Them Old Hyannis Blues

Judith Tarr

And now for something completely different: alternate history goes gonzo, with Kennedys. One of our greatest hits; the cover album adorned the Tor offices for years.

Jack was late again. “Who is it this time?” Marilyn wanted to know. She still had that voice, all breathy and sweetsy-nice. That body, too. She swore it didn’t owe a thing to modern medical science. As far as Bobby knew, she was telling the truth.

He was dead bone-tired of running this road show. Jack late. Young Joe toked out in a corner. Sometimes he giggled. Most of the time he just let the makeup maven take off the last ten years or so of living high, Kennedy Brothers style. Teddy made great-stone-faces in the dressing-room mirror. Sweet Tammy was home with the kids, singing hymns by the fire and waiting for Daddy and Uncle Joe and Uncle Jack and Uncle Bobby to show up on TV — Live from the Valens Center for the Performing Arts: The Inaugural Gala.

Marilyn was looking particularly voluptuous in a Halston silk suit. It was her new look, she’d informed Bobby last year, along about the time she passed the bar. She’d had it with being a sex object. She was going to realize the power of her femininity, burst out of the patriarchal power structures, and become a new woman.

She was certainly bursting out of that suit.

“Bobby, you’re not listening to me,” she said. Breathy. Sweet. Iron underneath. “I want a divorce.”

“Ten minutes!” from outside.

“Later,” said Bobby.

“I said,” she said, “I want a divorce.”

Bobby ran through the checklist. Secret Service codes all over it. Times down to the minute: “1800 hours, arrive Valens Center. 1806, pass checkpoint. 1820, secure dressing room. 1833, order dinner. 1854, consume dinner.” Right up to “2200, arrive backstage” and “2216, begin rendition: ‘Hail to the Chief.’ “

They should have added, “2143, Jack still missing.” Jack did what Jack damned well pleased.

“If he doesn’t show up,” Bobby said, “Joe, you take keyboard.”

Joe stopped giggling. “Jack always shows up.”

“One of these days he won’t,” Teddy said. He was all ready, every sequin in place. He’d called Sweet Tammy precisely at 2135, and talked to her for precisely two minutes and fifty-nine seconds, doling out twenty seconds apiece to each of the offspring. “I’ll take over for him. I have the parts down.”

Bobby’s teeth hurt. “You stay at bass. We need that line. You know Joe can’t play bass and sing at the same time.”

“Can,” said Joe.

“I want a divorce,” said Marilyn. “I’ve done the paperwork. I’m filing tomorrow. Lee says it should be final just in time for me to matriculate at Yale.”

Bobby jerked around. ‘‘Yale? What the hell do you think—”

“International law,” she said. “I’m going for the doctorate. I’m thinking that with the new administration and the New Direction President Presley has promised, there should be room for a few good women.”

“A doctorate,” said Teddy, “takes at least four years. More like eight. Or ten. He’ll be out of office before you get the degree. And you’ll be almost sixt—”

She flashed the smile. Like the body, it hadn’t dimmed much with age. “I’ll do it in four. When he comes up for his second term, I’ll be ready for him.”

“God,” said Bobby. “Yale.”

She wouldn’t divorce him. She’d threatened before. He’d always got her to come around. But this looked serious. The law degree had been bad enough. “What’s wrong with Harvard?”

“You went there,” she said sweetly. She touched up her lips — none of this no-makeup, no-bra, hairy-legs crap for her, he gave her that much — and shut her compact with a sharp click. “I’m going out now. Break a leg, boys.”

“That’s for stage actors,” Teddy said, as usual.

“Shut up,” Joe said, also as usual.

“Am I late?” Jack asked.

The forecast had been for sleet. It must be falling: it was in the famous hair. The famous smile was turned up to max. A blonde hung on the famous arm.

Forty years of voice lessons and he still couldn’t sing. The girls didn’t care. They collected the old albums. They swooned over the old movies. They bought every single one of his hack best-sellers, even his “serious” shtick, Profiles in Charisma. They screamed when he went by.

Hiding him behind a piano hadn’t worked when the Kennedy Brothers were the big band to end all big bands. When Bobby saw the future in a pounding beat and switched the act to rock and roll, Jack got himself a keyboard and taught himself some moves, and it was his name they screamed, even with Joe at lead vocals. Joe had It, said Tiger Beat and Groovy and Rolling Stone, but Jack had It cubed.

Jack and Marilyn together were death on the synapses. The blonde on his arm pouted, dulled to dishwater and knowing it. Marilyn patted her on the shoulder. “There,” she said. “You realize of course that you’re succumbing to the lies of the patriarchal system? Come on now, they’re due onstage and we have some talking to do.”

“We do?” the blonde asked.

