Jane Smiley - Golden Age

He did wake up around two — two-thirteen. She went into his room and did what she was supposed to do. Then, outside his door, she was so tired that she slumped against the wall. Three minutes, five minutes. Two minutes after her second, supposedly reassuring visit, he went quiet, and she did not peek in to see whether he had put his head between the bars of his crib (not possible — the bars were two and a half inches apart). She went back to bed, lay awake for a while, noticed that Jared had not moved, and did, indeed, fall asleep. Jonah was up at his usual time, just after six. She entered his room with a feeling of such profound guilt that she felt thrilled, but also astonished, when he greeted her with his usual big smile and waving arms, and when she picked him up his arms went around her neck. Jared and Emily said nothing about the whole ordeal at breakfast. Jared said he would be late for supper, and Emily reminded her that she had promised to take her to the stables that afternoon — she had to ride both Pesky and Sunlight, especially if Janet planned to go out Saturday, like she’d said. Yes, she did. “Well, then,” said Emily, in a Denise Herman sort of voice, “are you going to come over and clean your tack? You haven’t cleaned it in two weeks, and it’s a little yucky,” which made Janet get up, go into the bathroom off the kitchen, and laugh silently into the mirror. When she came back out, Emily was setting some bits of scrambled egg on the tray of Jonah’s highchair, and he was touching them with the tip of his finger. Jared was saying, “Honey, give him a bit of the watermelon.”

That night, Night Number Two, it took him twenty-four despair-filled minutes to fall asleep, but when he woke up at two-thirty-four, he only cried out once; she stood outside his door for five minutes, and he didn’t make another sound. On Night Number Three, he fell asleep in fourteen minutes; on Night Number Four, in five; and on Night Number Five, he took a deep breath when she kissed him and patted him, and was, as far as she could tell, sleeping by the time she left the room. And he didn’t wake up until seven-thirty.

The only semi-sad aspect was that she had no one to impart this newfound wisdom to — none of her friends had babies, she didn’t know any younger women well enough to give them unsolicited advice, and Jared and Emily thought that it was all a matter of course. So she kept it quiet, another pleasurable secret between herself and Jonah, another reason never to get a babysitter and to put off the nanny question for six months. She didn’t actually want to be away from him, so why bother?

—

RICHIE HAD the lease on his little campaign office on Sixth Avenue near Ninth Street until the end of the year, which gave him plenty of time to get it cleaned up. The best thing about it (it was only fourteen feet wide and thirty feet deep, and so had been cheap) was that it was across the street from Colson’s, where he always went for coffee. It was there that Charlie and the girlfriend ambushed him at 9:00 a.m. the day after the election. They let him get his coffee and pay for it, along with a rugelach and an apricot tart, so that his hands were full and his cup was hot, and he couldn’t get away. And they stood between him and the door, too. Richie was tired of the campaign and ready for a break, but he said, “Okay, let’s sit down,” and Charlie pulled out the seat they had been keeping for him. Richie wondered if they’d followed him from Park Slope.

Richie had won, 53.4 percent to 46.1 percent, leaving out the handful who’d voted for the socialists and the three voters who voted for the Conservative Party. It was a margin that would have deeply shamed Congressman Scheuer. Richie himself didn’t know if this was a good omen or a bad one, a sign of the times or something personal. He told himself that he was in, all that mattered.

Riley was talking. Charlie was smiling. Richie was putting on his paying-attention face. Riley said, “Sir, as far as I am concerned, and the people I work with, this is the most important issue of our age. I’m not kidding.”

“She’s not kidding,” said Charlie.

Richie said, “Explain it to me again, in a way that I can understand.”

She was good. She did not take a single impatient breath; she did not, even fleetingly, get a “you idiot” look on her face. She did what he would have done with an angry Perot supporter — she smiled and said, “Okay, Clinton was elected, just barely, and now is really our only chance. I mean, let’s put it this way—”

Charlie interrupted, “Pornographers have control of the White House now, and militant homosexuals run the armed forces.”

Richie actually glanced around to see if anyone was looking at them. Loretta had said almost that very thing a week or so ago, except that she, of course, meant it.

“And,” said Riley, “we can close the ozone hole because that was an atheist plot, and now we’ve won.” She had a big smile. That was her pretty part. She got serious immediately, and leaned toward him. “But the greenhouse effect is harder to deal with. We atheists and our trained-seal scientists can’t do it alone, and God doesn’t seem to care, so I want a job.”

“What would your job be?” said Richie.

“Congressmen have staff,” said Charlie. “People who get on TV and say, ‘The congressman has no comment at this time.’ ”

“I do need someone like that. What’s your name? Riley? Let’s hear you.”

Riley cleared her throat, then said, “The congressman has no comment at this time about whether six prostitutes did, indeed, jump from the third-story windows of the West Wing, but he would like to point out that all of the prostitutes signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change while they were visiting with the president, and are completely in agreement with the aims of the protocol, namely, to commit themselves to a reduction of carbon dioxide, methane, sulfur hexafluoride, and, their own personal favorite, nitrous oxide, or laughing gas.” Her smile was perfectly flat and fake, just the way the networks liked it. She went on: “And, of course, hydrofluorocarbons and perfluorocarbons. We understand that, before the jump, three of the prostitutes were preparing a statement to this effect. We greatly regret what appears to be a heartbreaking tragedy, and we would like to remind the audience that everyone must pull together to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by our agreed-upon five-point-two percent. Thank you, and, once again, the congressman regrets being called away on pressing business just now. I have no further comment.” Her smile broadened.

Richie said, “Perfect.”

Charlie said, “I’ve been coaching her.”

Riley said, “I can also answer hate mail, death threats, and accusations that you bear the mark of the devil on your forehead, which is why you always wear a baseball cap.”

“Do you have practice answering those sorts of letters?”

“We don’t answer them, but I think they should be answered.”

Charlie offered, helpfully, “She still has to write her dissertation, but she’s finished with her coursework.”

“What is the subject of your dissertation?”

“Methods of motivating governing elites to understand and address climate issues.”

“So — I am your experimental subject?”

“You’re the only one either of us has met.”

Charlie said, “We drove through Iowa during the drought four years ago, but I was too shy to stop and see Joe or even Minnie. I really liked Minnie.”

Riley turned glum, then said, “I am so sorry I missed that. But I did two papers on the Yellowstone fires.”

“How old are you?” said Richie.

“Twenty-six,” said Riley.

“Do you want to be part of an experiment?”