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himself, can I?” And she established herself as manager of the Plainfield store, leaving Norman free to expand and improve the business. And he had. He’d opened three new stores that year and four more since then. He was always up to his elbows in a new solution.
    S ANDY WAS UNDER THE DRYER at Coiffures Elegante in downtown Plainfield that gray November afternoon in 1963, her head covered with giant blue rollers, which, after an hour of intense discomfort would turn into the popular bouffant hairstyle of her look-alike. She was flipping the pages of the latest issue of
Vogue
with the stub of her fingers, careful not to mess up the freshly applied Frosted Sherbet on her nails, when the news came over the radio. Sandy didn’t know what was happening since she couldn’t hear anything but suddenly there was a lot of activity in the shop. She raised the hood of her dryer. “What’s wrong?”
    “The president’s been shot!”
    “Is it serious?”
    “Looks like it.”
    “Oh God.”
    And the other women pulled their dryers back down over their wet heads. But not Sandy. She’d jumped up, knocking over the manicurist’s table, tiny bottles of polish crashing to the floor. She ran through the shop to the back room, where her coat hung, and as she tore out the door the last words she heard were spoken by her neighbor, Doris Richter. “Alex . . . could you tease it a little higher on the left because it always drops by the next day . . .”
    She drove home quickly, rushed into the house, found Bucky snuggled next to Mazie on the sofa in the den, the baby asleep in her lap, the TV on. “Oh, Mrs. Pressman,” Mazie cried, “the president’s dead. He’s been shot in the head. Lord help us our president’s dead.”
    Bucky made a gun with his finger. “Bang bang, the president’s dead!” He studied Sandy for a minute. “You look funny like that, Mommy . . . like a moonman.”
    Sandy took him in her arms, cried into his warm, puppy-smelling head, then went to her room, took the rollers out of her hair, laid out her black dress and shoes, dug out the black veil she’d worn to Samuel’s funeral, and prepared for mourning.
    “What the hell,” Norman said, when he got home and found Sandy dressed in black.
    “I’m sitting shiveh for the president.”
    “Are you crazy?”
    “No.”
    “You didn’t sit shiveh when my father died.”
    “That has nothing to do with this.”
    “And the Kennedys are Catholic!”
    “So what?”
    “I think you’re really going off your rocker this time. I think you’re really going bananas.”
    Sandy shrugged. “I don’t expect you to understand . . . you didn’t even vote for him.”
    “And neither did you!”
    “That’s how much you know.” She gathered several sheets from the linen closet and draped one over the mirror in their bedroom.
    “Jesus Christ, now you’re going Orthodox?”
    “This is the way we did it when Grandpa died,” Sandy said, “I remember.”
    “I can’t believe this. You’re not Jackie, you know, just because you won that fucking contest.”
    How could Sandy explain? In a way she was Jackie, with blood and brains all over her suit. “I know exactly who I am and exactly what I’m doing.”
    “We’re due at the Levinworths’ in two hours. You better do something about your hair. It looks like hell.”
    “You’ll have to call to say we can’t make it.”
    “Not
we,
Sandy. I’m going anyway.”
    “Don’t you have any feelings? Don’t you know the whole country’s in mourning?”
    “So we’ll mourn at Lew’s house. It’s not going to make any difference. It’s not going to bring him back.”
    “No!” Sandy headed for the dining room, to cover the mirror above the sideboard.
    “Pardon me, Mrs. Pressman,” Mazie said. She’d changed out of her uniform into a green wool suit and she carried a small suitcase. “I’m going to take a few days off to go down to Washington . . . to the funeral . . . you