Jane Smiley - Golden Age

When she returned, they were laughing. Charlie was talking about how he would not be allowed to dive until he could show the coach that he had read his ten pages of The Bridge of San Luis Rey , or whatever the book was. He was required to read them even if the book happened to slide off the diving board and into the deep end.

Then Arthur told a story Steve Sloan had told him after Tim died, about how they would ride their bicycles to the local lovers’ lane, crawl along the drainage pipe to the manhole, and set off firecrackers under the lovers’ cars.

They lulled her. She gave them sandwiches and drinks in the living room. Charlie went out for a run in the mid-afternoon, but came back after an hour (“Only six miles, but I can make it up,” he said). Arthur appeared to take a nap. It was Frank who noticed when he got home before supper that when Arthur stood up from his chair to go to the bathroom, he stumbled to one side, caught himself, and then stood there as if he was too dizzy to go any farther, and it was Frank who suspected what they discovered at the emergency room — he was having a little stroke, or what the ER doctor called “a transient ischemic attack” from a blood clot in his left carotid artery, and would need to stay in the hospital for at least a few days.

—

FRANK WAS NOT SURPRISED that the few days of Arthur’s stay at the hospital turned into something much more lengthy and dramatic. He was not lulled by day one, when Arthur seemed back to normal, sitting up in his bed, chatting with the nurses and the orderlies as if he’d known them for years, telling Charlie about how their house in McLean had so many doors and gates that it took him half an hour every night to make sure everything was locked up. He went along with Arthur’s refusal to call Debbie, but not because he thought Arthur was going to be all right. When Frank arrived on the morning of day two to find Arthur dressed, and busily, but quietly, getting his things together, he didn’t help him. He said he had to find the men’s room, then went to the nurses’ station and asked if Mr. Manning had been discharged. The nurse, very slowly, Frank thought, went through Arthur’s chart, and said, “No, sir. Mr. Manning is scheduled first thing tomorrow morning for a carotid endarterectomy.”

“What is that?”

“Apparently, Mr. Manning has about a seventy-five- or eighty-percent atherosclerotic plaque blockage where the left carotid artery forks. The right artery is not clear, but the blockage is only about thirty-five to forty percent, which is not critical at this point. Dr. Marcus will open the left artery and clear out the plaque. It’s a delicate operation, but not terribly—”

“Does Mr. Manning know what the doctor’s plan is?”

“They had a consultation about an hour ago, sir.”

He told her that Arthur was ready to leave.

Considering how thin he was, Frank discovered that Arthur was pretty strong. It was Frank who had to grab his elbow as he rushed the door, and retain his hold while Arthur tried to twist out of his grasp. The nurse kept exclaiming, “Mr. Manning! Mr. Manning! Please, sit down!”

Finally, Frank simply embraced him and held him until he went quiet. He could see the two of them in the bathroom mirror — himself half a bald head taller than Arthur now, Arthur’s white hair fluffing upward, his own bulky blue-shirted arm across Arthur’s narrow back. The nurse — her name was Ernestine — said, soothingly, “There’s nothing to be afraid of, Mr. Manning. Dr. Marcus is a wonderful surgeon, he’s done this a thousand times.” Arthur said nothing. When the nurse went out to get him “a little something,” Frank leaned over him and spoke in a low voice. He said, “I know you’re not afraid.”

Arthur shook his head. “That’s not it,” he said. “Why bother?”

“Because something could happen to you that would be a major pain in the ass for everyone else.”

Arthur sat down on the bed. Frank positioned himself between Arthur and the door, but Arthur didn’t make a move.

That night, in bed, Frank said to Andy, “When Arthur and Lillian ran off, it was Joe who drove to the soda fountain to pick Lillian up when she said she was getting off that night, at eight. When was that, ’45? I was still in Germany, anyway. The fellow who ran the drugstore was dumbfounded: he hadn’t seen her all day, she wasn’t assigned to come into work, he said. He went with Joe around behind the drugstore and looked in the weeds, down by the river, for her body! Joe was afraid to go home. But by the time he got there, my mom had gone into Lillian’s room, noticed the bed wasn’t made, and found the note. Oh, she was beside herself, she didn’t know whether it was from fear or rage. Then, two days later, I got another letter saying that Lillian had written home to say she was married. Postmarked Kankakee. They were on their way to Washington, D.C., she was as happy as she could be, goodbye!”

“Your parents never seemed to hold it against her.”

“They were all set to see Arthur with horns and a forked tail — stolen the darling! But she wrote about how his first wife had died in childbirth, and the baby, too, and my mom couldn’t resist that, and then Arthur sent her a Sunbeam toaster and a hand mixer. Lillian was so good at detailing everything about him that my mom came around by Thanksgiving — what was that, six weeks by then. I’m sure a baby blanket was half knitted by Christmas, whether or not Lillian had told them she was expecting.”

“He was born to deceive,” said Andy.

“No,” said Frank, “he was a genius at keeping secrets, but he could not tell a lie.”

After that, they lay quietly until Andy kissed him good night — two, three, four kisses, each softer and more searching than the last one, each one saying, We are old we are old, the end is nigh, yet each one so exactly like those kisses he remembered from when they were first married and living in Floral Park that he felt disoriented. Certainly, one of the punishments of old age was experiencing this decline, but with Arthur, Frank thought it was worse than that. He remembered Arthur more clearly from those early days than he remembered almost anything, because Arthur had been a peculiar phenomenon, almost sinister in his ability to be that affectionate, fun-seeking, all-American dad when he was near Lillian and the kids, and that ruthless, suspicious schemer when he was grooming Frank for some intelligence-gathering project that Frank only half understood but was always flattered by, always game for. If domesticity was quicksand for a real man (and who in the fifties had not thought so?), then, to Frank, Arthur had held out the occasional lifeline, his only remuneration the satisfaction of being useful, feeling a frisson of risk. Frank was two inches taller than Arthur and must have outweighed him even then by twenty-five pounds, but they both knew that Arthur was the more unpredictable, the more dangerous, or that was how Frank had felt at the time.

Had he liked Arthur? Felt real affection for him? Maybe, at first, only fascination, then dependence, then, now, yes, love. But Frank knew he wasn’t good at love. Andy was training him in their old age. That she was right this minute sleeping next to him was one sign that she was having an effect; that he had looked at the pictures of Jonah with pleasure when they came in the mail earlier in the week was another. He had appreciated Janet — there was one close-up of her face right beside Jonah’s, both of them grinning, that he had thought attractive, even affecting. Frank hadn’t expected to change at this age. Andy turned in his direction and put her hand on his shoulder. He thought again of Arthur as he was now, practically dead. The surgery would be over by the time Frank woke up. If he happened to fall asleep. But then he did.