Space by Jesse Lee Kercheval

Author:Jesse Lee Kercheval [Kercheval, Jesse Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press

IN THE END, Mrs. Henry drove me home. My father forgot—not that unusual—but for the first time ever, Carol forgot to remind him. By the time I got home, I was ready to be mad at her. I found her in the kitchen, standing at the refrigerator, pouring a glass of Hawaiian Punch. I slapped my rolled towel on the kitchen table. “Have you heard the news?” she asked me, not noticing that I was angry. “Jackie Kennedy is going to marry some old rich Greek guy. She’s hidden away on his yacht in the Mediterranean.” Carol made a face and drained the glass of sweet red punch as if washing a bitter taste from her mouth. “Isn’t that disgusting? What would President Kennedy have said?” Carol had taken down her autographed color picture of JFK, but I knew she still had it, carefully stored in her sock and underwear drawer, along with the proof Kennedy half-dollars my mother had bought us when she worked at the Treasury. I understood why this news had made her forget about picking me up at Mrs. Henry’s.

“I bet he’s spinning in his grave,” I said, imagining just that, JFK tossing and turning in his coffin under his flickering gas eternal flame, imagining his bride in another man’s arms.

“Her new husband isn’t even an American,” she said.

Carol said all the other girls in the chorus were outraged, too. And when we watched Cronkite after dinner, it was clear the whole world was waiting for the first glimpse of Jackie transmuted—like gold into lead, Cinderella into the Wicked Stepmother—into Mrs. Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. No one was thinking about poor Wally Schirra and his head cold circling the earth in Apollo 7 or about Paul asleep after a dinner of baby food and fruitcake in the Maltezos’ dark backyard. No one, that is, except me.

That night I dreamed we were both in our bathing suits floating in the deep night of space. Paul was ahead of me, and I was trying to rescue him as I had in Mrs. Henry’s pool. Though I could almost touch his warm, bare skin, he kept bobbing away.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.