass of a white beetle, or the river flowing
below with a deceptive sluggishness toward the lip of the falls, its surface rust-tinged, as though there were a powerful
flame burning in its depths. Strange to think that this same dirty, dreary river that she had followed from its source had
led her to the place where she finally belonged. After all the false starts and losses and mistakes of her youth, she was
embarking on a new beginning, one paradoxically generated by that awful ending recorded with fresh blood and brain on a convertible
Lincoln Continental in Dallas.

The president was dead. The fixed certainty of that fact stood in contrast with her evolving impressions of the man who had
been her boss for two years. Mr. Arnold Caddeau. She never would have guessed he was such a romantic. It was terribly wrong
to think of him this way at such a time, when the country was in shock. But she couldn’t stop from imagining the next encounter
that would follow from the first. The touch of his lips on hers, the scent of lavender on his skin, his silky sideburns, his
peppermint teeth. She knew she should proceed cautiously, since she really couldn’t be sure that her interpretation of the
moment was absolutely correct. Had they really experienced something crucial together? Well, she knew what she’d felt. She
didn’t doubt that she found him alluring. He wasn’t the kind of man that other women would have identified as irresistibly
attractive, and yet she was finally ready to admit to herself that she’d been attracted to him for months. Maybe she had sensed,
without quite being conscious of it, that he was attracted to her. Maybe they’d been looking for an excuse to move beyond
their routine formalities. Any intimacy could be only hurtful to others, dangerous to themselves. But maybe they couldn’t
help it and were already in love.

The president was dead, long live the president. Who killed JFK? Hum, buzz, whisper of conspiracies. It was the Reds, people
said. It was the CIA. It was the Mob’s own Murder Inc. Once ignited, the lust for revenge is an eternal flame. A great man’s
death deserves to be honored by another great man’s death, so the story goes. That and the concoction of poisons mixed in
fifty-gallon tubs and deposited in the empty carcasses of B-52s, to be dispensed when the need arises. The world is too much
with us. Who can blame those tender souls who stop buying newspapers because the headlines are just too damn depressing!

Sally registered the news items as a set of symptoms that could be ameliorated with love. In the midst of the country’s turmoil,
she felt as though she’d discovered that she had a secret ability to walk on water. And as if in an effort to record her happiness,
she took to saving the receipts for all the bills paid by Arnold Caddeau on her behalf. Twenty dollars and change for a whole
night’s stay at the Cadillac Hotel, though the room was used only for two hours on the frosty afternoon of December 10, 1963.
Thirty-two dollars for a silver bracelet purchased from Foster’s Boutique. Sixteen dollars for an elegant lunch at the Bonville
up by the lake. Another twenty for a second stay at the Cadillac Hotel, paid in full January 15, 1964. Twelve dollars for
a rhinestone chameleon brooch purchased at the Art Gallery, March 3, 1964, intended as a birthday present for her daughter,
with happy birthday wishes from her mother’s boss.

A present for Penelope from Mr. Caddeau? Really? From that disgusting man? Penelope, age eleven, wiser than her years, knew
up from down. She may not have clearly understood the nature of the affair and didn’t suspect that her mother occasionally
took an extra hour for lunch in order to strip off her clothes and climb into bed with Arnold Caddeau. But Penelope was sharp
enough to guess that her mother’s boss was responsible for her mother’s happiness, and her mother’s happiness was making her
flighty and selfish. Sally didn’t bother to prepare a proper dinner. Either they’d go out, or she’d bring home a bucket of
fried chicken. Sally didn’t bother to come watch Penelope play shortstop in the girls’ softball league on Saturday afternoons.
Sally missed the teacher-parent midyear conference simply because she forgot. She forgot everything that mattered, all because
her head was stuffed with thoughts of her lovey-dove boss. That disgusting man. Penelope had no use for his gift of a rhinestone-studded
chameleon. Into the wastebasket it went.

“Baby, don’t do that!”

“Leave me alone!”

Sally’s darling child, her purpose in life, her little princess — she hadn’t been brought up to become a spoiled little brat.
But who was really the spoiled brat! Go look in the mirror, Sally Bliss.

All right, she’d look. There she was, lashes extended with a fancy new mascara, lips a nice ripe ruby red, no wrinkles yet
other than the laugh lines at the corners of her twinkling eyes. She looked better than she had in years, as long as she didn’t
open her mouth wide enough to display her broken teeth. She couldn’t help it if she was happy. She who had lost so much through
her first three decades of life had finally found a point of stability. Too bad that Arnie was already married and would stay
married, not because he loved his wife but because he was a good man who honored his commitments. And consider that the poor
woman had been diagnosed with some terrible degenerative eye disease. There was nothing to be done about it, no prevention
or cure. Arnie and his wife had decided to keep the matter to themselves. Not even their children knew about it. But Sally
knew. After their first rendezvous at the Cadillac Hotel, Arnie revealed to her that his wife was going blind. He loved Sally,
he really did, but she couldn’t expect him to leave a wife who was going blind.