Message from Nam (2 page)

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Walter Cronkite’s voice droned on, as Paxton and the others stared silently at the television screen at school. The few people who were still talking were doing so in whispers. And every few minutes, Cronkite was switching over to the reporters now standing in the lobby of Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, where the President had been taken.

“We don’t have any real answers for you yet,” the face on the screen said, “all we know is that the President’s condition is critical, but there haven’t been any new bulletins in the last few minutes.” With that, a teacher’s hand reached out and switched the dial, just in time to hear Chet Huntley say almost exactly the same thing on another network. The students were looking at each other, with terror clearly etched on their faces. And again, Paxton could remember George coming to pick her up at school to tell her about their father. The accident, the plane coming down … and George’s face as he told her. He had just finished medical school then, and he was waiting to start his residency at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. He had managed to stay in the South for his entire education, although their father was a Harvard graduate and had encouraged him to go north. But Beatrice felt that it was important to stay close to their roots, and support the educational institutions of the South, and she frequently said so.

It was two o’clock, and Paxton stood breathlessly in the corner of the room trying to believe that he would be all right, fighting back tears, and not sure if she was crying for their President, or her father. Her father had died the day after his plane crashed, his injuries too great, his wife and son at his side, while Paxton waited at home with Queenie. At eleven, they thought she was too young to see him at the hospital, and he had never regained consciousness anyway. She had never seen him again. He was gone, with all his warmth and his love and his broad wisdom about the world, his fascination with people and history and things far, far from Savannah. He was a southern gentleman of the old school, and yet in some secret ways he didn’t fit into the mold he had been born to, and it was that that Paxton loved about him. That and everything else in fact, the way he hugged her tight when she ran to him, the way he sounded when they went for long walks and talked about things she wondered about, like the war, and Europe, and what it had been like to go to Harvard. She loved the way he sounded and the way he smelled, the spice of his after-shave would leave a fresh smell in the room after he’d walked through it … and the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled, and the things he said about how proud he was of her … she felt as though she had died when they played “Amazing Grace” at his funeral, and Queenie sat in the back row and cried so loud, Paxton could hear her from where she sat between George and her mother.

Her life had never been the same again since her father died. It was as though he had taken a piece of her with him, the piece that used to smell wild flowers with him, and go to his office to visit him when he had to work on Saturday mornings, the piece that could talk to him as though she really understood the world, and ask him all kinds of questions. She had an uncanny sense about people, and she had once said to him that she didn’t think her mother really loved her. It didn’t really bother Paxton anymore. It just was. And she had Queenie and her father.

“I think … I think she needs someone like George.… He doesn’t make her nervous, and he talks about the things she cares about. He kind of
is
like her, don’t you think, Daddy? Sometimes when I say I really
love
something, I think it scares her.” She was more perceptive than she knew, and Carlton Andrews knew it too, but he never admitted it to his only daughter.

“She doesn’t express her feelings the way you and I do,” he said honestly, sitting back in the comfortable old leather chair that she liked to swivel in until it threatened to fall off its moorings. “But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have them.” He felt an obligation to protect his wife, even from Paxton, although he knew that what Paxxie said was true. Beatrice was as cold as ice. Dutiful and loyal and a “good wife” in her own eyes. She kept a nice home, was always polite and kind to him, she would never cheat on him, or be rude to him, or betray him. She was a lady to her very core, but like Paxxie he wondered if she had ever loved anyone or anything, except George, but even there she kept a cool, comfortable distance. It was just that their son was so much like her, he didn’t expect more than that. But Carlton did, and so did Paxxie, and they both knew that, from Beatrice, they would never get it. “She loves you, Pax.” But even as he said it, Paxton thought he was lying. She didn’t totally understand the subtle shadings of just how much the woman was capable of, or wasn’t. Carlton had a much clearer picture.

“I love you, Daddy.” She had thrown her arms around him then, without hesitation or reserve. She never held back anything from him, and he laughed as she almost knocked him off the ancient swivel chair.

“Hey, you … you’re goin’ to have me on the floor here in a minute.” He dreamed about her going to Radcliffe one day, and as he held her close to him, he could imagine her grown and beautiful, and the pride of his sunset years. She was everything he had ever dreamed of, warm and loving and giving and caring. She was everything he himself was, although he didn’t know it.

