Chapter 39 Before and After
Before and After
From the bird’s-eye vantage point of ivory towers, scientists, theologians, and academics take the long view of human history,
measuring existential change in eras or epochs.
Change looks and feels different at the ground level of lived life, more jarring, measured in moments rather than ages. Nearly
every generation can point to an unanticipated event that divided time into before and after, a day after which the world
would never be the same, when the markets crashed, or bombs dropped, or wars began, or towers fell.
For the generation cognizant in the early 1960s, the demarcation of the time before and after was a collective shock, a recollection
indelibly etched, a shared trauma that would be retriggered by the question they would ask one another for the rest of their
lives: “Where were you when Kennedy was shot?”
Margaret was at the market.
Hoping to get a jump on Thanksgiving preparations, she had filled her shopping cart with canned cranberry sauce, pumpkin,
and sweet potatoes, bags of miniature marshmallows, and day-old bread for stuffing. When she wheeled the cart to the register,
she saw two clerks, the produce manager, and a box boy clustered around a transistor radio. The box boy looked pale. One of
the clerks was crying openly.
“What’s happened?” Margaret asked.
The weeping, red-eyed clerk looked toward her.
“Somebody shot the president.”
Margaret abandoned her shopping cart where it stood and drove directly to the elementary school. It seemed imperative that
she collect her children so the family could be together. She wasn’t the only one who felt that way; scores of parents had
come to take their children home early.
As Margaret, Bobby, and Suzy were driving to the junior high school, a decision to dismiss early was made. Beth was lining
up to board the bus when they arrived. Margaret spotted her and waved her over to the station wagon. Blunt as always, Beth
voiced the question Margaret had been silently asking herself since leaving the supermarket.
“Is the president going to die?”
“Oh no. No, I’m sure he’ll be fine,” Margaret said, not because she was dissembling but because she found it impossible to
imagine otherwise.
President Kennedy was so young and charismatic, full of life, vitality, and the desire to do good. And Margaret had only just
met Mrs. Kennedy, spent substantial time in the same room with this lovely and elegant young wife and mother, a First Lady
of legend who was remarkably relatable and even more admirable in person.
They were Jack and Jackie, the golden couple, two halves of a perfectly matched set. Providence could not be so cruel as to
separate them.
Oh no. Surely not.
Even after Walter Cronkite, the stoic, rock-solid news anchor on whom Americans counted in times of crisis, confirmed the
president’s death in a voice choked with emotion, Margaret couldn’t make herself believe it. She kept waiting for a retraction,
for the moment a sheepish but relieved-looking Cronkite would admit his mistake.
Later that night, when the plane carrying the president’s body arrived at Andrews Air Force Base, and Margaret saw Mrs. Kennedy, dressed in the pretty pink suit she had donned for a Dallas parade, now stained with her husband’s blood, being helped into the ambulance that carried the president’s flag-draped coffin, it all became real.
“But I know her,” Margaret said, collapsing onto Walt’s shoulder in tears. “I just saw her two days ago. How can he be dead?
How? What will she do without him?”
* * *
Four days later, one million people lined the street to watch the caisson carrying the fallen president’s coffin pass by on
its way toward the Capitol. Tony Buschetti, wearing his dress uniform, and the four older Buschetti children were among them.
Millions more watched the procession on television, including Helen and Edwin, Bitsy, Charlotte, and Viv and her younger children,
who were gathered in Walt and Margaret’s home.
Though there had been no discussion of it beforehand, the adults all dressed in black. The women brought food, too much food,
as is customary in gatherings of grief. Only the children had appetite for it. The little ones sat cross-legged on the floor,
the adults on sofas and chairs, observing the ceremonies in silence. Even baby Betty, swaddled in a pink blanket and held
in her mother’s arms, was quiet, stirring only when she wanted a bottle.
Margaret had wept on and off for days. But today, as the coffin with the president’s remains was removed from the cathedral
for the journey to his final resting place in Arlington National Cemetery, she had no tears left, only dull acceptance of
the heretofore unimaginable.
When the honor guard loaded the casket onto the caisson, passing near the former First Family, Mrs. Kennedy leaned down and whispered into the ear of her youngest, John Kennedy Jr., a chubby-cheeked boy barely out of toddlerhood, who had turned three that very day.
After a second whisper, little John-John stepped forward and touched the fingertips of his right hand smartly to his forehead, saluting his father’s casket.
