Meanwhile in the World where Kennedy Survived

  Chapter Seventeen

  May, 1985. Jacy had just locked the front door of her house, took heavy steps down the winding front walk and tossed her largest purse into the shotgun seat of her thirteen-year old convertible. Before getting in herself, she walked around to the trunk, keyed it open and for the tenth time, gazed at the hodge-podge of suitcases packed tightly inside there. She started to reach for the smallest one, which contained her checkbooks, credit cards, and caches of money but caught herself. Instead she sighed and said, out loud “Now or never,” for only the birds to hear in the early morning sleepiness. She slammed the trunk lid down.

  When she walked from the trunk to the driver door of the lemon-yellow car, she realized that time had taken on that frozen quality she had not felt for quite some time. Each small action seemed deliberate, ponderous, and even sacred. And when she gently tugged the driver’s door open and slid behind the wheel, she used one fluid, languorous motion. She allowed herself the luxury of pausing, once again, to let the moment wash over her.

  Thirty years before, in the Thunderbird, she’d had a ritual she always followed. She would test the way her hair fell against her forehead, smiling in the rear view mirror, and wriggle in the seat to conform it to her contours before she would drop the choke and twist the key. She fantasized that instead of her trip to the lot for a dance lesson she had instead climbed aboard a light beam Einstein-style, and that trip had astrally propelled her to this point, in that land of bid hair and savings and loan scandals known as the eighties.

  Her soon-to-be ex-husband Stan was a casualty of the scandals, but on that bright, sunny morning she chose not to think about that. Her sixteen year old daughter Josette had traveled north to spend time with her father. Jen, her live-in housemaid, would take care of things while she was away. She had no worries.

  When she looked into the mirror she saw the tiny wrinkles that formed around the corners of her eyes. She tested her smile and saw faint furrows spread across her forehead. That morning she’d gone without the coating of egg whites and also without the foundation, liner, shadow and rouge. She’d pushed her long hair away from her face with the help of a silk scarf, checking to see how long the ends of it dangled. Vaguely she remembered about how the famous dancer Isadora Duncan choked to death when her long flowing scarf caught the spoked wheels of a speeding Bugatti as it drove her along.

  Her friends had been pestering her to get rid of the Mustang and instead treat herself to something newer, sleeker, and fresher, “especially after the way that bastard did you” as Terri said. But she loved the old car, sighing when just a quick turn of the ignition caught the canister and all four barrels exploded to life. It was too late for the paperboys and too early for all the power brokers and Jacy could have backed out of the driveway blindfolded. Instead she turned to look behind herself for her first glimpse of the open road lying ahead.

  The engine thrum reverberated off the stone and slate rooftops as she screeched around corners past manicured lawns and gleaming street signs. There was no phone in the car. It did not have a postal address. Not even a telegram could reach her. The pony express of her steed would deliver her into a sorely needed, introspective adventure.

  Once she cleared the neighborhood, she knew from decades of experience that the gray, greasy cloud would hang over her until she had thundered miles past San Bernardino.

  At her first stop for fuel she gave her money to a sleepy looking man in early middle age with the porcupine-like sprouting of a few days’ beard growth. He nodded and smiled at her, ringing out her purchase. To him, she supposed, she could have been any glamour grandma type taking a spin on a beautiful morning, possibly to alight on one of the sprawling shopping malls in the valley. She stopped in the service station’s restroom to give herself a once-over in the mirror.

  Maybe the glamour grandma bit was underestimating things a bit, she thought when she lifted her chin, turned to one side, then the other, and inhaled slightly to inspect her cheekbone hollows. There was a stray reddish brown eyebrow tendril jutting from beneath one of her high arches. She was able to press the long, healthy nails of her thumb and index finger together and grasp it, yanking it free. She wore a plain, cream cable knit sleeveless top and mauve slacks that day. Before climbing back behind the wheel she slipped on a paid of big, clear-framed sunglasses she’d seen on Santa Monica matrons, which completed the exact incognito departure she wanted.

  She’d kept herself psychologically numb to the tall buildings and sunlight dancing off the glass. There were golf courses carved into the desert and palm trees flanking the roadside. Airplanes. Motorcycles. Children playing on street corners. She was staring straight ahead, riding in a car named after a horse, with blinders on.