And then, he was gone, and Paxton was alone with them, except for Queenie. She studied hard, and she read all the time. She wrote letters to her father, as though he were away on a trip, and she could mail the letters to him, except that she couldn’t. Sometimes she put the letters away, and sometimes she just tore them up. But it helped her to write them. It was a way of still “talking” to him, since she couldn’t talk to “them.” Her mother seemed to jump at everything she said, she disagreed with everything Paxton said, and sometimes Paxxie almost felt as though she’d come from another planet. They were so different in every way. And George was just like her. He would urge Paxton to “behave” and try to see things her mother’s way, to be “reasonable,” and remember who she was, which only confused her further. Who was she? Her father’s daughter, or theirs? Who was right? But in her heart of hearts, there was no confusion. She knew that his broader love of the world was the only way for her, and by the time George finished his residency at Grady Memorial, and she turned sixteen, she knew without a moment’s doubt that she wanted to get out of the South and go to Radcliffe. Her mother wanted her to go to Agnes Scott or Mary Baldwin, or Sweet Briar where she had gone herself, or even Bryn Mawr, but she thought it a ridiculous idea for Paxton to go to Radcliffe.

“You don’t need to go to a northern school. We have everything you need right here. Look at your brother. He had every opportunity to go anywhere in the country, and he stayed right here in Georgia.” The very idea of it made Paxton feel claustrophobic. She wanted to get away from their narrow ideas, from her mother’s friends, from the things she heard about the “horrors of integration.” Civil rights were something she discussed with her friends, or with Queenie, sotto voce in the kitchen. But even Queenie clung to the old views and thought that black folks should stay where black folks belonged, and that ain’t the same place as white folks. The thought of mixing the two frightened her, and it was only her children and her grandchildren who wanted the same changes as Paxton. But Paxton thought the things she had grown up with were wrong, and she wasn’t afraid to say so, or write papers about it for school. She knew her father would have agreed with her too, he always had, and that added fuel to her fervor. It was a subject she had learned not to discuss with her mother and brother. But that fall, she had applied to half a dozen northern schools, and two in California. She had applied to Vassar, Wellesley, Radcliffe, Smith, and in the West, Stanford, and UC Berkeley. She didn’t really want to go to a girls’ school, and Radcliffe was the only one she really wanted. She had applied to the two western schools because her adviser thought she should, and she had finally applied halfheartedly to Sweet Briar, to appease her mother. And her mother’s friends kept telling her how happy she was going to be there, as though her going to Sweet Briar was a foregone conclusion.

It was something she couldn’t even think of now, as her eyes clung to the clock. It was only two o’clock, half an hour after the President had been shot, ten minutes since they had been watching the television for news of him, as the entire nation prayed, and his family knew what Paxton had learned six years before when her father died … that it was over.

At 2:01, Walter Cronkite looked into the camera with a defeated look and told the American people that their President was dead, and in the tiny room at Savannah High, there was a murmur of grief that became a wail, and the room was suddenly filled with the sound of sobbing. People were crying everywhere and teachers and students embraced, muttering incoherently about how could a thing like that happen. Walter Cronkite went on, two doctors were interviewed, and Paxton felt as though she were moving underwater. Everything seemed to have slowed down, and everything seemed to be happening at a great distance. People were crying everywhere, and Paxton could barely see as the tears coursed down her cheeks and she felt a breathlessness she had felt once before, as though someone had squeezed all the air out of her and she would never catch her breath again. It was a pain and a grief almost beyond bearing. And in an odd way, this was like losing him all over again. Her father had been fifty-seven years old when he died, and John Kennedy was only forty-six, and yet both had been cut down in the prime of their lives, filled with fire and ideas and excitement about living, both had families, both had children who loved them dearly. And Jack Kennedy would be mourned by an entire world, Carlton Andrews was only mourned by those who knew him. But it felt the same to Paxton now, and she could feel what his children must feel, the terrible grief, the loss, the sorrow, the anger. This was so terrible, so wrong, how could anyone do it? She walked blindly down the halls as she left the school, without saying a word to anyone, and she ran the half-dozen blocks to their home on Habersham, and the door to their house slammed as she flew into the front hall, still crying, her white-blond mane still flying behind her. She looked like her father, too, or as he had as a boy, with shining blond hair, and big green eyes that always seemed to be searching for answers. And she looked frighteningly pale now as she dropped her books and her bag, and hurried to the kitchen to find Queenie.

