11/22/63 полностью

“Forever and a day. If you want to call what we had a marriage, that is.” She laughed. It was Ivy Templeton’s laugh, full of humor and despair. “In my case, forever and a day adds up to a little over four years. After school lets out in June, I’m going to make a discreet trip to Reno. I’ll get a summer job as a waitress or something. The residency requirement is six weeks. Which means in late July or early August I’ll be able to shoot this… this joke I got myself into… like a horse with a broken leg.”

“I can wait,” I said, but as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I wondered if they were true. Because the actors were gathering in the wings and the show would soon start. By June of ’62, Lee Oswald would be back in the USA, living first with Robert and Robert’s family, then with his mother. By August he’d be on Mercedes Street in Fort Worth and working at the nearby Leslie Welding Company, putting together aluminum windows and the kind of storm doors that have initials worked into them.

“I’m not sure I can.” She spoke in a voice so low I had to strain to hear her. “I was a virgin bride at twenty-three and now I’m a virgin grass widow at twenty-eight. That’s a long time for the fruit to hang on the tree, as they say back where I come from, especially when people — your own mother, for one — assume you started getting your practical experience on all that birds-and-bees stuff four years ago. I’ve never told anyone that, and if you repeated it, I think I’d die.”

“It’s between us, Sadie. And always will be. Was he impotent?”

“Not exact—” She broke off. There was silence for a moment, and when she spoke again, her voice was full of horror. “George… is this a party line?”

“No. For an extra three-fifty a month, this baby is all mine.”

“Thank God. But it’s still nothing to be talking about on the phone. And certainly not at Al’s Diner over Prongburgers. Can you come for supper? We could have a little picnic in my backyard. Say around five?”

“That would be fine. I’ll bring a poundcake, or something.”

“That’s not what I want you to bring.”

“What, then?”

“I can’t say it on the phone, even if it’s not a party line. Something you buy in a drugstore. But not the Jodie Drugstore.”

“Sadie—”

“Don’t say anything, please. I’m going to hang up and splash some cold water on my face. It feels like it’s on fire.”

There was a click in my ear. She was gone. I undressed and went to bed, where I lay awake a long time, thinking long thoughts. About time and love and death.

At ten o’clock on that Sunday morning, I jumped into the Sunliner and drove twenty miles to Round Hill. There was a drugstore on the main drag, and it was open, but I saw a WE ROAR FOR THE DENHOLM LIONS sticker on the door and remembered Round Hill was part of Consolidated District Four. I drove on to Kileen. There, an elderly druggist who bore an eerie but probably coincidental resemblance to Mr. Keene back in Derry winked at me as he gave me a brown bag and my change. “Don’t do anything against the law, son.”

I returned the wink in the expected fashion and drove back to Jodie. I’d had a late night, but when I lay down and tried to nap, I didn’t even get in sleep’s neighborhood. So I went to the Weingarten’s and bought a poundcake after all. It looked Sunday-stale, but I didn’t care and didn’t think Sadie would, either. Picnic supper or no picnic supper, I was pretty sure food wasn’t the number one item on today’s agenda. When I knocked on her door, there was a whole cloud of butterflies in my stomach.

Sadie’s face was free of makeup. She wasn’t even wearing lipstick. Her eyes were large, dark, and frightened. For one moment I was sure she was going to slam the door in my face and I’d hear her running away just as fast as her long legs would carry her. And that would be that.

But she didn’t run. “Come on in,” she said. “I made chicken salad.” Her lips began to tremble. “I hope you like… you like p-plenty of m-may—”

Her knees started to buckle. I dropped the box with the poundcake inside on the floor and grabbed her. I thought she was going to faint, but she didn’t. She put her arms around my neck and held tight, like a drowning woman to a floating log. I could feel her body thrumming. I stepped on the goddamned poundcake. Then she did. Squoosh.

“I’m scared,” she said. “What if I’m no good at it?”

“What if I’m not?” This was not entirely a joke. It had been a long time. At least four years.

She didn’t seem to hear me. “He never wanted me. Not the way I expected. And his way is the only way I know. The touching, then the broom.”

“Calm down, Sadie. Take a deep breath.”

“Did you go to the drugstore?”

“Yes, in Kileen. But we don’t have to—”

“We do. I do. Before I lose what little courage I have left. Come on.”