“Of course we do.” Marilyn got a grip on her arm. They hadn’t got past the door before she started talking. ‘‘You think that there’s no way to obtain power in this society except through a man. But if you consider — ”

Jack laughed. “She said she wanted to meet Marilyn,” he said. He looked around. “I thought we were going formal tonight. What’s with the attack sequins? Are we trying to upstage Liberace?”

“We are trying,” Bobby said through gritted teeth, “to perform at President Presley’s inaugural ball.”

“One of them,” said Teddy. No one paid any attention.

The makeup maven started on Jack. He was moving stiffly, Bobby noticed. The back was out again. That meant he’d try something stupid in the performance, soldier through it with the famous bravery, and end up in the hospital. Bobby had figured it in. They weren’t playing Vegas till March, and the filming wouldn’t start till May. The Road to Saigon. Joe was the war hero this time. Jack got to be the handsome good-for-nothing who discovered himself in the last ten minutes, and saved the world for rock and roll.

“One minute!” from outside.

“Let’s boogie,” said Jack.

oOo

‘The Ritchie Valens Center for the Performing Arts smelled like a new car. Looked like one, too, shiny and new and every piece in its place, not even threatening to fall off. This was its first major gala, not that they got much bigger than the main inaugural ball. What Bobby saw was mostly glitter. Glitter hanging in sheets from the ceiling. Glitter inset in the floor. Glitter on the people packed as tight as fans at a rockfest. There were globes floating everywhere, glowing pearlily. “Alabaster,” sighed Joe. “Alabaster globes.” He wasn’t looking up. A woman waited backstage — one of the acts, Bobby supposed; he didn’t recognize her offhand. She was wearing a square yard, just about, of silver lame, and a lot of pearls. They went nicely with her endowments, which were considerable.

Jack was over there already, flashing the grin. Joe was content to giggle. Teddy pursed his lips and disapproved. Bobby sighed.

“Time!” from the curtain.

They leaped into place: Bobby at drums, Joe at the mike, Teddy at bass. Jack sauntered. He inspected the keyboard. He frowned. “I’m not sure —”

The curtain sank through the floor. Crowd-roar rocked them back. A chord thundered out of the keyboard. The bass howled a split second late. Then they were into it: “Hail to the Chief,” as arranged and performed by the Kennedy Brothers in honor of the thirty-seventh President of the United States.

“El-vis! El-vis! El-vis!”

He came in waving and smiling, looking just a little sultry in white tie and tails. The First Lady was radiant in clouds of white tulle, with her platinum hair done up just this side of extravagant, and a spray of orchids for a tiara. His nibs had lost some lard, Bobby noticed, and her FirstLadyship had gone ahead and got that breast-reduction surgery. Too bad. In her heyday she’d have outdone the bosom in the wings by a good six inches. She was still magnificent. There’d been a few nights, and that weekend in Malibu…

He’d forgotten it, of course. Until he needed it.

They ended the old standby with a new riff that took all of Bobby’s concentration. Then they swung into something light and easy, mill-and-swill music for the President’s ball. Joe crooned into the mike. “Them blues, them old Hyannis blues…”

They’d cover the country tonight, from Hyannis to Malibu, Grosse Pointe to Galveston, and end up with the President’s own personal theme, “Graceland on My Mind.” Teddy was back on track after doing half the first number a half-note behind. Joe was in good voice, for once. Jack hadn’t missed any notes yet. Bobby let the rhythm play through him and, for the first time in months, thought he might relax.

oOo

Vice President King came backstage at the break, towing a nicely integrated pair of teenage gigglers. The redhead would be something when she was a few years older.

The Veep’s daughter already was. Took after her mother, Bobby noticed. “And how’s Coretta?” Teddy was asking.

“Glowing,” said the Veep. “Just glowing.”

“Alabaster,” crooned Joe. “Alabaster globes.”

“New song,” Bobby said quickly. He slashed a hand behind his back. One of the roadies boxed Joe in and got him talking about, as far as Bobby could tell, the High Sierras.

Jack had wandered off again. He wasn’t interested in potential. He wanted his beauties ripe, and now. After a while he wandered back. Teddy and the Veep were swapping road stories — the campaign trail wasn’t much different from the rock circuit. The gigglers were giggling and sliding eyes at Jack, who made their year with a grin and a platitude. They’d never know they’d had the brushoff. “Take a look at this,” he said to Bobby.

Bobby started to snap back, but Jack had pulled him over to the edge of the stage. There was a gap in the curtain. Bobby got a wide angle on the audience, milling and swilling as frantically as ever. The President was in the middle, and the First Lady’s platinum ‘do glowed as brightly as one of those damned ambulating beach balls.

“Look over there,” said Jack.

Marilyn still had the blonde in tow, but they’d picked up a third weird sister. This one looked like a very genteel horse.

“She’s British,” Jack said. “Amazing how a woman can look like hell in chiffon.”

