When We Were the Kennedys Read Online Free Page A

me too hard—my arm hurting, my hand twisted between her body and mine—and then let go because she couldn’t stand up, she had to sit, and then those terrifying, animal sounds gushed out again, and it seemed as if we were all stuck fast, stuck in one eternal moment, a locked trap of disbelief.
    But now, a miracle, Anne is home—Anne’s home!—and that encased moment geysers open, briefly cleansing our monstrous pain.
    The door opens and opens. The phone rings and rings. People arrive and arrive and the day moves despite all, and we children, who had felt the queasy stirrings of duty—
At least you have your children,
Mr. Cray said—see now that nothing will be asked of us. We don’t have to save Mum after all. We don’t have to think up a way—think! think!—to call Dad back from heaven.
    Childhood is over, but Anne’s home, so we can still be children.
    Â 
    The rest of that morning, after Dad’s unthinkable departure, fills with arrival. Father Bob, who will oversee Dad’s funeral, comes home to us from his parish in Westbrook. He embraces Mum, blesses her—
In nomine Patris .
.
 .—
murmurs into her neck another prayer or incantation or perhaps something only a baby brother can say to his fourteen-years-older sister, something in plain English. Whatever it is, it doesn’t work; my mother sits again, vacant, wordless, her lips gently parted.
    A priest in the room is supposed to smooth things over, heal confusion, make ritual out of chaos. I cling to my shaking uncle, to the familiar scent of his blacks—his rabat and collar and jacket—but there are so many people here now, another neighbor coming through the door, and here are Aunt Rose and Cumpy—my aunt and my grandfather—and two of Dad’s workmates from the mill, and after a while I realize that Father Bob, too, has headed for the bedroom—Barry has gone back home to break the news—where he lies on the bed with his black shoes on. I steal over to my own bedside, terrified.
    Men crying everywhere.
    He stares at the ceiling. Glasses fogged, cheeks gone scarlet, mouth quavering so badly it seems poised to slide off his face. He does not look at me but knows I’m here. “Is it all right for a man to cry, Monnie?” he asks me. He loved Dad more than he loves his own father.
    What kind of question is this? What kind of question is this? I answer with another question: “Yes?”
    â€œThat’s right,” he says, though I can barely hear him. “It’s all right for a man to cry.”
    I don’t know what to do with this information; I’m afraid to touch him, my beloved uncle who has loved me in turn for as long as I can remember. He makes painful, held-in, small-animal sounds, his tears pooling on the pillows I share with Cathy. Then someone—I think it’s Anne—touches my shoulder, releases me from this too-private moment, and leads me back out to the kitchen, now filled with people, tears all over.
    Mrs. Hickey shows up with a tuna pie; the O’Neills drop off some biscuits; other neighbors, too many to sort, bring meat loaf, deviled eggs, soda bread. At some point, somewhere between Mr. Cray’s visit and Father Bob’s arrival, somebody asks, “Where’s Cathy?”
    Everyone looks at me.
    â€œI don’t know.”
    I don’t. Their faces scare me. The whole house has tilted somehow, and it’s hard to see, and to hear, and everybody seems to be saying something to somebody who is saying something to somebody else. Those first few hours are like being caught inside a washing machine, an agitated drowning.
    â€œWhat do you mean, you don’t
know
?” Mum says, panicking, alive again after a zombielike lull that I have no way of recognizing as shock. My mother, who never panics over anything, starts to shake. “People don’t just vanish into thin air.”
    But Dad did. His