11/22/63: A Novel Read online

  “If we’re discreet, everything will be fine. But we have to be discreet. You know that, right?”

  She laughed and lit up. “Oh yes. I know that.”

  “Sadie, have you had discipline problems in the library?”

  “Huh? Some, sure. The usual.” She shrugged; her breasts bobbed; I wished I hadn’t dressed quite so fast. On the other hand, who was I kidding? James Bond might’ve been up for a third go-round, but Jake/George was tapped out. “I’m the new girl in school. They’re testing me. It’s a pain in the keister, but nothing I didn’t expect. Why?”

  “I think your problems are about to vanish. Students love it when teachers fall in love. Even the boys. It’s like a TV show to them.”

  “Will they know that we’ve …”

  I thought about it. “Some of the girls will. The ones with experience.”

  She huffed out smoke. “Great.” But she didn’t look entirely displeased.

  “How about dinner out at The Saddle in Round Hill? Get people used to seeing us as a couple.”

  “All right. Tomorrow?”

  “No, I have something to do in Dallas tomorrow.”

  “Research for your book?”

  “Uh-huh.” Here we were, brand-new, and I was lying already. I didn’t like it, but saw no way around it. As for the future … I refused to think about that now. I had my own glow to protect. “Tuesday?”

  “Yes. And George?”

  “What?”

  “We have to find a way to keep doing this.”

  I smiled. “Love will find a way.”

  “I think this part is more lust.”

  “It’s both, maybe.”

  “You’re a sweet man, George Amberson.”

  Christ, even the name was a lie.

  “I’ll tell you about Johnny and me. When I can. And if you want to hear.”

  “I want to.” I thought I had to. If this was going to work, I had to understand. About her. About him. About the broom. “When you’re ready.”

  “As our esteemed principal likes to say, ‘Students, this will be challenging but worthwhile.’”

  I laughed.

  She butted out her cigarette. “One thing I wonder about. Would Miz Mimi approve of us?”

  “I’m pretty sure she would.”

  “I think so, too. Drive home safe, my dear. And you better take those.” She was pointing at the paper bag from the Kileen Pharmacy. It was sitting on top of her dresser. “If I had the kind of nosy company who checks the medicine cabinet after they tee-tee, I’d have some explaining to do.”

  “Good idea.”

  “But keep them handy, honey.”

  And she winked.

  5

  On the way home, I found myself thinking about those rubbers. Trojan brand … and ribbed for her pleasure, according to the box. The lady didn’t have a diaphragm any longer (although I guessed she might arrange for one on her next trip to Dallas), and birth control pills wouldn’t be widely available for another year or two. Even then, doctors would be wary about prescribing them, if I remembered my Modern Sociology course correctly. So for now it was Trojans. I wore them not for her pleasure but so she wouldn’t have a baby. Which was amusing when you considered that I wouldn’t be a baby myself for another fifteen years.

  Thinking about the future is confusing in all sorts of ways.

  6

  The following evening I revisited Silent Mike’s establishment. The sign in the door was turned to CLOSED and the place looked empty, but when I knocked, my electronics buddy let me in.

  “Right on time, Mr. Doe, right on time,” he said. “Let’s see what you think. Me, I think I outdid myself.”

  I stood by the glass case filled with transistor radios and waited while he disappeared into the back room. He returned holding a lamp in each hand. The shades were grimy, as if they had been adjusted by a great many dirty fingers. The base of one was chipped so it stood crooked on the counter: the Leaning Lamp of Pisa. They were perfect, and I told him so. He grinned and put two of the boxed tape recorders next to the lamps. Also a drawstring bag containing several lengths of wire so thin it was almost invisible.

  “Want a little tutorial?”

  “I think I’ve got it,” I said, and put five twenties down on the counter. I was a little touched when he tried to push one back.

  “One-eighty was the price we agreed on.”

  “The other twenty is for you to forget I was ever here.”

  He considered this for a moment, then put a thumb on the stray twenty and pulled it into the group with its little green friends. “I already did that. Why don’t I consider this a tip?”