“The dress isn’t bad,” said Bobby. “The hat is the problem.”

“The hat is always the problem,” Jack said. “Just ask the Queen.” He paused. He wasn’t grinning as much as usual. “You know, it’s funny. Remember that crazy we had to ask Frankie to help us get rid of, back in L.A.? She looks like that.”

“That crazy was male, filthy, and wouldn’t know chiffon if you wrapped him in it.”

“Not that, damn it,” said Jack. “Look at her eyes.”

Jack couldn’t read a newspaper at less than three feet, but give him a hundred yards of packed ballroom and he could count the sequins on Liberace’s cummerbund. Bobby squinted. Marilyn was holding forth. The blonde was either rapt or shell-shocked. The woman in chiffon — God, a face like that and she wanted ruffles — wasn’t looking at either of them. Marilyn was about twenty feet from the President, just outside the security perimeter. The President would be standing, from the woman’s angle, just behind Marilyn’s right shoulder.

Bobby didn’t shiver often. “Tough,” he said, “and mean. What’s she got against him?”

“The Revolutionary War?” Jack shrugged. “Maybe the War of 1812, though we’ve got grudges of our own, there.”

Bobby curled his lip. “Egghead,” he said.

Jack punched Bobby on the shoulder. It was nicely calculated. Just hard enough to bruise, not hard enough to knock him sideways. Smiling all the while. “She does look like old dad, doesn’t she?” He crossed himself devoutly. “May he rest in peace, if there’s peace in downtown hell.”

“Downtown,” Joe twanged behind them. “Downtown hell.”

There was one good thing about Joe’s getting loose. The Veep wasn’t there any more to hear him.

Outside, onstage, Secretary of State Lennon was going on about New Directions and Brave New Worlds and When It’s ‘84. He’d smoothed out his accent for the occasion.

Bobby happened to glance toward Marilyn. She hadn’t moved. Hadn’t stopped talking, either. But if the Brit in chiffon had looked mean when she looked at the President, she looked murderous as she listened to the Secretary of State.

Bobby shrugged. She wasn’t his problem. Keeping this show on the road was.

oOo

They got through the medley —”Rocky Mountain Sighs,” “California Babes,” and the wall-thumping, teeth-rattling crescendos of “Niagara Falls.” Then, while the floor was still rocking and the crowd still rolling, Jack grabbed the bass right out of Teddy’s hands and leaped off the stage.

Bobby had been in between chords somewhere. He came out of it with a snap. Teddy goggling and emptyhanded. Joe at the mike, starting in on “Manhattan Lovers.” Blurs out beyond the stage, with smudges for eyes. Jack bounding through with Teddy’s custom axe high over his head, heading right for President Presley.

People goggling. His nibs looking sultry. Suits closing in. Over on the edge, winter-white Halston and dishwater blonde and too damned much pink chiffon.

The chiffon had a gun.

So did the tux heading for the President.

The axe caught the tux’s hand. Bobby didn’t hear the gun go off. Too many screamers. Teddy’s bass came back around and lobbed the tux right into the oncoming suits. Jack was grinning like a maniac. He might have been singing, too. Bobby didn’t envy anybody who could hear him.

The chiffon braced her wrist with her other hand. Bobby’s eye followed the line of her aim. Vice President King was somewhere in the muddle, suits all over, women shrieking, men hitting the floor. Secretary Lennon hadn’t moved. His silly little glasses gleamed. His long egghead face looked more interested than anything else. Even when the red flower bloomed all over the front of his clean white shirt.

Halston tackled chiffon. Marilyn’s timing was just a little off. It did keep the second shot from hitting anything but one of those damned globes. It shattered. The shrieking hit banshee volume.

Bobby slammed the cymbal. It brought Teddy around. Bobby jerked his head toward the keyboard. Teddy did a fish-take, but he went where Bobby told him. On the way by, he pulled at Joe’s arm. Bobby signaled. Joe, bless his pickled brains, wrapped his hands around the mike. Teddy kicked a chord out of the board. Bobby set the beat. Joe started to wail. He had lungs on him, and the amps were cranked just short of feedback. Without the bass line it wasn’t the gut-buster it could have been, but it out-howled anything the crowd could come up with. “Bay-beeeeeee, you just kill me, baby, do...”

oOo

Jack landed himself in the hospital. It wasn’t the backhand that did it, though it finished off Teddy’s bass. It was the pileup afterward, with the tux on the bottom and Jack on top of him and the Secret Service six deep on top of that.

The tux was Brit, too. “Name of Jagger,” said President Presley in his best cornpone drawl. “Front man for the Unified United Kingdom Front.”

“The one that wants to take over Free Ireland and make it safe for tea and crumpets?” asked the hero of the hour.

