Jane Smiley - Golden Age

“Oh, I don’t mean that the food was good. Sometimes it was and sometimes it wasn’t. But the conversation was good. Not so much complaining as these days. More like, well, we made it another year, thank the Lord.”

“Thank the Lord,” said Jesse.

Now there was a long silence. Joe’s oxygen tank was across the room, but he hated to use it. He called his condition “farmer’s lung,” as if that was a joke, but Jesse knew it was emphysema, caused by all kinds of dust (but do you really wear a mask when you are cultivating or plowing or closed up in the barn, maintaining equipment over the winter? To do so seemed both silly and frightening). When had the illness come on? If his dad had caught it early, what would he have done, moved to town? Gone to work in his mom’s shop? Now Jesse cleared his own throat, and then he wondered if he would start panicking every time he got a cold.

Suddenly Joe said, “She’s going to rope me into a big funeral and put up a headstone twice as tall and twice as wide as Frank’s.”

Jesse shifted in his chair. His dad hadn’t mentioned his funeral before.

“You make sure I get cremated. Pastor Campbell be damned.”

“I’ll tell her—”

“Yes, you do that. I put it in a letter and I put it in my will, but she’s going to ignore that, sure as rain. You know, when my dad died, I sat with him out under the Osage hedge there, and I knew in my heart that when I was going to die — and I thought that would be forever and a day in the future, or maybe never, you know how it is — I would make sure that I got buried under the Osage tree. I hated that old graveyard where they put Uncle Rolf and everyone. But here I go. Can’t do a thing about it.” He coughed again.

“I don’t think she’ll let me bury you under the Osage hedge,” said Jesse, “but I will sprinkle some ashes there. I will do that. I promise.”

His dad nodded.

It was funny how they talked about this, so matter-of-fact, Jesse thought. No tears were coming to his eyes, though he loved and respected his father. Nor did his dad pity himself. Death was death. If you went to church every Sunday, which they did, you had to accept that death was a release — they certainly told you that over and over, a harvest to be prepared for and then performed.

His dad said, “Don’t you let those boys ride along unless they’ve got a seat to sit on.”

Jesse said, “I won’t, Dad.”

“And don’t you let Pastor Campbell say that I’ve been gathered into the arms of the Lord. I nearly walked out when he said that about your uncle Frank. Frank would have punched him in the nose for that. You know, when my Opa first came here, if an old man died in the winter, well, they just put him in the cellar for a few months, until the ground thawed. That wasn’t a bad idea.”

The door opened. His mom said, “Hi, sweetie. You two have a nice afternoon?”

Jesse said, “We did.”

His mom said, “I roasted some extra Brussels sprouts and sprinkled them with olive oil and Parmesan. I made up a container for you to take home.”

“Thanks, Mom. Those are always good.” Jesse’s hand was resting on his dad’s hand, on top of the sheet, and now he looked down. So similar in shape — not beautiful or graceful, but strong and built for work. His dad’s hand felt dry, hard, cool, ready to fix something or plant something, as if it didn’t know that the system was shutting down. It was the hand of a kind man, a hand that had gently squeezed his shoulder or patted him on the back countless times. How did you deserve such a dad? he thought. But he said nothing, looked away. There would be some point when he would express all of this, but it frightened him now — bad luck, asking for trouble. He gave his father’s hand a squeeze and said, “I guess I’d better check the weather.”

“Could be good,” said Joe.

—

BEFORE SHE WENT to Kyoto for the Convention on Climate Change, Riley moaned incessantly about the carbon footprint of her flight, how could she justify it, why couldn’t they have the conference in…(but she couldn’t come up with a sustainable spot). After she got back (and Richie had paid for the trip, out of pocket, not in his official capacity), she showed no gratitude at all — simply came into his office at all hours of the day and continued arguing with him about the new treaty, about emissions, about money for wind and solar. As far as Richie was concerned, Al getting Bill to sign the treaty was a major victory. The strategy now should be to back off, let Clinton regain his footing and his cool, and move forward from there. But no promise was sufficient for Riley, or for the World Wildlife Fund, or for any other environmental group. He said to her, “Look. The Senate is not going to ratify it. And they would like to tar and feather him for signing it. Can’t you shut up for once?” What he did not say was that there was something else brewing, something that Riley might not care about in any way, but that the Republicans would certainly take advantage of.

Richie was not terribly fond of his scheduler, Lucille, but she had been working as a congressional staffer since the Johnson administration, and she was an accomplished eavesdropper — in the bathroom, in the lunchroom, in the gym, in the hallways, you name it, she had heard things everywhere. One of her strategies, she had told Richie, was to do a crossword puzzle on the can, her body movements stilled. He would not believe, she said, who was sleeping with whom, and where. Across the congressional office desk was the least of it. And now she had heard another thing, and if they got through Christmas without an explosion, they’d be lucky.

There was a girl, Lucille said. In her twenties, plain-looking, dumpy sort of girl. She had worked for Clinton in the White House. Lucille sniffed. Girls worked in the White House generation upon generation. Richie found this difficult to believe. Hadn’t girls in the nineteenth century been required to stay at home? Well, since the Kennedy administration, said Lucille. Someday, they would talk about that. What the girl had done, well, the girl had given in — either to temptation or to the president, what was the difference, said Lucille. But here was the kicker: she had decided to start talking about it. She talked and talked and talked about it. Other people talked about it, too — that was how Lucille heard the news, sitting on the can in the Capitol, quiet as a mouse, doing her puzzle. When the talkers walked along the row of stalls, looking for feet, hers were tucked in the shadows. But they would have talked anyway — everyone loved to talk. Washington ran on gossip. Here was the other thing.

“What?” said Richie.

The woman this girl talked to just happened to make hours and hours of recordings. Lucille was not a fan of Bill Clinton, but her findings were that whatever he did was the norm on Capitol Hill. And the girl was twenty-four, not nineteen.

The next person Richie heard something from was Michael, who had heard it from Loretta, who had overheard it having lunch in the Oyster Bar at Grand Central. Someone at Time or Newsweek was already on it. “Everybody knows,” said Michael.

“About what, that a Democrat has balls?”

“Everyone but you,” said Michael.

“Mom wouldn’t like to hear you say that,” said Richie. “Nor would the monsignor.”

“I say nothing about Monsignor Kelly’s balls.”

“At least, not as long as he’s controlling the checkbook, right, Mike?” said Richie.

He saw that Riley had walked into his office yet again. He hung up without saying goodbye, and barked, “Where is Kenisha?” Kenisha was his press secretary.

She ignored him. “Okay, here are your notes for your speech about energy alternatives. I fixed them a little bit, since today is cold, so that they de-emphasize conservation and ramp up innovation and being ahead of the curve and all that. Just remember, natural gas is a stopgap; don’t talk about it too much. And I know nobody likes the doomsday stuff, but Kenisha was in the Chamber a few minutes ago, and she says there’s hardly anybody there, but we’ll get it into the record, anyway.”