11/22/63: A Novel Read online

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Say thank you, and compliment me on my acute judgment.”

  “Thanks. And your insight is only exceeded by your good looks.”

  That brought the smile back, dryer than ever. “Don’t exceed your brief, George.”

  “Yes, Miz Mimi.”

  The smile disappeared. She leaned forward. The blue eyes behind her glasses were too big, swimming in her face. The skin under her tan was yellowish, and her formerly taut cheeks were hollow. When had this happened? Had Deke noticed? But that was ridic, as the kids said. Deke wouldn’t notice that his socks were mismatched until he took them off at night. Probably not even then.

  She said, “Phil Bateman is no longer just threatening to retire, he’s done pulled the pin and tossed the grenade, as our delightful Coach Borman would say. Which means there’s a vacancy on the English faculty. Come and teach full-time at DCHS, George. The kids like you, and after the junior-senior play, the community thinks you’re the second coming of Alfred Hitchcock. Deke is just waiting to see your application—he told me so just last night. Please. Publish this under a pseudonym, if you have to, but come and teach. That’s what you were meant to do.”

  I wanted badly to say yes, because she was right. My job wasn’t writing books, and it certainly wasn’t killing people, no matter how much they deserved killing. And there was Jodie. I’d come to it as a stranger who had been displaced from his home era as well as his hometown, and the first words spoken to me here—by Al Stevens, at the diner—had been friendly words. If you’ve ever been homesick, or felt exiled from all the things and people that once defined you, you’ll know how important welcoming words and friendly smiles can be. Jodie was the anti-Dallas, and now one of its leading citizens was asking me to be a resident instead of a visitor. But the watershed moment was approaching. Only it wasn’t here yet. Maybe …

  “George? You have the most peculiar look on your face.”

  “That’s called thinking. Will you let me do it, please?”

  She put her hands to her cheeks and rounded her mouth in a comic O of apology. “Well braid my hair and call me Buckwheat.”

  I paid no attention, because I was busy flicking through Al’s notes. I no longer had to look at them to do that. When the new school year started in September, Oswald was still going to be in Russia, although he had already started what would be a lengthy paperwork battle to get back to America with his wife and daughter, June, with whom Marina would be pregnant any day now. It was a battle Oswald would eventually win, playing one superpower bureaucracy off against the other with instinctive (if rudimentary) cleverness, but they wouldn’t step off the SS Maasdam and onto American soil until the middle of next year. And as for Texas …

  “Meems, the school year usually ends the first week in June, doesn’t it?”

  “Always. The kids who need summer jobs have to nail them down.”

  … as for Texas, the Oswalds were going to arrive on the fourteenth of June, 1962.

  “And any teaching contract I signed would be probationary, right? As in one year?”

  “With an option to renew if all parties are satisfied, yes.”

  “Then you’ve got yourself a probationary English teacher.”

  She laughed, clapped her hands, got to her feet, and held her arms out. “Marvelous! Huggies for Miz Mimi!”

  I hugged her, then released her quickly when I heard her gasp. “What the hell is wrong with you, ma’am?”

  She went back to the couch, picked up her iced coffee, and sipped. “Let me give you two pieces of advice, George. The first is never call a Texas woman ma’am if you come from the northern climes. It sounds sarcastic. The second is never ask any woman what the hell is wrong with her. Try something slightly more delicate, like ‘Are you feeling quite all right?’”

  “Are you?”

  “Why wouldn’t I? I’m getting married.”

  At first I couldn’t match this particular zig with a corresponding zag. Except the grave look in her eyes suggested she wasn’t zigging at all. She was circling something. Probably not a nice something, either.

  “Say ‘Congratulations, Miz Mimi.’”

  “Congratulations, Miz Mimi.”

