11/22/63: A Novel

I walked out to fresh applause. I shook Mike’s hand and gave Bobbi Jill a peck on the cheek. They scampered offstage. I raised my hands for quiet and launched into my carefully rehearsed speech, telling them Sadie couldn’t be here tonight but thanking them all on her behalf. Every public speaker worth his salt knows to concentrate on specific members of the audience, and I focused on a pair in the third row who looked remarkably like Ma and Pa in American Gothic. This was Fred Miller and Jessica Caltrop, the schoolboard members who had denied us use of the school gym on the grounds that Sadie being assaulted by her ex was in bad taste and should be ignored, insofar as possible.

Four sentences in, I was interrupted by gasps of surprise. This was followed by applause-isolated at first but quickly growing to a storm. The audience took to its feet again. I had no idea what they were applauding for until I felt a light, tentative hand grip my arm above the elbow. I turned to see Sadie standing beside me in her red dress. She had put her hair up and secured it with a glittery clip. Her face-both sides of it-was completely visible. I was shocked to discover that, once fully revealed, the residual damage wasn’t as awful as I had feared. There might be some sort of universal truth there, but I was too stunned to suss it out. Sure, that deep, ragged hollow and the fading hash marks of the stitches were hard to look at. So was the slack flesh and her unnaturally wide left eye, which no longer quite blinked in tandem with the right one.

But she was smiling that charming one-sided smile, and in my eyes, that made her Helen of Troy. I hugged her, and she hugged me back, laughing and crying. Beneath the dress, her whole body was thrumming like a high-tension wire. When we faced the audience again, everyone was up and cheering except for Miller and Caltrop. Who looked around, saw they were the only ones still on their fannies, and reluctantly joined the others.

“Thank you,” Sadie said when they quieted. “Thank you all from the very bottom of my heart. Special thanks to Ellen Dockerty, who told me that if I didn’t come here and look y’all in the eye, I’d regret it for the rest of my life. And most thanks of all to…”

The minutest of hesitations. I’m sure the audience didn’t notice it, which made me the only one who knew how close Sadie had come to telling five hundred people my actual name.

“… to George Amberson. I love you, George.”

Which brought down the house, of course. In dark times when even the sages are uncertain, declarations of love always do.

7

Ellen took Sadie-who was exhausted-home at ten-thirty. Mike and I turned out the Grange Hall lights at midnight and stepped into the alley. “Gonna come to the after-party, Mr. A? Al said he’d keep the diner open until two, and he brought in a couple of kegs. He’s not licensed for it, but I don’t think anyone’ll arrest him.”

“Not me,” I said. “I’m beat. I’ll see you tomorrow night, Mike.”

I drove to Deke’s before going home. He was sitting on his front porch in his pajamas, smoking a final pipe.

“Pretty special night,” he said.

“Yes.”

“That young woman showed guts. A country mile of em.”

“She did.”

“Are you going to do right by her, son?”

“I’m going to try.”

He nodded. “She deserves that, after the last one. And you’re doing okay so far.” He glanced toward my Chevy. “You could probably take your car tonight and park right out front. After tonight, I don’t think anyone in town’d bat an eye.”

He might have been right, but I decided better safe than sorry and hoofed it, just as I had on so many other nights. I needed the time to let my own emotions settle. I kept seeing her in the glow of the footlights. The red dress. The graceful curve of her neck. The smooth cheek… and the ragged one.

When I got to Bee Tree Lane and let myself in, the hide-a-bed was in its hiding state. I stood looking at this, puzzled, not sure what to make of it. Then Sadie called my name-my real one-from the bedroom. Very softly.

The lamp was on, casting a soft light across her bare shoulders and one side of her face. Her eyes were luminous and grave. “I think this is where you belong,” she said. “I want you to be here. Do you?”

I took off my clothes and got in beside her. Her hand moved beneath the sheets, found me, and caressed me. “Are you hungry? Because I have poundcake if you are.”

“Oh, Sadie, I’m starving.”

“Then turn out the light.”

8

That night in Sadie’s bed was the best of my life-not because it closed the door on John Clayton, but because it opened the door on us again.

When we finished making love, I fell into the first deep sleep I’d had in months. I awoke at eight in the morning. The sun was fully up, the Angels were singing “My Boyfriend’s Back” on the radio in the kitchen, and I could smell frying bacon. Soon she would call me to the table, but not yet. Not just yet.