Early Warning

Now Bobby appeared, surrounded by larger men — Frank recognized Rafer Johnson — and headed toward the podium. Frank’s edginess peaked in a kind of uncomfortable tingle. He finished his beer and turned away. Outside of the hotel, Wilshire was pretty empty. Even the whores were there, trying to get a glimpse of the next president. Frank found the car and drove around for an hour or two, still a man with nothing to lose, but newly aware of what he had lost — not only Lydia, but Andy, Janet, Eunice, Lawrence (who would have loved Bobby Kennedy).

It was at least three when he got to the Beverly Hills Hotel, where he had stayed for the last three nights and always did stay. The desk clerk was distracted; Frank didn’t understand why until he got to his room and turned on the TV. He sat on the corner of the bed in his shorts, watching the black-and-white panic. Was he the only person in America who was not surprised at the assassination of Bobby Kennedy — or, rather, surprised only that the shooter was that kid, who looked as dumbfounded and harmless as a fawn in the headlights?

—

WHEN SHE GOT HOME from Mount Holyoke in June, Debbie saw that her real summer job was organizing her mother and, once he got home, watching her dad, who was finishing up five months at Sheppard Pratt. She had to press her mother, even bully her, into naming his diagnosis — well, depression, yes, pretty severe, and, well, paranoia, too, though that was not something her mother had noticed, or maybe it was not something that her father had expressed. Apparently, there were people who seemed perfectly normal on the surface, and then you read their diaries or their letters and it was one long description after another of plots and plans. There had been shock treatments. Debbie quailed and didn’t ask how many. Lillian at last told Debbie about the suicide attempt, and then she told her about her grandmother, and then she told her about the first wife, during the war, and Debbie cried, but all of this was so new and strange that her grief was more or less like crying when a book was sad. She wrote about it to David.

When he got home, though, her father seemed fine enough. He wasn’t ready to go back to work, so he bought and read something called The Gourmet Cookbook, which was about five hundred pages long, and he went to the nursery for plants and bushes, which he and Mom discussed as if they were new puppies, and he oversaw the crew that came to trim some of the trees. At the bottom of the property, he broadcast some wildflower seeds that he got at a natural-history museum. He washed both cars. Debbie found herself counting jokes. If he made five jokes in a day or fewer, he wasn’t feeling very good, and if he made up to ten, he was okay, but if he made more than ten, he was acting “manic,” which was cause for worry. He didn’t watch the news or read the paper. Debbie wondered if he was the only person in the world who did not know about the assassination of Bobby Kennedy or the assassination of Martin Luther King. Her father would have been the perfect person to talk to about these events, but she couldn’t find a way. Her mother never said a word.

To David, who was caddying for the summer at a golf course in Middletown, she wrote, “It’s like a tomb around here. That’s the saddest thing. When we were kids, no one had as much fun as we did. We had the first television, we had the sandbox, and both a swing set and a rope hanging from a tree limb. We had more bikes than kids, because if my dad saw a bike for sale cheap, he would buy it in case some neighborhood kid didn’t have one. We had so many balls, neighborhood dogs would come over to play even when their kids didn’t. Dean keeps telling me to leave Dad alone and stop staring at him, that that’s what makes you paranoid!”

She thought she was handling everything pretty well, until she took a weekend and went up to Middletown Friday night, with a return ticket for Sunday afternoon. Mom had been willing to make her a reservation at a hotel. She said, “You’re almost twenty-one. When I was your age, Timmy was a year old and you were on the way. What you do is your business. I am not going to ask you how serious you are about him, or anything. Which is not something your grandmother said to me. Which is why I ran off with your father without telling her a word about it.” She smiled, but she still looked worn out. Debbie wasn’t in fact sure how serious she was about David, since he was more comforting than exciting, but she was eager to go.

David hugged her like he was really glad to see her, and he looked tanned and fit from working at the golf course. He’d had to cut his hair, but it was growing out.