  “Deke first popped the question almost a year ago. I put him off, saying it was too soon after his wife died, and it would cause talk. As time passes, that has become less effective as an argument. I doubt if there would have been all that much talk, anyway, given our ages. People in small towns realize that folks like Deke and me can’t afford the luxury of decorum quite so much once we reach a certain, shall we say, plateau of maturity. Truth is, I liked things fine just the way they were. The old fella loves me quite a lot more than I love him, but I like him plenty, and—at the risk of embarrassing you—even ladies who’ve reached a certain plateau of maturity aren’t averse to a nice boink on a Saturday night. Am I embarrassing you?”

  “No,” I said. “Actually, you’re delighting me.”

  The dry smile. “Lovely. Because when I swing my feet out of bed in the morning, my first thought as they hit the floor is, ‘Might there be a way I can delight George Amberson today? And if so, how shall I go about it?’”

  “Don’t exceed your brief, Miz Mimi.”

  “Spoken like a man.” She sipped her iced coffee. “I had two objectives when I came here today. I’ve accomplished the first. Now I’ll move on to the second so you can get on with your day. Deke and I are going to be married on July twenty-first, which is a Friday. The ceremony will be a small private affair in his home—just us, the preacher, and a few family members. His parents—they’re quite vigorous for dinosaurs—are coming from Alabama and my sister from San Diego. The reception will be a lawn party at my house the following day. Two P.M. until drunk o’clock. We’re inviting almost everyone in town. There’s going to be a piñata and lemonade for the little kiddies, barbecue and kegs of beer for the big kiddies, and even a band from San-Antone. Unlike most bands from San-Antone, I believe they are able to play ‘Louie Louie’ as well as ‘La Paloma.’ If you don’t favor us with your presence—”

  “You’ll be bereft?”

  “Indeed I will. Will you save the date?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Good. Deke and I will be leaving for Mexico on Sunday, by which time his hangover will have dissipated. We’re a little old for a honeymoon, but there are certain resources available south of the border that are not available in the Sixgun State. Certain experimental treatments. I doubt if they work, but Deke is hopeful. And hell, it’s worth a try. Life …” She gave a rueful sigh. “Life is too sweet to give up without a fight, don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Yes. So one holds on.” She looked at me closely. “Are you going to cry, George?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Because that would embarrass me. I might even cry myself, and I don’t do it well. No one would ever write a poem about my tears. I croak.”

  “How bad is it? May I ask?”

  “Quite bad.” She said it offhandedly. “I might have eight months. Possibly a year. Assuming the herbal treatments or peach pits or whatever down Mexico way don’t effect a magical cure, that is.”

  “I’m very sorry to hear it.”

  “Thank you, George. Expressed to a nicety. Any more would be sloppy.”

  I smiled.

  “I have another reason for inviting you to our reception, although it goes without saying that your charming company and sparkling repartee would be enough. Phil Bateman isn’t the only one who’s retiring.”

  “Mimi, don’t do that. Take a leave of absence if you have to, but—”

  She shook her head decisively. “Sick or well, forty years is enough. It’s time for younger hands, younger eyes, and a younger mind. On my recommendation, Deke has hired a well-qualified young lady from Georgia. Her name is Sadie Clayton. She’ll be at the reception, she’ll know absolutely no one, and I expect you to be especially nic
e to her.”

  “Mrs. Clayton?”

  “I wouldn’t quite say that.” Mimi looked at me guilelessly. “I believe she intends to reclaim her maiden name at some point in the near future. Following certain legal formalities.”

  “Mimi, are you matchmaking?”

  “Not at all,” she said … then snickered. “Hardly at all. Although you will be the only teacher on the English faculty who’s currently unattached, and that makes you a natural to act as her mentor.”

  I thought that a gigantic leap into illogic, especially for such an ordered mind, but I accompanied her to the door without saying so. What I said was, “If it’s as serious as you say, you should be seeking treatment now. And not from some quack doctor in Juaréz, either. You should be at the Cleveland Clinic.” I didn’t know if the Cleveland Clinc even existed yet, but just then I didn’t care.

