Jane Smiley - Golden Age

Minnie pushed. “Is curiosity the wrong path?” Then, “Really?”

“About some things, yes.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” exclaimed Minnie. “You can’t possibly mean that.”

“She’s my only granddaughter. I want what is best for her.” She stood up and stared at Minnie, her hands suddenly on her hips. “For everyone. For you, too.”

“I know what is best for me.”

“No,” said Lois, but only in her facial expression, “you don’t.”

Minnie said nothing about Pastor Campbell or the Rapture or the Harvest Home Light of Day Church — she never did, though she was often tempted. She said, “She is almost seven years old. We knew what male sex organs were by the time we were three or four, and what they were used for, too. I remember watching Pa’s ram mount one of the ewes, and Mama saying—”

“You think that was good? Nothing was sacred then. It was all dirt, everywhere. Makes me shudder to think about it — oh, tetanus; oh, mad-cow disease; oh, swine flu.”

“Oh, walking into the street and getting hit by a car!” said Minnie. “How does this relate to Felicity wondering about the difference between herself and her brother?”

“She is exactly the sort of person who eventually goes too far.”

“Like everyone else we know, Lois. If they’re lucky.” Like you, thought Minnie, but again kept it to herself.

Lois pursed her lips, and Minnie leaned toward her, put her hand on her sister’s shoulder, and kissed her on the cheek. Lois would not be convinced, since she could not be convinced of anything, but Minnie thought that she would drop the subject long enough to find that book they had censored at the Usherton Library, A Kid’s First Book About Sex , ages five and up. She might have to go to Des Moines to get it, but, Minnie thought, she was glad to be reminded of it. It was perfect for Felicity.

—

RICHIE HADN’T MET the broker before, but their Realtor was taken ill, so, at the last minute, the broker agreed to show them the listing. The property was on Prospect Park West — the whole building, four floors including a basement apartment they might rent out. It was three and a half blocks from where they lived already, four blocks from the boundary between his district and the next one. It had come on the market Thursday, and the broker expected it to sell before Tuesday. They had given Leo his breakfast, thrown on their winter coats, and run most of the way in the sleet, but that was good, because it got Leo a little tired, tired enough so that Richie or Ivy could, between them, jiggle him into silence for the half hour it took to look over the place.

The broker was, like all brokers, full of smiles and information, and very glad to meet Congressman Langdon in person — sometime they would have to talk! He opened doors with a flourish, invited them to peek into closets, knew the names of all the varieties of wood that made up the woodwork in this incredibly woody house. With its bay windows and its original parquet floors and its many moldings, the place was the opposite of Richie’s mom’s house in Jersey; living here would throw him back fifty years, immerse him in every single thing that Frank Lloyd Wright had detested. That was a point in its favor, Richie thought. Two and a half baths, not counting the basement apartment; a doctor’s office on one side, a couple on the other side with a child a year or so older than Leo. No one had to tell Richie it was perfect; they hadn’t seen any other place in four months of house hunting that they hadn’t had to talk themselves into. Until now. Until, standing in the kitchen wondering if she could replace the twenty-year-old Maytag gas range with a Wolf, Ivy put her hands over her face and said something that sounded suspiciously like “I can’t do it.”

Leo was pulling on one of the cabinet doors. He had a speculative look. He let it go, and it slammed.

Richie stepped toward Ivy, gently removed her hands, kept holding them, and said, “You can’t do what?” Behind her, he could see the shadow of the real-estate broker on the herringbone floor of the hallway.

Leo opened the door again, squatted, peered into the cabinet.

Ivy looked up at him, her dark hair, now flecked with gray, bouncing, the tendons of her throat quivering. “I can’t go on with this.”

“We don’t have to buy a house. This is a big undertaking. We’d have to replace the—”

This time, Leo gave the cabinet door a little push — bang! Leo laughed.

“I’ve been having an—”

With smooth congressional tact, Richie put his hand on her shoulder and turned her toward a dark back room — a family room, it looked like — but she said it out loud anyway: “—affair with—”

Richie propelled her a little harder, and she stumbled over the threshold. He glanced back, not quite sure what to do with Leo, but Leo seemed reasonably well occupied. He had moved on to the lazy-Susan corner cabinet. Richie called back to him, “Don’t catch your finger.”

The family room was carpeted and had drapes, and thus darkened and muffled what Ivy had to say: the affair was with a lawyer, he was in his fifties, he and his wife had been divorced for seven years, his two kids were in college, he had given up on love and sex, and now he’d met Ivy.

“How long?” said Richie.

“A year,” said Ivy. “I don’t dislike you.” Then, “But I knew when you started talking about a new place that it was only a matter of time. I’m sorry I left it this long.”

“Where does he live?”

“The house is in New Rochelle, but he stays mostly in his place on Riverside Drive and Seventy-ninth.”

Richie tried to imagine Ivy in New Rochelle. A guy he knew lived in a brick Georgian palace up there with a grand foyer, circular staircase, formal garden, portico, elaborate crown moldings. He didn’t think Ivy’s parents would even enter such a place. Then he said, “Bob Newton?”

“Do you know him?” said Ivy.

Richie blew out some air.

“He never said he knew you.”

Bob Newton was a slender, dark guy with a predatory look, beak and all. He was worth millions, certainly did not subscribe to The Nation . Richie wondered what Ivy’s parents would say. Richie leaned backward so that he could see Leo, who had moved on to the refrigerator. He was standing with the freezer door open, staring into the interior.

Ivy said, “He’s an avid reader. He’s read all of Trollope. He belongs to some club.” Then, a little embarrassed, she said, “Can we talk about this later?”

“Of course,” said Richie, and that was that. They thanked the broker, who was as smooth and friendly as he had been an hour before, as if he had heard nothing. They said goodbye, and helped Leo down the outside steps, agreeing as they did so that maybe that house had too many steps for an active six-year-old. On either side of Leo, each holding a hand, they walked to the corner of Eighth and turned left. Ivy said, “The sleet seems to have stopped completely.”

Richie said, “It’s not really that cold.” He glanced at her from time to time. It was true that a woman who would carry on with Bob Newton for a year couldn’t possibly be interested in him. They were like worlds that did not, could not overlap, could only intersect at the point where Bob was giving him some campaign financing.

By the time the item appeared on Page Six, “Congressman’s Marital Ship on the Rocks,” Richie didn’t even care anymore — better, at least in New York, to nod, shrug, say, “It happens. The most important thing is Leo.” A congressman didn’t have to defend the institution of marriage; that was entirely up to the president.