The Day Kennedy Died

PAUL HANDS me the ceramic dish, steaming with crisp-edged potatoes. I spoon three onto my plate, alongside pale strips of chicken and carrots sweetened with cinnamon.

“Where were you, Marilyn?” he asks.

“Where was I, when?” I pass the potatoes to my husband, Frank.

“When Kennedy was shot.”

For months, this had been popular dinner party conversation. Everyone had their account of the moment they heard about the assassination. Especially Paul, who had been in Europe in November and liked to share how he had divined the news against great odds and language barriers from a Greek newspaper. 

“I was in the apartment,” I lie, recalling how the pale afternoon light had caressed Denise’s thighs and belly as she sprawled across her bed.

“How did you hear?” Nancy hands me a platter of cauliflower smothered in cheese sauce.

“The wireless,” I say, spooning generous fists of the vegetable onto my plate. Denise had joked that we had nothing on but the radio. Her firm breasts highlighted in the pale triangles of her bikini tan. I slip the serving spoon into the sauce. “I was listening to the news.” 

“But what were you doing?” Frank insists. “Everyone remembers what they were doing.”

I fork a potato and slice through its flesh, picturing how my thumbs fitted in the shallow indentations above Denise’s buttocks. I lift the mouthful to my lips.

“Baking,” I say.

“I went to lunch.” Nancy says. “I walked to a café downtown, where they do the most delicious roast beef on rye. When I got back to the office, everyone on my floor was gathered around a desk. I thought they were telling LBJ jokes.” She shakes her head. “Then I heard that JFK had been shot.”

Frank is watching me. “I called the apartment that afternoon,” he says. “You didn’t answer.”

After the news, we sat on the edge of Denise's bed. The sun dipped and the room chilled and a film of bumps tensed across my skin. I rooted for my clothes, disentangling  our stockings and my satin panties and matching brassiere from her white cotton briefs. I dressed with my back to her, listening to the insistent ring of our telephone across the hall. “That’ll be your husband,” she’d said. I retrieved the empty measuring cup I’d bought under the guise of borrowing some sugar and stumbled bare-legged back to my apartment, my blouse and shoes bundled in my arms. The phone stopped as I reached it.

“I couldn’t. My hands were covered in batter,” I say.

“What did you bake?” Frank pours gravy in thick folds over his chicken.

“A tart, to welcome our neighbor.” 

I finger my pearls and recall the click of Denise’s teeth on the hard round stones, the feel of her tongue in the hollow of my neck.

“The hot blonde across the hall?” Frank nudges Paul. They smile like frat boys.

“Yes.” I lick sauce off my finger, “that’s the one.”