  As he put the stuff into a brown paper bag, I was struck by simple curiosity and asked him a question.

  “Kennedy? I didn’t vote for him, but as long as he doesn’t go taking his orders from the Pope, I think he’ll be okay. The country needs somebody younger. It’s a new age, y’know?”

  “If he were to come to Dallas, do you think he’d be all right?”

  “Probably. Can’t say for sure, though. On the whole, if I were him, I’d stay north of the Mason-Dixon line.”

  I grinned. “Where all is calm, all is bright?”

  Silent Mike (Holy Mike) said, “Don’t start.”

  7

  There was a rack of pigeonholes for mail and school announcements in the first-floor teachers’ room. On Tuesday morning, during my free period, I found a small sealed envelope in mine.

  Dear George—

  If you still want to take me to dinner tonight, it will have to be five-ish, because I’ll have early mornings all this week and next, getting ready for the Fall Book Sale. Perhaps we could come back to my place for dessert.

  I have poundcake, if you’d like a slice.

  Sadie

  “What are you laughing about, Amberson?” Danny Laverty asked. He was correcting themes with a hollow-eyed intensity that suggested hangover. “Tell me, I could use a giggle.”

  “Nah,” I said. “Private joke. You wouldn’t get it.”

  8

  But we got it, poundcake became our name for it, and we ate plenty that fall.

  We were discreet, but of course there were people who knew what was going on. There was probably some gossip, but no scandal. Smalltown folks are rarely mean folks. They knew Sadie’s situation, at least in a general way, and understood we could make no public commitment, at least for awhile. She didn’t come to my house; that would have caused the wrong kind of talk. I never stayed beyond ten o’clock at hers; that also would have caused the wrong kind of talk. There was no way I could have put my Sunliner in her garage and stayed the night, because her Volkswagen Beetle, small as it was, filled it almost wall-to-wall. I wouldn’t have done so in any case, because someone would have known. In small towns, they always do.

  I visited her after school. I dropped by for the meal she called supper. Sometimes we went to Al’s Diner and ate Prongburgers or catfish fillets; sometimes we went to The Saddle; twice I took her to the Saturday-night dances at the local Grange. We saw movies at the Gem in town or at the Mesa in Round Hill or the Starlite Drive-In in Kileen (which the kids called the submarine races). At a nice restaurant like The Saddle, she might have a glass of wine before dinner and I might have a beer with, but we were careful not to be seen at any of the local taverns and certainly not at the Red Rooster, Jodie’s one and only jukejoint, a place our students talked about with longing and awe. It was 1961 and segregation might finally be softening in the middle—Negroes had won the right to sit at the Woolworth’s lunchcounters in Dallas, Fort Worth, and Houston—but schoolteachers didn’t drink in the Red Rooster. Not if they wanted to keep their jobs. Never-never-never.

  When we made love in Sadie’s bedroom, she always kept a pair of slacks, a sweater, and a pair of moccasins on her side of the bed. She called it her emergency outfit. The one time the doorbell bonged while we were naked (a state she had taken to calling in flagrante delicious), she got into those t
hreads in ten seconds flat. She came back, giggling and waving a copy of The Watchtower. “Jehovah’s Witnesses. I told them I was saved and they went away.”

  Once, as we ate ham-steaks and okra in her kitchen afterward, she said our courtship reminded her of that movie with Audrey Hepburn and Gary Cooper—Love in the Afternoon. “Sometimes I wonder if it would be better at night.” She said this a little wistfully. “When regular people do it.”

  “You’ll get a chance to find out,” I said. “Hang in there, baby.”

  She smiled and kissed the corner of my mouth. “You turn some cool phrases, George.”

  “Oh yes,” I said, “I’m very original.”

  She pushed her plate aside. “I’m ready for dessert. How about you?”

  9

  Not long after the Jehovah’s Witnesses came calling at Sadie’s place—this must have been early November, because I’d finished casting my version of Twelve Angry Men—I was out raking my lawn when someone said, “Hello, George, how’s it going?”

