Standing Room Only

Downstairs she heard the front door open and close. She rose and looked out the window, just as she had done that afternoon. Many people, far too many people were on the street. They were all walking in the same direction. One of them was George Atzerodt. Hours before he had abandoned his knife, but he too would die, along with Mary Surratt. He had gone too far to back out. He walked with his hands over the shoulders of two dark-haired men. One of them looked up. He was of a race Anna had never seen before. The new boarders joined the crowd. Anna could see them when they passed out from under the porch overhang.

Something big was happening. Something big enough to overwhelm her own hurt feelings. Anna dressed slowly and then quickly and more quickly. I live, she thought, in the most wondrous of times. Here was the proof. She was still unhappy, but she was also excited. She moved quietly past her mother’s door.

The flow of people took her down several blocks. She was taking her last walk again, only backward, like a ribbon uncoiling. She went past St. Patrick’s Church, down Eleventh Street. The crowd ended at Ford’s Theatre and thickened there. Anna was jostled. To her left, she recognized the woman from the carriage, the laughing woman, though she wasn’t laughing now. Someone stepped on Anna’s hoop skirt and she heard it snap. Someone struck her in the back of the head with an elbow. "Be quiet!" someone admonished someone else. "We’ll miss it." Someone took hold of her arm. It was so crowded, she couldn’t even turn to see, but she heard the voice of Cassie Streichman.

"I had tickets and everything," Mrs. Streichman said angrily. "Do you believe that? I can’t even get to the door. It’s almost ten o’clock and I had tickets."

"Can my group please stay together?" a woman toward the front asked. "Let’s not lose anyone," and then she spoke again in a language Anna did not know.

"It didn’t seem a good show," Anna said to Mrs. Streichman. "A comedy and not very funny."

Mrs. Streichman twisted into the space next to her. "That was just a rehearsal. The reviews are incredible. And you wouldn’t believe the waiting list. Years. Centuries! I’ll never have tickets again." She took a deep, calming breath. "At least you’re here, dear. That’s something I couldn’t have expected. That makes it very real. And," she pressed Anna’s arm, "if it helps in any way, you must tell yourself later there’s nothing you could have done to make it come out differently. Everything that will happen has already happened. It won’t be changed."

"Will I get what I want?" Anna asked her. She could not keep the brightness of hope from her voice. Clearly, she was part of something enormous. Something memorable. How many people could say that?

"I don’t know what you want," Mrs. Streichman answered. She had an uneasy look. "I didn’t get what I wanted," she added. "Even though I had tickets. Good God! People getting what they want! That’s not the history of the world, is it?"

"Will everyone please be quiet!" someone behind Anna said. "Those of us in the back can’t hear a thing."

Mrs. Streichman began to cry, which surprised Anna very much. "I’m such a sap," Mrs. Streichman said apologetically. "Things really get to me." She put her arm around Anna.

"All I want," Anna began, but a man to her right hushed her angrily.

"Shut up!" he said. "As if we came all this way to listen to you."

– for John Kessel