  “I think not. Given the choice between dying in a hospital room somewhere, stuck full of tubes and wires, and dying in a seaside Mexican hacienda … that is, as you like to say, a no-brainer. And there’s something else, as well.” She looked at me unflinchingly. “The pain isn’t too bad yet, but I’m told it will be. In Mexico, they are far less apt to strike moral poses about large doses of morphine. Or Nembutal, if it comes to that. Trust me, I know what I’m doing.”

  Based on what had happened to Al Templeton, I guessed that was true. I put my arms around her, this time hugging very gently. I kissed one leathery cheek.

  She bore it with a smile, then slipped away. Her eyes searched my face. “I’d like to know your story, my friend.”

  I shrugged. “I’m an open book, Miz Mimi.”

  She laughed. “What a crock of shit. You say you’re from Wisconsin, but you showed up in Jodie with a New England drawl in your mouth and Florida plates on your auto. You say you’re commuting to Dallas for research purposes, and your manuscript purports to be about Dallas, but the people in it speak like New Englanders. In fact, there are a couple of places where characters actually say ayuh. You might want to change those.”

  And I thought my rewrite had been so clever.

  “Actually, Mimi, New Englanders say it a-yuh, not i-yuh.”

  “Noted.” She continued to search my face. It was a struggle not to drop my eyes, but I managed. “Sometimes I’ve actually caught myself wondering if you might not be a space alien, like Michael Rennie in The Day the Earth Stood Still. Here to analyze the natives and report back to Alpha Centauri on whether there’s still hope for us as a species or if we should be exploded by plasma rays before we can spread our germs to the rest of the galaxy.”

  “That’s very fanciful,” I said, smiling.

  “Good. I’d hate to think our whole planet was being judged by Texas.”

  “If Jodie were used as a sample, I’m sure Earth would get a passing grade.”

  “You like it here, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is George Amberson your real name?”

  “No. I changed it for reasons that are important to me but wouldn’t be to anyone else. I’d prefer you kept that to yourself. For obvious reasons.”

  She nodded. “I can do that. I’ll see you around, George. The diner, the library … and at the party, of course. You’ll be nice to Sadie Clayton, won’t you?”

  “Nice as pie,” I said, giving it the Texas twist: pah. That made her laugh.

  When she was gone, I sat in my living room for a long time, not reading, not watching TV. And working on either of my manuscripts was the farthest thing from my mind. I thought about the job I’d just agreed to: a year of teaching full-time English at Denholm Consolidated High School, home of the Lions. I decided I had no regrets. I could roar at halftime with the best of them.

  Well, I did have one regret, but it wasn’t for me. When I thought about Mimi and her current situation, I had regrets aplenty.

  6

  On the subject of love at first sight, I’m with the Beatles: I believe that it happens all the time. But it didn’t happen that way for me and Sadie, although I held her the first time I met her, and with my right hand cupping her left breast. So I guess I’m also with Mickey and Sylvia, who said love is strange.

  South-central Texas can be savagely hot in mid-July, but the Saturday of the post-wedding party was damned near perfect, with temperatures in the upper seventies and lots of fat white clouds hustling across a sky the color of faded overalls. Long shutters of sun and shadow slipped down Mimi’s backyard, which was on a mild slope ending at a muddy trickle of water she called Nameless Crick.

  There were streamers of yellow and silver—Denholm High’s colors—strung from the trees, and there was indeed a piñata, hung temptingly low from the jutting branch of a sugar pine. No child passed near it without giving it a longing glance.

  “After dinner, the kids’ll get sticks and beat away on it,” someone said from just behind my left shoulder. “Candy and toys for all the niños.”

  I turned and beheld Mike Coslaw, resplendent (and a little hallucinatory) in tight black jeans and a white open-throated shirt. A sombrero on a tug-string hung down on his back, and he wore a multicolored sash around his waist. I saw a number of other football players, including Jim LaDue, dressed in the same semi-ridiculous manner, circulating with trays. Mike held his out with a slightly crooked smile. “Canapé, Señor Amberson?”

  I took a baby shrimp on a toothpick, and dipped it in the sauce. “Nice getup. Kind of a Speedy Gonzales thing.”

