Jane Smiley - Golden Age

—

CHARLIE CONSIDERED HIMSELF a brash, or bold, or even brave person. Certainly Riley often said that he was ready for anything, but it wasn’t until his mom sat him down over the Fourth of July, when she and his dad came to Washington (for the first time!) to visit various buildings that they had heard about all their lives (and maybe also to see for themselves that no grandchildren existed or were forthcoming), and said that he needed to try to see his birth mother before it was “too late,” that he seriously considered contacting Fiona McCorkle. And so he got up from the table where his mom was sipping her iced tea, went to the Rolodex, found the number, and dialed it. Riley, who was at the stove, stirring half-and-half into the broccoli bisque, glanced at him and gave him a little nod. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his mom’s eyebrows lift and then lower, and he heard his dad say, “What is he doing?”

“You dared him,” said Riley, reaching for the salt shaker, and Charlie was willing to believe that this was true.

Charlie looked at his watch. It would be 10:00 a.m. in L.A. A voice said, “Over the Top Stables. This is Fiona.” It was a self-possessed voice, a bit distracted, the voice of someone in the middle of something. Charlie said, “Hi, this is Charlie Wickett,” in the exact same tone that people used when they called to ask you whom you were going to vote for. Fiona said, “Yes?” Then there was a pause, and she said, “Well, what do you know.”

Charlie said, “Not much, to tell the truth,” and Fiona laughed.

Charlie laughed, too. He glanced at his mom and then looked at the floor. With the Langdons and Arthur Manning, he had felt no competing loyalties, but now, unexpectedly, he did. He said, “I’m thirty-six. Oh, I guess you know that. Anyway, my mom says I should meet you.”

Well, he had bungled that. He felt his face grow hot.

“I hear about you from time to time,” said Fiona. “It sounds as though I would like you.”

Charlie said, “Now you have your chance.”

“Where are you?” said Fiona.

“We live in Washington, D.C. My wife works for Congressman Richard Langdon, of New York.”

“What do you do?”

“Right now, I go to nursing school, but since I’ve gotten into a lot of trouble over the years, I decided that I’m going to specialize in rescues.” Fiona laughed again.

His dad was patting his mom on the shoulder, and his mom was looking away, toward the windows. Riley stirred the soup again, turned off the burner. Charlie said, “I just wanted to make contact. I need to get off now.” Awkward again.

Fiona said, “We come to Washington from time to time. There’s a big horse show. We have a horse that might qualify.”

“I’ll give you my number.”

“I have it. It’s right here on the phone.” Then, “Oh, here’s my student. Sarah! Wait a second.”

And then she said goodbye and hung up.

After his folks left, Charlie grilled Riley about whether she thought he had hurt his mom’s feelings, and even brought the subject up one night when Uncle Henry took them to his favorite restaurant, Galileo. Uncle Henry said, “She’s always encouraged you.”

Riley said, “She pushes him. She was glad.”

“She didn’t look glad.”

Uncle Henry said, “Sometimes when you first open the door to the attic, you aren’t sure. But then you’re happy to clean it out.”

“Spoken like a hoarder,” said Riley.

And Uncle Henry said, “You got me.”

They all laughed and went on to a discussion of the casserole — celery root, onion, potatoes, wild rice, food originally from the Mediterranean Basin, Iran, Minnesota, and South America, according to Henry, and delicious according to all three of them. Riley said that the name “Menominee” meant “eaters of wild rice.” It was not what the Menominee called themselves, but what the Ojibwe called them. Uncle Henry looked impressed.

At the beginning of August, Fiona called him when Riley was at work, taking advantage of what she called the Idiot Vacation. The apartment was quiet, and Fiona, as before, had a strangely pleasant voice. She said, “Is it Charlie? Charles?”

“Always been Charlie.”

“Good. Anyway, as soon as the vet diagnosed the injury, I thought, well, he’s out for the season, so I won’t get to see Charlie.”

“What is his injury?”

“Oh hell, he kicked the wall of his stall and fractured his coffin bone. What a dope. He’ll be fine next year, though. He’s only seven. You should come out here.”

“I should.”

“September would be good. I don’t have to put you on a horse. We can go to the beach, or take a drive into one of the wilderness areas. We can go up to Desert Hot Springs. There are a lot of weird little places around L.A. Death Valley.”

Charlie said, “I would like to come.” And it was true.

Riley said she could not go with him. The new congressional term would have started, and she had to prove to the congressman that she was more essential to him even than Lucille. Sometimes she got the sense that he was getting tired of her, which wasn’t surprising — she and Lucille were the only ones left of the original eight staffers. But now they would be moving into Rayburn. She didn’t want to miss that, and she didn’t think he would fire her as long as she was married to Charlie. But of course that wasn’t the only reason she remained married to Charlie. She kissed him smack on the lips. He knew it wasn’t the only reason, but they were an odd couple, he admitted that. He got himself a map of California, and imagined driving around — Pasadena, Indio, Twentynine Palms, Escondido (“Secret”) — the place-names were evocative of darkness and sunshine all at once. He began to get a little excited.

—

RICHIE WASN’T SURPRISED that Riley was crying in the bathroom — she was crying everywhere, and she wasn’t alone. His mom, of course, said, “I felt he shouldn’t take that flight. I even picked up the phone to call you, but I couldn’t do it. It is killing Arthur. Arthur will be dead by Christmas.” And then he could hear her voice shake, and then she said, “Oh Lord,” and hung up. Richie had done his share of crying, too, as had Uncle Henry, as had Charlie’s parents in St. Louis, who called Riley every few days. Richie put his head in his hands. Ivy had seen the towers fall from her new place in Brooklyn Heights — or so she said — it was all jumbled in her mind. He knew scads of people who had looked up, or looked over their shoulders, or seen something, or heard something, or sensed the ground shake upon impact, or saw the plume of fire when the plane, Charlie’s plane, hit, then plowed through the Pentagon. Michael and Loretta knew two men who had been in the second tower. Maybe one of them had jumped. Michael said that he would have jumped. Every thought about it was terrifying. Why would you jump? thought Richie, and then he stopped thinking.

However, Lucille said that Riley wasn’t crying in the bathroom — or not only crying. She was also throwing up. Richie did not understand what this meant until Lucille said, “Well, Congressman, open your eyes. She’s pregnant.”

Richie said, “I don’t think that’s our business.”

“If you say so,” said Lucille.

“I say so,” said Richie. What was their business? That was the question. Just after they heard about the Trade Center attack, it had been decided that everyone should evacuate — Richie was arriving at the Capitol building with his new press secretary, Alia, when they saw Hastert being whisked away, and knew that they should leave, too. Richie sent Alia home — she lived in College Park. Then he found Lucille in the office and told her that the Secret Service said everyone had to leave, walk south. Right then, it would have been, at that very moment (Richie pictured his feet, brown loafers, green socks, stepping across the pavement), Charlie’s plane was arrowing into the Pentagon. That evening, Richie joined the others on the Capitol lawn, when everyone agreed to stand behind the president. Since then, though, their job had not been as clear. The perpetrators were dead, and there were all sorts of theories about who was behind them. Most of the Congress was eager to fund some sort of reprisal, or at least investigation. Although his district did not include Ground Zero, as they called it, it did include parts of Lower Manhattan, so he helped Jerry Nadler author a bill that would give grants to businesses around there, to keep them running.