Jane Smiley - Golden Age

Riley said, “Yes. You get busy and make a world that my kids can live in, I’ll give you a kid.”

Richie knew she meant it.

Richie had spent his legacy on a down payment for a condo within biking distance of his office, and he was glad he had. With lots of light and some spare, appealing furniture, it made a place that Nadie enjoyed, rather like an inexpensive but newly renovated hotel where she could take a break from her own place, which was crammed with her computer, drawings, and papers. She worked from home, hiring herself out to small construction firms that were building groups of houses or apartment buildings. She organized materials, sets of plans, crews of workers; the driveways in Fairfax would be completed by Thursday, and then the crews would head for Arlington. The companies she worked for could throw up a house that conformed to building codes in a couple of months. She had gone around to construction sites and talked to the builders until two or three had hired her. When others saw what she could do, they hired her, too. Some weeks, she drove as far as Philadelphia.

Lying in bed next to her (it was not that late; they’d come home straight from the restaurant, since he had to leave on the 6:00 a.m. train to New York to get to three campaign events the next day), he said, “Could you come along and just spy on my brother? I could set you up somewhere with a telescope.”

“I have a job,” said Nadie.

She seemed restless, so Richie put his leg over hers and moved her toward him. She was tense for a moment, then relaxed and kissed him. He said, “It wouldn’t be a job, it would be a charitable act.”

“To whom? When you describe him, Michael sounds like an asshole. Do you want me to declare that he is an asshole, or that he isn’t?”

“I want analysis. I want to know why he does what he does.”

“What you really want to know is why you care.”

“Why do I care?” said Richie. Maybe this was a way to get her to stay.

“I’m not staying,” she said, answering his real question. But then, when she saw that he looked disappointed, she said, “I’ll go to What Dreams May Come with you Saturday night, though.”

Richie was not a fan of Robin Williams, but he said, “Okay.” She eased herself out of the bed and got dressed. He walked her to the door. Her generation did not like to be accompanied home, he had discovered.

THE NEW MAN, Pastor Diehl, had a way of letting his gaze pass over Lois’s face without recognition. It happened every single time he stood in the doorway of the church, sending the believers away after the Sunday-morning or the Wednesday-evening services. At first, Lois said nothing to Minnie about this particular insult; she was, after all, Pastor Campbell’s most industrious and helpful congregant, had been for years now. But she vocally dismissed Pastor Diehl’s views about Clinton, liberals, homosexuals. There were ways in which Lois and Henry were two of a kind — careful, stylish, persnickety about details. She was not going to stand for any sass about homosexuals from a flashy kid who grew up in Missouri, and not even St. Louis or Kansas City, but Bucyrus! Where in the world was that?

First Lois talked to Cecilie Campbell about what she saw as a mutiny. She came home afterward — home to the big house, not to her own house — and made herself a pot of tea, then said to Minnie, who was reading, “That girl doesn’t know left from right!” Pastor Campbell’s wife was forty-two, Minnie thought, but said nothing. Lois said, “She’s glad Pastor Diehl has taken over the ten o’clock service as well as the Wednesday-night service, not to mention the youth crusade! She says Ralph is relieved! He’s so exhausted running the place that—”

“Administration is exhausting,” said Minnie — a neutral comment, she would have thought.

“Then a young man should do it!”

“Why let him control the money?” said Minnie. That shut Lois up.

She then had a talk with Pastor Campbell himself. He said that he felt out of touch with the latest “fashions,” and Lois told him that salvation was not a fashion, but of course it was — Minnie saw that all the time. He was sorry Lois felt that way, but the fact was that he had never considered his sermons much good, so he was happy enough to step back.

After that, Lois stewed for a few days. She went to Diehl, cornered him in the youth center, where he was putting up posters, and accused him of taking over. At first he advised her not to worry: there was no one he respected more than Ralph, and he had a perfect love of Cecilie, who was the ideal wife that he himself hoped for, a quiet, humble, but wise helpmeet, and the children…

She wasn’t going to stand for it. Lois walked out. He was a hypocrite! All he wanted was to run the place, and he was using politics to make people afraid, to consolidate his power, to ease out one of the best men of God Lois had ever known, a man who was inherently humble and kind but brilliant—

“These things aren’t really your business,” said Pastor Diehl.

After that, Lois didn’t feel comfortable going to the church at all, so she sat around her house, baking this, baking that, mastering cannoli at last. Minnie had seen it before: someone dies, and what had appeared to be peace and contentment explodes in frustration. Finally, on Lincoln’s Birthday, which Minnie noted because it was a holiday, Lois showed up at breakfast in her eight-year-old pickup truck and went down into the cellar. The mazelike brick house she and Joe had lived in now for fourteen years had a small cellar, but for real storage, she used this place. Minnie hadn’t realized how much was down there.

Lois brought up boxes of beans, lentils, peas, rice, quinoa, wheat berries. Cases of stewed tomatoes, her own canned vegetables, her own dried apple slices, pear wedges, cranberries. Bags of flour, wheat and rye. Bags of sugar, of course. Frozen cuts of pork and steaks; condensed milk. Dried pasta. Oils of various kinds. She was patient and strong. She was pleasant to Minnie and didn’t ask her to help, but she did prop the door open. The day before had been warm, but today it was in the twenties again, so Minnie went up to her room, closed the door, and put on two sweaters. Sometimes she looked out the window. Loading the truck bed took two hours. Finally, Minnie saw her slam the tailgate, stand for a moment to regard her work, then turn toward the house. Minnie went down and met her at the door. Lois said, “Well, time to say goodbye.”

“Where are you—”

“I’ll stay with Annie for a few weeks.”

“You’re taking all of this to Milwaukee?”

“Heavens, no. I’m dropping it at the church. That Diehl may be telling them that the world is going to end on New Year’s, but I don’t believe it. Not anymore. Never did, really.”

“What about your house?”

“Oh, I’m all moved out of there.”

“What about Jesse and Jen and the kids?”

“I’ll visit,” said Lois.

Minnie said, “I mean, why are you giving all the food to the church and not to the kids?”

“They get the house.” She said, “Jen is good. She can take over.”

“Take over what?”

“Keeping up the garden. Making sure that you all don’t eat poison, I guess. I’ve had enough. Joe isn’t here anymore. Without him to care for, I feel overwhelmed with rage every time I look at the corn and beans or pass that Kum & Go. My heart sinks. It’s like I fell asleep forty years ago and woke up in hell. I don’t want to have to drive forty miles to Ames to go to Wheatsfield. The other night, in the middle of the night, I thought, ‘I am out of place. Just out of place. Diehl is right.’ ” Minnie didn’t dare say that she would miss her — she had that Lois sense of certainty still. Minnie was sorry to see her go, but she dared not object.