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Sea | Jan 16 2006

My high school sweetheart used to receive love letters from a pathological liar. We would read them in her room, with the door locked, before her sister, with whom she shared the room, arrived home from school. It was almost as exciting as sex, which also happened behind that door and also in the time before her sister returned home.

The letters were filled with stories of the author’s childhood, none of which were believable beyond the first sentence. The one I remember best concerned Bobby Kennedy, who he claimed to have befriended on a Nantucket bench at the age of seven. Their bond was such that Kennedy insisted the boy accompany him on the 1968 presidential campaign trail, which is how he came to be backstage the night of assassination. Overcome with terror and grief, he wedged through the crowd and held the dying man in his arms just as he drew his last breath. This last detail I’ve always loved. Too much in a sea of too much, it is somehow just right.