  “Don’t start. If you want to see a real getup, check Vince Knowles.” He pointed beyond the net to where a group of teachers was playing a clumsy but enthusiastic game of volleyball. I beheld Vince dressed up in tails and a top hat. He was surrounded by fascinated children who were watching him pull scarves out of thin air. It worked well, if you were still young enough to miss the one poking out of his sleeve. His shoe-polish mustache gleamed in the sun.

  “On the whole, I prefer the Cisco Kid look,” Mike said.

  “I’m sure you all make terrific waiters, but who in God’s name persuaded you to dress up? And does Coach know?”

  “He ought to, he’s here.”

  “Oh? I haven’t seen him.”

  “He’s over by the barbecue pit, gettin hammered with the Boosters Club. As for the outfit … Miz Mimi can be pretty persuasive.”

  I thought of the contract I’d signed. “I know.”

  Mike lowered his voice. “We all know she’s sick. Besides … I think of this as acting.” He struck a bullfighter pose—not easy when you’re carrying a tray of canapés. “¡Arriba!”

  “Not bad, but—”

  “I know, I’m not really inside the part yet. Gotta submerge myself, right?”

  “It works for Brando. How are you guys gonna be this fall, Mike?”

  “Senior year? Jim in the pocket? Me, Hank Alvarez, Chip Wiggins, and Carl Crockett on the line? We’re going to State, and that gold ball’s going into the trophy case.”

  “I like your attitude.”

  “Are you going to do a play this fall, Mr. Amberson?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Good. Great. Save me a part … but with football, it’ll have to be a small one. Check out the band, they’re not bad.”

  The band was a lot better than not bad. The logo on the snare drum proclaimed them The Knights. The teenage lead singer counted off, and the band launched into a hot version of “Ooh, My Head,” the old Ritchie Valens song—and not really so old in the summer of ’61, although Valens had been dead for almost two years.

  I got my beer in a paper cup and walked closer to the bandstand. The kid’s voice was familiar. So was the keyboard, which sounded like it desperately wanted to be an accordion. And suddenly it clicked. The kid was Doug Sahm, and not so many years from now he would have hits of his own: “She’s About a Mover” for one, “Mendocino” for another. That would be during the British Invasion, so the band, which basically played Tejano rock, would take a pseudo-British name: The Sir Dougla
s Quintet.

  “George? Come here and meet someone, would you?”

  I turned. Mimi was coming down the slope of the lawn with a woman in tow. My first impression of Sadie—everyone’s first impression, I have no doubt—was her height. She was wearing flats, as were most of the women here, knowing that they’d be spending the afternoon and evening traipsing around outside, but this was a woman who had probably last worn heels to her own wedding, and even for that occasion she might have picked a dress that would hide just one more pair of low-or no-heels, chosen so she wouldn’t tower comically over the groom as they stood at the altar. She was six feet at least, maybe a little more. I still had her by at least three inches, but other than Coach Borman and Greg Underwood of the History Department, I was probably the only man at the party who did. And Greg was a beanpole. Sadie had, in the argot of the day, a really good built. She knew it and was self-conscious about it rather than proud. I could tell that from the way she walked.

  I know I’m a little too big to be considered normal, that walk said. The set of her shoulders said more: It’s not my fault, I just growed that way. Like Topsy. She was wearing a sleeveless dress printed over with roses. Her arms were tanned. She had dashed on a little pink lipstick, but no other makeup.

  Not love at first sight, I’m pretty sure of it, but I remember that first sight with surprising clarity. If I told you I remember with similar clarity the first time I saw the former Christy Epping, I’d be lying. Of course, it was at a dance club and we were both toasted, so maybe I get a pass on that.

  Sadie was good-looking in an artless what-you-see-is-what-you-get American-girl way. She was something else, as well. On the day of the party I thought that something else was plain old big-person clumsiness. Later I found out she wasn’t clumsy at all. Was, in fact, the farthest thing from it.