It was a wrenching moment and a picture the world would never forget, a day that stirred up a vast range of unexpected emotions,
regrets, and fears.
Bitsy pressed a hand hard against her lips. Charlotte squeezed her eyes shut and clutched the neck of her black dress. Viv
murmured, “Oh, that precious baby,” pulling her own baby closer to her breast. Walt rose from the sofa, leaving the room so
abruptly that everyone turned away from the television. Beth frowned with concern and turned to Margaret.
“Is Daddy okay?”
Margaret assured her that he was, then got to her feet and followed him to the kitchen.
“I’m fine,” he said, lifting a hand but not his eyes. “Just needed a break. You go on back, and I’ll be there in a minute.”
Walt was gone longer than a minute, but he did return looking composed and took a seat next to Margaret. When the funeral
was over, Walt found Edwin’s hat and helped Helen into her coat, then walked them to their car. Margaret stayed inside to
say goodbye to the Bettys, hugging each woman in turn.
“I’m glad we could be together today,” Bitsy said, her brown eyes filling. “You know, I’m starting to have second thoughts
about applying to vet school. California is so far away. What am I going to do without you three?”
“Live and thrive,” Viv said, taking hold of Bitsy’s chin like a gently chiding schoolmarm. “We’ll miss you just as much as
you’ll miss us, but you’re going to be fine. Promise.”
Charlotte nodded. “You know what Eleanor Roosevelt used to say: ‘A woman is like a tea bag. You never know how strong it is
until it’s in hot water.’”
Bitsy swiped at her eyes and twisted her lips. “I know. But . . . couldn’t I start with warm water and work my way up?”
“Are you kidding? What kind of water do you think you’ve been in lately?
” Margaret asked, clicking her tongue. “You’re one tough tea bag, Bitsy.
And so are you, and so are you,” she said, looking at Charlotte and Viv in turn.
“And so am I. Think of all we’ve gone through in the last few months and all we’ve learned about ourselves, starting with the fact that we’re all a lot stronger and more capable than we ever realized. ”
Charlotte nodded. “Good point. Maybe we should start calling ourselves the Tea Bags?”
Margaret rolled her eyes, then shook her head.
“We’re the Bettys. And we always will be. Always.”
* * *
Margaret had a hard time falling asleep that night. So did Walt. He lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling, holding his arms
arrow-straight and tucked tight against his sides. Margaret turned on the bedside lamp.
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
After thirteen years of marriage, Margaret thought she’d seen every side of her husband, but this was a Walt she didn’t recognize,
a man whose inner thoughts and body language were a mystery to her.
“I had to get out of there,” he said, shaking his head but still staring at the ceiling. “I didn’t want to start crying in
front of people.”
Margaret nodded. She thought she understood. Walt was more softhearted than most people would have guessed, but he didn’t
like to display that side of himself. She’d seen him shed tears only rarely and never in public.
She moved nearer, lifted his arm, and draped it over her shoulder, nestling closer.
“No one would have thought less of you. Everybody was on the verge of tears. That poor, sweet, fatherless boy. And little Caroline. You’d have to be made of stone not to cry for those kids.
And poor Mrs. Kennedy,” she said, her voice dropping as she recalled the bright-eyed woman of the week before, now made a widow.
“Every time I think of her, I feel like bursting into tears. But sometimes I wonder if I’m not crying for myself as much as
for her.”
Margaret looked up into her husband’s eyes.
“If anything happened to you, I don’t know how I’d find the strength to go on. Maybe it sounds selfish, but meeting Mrs. Kennedy,
understanding that she’s a real, flesh-and-blood woman, not so different from me, and knowing that something so unimaginably
terrible could happen, and so unexpectedly, has taken the lid off things that frighten me most.”
Walt rolled toward her. “If that makes you selfish, we’re both guilty. I’m sad for the Kennedys, but I’m sad for myself too.
When John-John saluted the casket . . .”
Walt paused, took a breath.
“I know the president wasn’t perfect, but I admired him. He was so full of energy and vision and plans—the Peace Corps, civil
rights, the space program. If he’d lived, who knows what he might have accomplished? But then, just like that—” Walt snapped
his fingers. “All that promise, all those plans. Gone.”
“He was so young,” Margaret said, her voice almost a whisper.
“But that’s the thing, isn’t it? Nobody knows if today will be their last day. It all goes so fast. At least Kennedy did something