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my Ford steamed up. Then she pushed me away and I saw her cheeks were wet. When in God’s name
had she started to cry?
“George, I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t. I’m too scared.” Her jumper was in her lap, revealing her
garters, the hem of her slip, the lacy froth of her panties. She pulled the skirt down to her knees.
I guessed it was being married, and even if the marriage was busted, it still mattered—this was the
mid-twentieth century, not the early twenty-first. Or maybe it was the neighbors. The houses looked
dark and fast asleep, but you couldn’t tell for sure, and in small towns, new preachers and new teachers
are always interesting topics of conversation. It turned out I was wrong on both counts, but there was
no way I could have known.
“Sadie, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. I’m not—”
“You don’t understand. It’s not that I don’t want to. That’s not why I’m scared. It’s because I never
have.”
Before I could say anything else, she was out of the car and running for the house, fumbling in her
purse for her key. She didn’t look back.
8
I got home at twenty to one, walking from the garage to the house in my own version of the Blue-
Balls Scuttle. I had no more than turned on the kitchen light when the phone began to ring. 1961 is
forty years from caller ID, but only one person would be calling me at such an hour, and after such a
night.
“George? It’s me.” She sounded composed, but her voice was thick. She had been crying. And hard,
from the sound.
“Hi, Sadie. You never gave me a chance to thank you for a lovely time. During the dance, and
after.”
“I had a good time, too. It’s been so long since I danced. I’m almost afraid to tell you who I learned
to Lindy with.”
“Well,” I said, “I learned with my ex-wife. I’m guessing you might have learned with your
estranged husband.” Except it wasn’t a guess; it was how these things went. I was no longer surprised
by it, but if I told you I ever got used to that eerie chiming of events, I’d be lying.
“Yes.” Her tone was flat. “Him. John Clayton of the Savannah Claytons. And estranged is just the
right word, because he’s a very strange man.”
“How long have you been married?”
“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