Everyone has their own memories of that day. In this short anecdote, a girl called Catherine is twelve years old when her hero dies.
It was Friday and I didn’t want to be late for Petal. Ever since I’d started dog-walking after school, I had prided myself on being punctual as well as responsible. I rushed up to the fifth floor.
Mrs Berger trembled all over when she opened her door. ‘Oh, Catherine, it’s the most terrible thing.’
I thought Petal must have swallowed one of Mrs Berger’s pearl earrings again, but it was much worse than that.
‘The president is dead.’
My hand flew to my mouth. ‘No! What happened?’
Mrs Berger dabbed at her eyes as she told me. I could hardly believe it, but she had seen it on TV and she said that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas around 1 P.M. DC time. I was in the refectory then, wiping down the tables. Even now, my fingers still stank of orange peel, banana skins, and vinegar.
Numb, I thought back to that morning. The geography lesson hadn’t gone too well because I’d got muddled between the St Lawrence Seaway and the Gulf Stream in front of the whole class, but I’d have given anything to be back there being laughed at, just a few hours ago when the best president ever was still alive.
‘It’s so terrible,’ said Mrs Berger.
It was way beyond terrible. And I still had to walk Petal, because dogs need to do their business no matter who got shot. I took her leash, wound my scarf around my neck, and headed out.
In the lobby, Mrs Mezzanine in her mothy coat stopped me and declared it was a dreadful tragedy. ‘America is so violent. In the old country, things like this didn’t happen. Or maybe they did, but I’m so old that I’ve forgotten.’
I nodded. I felt sad too but I had to keep it together for Petal’s sake, so I pulled her away from sniffing Mrs Mezzanine’s bottom and told her, ‘Come on, Petal. Let’s find you a tree.’
As I waited at Petal’s favorite fire hydrant, my fingers knotted and unknotted in anguish. I didn’t know what to do, so I did the usual thing. I walked all the way up New Hampshire Avenue to the little grocery store. Petal sniffed at several trees on the way and tried to eat an empty pack of Lucky Strikes, but she still hadn’t done what she was supposed to do, so I took her down to Virginia Avenue where the State Department is.
This was where I’d been standing the time I saw President Kennedy. It was just one glimpse when he was in his limo on his way to the State Department for a press conference, but from then on it was like I had known him forever. And now he was gone.
Mommy had heard the news too by the time I returned Petal and got to our apartment. She gave me a big hug. For dinner, she made hamburger out of ground round and then she broiled it just how I like it.
I cut into the meat and stared at it. Instead of hunger growling in my stomach, I had a hard knot inside like when I hadn’t done my homework, only much worse. Even thinking of a Hostess chocolate cupcake didn’t help. The hurt from the knot went right through my heart and out the other side.
The TV was on. I couldn’t bear to watch, but I couldn’t bear not to watch, either.
‘His poor family.’ Mom sat there on the couch looking hopeless.
I nodded sickly. The only thing on TV was the same news over and over, and we already knew that Kennedy was dead and that Lyndon Johnson had been sworn in as President on Air Force One. You didn’t need to see Mrs Kennedy in her pink suit stained with blood and brains down the front to know how awful it was.
It’s almost incredible that, even sixty years on, we still don’t know exactly what happened on that day. Let me know what you think.
