Jane Smiley - Golden Age

“Sure,” said Riley.

“My sister-in-law would be one of those people writing you hate mail. You should meet her and try out your techniques on her.”

“Michael’s wife,” said Charlie.

Richie nodded.

Charlie said, “I got that vibe off her. The my-dad-has-twenty-thousand-head-of-cattle-and-we-eat-ribs-for-breakfast-lunch-and-dinner-and-you-will-remove-them-from-my-cold-dead-hands sort of vibe.”

Richie looked at the clock behind the baked-goods display. It was almost eleven, and he had done nothing yet this morning. Ivy was not sanguine about the presidential election. She thought the victory was enough to shrink the population of right-wing bacteria, but not enough to kill them all, so the stronger ones would reproduce and return, more “virulent” than ever (though she did think that eventually she would win over Michael, who was basically well meaning, and Loretta, who had to be more sharply defined than Michael just to maintain his interest and respect). Richie said, “What are you doing this morning, Riley?”

“Following you around.”

Richie said, “I will pay you each one dollar over the minimum wage, which is four twenty-five per hour, to help me clean up my campaign headquarters, starting right now; one hour every day for lunch; no benefits until I get to Washington. But you can come for dinner Friday night and meet Ivy and Leo.”

“Five fifty,” said Charlie.

Richie pulled some change out of his pocket and threw it on the table, then said, “You got it.”

ANDY AND DEBBIE ARRANGED that Frank would invite Arthur to Englewood Cliffs after the inauguration. He would come for a week and at least be a little distracted. No one north of the Tappan Zee Bridge had seen the sun in twenty-six days; Debbie could tell Arthur was sinking. Debbie’s husband, Hugh, was sinking, too. Hugh tried not to complain, but he thought, if the four of them could just get away to Stowe for a long weekend (away from Arthur, that was), then everyone would be fortified and ready to take on the ninth anniversary of Lillian’s death. Hugh’s unspoken opinion was that people die — his grandmother had died; his aunt had died; his grandfather had died. In his family, this was accepted as natural. He had spent nine years treating Lillian’s death as a larger event than he felt it was. Andy said, “I understand completely.”

Because Arthur might not answer the phone, and even if he did he would decline the invitation, Frank proposed that they drive up to Hamilton (Hugh was tenured at Colgate now) and kidnap him. They would take the kid, Charlie, with them. Andy asked Richie, who asked Riley, who asked Charlie, who said yes. Riley was in Washington, helping Richie organize his congressional office. But Arthur was happy to see them and not at all reluctant to accompany them to New Jersey.

He kept up conversation for maybe half an hour, then dozed off with his head against the car window, snoring for a while; then he seemed to suck air and gag, which was alarming. And even though the Mercedes was hot, Arthur shivered periodically as Frank drove.

Once they got back to Englewood Cliffs and Arthur had gone to bed, Andy, Frank, and Charlie huddled around the table in the kitchen. “He at least needs a warmer coat,” said Charlie. “I can find him something.”

“He must weigh a hundred and twenty-five pounds,” said Andy. “And he’s so hunched over. I can’t believe he’s our age.” She turned to Charlie. “I’ll be seventy-three in the summer, and Frank turned seventy-three on the first of January, but Arthur looks ninety. His father was still walking several miles a day the last year of his life. Was he eighty-something when he died?” Andy had bought tickets to Jelly’s Last Jam and planned to take Arthur to simple things, like Central Park to watch the skaters at Wollman Rink, brunch at a deli, maybe to the Guggenheim for half an hour; but, judging by the way he had changed even since the fall, she wasn’t so sure now.

Frank said, “He’s tougher than we think,” and it was true that Arthur had endured things that none of the rest of them had had to endure, but even if Frank was discounting his own good health by 50 percent, Andy thought he was overestimating what Arthur had become.

Andy said, “Maybe I should take him to a doctor.”

But could kidnapping accomplish that, too?

When they were settling into bed, Frank said, “You know, it’s okay with Arthur if he dies. I don’t think he ever tried it after that one time, but he told me he thought about it. And thought about it.”

Andy said, “You have to be brave and resolute to do it.”

Frank tightened his arms around her and kissed her.

In the morning, Arthur was already up when Andy entered the kitchen. Charlie had toasted him an English muffin and made both of them some hard-boiled eggs and coffee. Arthur was sitting up straight and cracking the shell of his egg. Charlie was saying, “You can get used to your indoor temperature being sixty-two if you’ve weather-stripped the windows to take care of the drafts. Warm socks and a sweater work for me. We’re lucky to have heat at all — we have friends who’ve never turned on the furnace. Even Riley dreads going to their place.”

Arthur gazed at him with a fond smile and said, “Some indigenous peoples are built to retain heat. Thick around the center, thin at the periphery. But you don’t look like one of them.”

“I have the luxury of a six-thousand-calorie diet.”

Andy wrapped her robe a little more tightly around herself and said, “Everybody sleep well?”

Charlie said, “I did get up to open a couple of windows, but I set a rolled-up towel against the threshold of the door so no cold air would leak into the house.”

“Comfortable bed,” said Arthur.

Andy offered them some Familia, which she liked with a little yogurt every morning, but they shook their heads.

It went like that all day: Charlie and Arthur sitting here and there, chatting, while Andy eavesdropped. Charlie was a good listener, and so was Arthur. Arthur didn’t talk only about Tim, but he did tell Charlie about the time that Tim went with his friends the Sloan brothers when they sneaked out one night in their father’s work truck. They were driving along a country road at about 1:30 in the morning. Two other boys were in the back, and the truck went off the edge and rolled into a field. The boys in the back were thrown clear, and everyone was fine. They went to the Sloans’ place, and took the truck out behind the garage, found hammers in the workshop, and hammered out the dents. The dad, according to the older Sloan boy, didn’t notice a thing.

Charlie told about how, when he was seven, he walked out of the house and took the bus to the pool without telling anyone. His mom had figured out where he was headed by the fact that his trunks and towel were gone. Instead of punishing him, she got him a bus pass and made sure that the driver for that route knew his name.

Arthur told about his boarding school — Andy hadn’t known that Arthur went to boarding school. His favorite history teacher was a fellow from Belfast, who spoke with a liquid Irish accent. Instead of talking about whatever was in the textbook (though he did test them on that), he would give them poems to memorize—“The Charge of the Light Brigade,” “Dulce et Decorum Est,” “O Captain! My Captain!” “Sailing to Byzantium,” “The Wind That Shakes the Barley.” And Arthur said he could remember them still, all the verses, word for word; sometimes when he couldn’t sleep he recited them to himself. When he then, at Charlie’s urging, said a few lines from “The Wind That Shakes the Barley”—“And on my breast in blood she died / While soft winds shook the barley”—Andy’s eyes filled with tears, and she went out the back door.