Jane Smiley - Golden Age

Her second thought was “Why am I crying?”

Nevertheless, they did uncover the primary shareholders in Piddinghoe Investments, and right at the top of the list was Michael Langdon.

—

ANDY KNEW IT all along, simply by the ebb and flow of money into her account. She kept track. On May 1, there were three deposits right in a row; on May 6, three more; and so on, all through May. As fast as she could, she sent it away — to school districts all over New Jersey and New York, to the New York Public Library, and to all the disaster-relief organizations she could find: floods in Maryland, Norfolk, England, and Denmark; hurricanes in Mexico, the Florida Keys, and Texas; earthquakes in Russia, India, and Italy; drought relief in Arkansas and Oklahoma; research into enterovirus D68. When Richie told her that the farm had been sold to Cargill for fifteen thousand an acre, about thirteen and a half million dollars, she had pretended to be shocked, but she hadn’t been. However, she had stayed up all night writing checks. She kept no records, gave little thought to the IRS — that little thought being, Come and get me, I am ninety-six years old. Her own accounts were down, though, so at the end of May she sold her best item, a Dior gown from 1957 that she had worn to some Upjohn gala for the New York City Ballet. It was cream-colored, with beading at the tiny waist and a silk band that wrapped around the shoulders, highlighting the face, the upswept hairdo, and, as she remembered, the sapphire necklace she had borrowed from Frances Upjohn. It was a beautiful piece, it still fit, and she sold it for forty-six thousand, throwing in the white calfskin elbow-length gloves for free. Michael hadn’t called her in a year, but he did send smoked salmon, champagne, and chocolates for Mother’s Day.

—

MICHAEL WAS ELUSIVE, indeed. No more dropping by Richie’s condo with bags of take-out, no more laughing with Jessica in the kitchen, no more unsolicited advice about how to get his act together. Their last real conversation had been about the election. Michael’s theory was that the Supreme Court had acted wisely — the right was much better armed than the left, so, although deciding for the Republicans had led to roiling protests, they were relatively peaceful. Deciding for the Dems would have triggered a disaster, “if you consider disunion a disaster,” which Michael did, at the moment. Then he shrugged, as, Richie had thought, a man with a flat in the Greenwich Peninsula development in the southeast of London might do. A nearby spot was called “Isle of Dogs,” which did give Richie a laugh. But as far as Richie knew, Michael still owned the Shoebox. No “For Sale” sign, and the furniture was still there (Richie peeped in the windows). He did not think that he, Richie, was being actively avoided; he thought Michael was back in business, but it was a new sort of business, more adventurous and piratelike, no longer based in having a respectable domestic establishment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. As soon as Ezra told Richie that Michael had somehow foreclosed on the farm and kicked Jesse and Jen out, it all clicked into place without Richie’s even pondering it — first and foremost, that look of rage every time Michael talked about inheriting only a hundred grand from the old man and then finding out that the portion of the farm that Jesse got was worth six times that, then the intermittent teeth-grinding references to Jesse he had made over the years, that the “kid” (Jesse was two years younger than they were) was making all kinds of mistakes, as if Michael knew the first thing about farming. That time — say, two or three years ago — when Felicity mentioned at the table that her dad had refused to try organics, Michael had actually blown his stack and gone on at length about the free market, and if the free market was on the side of Whole Foods, well, so be it — he had no more allegiance to Monsanto than he did to Pan American World Airways. It was the same with feminism, with nuclear power, with solar, with anti-virus vaccines. The truest gauge of the way forward was the free market. Jessica had said, “But the free market is always so late to the game, isn’t it?” and Michael had laughed out loud.

At first, the theft of the farm (for that’s what it was) didn’t bother Richie all that much. But he kept thinking about it. Jesse and Jen had moved in with her brother; he was helping with the farm work, she was looking for a job. They could end up anywhere. The thing Richie wanted most was to hear Michael’s side of it — not some slogan about “what’s done is done” but the details, what he thought when he was pretending to be broke, how he got off scot-free from the forgery, why it all happened, how he fucking felt now, whether he had been lying about every single thing — but Michael was nowhere to be found. Their mom hadn’t heard from him in over a year. Janet sometimes mentioned Chance, since he and Emily were good friends, but Richie couldn’t imagine Michael showing up at the ranch and having some tender father-son moment with the cowboy. Frankly, if Michael had ever felt anything for Chance, Richie thought, Loretta had put a stop to it, claimed him for her own until her mom took him away.

It went this way through the summer, into September, into October. Everyone was distracted by the Pakistan/India skirmish, but the president did what Richie thought he should do — he sat on his hands until the Chinese premier, Ji Ling, who was younger than Richie by twenty years, stepped in and told both the Pakistanis and the Indians that China would do the retaliating if a single atomic weapon was deployed, even by accident, since prevailing winds over Beijing were from the west. After the Chinese had disarmed Iran in December, they became the de-facto peacemaker of the world, but peace was getting harder and harder to make; even Richie could see that (they hadn’t disarmed the United States, had they, and Vice-President Cotton was still arguing for war).

Of course, Michael showed up at 2:00 a.m. Of course, he was banging on the door to the condo; of course, Richie jumped out of bed, his heart pounding, and ran out to quash the noise. He closed the bedroom door. Jessica was still asleep.

Michael was happy, bouncy, and cheerful. Drunk? High? Not evidently. Flat-bellied and in good shape, neatly bearded — Richie noticed even as he invited him in that the white pattern in his beard was quite similar to Richie’s own.

What he wanted to talk about was not the farm; he had forgotten about the farm. Fact was, he was getting married again. Richie hadn’t even known that he and Loretta were divorced, and were they? Unlikely, Richie thought. When Richie said, “Why did you bother with the fucking farm?” Michael looked blank, genuinely blank, then said, “Shit! That was a sweet deal. Cargill and ADM were falling over each other trying to get that place.”

Richie said, “Do you know what an asshole you are? I’ve always wondered.”

“Do you know that land is a commodity, just like anything else? What do you care? It isn’t your farm. You never cared about it. I don’t believe you care now.”

Richie ignored this and said, “I know you did something underhanded.” He hadn’t known this a moment ago, but now the conviction flooded him. “Or illegal.”

Michael shrugged.

Assent.

Michael said, “I did not go looking for the fucking farm.”

“Actually, you did go there. I found out. Why did you go there?”

“Oh Jesus, Richie, I was in the neighborhood anyway. Look, irrigation is a thing of the past. The world population is eight billion. If we don’t have a vertically integrated food-production system, our kids are done for. There’s about three spots left on the planet — well, of course I’m exaggerating — where the food is going to grow, almost, but not quite, no matter what. Why should a bunch of guys go out every February and scratch their heads and say, ‘Wale, what’m Ah gonna do this ye-ah?’ ”