MacDougal Street Ghosts by Hesper Anderson

Author:Hesper Anderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2005-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

April was explosive, inwardly and outwardly. The assassination of Martin Luther King shocked us, and devastated the children. They’d been too young when Kennedy was killed to really understand. I remember the boys watching the funeral with me, at moments, and then carrying large blocks down the hallway, chanting, “We’re burying President Kennedy, we’re burying President Kennedy.” But Martin Luther King was different; they’d grown up with him. The Little Red School House, in the heart of the Village, was a progressive, integrated school. In assemblies they sang “We Shall Overcome” and “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” King was a hero, his dream and his movement embraced, so his killing was their first run-in with insanity and injustice. They tried to make sense out of it, and couldn’t, and we weren’t much help. All we could do was to grieve with them, and try to hide the fact that our lives were in shambles, and getting worse by the day.

The best part of early April in New York was the shedding of winter clothes. Snow pants, mittens and galoshes were happily discarded by the kids, overcoats and parkas by the grown-ups, and we could walk outside in just sweaters, jeans and sneakers. Bare branches were coming alive, the forsythia was golden, and the first robins were darts of red between the garden trees. The garden mothers began gathering again on the benches, and on one of these perfect afternoons I found Diana sobbing on the bench nearest our house. She was turned away, hiding her face, but her shoulders were shaking.

“Diana, sweetheart, what’s wrong?” I asked, sitting beside her, trying to get an arm around her.

“I can’t talk,” she said, between sobs, shaking me off.

“Sure, you can. You can talk to me,” I said gently. She twisted further away, and pressed her forehead on the top slat of the bench. “I’m the one that gets it, remember?” I said.

“Not this,” she said, and after a minute turned her ravaged face to me. “I told Cliff, and he said he’d take the children—he’d take everything.”

“Told him what?”

“Told him I wanted to leave him, told him I loved somebody else.”

“Oh, God…”

“Oh, God is right,” she said bitterly. “I can’t lose my kids—I’d die—and Cliff controls the money—I turned it all over to him!”

“I know, I did that too,” I said quietly. “Not money like your money, but still—I did it too.”

“Fucking idiots,” Diana muttered, and I tried not to laugh. “I don’t know what to do, Cal…I have no idea.”

“Maybe he’ll change his mind. Maybe if you give it some time.”

“You don’t know Cliff,” Diana answered as she wiped her face and blew her nose. “You don’t know how stubborn, how totally self-righteous—”

“No, I don’t.”

“I can’t lose my kids,” Diana said again, her voice desolate.

“Then you won’t,” I said, and reached out and held her, one hand stroking her hair. I knew that she’d made a decision. She would tell her lover, whoever he was, that it was over, and stay with Cliff and the kids.

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