  I turned around and saw Deke Simmons, now a widower for the second time. He had stayed in Mexico longer than anyone had thought he would, and just when folks began to believe he was going to remain there, he had come back. This was the first time I’d seen him. He was very brown, but far too thin. His clothes bagged on him, and his hair—iron-gray on the day of the wedding reception—was now almost all white and thinning on top.

  I dropped my rake and hurried over to him. I meant to shake his hand, but hugged him instead. It startled him—in 1961, Real Men Don’t Hug—but then he laughed.

  I held him at arm’s length. “You look great!”

  “Nice try, George. But I feel better than I did. Meems dying …

  I knew it was going to happen, but it still knocked me for a loop. Head could never get through to heart on that one, I reckon.”

  “Come on in and have a cup of coffee.”

  “I’d like that.”

  We talked about his time in Mexico. We talked about school. We talked about the undefeated football team and the upcoming fall play. Then he put down his cup and said, “Ellen Dockerty asked me to pass on a word or two about you and Sadie Clayton.”

  Uh-oh. And I’d thought we were doing so well.

  “She goes by Dunhill now. It’s her maiden name.”

  “I know all about her situation. Knew when we hired her. She’s a fine girl and you’re a fine man, George. Based on what Ellie tells me, the two of you are handling a difficult situation with a fair amount of grace.”

  I relaxed a little.

  “Ellie said she was pretty sure neither of you knew about Candlewood Bungalows just outside of Kileen. She didn’t feel right about telling you, so she asked if I would.”

  “Candlewood Bungalows?”

  “I used to take Meems there on a lot of Saturday nights.” He was fiddling at his coffee cup with hands that now looked too big for his body. “It’s run by a couple of retired schoolteachers from Arkansas or Alabama. One of those Astates, anyway. Retired men schoolteachers. If you know what I mean.”

  “I think I’m following, yes.”

  “They’re nice fellows, very quiet about their own relationship and about the relationships of some of their guests.” He looked up from his coffee cup. He was blushing a little, but also smiling. “This isn’t a hot-sheet joint, if that’s what you’re thinking. Farthest thing from it. The rooms are nice, the prices are reasonable, and the little restaurant down the road is a-country fare. Sometimes a gal needs a place like that. And maybe a man does, too. So they don’t have to be in such a hurry. And so they won’t feel cheap.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Very welcome. Mimi and I had many pleasant evenings at the Candlewood. Sometimes we only watched the TV in our pajamas and then went to bed, but that can be as good as anything else when you get to a certain age.” He smiled ruefully. “Or almost. We’d go to sleep listening to the crickets. Or sometimes a coyote would howl, very far away, out in the sage. At the moon, you know. They really do that. They howl at the moon.”

  He took a handkerchief from his back pocket with an old man’s slowness and mopped his cheeks with it.

  I offered my hand and Deke took hold.

  “She liked you, although she never could figure out what to make of you. She said you reminded her of the way they used to show ghosts in those old movies from the thirties. ‘He’s bright and shiny, but not all here,’ she said.”

  “I’m no ghost,” I said. “I promise you.”

  He smiled. “No? I finally got around to checking your references. This was after you’d been subbing for us awhile and did such a bang-up job with the play. The ones from the Sarasota School District are fine, but beyond there …” He shook his head, still smiling. “And your degree is from a mill in Oklahoma.”

  Clearing my throat did no good. I couldn’t speak at all.

  “And what’s that to me, you ask? Not much. There was a time in this part of the world when if a man rode into town with a few books in his saddlebags, spectacles on his nose, and a tie around his neck, he could get hired on as schoolmaster and stay for twenty years. Wasn’t that long ago, either. You’re a damn fine teacher. The kids know it, I know it, and Meems knew it, too. And that’s a lot to me.”

  “Does Ellen know I faked my other references?” Because Ellen Dockerty was acting principal, and once the schoolboard met in January, the job would be hers permanently. There were no other candidates.

  “Nope, and she’s not going to. Not from me, at least. I feel like she doesn’t need to.” He stood up. “But there’s one person who does need to know the truth about where you’ve been and what you’ve done, and that’s a certain lady librarian. If you’re serious about her, that is. Are you?”