He was flat in the hospital bed and white as the sheets, but it didn’t stop him from turning on the grin.

“That one,” the President said. “The other bastard, though, who got John Lennon — God rest him —” he said, looking more sultry than usual, damn near smoldering, “that was their fearless leader herself.”

“Iron Maggie,” said Marilyn. Makeup just about hid the black eye, and she didn’t limp when she thought anyone was noticing, but she carried herself with a certain air she hadn’t had before. Satisfaction. “The Friedrich Engels of the underground. She’ll take over Britain, she says, and make it a world power again.”

“You’ve been talking to her?” Even Jack sounded surprised.

“She’s supremely wrongheaded,” Marilyn said, “and she’s convinced herself that the only way to overcome male power structures is to dominate them and then destroy them, but she does agree that violence was not exactly the best way to go about it. I’ve sent her Betty’s book, and Gloria is going to see her tomorrow.”

“She’ll be deported,” said Teddy from where he sat by the window. His voice seemed to be coming out of a basket of gardenias. “If she’s lucky, she’ll get out of prison in about sixty years.”

“Oh,” said Marilyn, “I don’t know. She did feel that she was executing a traitor. He was, if you look at things that way. He should have dedicated his genius to the cause of his own country, not to a pack of jumped-up rebels.”

Bobby rolled. his eyes. The President looked a bit glazed. Marilyn had that effect on people.

His nibs mustered up a smile. “You certainly saved us from a very unfortunate situation,” he said. “We’d have lost more than John, without the two of you.”

“And the boys, too,” said Marilyn. “They kept the crowd calm.”

“They certainly did,” said the President, shaking hands all around. Joe wiped his hand on his pants. People pretended not to notice.

Jack traded grins with the President. “You know, Jack,” his nibs said, “with a little help from your friends, you’d be a smash in politics.”

“I’d need help?” Jack asked.

Everybody laughed. Jack just kept smiling.

“Think about it,” the President said. “You saved my life — and the Veep’s, too. You know how to work a crowd. I can just see the ads: Mad Jack with his bass guitar, saving the world for democracy.”

Bobby’s face hurt. So did his stomach.

“What do you say?” said the President in the fast patter of politicians and used-car salesmen everywhere. “There’ll be a House seat vacant, you wait and see. Then maybe the Senate.”

“I don’t know,” said Jack.

“It’s the least I can do,” said the President, “for the man who saved my life.”

“What about the woman?”

Maybe no one heard that one but Bobby. Marilyn was smiling as sweet and empty as a pile of cotton candy. Until you saw her eyes. Bobby wondered just how much she’d been teaching Iron Maggie, and how much she’d been learning.

“Oh,” Jack said again, “I don’t know. I’m not much on speechifying, or on keeping my nose clean. Now, if you wanted to ask Teddy...”

Not Bobby, Bobby noticed. Teddy was already blustering, the old I’m-not-worthy shtick. The presidential focus turned on him. A minute more and they were an act, his nibs leaning, his purity protesting, and everybody else closed out.

“Clever,” said Bobby.

Jack grinned. He looked gray under it. Soldiering on. Bloody fool.

“I wonder sometimes,” Bobby said, “if politics might not have been the way to go after all.”

“Not me,” said Jack. “Not till hell freezes over.”

“Downtown,” Joe sang to himself from among the gardenias. “Downtown hell. Hot time, hot time in downtown, downtown, downtown hell.”

“Washington,” Jack sang in his just-off-key tenor. “Washington blues. So hot in August, we can’t — you can’t — Hell,” he said. “I never could get a line to come out straight.”

“Straight down,” sang Joe, “straight down, go down, to downtown hell.”

“I sent the papers in,” said Marilyn, ‘‘yesterday. For the divorce.”

Bobby grabbed a piece of paper. It was part of Jack’s chart. He flipped it over and fished out a pen.

‘‘You can keep the house,” she said. “I’ve rented a cottage in Westport — Katherine was so sweet about it, she even threw in the maid and gardener. I’ll commute to Yale from there.”

“Hell,” sang Joe, “hell so hot, so hot...”

Jack fingered imaginary keys on the tight white sheet. Joe sang nonsense, but nonsense with a beat. Bobby pulled it all together. Arrangements — bigger group for this one. Backups. Chicks in red, devil babes, lots of glitz. Teddy needed a new axe, got to get that straightened out, and Vegas, and the Stone interview, and maybe Jack should do the hero in the Road movie, after all, the ads for that, now, what his nibs said about Mad Jack wasn’t a bad idea at all.

“I may even,” she said, “now that I think of it, try politics myself.”

Politics, Bobby thought, scribbling words and music. Who needs politics? We’ve got a song to write.

The End

Copyright © 1992 by Judith Tarr

First published in Alternate Kennedys, ed. Mike Resnick, Tor, 1992