Jane Smiley - Golden Age

—

CLAIRE’S HOUSE WAS big enough for Jesse and Jen to feel almost comfortable. It was certainly well equipped — Jesse only had to think of a tool, walk into Carl’s old workshop, and find it ready to hand. They had moved in originally for Claire’s sake. Jesse’s job was to maintain the gardens and the property, sell vegetables at the city market when they were harvested, and keep the place up, though Carl had been so careful that only the most routine maintenance was needed. Jen’s job, unspoken, was to keep an eye on Claire. The very first evening, Claire had looked at them across the supper table and said, “I am eighty. I will never leave here, because I feel Carl’s presence here,” which meant, Live here, take care of me, I will bequeath you the house. It seemed like a decent bargain, not least because Claire had almost no sentimental attachment to the farm: I love it here; look at these vegetables; and to think, you can weed the garden, then take the train to the Field Museum and pick up some pomegranate balsamic on the way home. She didn’t insist that they view their eviction as a salvation, but she set the example.

After Guthrie’s car and then his body were found, though, Claire became the caretaker. It was a parent’s worst nightmare — first he disappears without a word, as if he just can’t take you anymore, and then his remains are found somewhere you’ve never been or he’s never been, until now. Guthrie, the riddle; Guthrie, the boy who smiled no matter what, and deflected all questions, all looks of concern; Guthrie, aged thirty-four, the boy who was always about to get it together. Guthrie, who died before you could look him in the eye and say, “I told you not to enlist, I told you not to be a sucker.” But he hadn’t told him, and look at Perky, “John”—it had all worked out for him.

Jesse did not think that Jen would recover from this. She had lost twenty pounds, she cried all the time, she refused antidepressants. He had never, never seen her not bounce back — even when they moved off the farm, she had truly seemed to believe that the opportunity to get rid of a lot of junk outweighed the injustice and the dislocation. She loved Claire, she loved Chicago, she loved the city market and the people she was meeting. Until. Now she could not look at Jesse; he looked too much like Guthrie. She spent her time with Claire, and Claire allowed it, comforted her over and over. Some nights she slept in Claire’s room, and Jesse could hear them through the heating vents, talking. It didn’t have to be about Guthrie — they talked about their childhoods and the news and knitting sweaters for Claire’s grandchildren.

Sometime after dawn, he woke up to find Claire in her robe, sitting on his bed. He jerked upward, and Claire took his hand. She said, “It’s all right. She’s asleep. It’s me that couldn’t sleep. I thought you might be awake already.”

“Aunt Claire, those days are gone. Even when I was farming, I never got up before eight.”

“No cows to milk,” said Claire.

“Nothing to love at all,” said Jesse. “What good was it?”

“Ah,” said Claire. “Hmm. What did I love? I think all the scents. Mama’s lilac trees, and the wild iris in the fields, and rain on the breeze on a hot day. Apple and pear blossoms. The hay just cut. The mix of odors in the barn when the sunlight was shafting through the cracks in the boards, heating everything up.”

Jesse said, “I liked a big harvest, but I didn’t love it. Not like my dad. He would put his hands into a bin of corn kernels and let them flow through his fingers, and he would pick up the cobs and sniff them.”

“Joe was a very sensuous man, and I am old enough to say that! Oh, I loved that house, the Frederick house. I remember, when I was six, so it was right around the end of the war, I used to ease out whatever door Mama wasn’t near and walk over there. It seemed like there was such a hill between our house and theirs, but it was just a little rise. I would walk in the weeds along the edge of the big field, and then I would just stand there, looking up at the row of windows, and the upstairs porch off the back; then I would walk around and look at the ripply glass panes in the front door. It was painted a minty rust-green then. I thought the color was very appealing. Whatever Mama didn’t like, I liked, that’s for sure.”

“She was a character,” said Jesse.

“And characters don’t always make the best mothers, but, with a little distance and Henry’s help, I came to appreciate her.”

Jesse did not say what he was thinking, that because, according to the police report, Guthrie probably felt no pain — the bullet went straight through his brainstem and cerebellum, then lodged in the headrest of his seat, and so he had lucked out — he had no worries anymore. If you were not religious, then you could imagine him at rest; and if you were religious, you could imagine him released, redeemed, reborn. Sometimes Jesse thought of this as his father had (redemption in the soil itself, in compost, in the memories of those who loved you), and sometimes he thought of this as his mother had, redemption in the arms of the Lord (and she had always told him those arms were wide open, no matter what certain pastors might say). You could grieve the strange horror of Guthrie’s demise, and what that meant about the world they lived in, or you could grieve Guthrie’s loss, or you could grieve your own loss. Or you could condemn yourself for bequeathing this new world to your children. He put his hands over his face, and his aunt Claire patted his knee. She said, “Oh, Jess. I don’t know what to say.”

—

THE BARGAIN THEY MADE was that Ezra could plan the wedding, and Felicity would plan the honeymoon, and each set of plans would be secret from the other person. Felicity thought that it would be very difficult for Ezra to plan the wedding around a rally or a march, but if she gave him the honeymoon, he would have a field day, and, as usual (in her experience), she was right. He put off and put off, and then, when they went to Britt and Leo’s place for Halloween, there was the Officiant, and there were her parents, looking spent but better than they had in the summer. Britt and Mona were wearing matching outfits, Leo and Jack were in suits, and Ezra had bought her a dress — beige, not white — and it fit perfectly of course, and looked good. Ezra was nothing if not precise. Emily and Jonah were there, too. Jonah was doing graduate work at Cornell, in Chinese, and if he wasn’t going to work for the NSA, Felicity would be dumbfounded; but at the moment, he was writing his dissertation on the violent end of the Ming Dynasty. Emily had with her a present from Tina, who had become a potter “as a retirement gesture.” It was a beautiful six-quart stoneware casserole that looked as though a peacock feather had been draped over it. Chance had been unable to come, but he had sent along his and hers cowboy shirts made of old feed sacks, which Ezra’s mom liked so much she said she would sell them in her shop. She had knitted Ezra a black vest and Felicity a white lace shawl. Felicity could tell she had been planning their marriage maybe longer than she and Ezra had, because the shawl and the vest were intricate and time-consuming. Felicity loved Ezra’s mom — in Roxbury, you did not have to hide your hippie origins or feel any embarrassment about all your friends who still lived in Woodstock. Ezra’s dad brought the Lamoreaux Landing Finger Lakes sparkling wine, a case.

She hugged her mom for about five minutes, she was so happy to see them, happy they looked okay, happy that Ezra had talked them into it, happy that her mom and Ezra kissed as if they really liked each other. But the fact was, everyone in the family liked Ezra; they thought she was lucky to get him. She did, too. Uncle Richie couldn’t come — he was in the hospital for an emergency cardiac procedure. All through the wedding, everyone tried not to be worried about him, tried to talk about Guthrie instead, what a sweet young man he had been, but at least six people, including Leo, said, “He just hasn’t been the same since Uncle Michael got killed.” When, before the ceremony, they said a prayer for Guthrie, they included Uncle Richie. As a rule, Felicity stared straight at the wall when anyone said prayers, but because it was for Guthrie, and her mom was standing next to her, holding her hand, she bowed her head this time. And so it was a big wedding, and so Ezra had pulled it off, and so the onus was now on Felicity to make something of the honeymoon.