Queenie was humming to herself as she hustled around the kitchen she loved. The copper pots shone to perfection as they hung on the racks above her head, and there was the fragrant smell of her baking. And she turned in surprise to see Paxton standing staring at her with a wild-eyed look and her lovely young face frightened and tear-stained. At that moment, Paxton was the symbol of an entire nation.

“What happen’, child?” Queenie looked frightened as she moved her enormous bulk toward the girl she had raised and loved like no other.

“I …” For a moment, Paxxie didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t find the words, didn’t know what to tell her. “Haven’t you watched TV today?” Queenie was addicted to the soaps, but she only shook her head and stared at Paxton.

“No, your mom took the kitchen set to be fixed yesterday. It’s broke. And I never watch the big set in the living room.” She looked hurt at the suggestion. “Why?” She wondered if something terrible had happened in downtown Savannah … maybe Dr. George … or Mrs. Andrews … or even her own children might be affected … maybe one of those terrible civil rights demonstrations … maybe … But she was in no way prepared for what Paxton told her.

“President Kennedy was shot.”

“Oh, my land …” Queenie sank her enormous bulk into the nearest chair with a look of shocked horror. Her eyes moved to Paxton’s then with an unspoken question.

“He’s dead.” Paxxie began to cry again, and then knelt next to Queenie and put her arms around her. It was like losing her father all over again. That terrible feeling of loss and despair and grief and betrayal. And Queenie held her as they both cried for a man they had never known and who had been felled so young, and for what? Why? Why had they done it? How angry could anyone be? What purpose would it serve? And why him as an example? Why a man with two small children and a young wife? Why anyone? And why someone so alive and so full of hope and promise for so many? Paxxie mourned him in Queenie’s arms, and the old black woman held her and rocked her as she had as a child, as she herself cried for a man she had never known, but believed to be a good person.

“Lawd, child … I can’t hardly believe it. Why would anyone do such a thing? Do they know who did it?”

“I don’t think so.” But when they went to the living room and turned on the TV, there was fresh news, a man named Lee Harvey Oswald had shot and killed a Dallas policeman who tried to question him, and had been traced to the Book Depository where the fatal shots had been fired into the motorcade at one-thirty. And he was believed to be President Kennedy’s killer. Oswald had been apprehended, the policeman and the President were dead, a secret service agent too, Texas governor John Connally had been severely wounded, but was doing well, and the President’s body was on its way to Washington on Air Force One, with his wife beside him. President and Mrs. Johnson were on board, too, and there had been earlier reports that he had been wounded slightly, which were later proven to be only rumors. An entire nation was in shock, and Paxton and Queenie stood there mutely, still unable to believe what they were hearing and seeing. They were still standing there, watching silently, tears streaming down their faces, when Paxton’s mother walked in a few minutes later. She went to the hairdresser every Friday afternoon and was just returning from her weekly appointment. She had heard the news there, and she looked grim as she silently joined them. Several of the women had gone home with wet hair, and most of the hairdressers didn’t have the heart to finish what they had started. Everyone was in tears, and Beatrice Andrews had been having her hair rinsed when they first heard the news. But she had stayed to have everything done, and even convinced one of the girls to finish her manicure. She hated to let it all go for a few more days. She had a lot to do that weekend before Thanksgiving, and her bridge club was giving a dinner. It never dawned on her that no one would be giving anything. Every festivity imaginable would be canceled, as people sat glued to their TVs and an entire nation went into mourning. But that hadn’t occurred to her, and she had come home, feeling subdued, but not hysterical by any means. She thought some of the women got a little too carried away. She knew what real grief was, she had lost her own husband, after all, hadn’t she, and it was impossible to feel the same emotion for a public figure. And yet people did feel that for him, that intense kind of personal grieving as though they had known and loved him. He had brought new hope to everyone, the promise of youth brought to ancient tasks, the magic of a world they would never know and could only dream of. And his beautiful wife reminded everyone of a fairy princess.