  After what had seemed like an hour to her, the space on either side of the road widened and gave way to wide expanses and cliff tops. Brown desert and mesas. Defiance and pent-up hostility found their way to her right foot, which plunged down onto the chrome-edged gas pedal, lurching the car forward, rocketing her into America.

  She didn’t know what prompted her to look into the rear-view mirror on her way to Arizona. Her angel, maybe? But in the reflection she saw the tell-tale blue lights and her stomach froze over. “Oh, no,” she said, all the while pulling back, as if yanking the reins, edging the wheels onto the gravelly shoulder. Thank god, she thought, I never changed my name. She edged the wheels of her car onto the shoulder and applied the brake, lightly at first but pressing down to halt the car onto the softer surface. Out of the reflection in the rear view mirror, she could see that the police car kept a distance of a couple of car lengths behind her, as it had been towed by an invisible cord. She took off her sunglasses.

  Her side view mirror had been angled in slightly and in that reflection she watched the police car behind her, waiting for the door to open. She wondered if he was just going to sit there and watch her from his driver’s seat, but finally the door did open. Slowly. Like the lid on a coffin. A boot emerged from the opened door, sought solid ground and landed on the pavement.

  Jacy watched a knee follow, then another leg, an arm, and then a white-hatted head as the officer emerged from the car empty handed. She would have thought that he would have carried at least his ticket writing pad. The officer walked toward her and when the size of his reflection would no longer allow her to follow him, she turned around. She clutched her purse to her side more tightly, her fingers seeking around inside for her billfold and her driver’s license. The next time she turned to the side she could see the glint and flash of sunlight off the badge. He said “Hello, it’s a nice day, isn’t it?”

  She looked up at him, surprised at the pleasant greeting. It was still early morning, she realized, and light from the rising sun in the east must have been trained directly on him. There was an uncanny, other-worldly glow to his clothes, his skin, and his hair. The blue in his eyes seemed flecked with shining silver. He smiled at her warmly, beatifically. Moments passed and it suddenly occurred to her that neither of them had spoken since she affirmed his comment. He asked “Can I see your license, please?”

  When she lifted the small, laminated care up to him, he grasped it and quickly glanced at the picture. She had been scrubbed down the day she’d had it taken, her hair tied back. For a moment she wondered whether anyone at all had ever seen the picture besides herself and the clerk at the Department of Motor Vehicles. The policeman gave her the license back and she quickly studied his lapels or breast for a name tag. She found it, on his side opposite the badge. It read “Gabriel.”

  “You were traveling pretty quickly back there,” Gabriel said. “I thought maybe something was wrong.”

  “No,” Jacy said. “Nothing at all.”

  The policeman nodded while looking down at her. “Can you just sit tight right here? I have to get something from the car.”

  She wondered if he would return with a ticket for her, taking a moment to try and remember exactly how fast she was going. This time she did no
t watch him walk back to his car. She was surprised when he returned so quickly with something that did look like a writing pad. He pulled the top leaf off and handed her the thin, flimsy, pale yellow piece of paper. The top of it read “Notice or Warning.” She sighed, relieved. In the next instant she realized that there had not been enough time for him to write anything down.

  “Just try to stay mindful of where you are, and where you want to go,” the officer said as he backed away, ending their encounter. Jacy scanned the writing on the ticket and saw that he had transcribed her name, address and details about the car onto the warning ticket, plus a couple of short lines describing her transgression: “traveling along Highway 1 at an excessive rate of speed.”

  Jacy was going to call out after the young man, ask him whether he had somehow written the ticket out in advance or whether he had speed-scribbled it. He had already lowered back into his squad car though, the engine firing, the wheels spinning and the vehicle lurching back onto the roadway. It occurred to her to look out after Gabriel’s car, to watch what direction it went to, and make sure that it did converge with the dot on the horizon rather than disappearing.

  After sitting there for a few more moments dumbfounded, Jacy just folded the ticket in half and tucked it away inside her purse. Something inside her told her not to give the matter a second thought. An eerie calm descended when she turned the ignition, engaged the gear and resumed smoothly onto the highway for the rest of her trip.