  “Yes,” I said, and Deke nodded as if that took care of everything.

  I only wished it did.

  10

  Thanks to Deke Simmons, Sadie finally got to find out what it was like to make love after sundown. When I asked her how it was, she told me it had been wonderful. “But I’m looking forward to waking up next to you in the morning even more. Do you hear the wind?”

  I did. It hooted around the eaves.

  “Doesn’t that sound make you feel cozy?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m going to say something now. I hope it doesn’t make you uncomfortable.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I guess I’ve fallen in love with you. Maybe it’s just the sex, I’ve heard that’s a mistake people make, but I don’t think so.”

  “Sadie?”

  “Yes?” She was trying to smile, but she looked frightened.

  “I love you, too. No maybe or mistake about it.”

  “Thank God,” she said, and snuggled close.

  11

  On our second visit to the Candlewood Bungalows, she was ready to talk about Johnny Clayton. “But turn out the light, would you?”

  I did as she asked. She smoked three cigarettes during the telling. Toward the end, she cried hard, probably not from remembered pain so much as simple embarrassment. For most of us, I think it’s easier to admit doing wrong than being stupid. Not that she had been. There’s a world of difference between stupidity and naïveté, and like most good middle-class girls who came to maturity in the nineteen-forties and-fifties, Sadie knew almost nothing about sex. She said she had never actually looked at a penis until she had looked at mine. She’d had glimpses of Johnny’s, but she said if he caught her looking, he would take hold of her face and turn it away with a grip that stopped just short of painful.

  “But it always did hurt,” she said. “You know?”

  John Clayton came from a conventionally religious family, nothing nutty about them. He was pleasant, attentive, reasonably attractive. He didn’t have the world’s greatest sense of humor (almost none might have been closer to the mark), but he seemed to adore her. Her parents adored him. Claire Dunhill was especially crazy about Johnny Clayton. And, of course, he w
as taller than Sadie, even when she was in heels. After years of beanpole jokes, that was important.

  “The only troubling thing before the marriage was his compulsive neatness,” Sadie said. “He had all his books alphabetized, and he got very upset if you moved them around. He was nervous if you took even one off the shelf—you could feel it, a kind of tensing. He shaved three times a day and washed his hands all the time. If someone shook with him, he’d make an excuse to rush off to the lav and wash just as soon as he could.”

  “Also color-coordinated clothes,” I said. “On his body and in the closet, and woe to the person who moved them around. Did he alphabetize the stuff in the pantry? Or get up sometimes in the night to check that the stove burners were off and the doors were locked?”

  She turned to me, her eyes wide and wondering in the dark. The bed squeaked companionably; the wind gusted; a loose windowpane rattled. “How do you know that?”

  “It’s a syndrome. Obsessive-compulsive disorder. OCD, for short. Howard—” I stopped. Howard Hughes has a bad case of it, I’d started to say, but maybe that wasn’t true yet. Even if it was, people probably didn’t know. “An old friend of mine had it. Howard Temple. Never mind. Did he hurt you, Sadie?”

  “Not really, no beating or punching. He slapped me once, that’s all. But people hurt people in other ways, don’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “I couldn’t talk to anyone about it. Certainly not my mother. Do you know what she told me on my wedding day? That if I said half a prayer before and half a prayer during, everything would be fine. During was as close as she could come to the word intercourse. I tried to talk to my friend Ruthie about it, but only once. This was after school, and she was helping me pick up the library. ‘What goes on behind the bedroom door is none of my business,’ she said. I stopped, because I didn’t really want to talk about it. I was so ashamed.”

  Then it came in a rush. Some of what she said was blurred by tears, but I got the gist. On certain nights—maybe once a week, maybe twice—he would tell her he needed to “get it out.” They would be lying side by side in bed, she in her nightgown (he insisted she wear ones that were opaque), he in a pair of boxer shorts. Boxers were the closest she ever came to seeing him naked. He would push the sheet down to his waist, and she would see his erection tenting them.