“I just meant . . .” Claire began. But what did she mean?
“Look,” the doctor said, “why don’t you both just come upstairs, watch the inauguration. Then go home and rest up. See where we are tomorrow.”
“That’s a good idea,” Claire said. “We don’t want to miss his speech.”
“Fine,” Peter said.
He hesitated. “Is it all right to just leave her?”
“She’s a bit confused,” the doctor said. “Not really dementia, but more like temporary amnesia. The nurse will keep her company, try to get her back to 1961. She talked about some poor kid who died of the Spanish flu, and taking the train to Denver, and all sorts of things from the past.”
“Are you sure it’s temporary?” Claire asked.
“I’ve seen it go both ways with old folks.”
Amnesia, Claire thought. It didn’t sound like a bad thing to her.
Crowded into that hospital solarium, everyone’s eyes fixed on the television that hung in a corner of the room, Claire imagined Dot’s party. She could picture the couples squeezed onto the Colonial sofas and armchairs, so many that people probably perched on the armrests. Some men, polite, would stand, hands on their wives’ shoulders. Then she imagined all of the living rooms across the country, every citizen watching this very same moment, and imagining it, Claire shivered.
Peter rubbed her arm. “Cold?” he asked her.
She couldn’t think of how to describe this feeling overcoming her, this sense of unity, of hope. Hadn’t her mother described the years before the Great Depression this way? There was hope then, she’d said. Hope that made people fall in love and feel optimistic. Hope for a bright future.
Uncharacteristically, Peter wrapped his arms around her, and rested his chin lightly on the top of her head.
John Kennedy was raising his hand now. He was taking the oath of office.
“He’s not wearing his hat,” someone in the room said.
“There go hats,” another person said. “Out of style as of 12:52 p.m., January 20.”
Disappointed, Claire saw Jackie in a taupe wool dress with a matching coat. The coat had a sable fur collar and a matching muff, her hands tucked inside it. And that pillbox hat, tipped jauntily back on her head.
Taupe. No one would ever guess taupe.
When Kennedy began his inaugural speech, the solarium went still. Behind him, LBJ sat frowning, his oversized ears practically moving with the wind. Claire listened, trying to keep her mind from going to her lover, standing perhaps this very minute in Dot’s living room, his hands on his wife’s shoulders, listening to these very same words.
“So let us begin anew,” JFK was saying, “remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.”
Claire felt Peter step away from her, ever so slightly. She resisted turning around to look up at him.
“Let both sides explore what problems unite us,” Kennedy continued, “instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.”
At this, Claire did turn to glimpse her husband, who stood with his jaw set hard, his hands shoved into his pockets.
She focused again on the new president’s speech, and when he finished, she applauded hard along with everyone else in the room.
“It’s truly a new beginning,” an elderly woman standing beside Claire said in an Eastern European accent. She said it as if she were speaking directly to Claire.
“It feels that way,” Claire said, wondering why she had this lump in her throat, why she felt so empty.
“No, no, it is. That boy, he’s going to change the world.” The woman pointed to the television. “You watch.”
“I hope so,” Claire said.
Nurses and doctors were pushing their way out now. The hallway outside the solarium came alive with calls over the PA for Doctor this and Doctor that.
The whole hospital had held its breath for this moment, Claire thought.
She touched Peter’s arm lightly. “I’m going to call Dot,” she said. “Then I’ll meet you downstairs?”
He nodded, and joined the stream of people exiting. Claire couldn’t read his expression. Was he unable to stop belaboring what had divided them? She left with the stragglers, wondering if she was able to stop.
Back in the phone booth, the operator connected her to Dot, reversing the charges.
“Taupe!” Claire said as soon as Dot accepted. “Can you believe it?”
“I picked cornflower blue,” Dot said. “Wouldn’t she have looked beautiful in cornflower blue and that black hair of hers?”
“I didn’t even hear who designed it.”
“Cassini,” Dot said. “And the hat was someone named Halston. Apparently he does hats for Bergdorf Goodman in New York.”
“I wish I was there with all of you,” Claire said.
“We missed you, darling. You did get to hear the speech, didn’t you?”
“Every word,” Claire said.