Jane Smiley - Golden Age

But it was a nightmare, trying to figure out how to get to the neighborhood, who should go there (a day-care business?), what to do with the site. He was the only congressman he knew of who was related to a victim. He hadn’t mentioned it to the papers, and so no one knew it —how he was related could be a problem. Only Cheney and Rumsfeld seemed not overwhelmed. They came, they talked, they promoted strict policies and aggressive laws, and though Richie didn’t like them, he was foggy about why — he needed Riley, he discovered, and Nadie and even Ivy, to get him organized. But the only person he had was Michael, and Michael wanted to kill them, whoever they were, no matter what, no matter where, no matter how.

ARTHUR WASN’T DEAD by Christmas, but he was dead by New Year’s Day. On the 3rd, Richie and Nadie took Riley and Uncle Henry to the service. The funeral was at a funeral home in McLean, easy to get to. As they drove past the neighborhood that Tim had roamed around, and then past Arthur and Lillian’s old place, Riley stared out the window but didn’t ask to stop or say anything; Charlie himself had no connection to this landscape. Uncle Henry, too, seemed small and quiet. But Richie remembered Tim vividly here — how grown up he’d seemed when Richie was just a kid. He and Michael hadn’t been there when Tim did some of his more legendary things, like jumping off the roof of the house into the pool, but, merely sitting at the supper table or teasing Janet, he had had an air of danger that Charlie, with all of his good nature, had never had.

They were the first to arrive at the funeral home. The casket was sitting forlornly in “The Memorial Center,” a large, dim, empty, greenish room. Tina arrived next, having taken a cab from Dulles. Richie introduced her to Riley and Nadie, and Tina gave Riley a heartfelt hug, then kissed her. Richie hadn’t realized that they had had much of a relationship before Charlie died, but afterward, Riley mentioned that they exchanged letters or e-mails every month or so — she had sent them a beautiful carved panel after their wedding, medieval-looking and ornate, but the faces of the couple were the faces of Charlie and Riley as Adam and Eve; Charlie was laughing, and Riley was looking pensively at the apple in her hand. Then Dean and Linda showed up, after them Debbie, looking pinched and sad, Hugh, looking bland, Kevin and Carlie, looking like the twenty-somethings they were (unsure of themselves). Except for Tina, the Mannings stood together in a bunch, while Richie, Riley, Uncle Henry, and Nadie stood in a line, space between them. Janet’s plane had been delayed for so long out of San Francisco that she had decided in the end not to come. After the chat about Arthur’s end (“peaceful”) had subsided into an uncomfortable silence, the director of the funeral home walked in and out a few times, asking if everyone was all right, and looking at his watch. Finally, Debbie stepped up to the casket, put her hands together, and said, “I asked my dad several times what he wanted for his service. He said, ‘Small, secret, out of the way.’ So — here we are.”

Just at that moment, the door opened and Richie’s mom slipped in. Debbie stopped speaking, looked at her, smiled. Andy, who was wearing a perfectly cut black wool coat with a tight waist and wide skirt that was probably as old as Richie was, glided down the aisle between the rows of empty chairs and took his hand. The service was indeed short, and maybe, in some sense, it was for Riley. There had been memorial services for the victims of all four 9/11 disasters, and the remains of many of the victims had been identified but not, so far, any of Charlie’s. (Riley had spent a week in November trying to convince him that Charlie hadn’t actually been on the plane, until Nadie finally said, “So he’s using this as an excuse to leave you?” which shut her up about that.) Richie hoped that you could add up memorial services like interest on investments, until they finally produced a payoff — comfort, acceptance, hope, especially if you were pregnant and due in May. (It was Nadie who insisted that Riley confess — was she pregnant or not? Yes, she was, and although she had thought about it, she could not bring herself to have another abortion, even in spite of the nature of the world she saw everywhere. Nadie had put her hands on Riley’s shoulders, looked her in the eye, and said, “Do you love me?” Riley nodded. Nadie said, “My mother lived in a much more horrifying world than you do, and abortion was routine there. I am a good reason not to have an abortion.” She said it lightly, and Riley said, “We’ll see about that in the future,” but took what she said to heart. Nadie had reported this to Richie at the office Christmas party.)

Everyone said something. His mom was last. Her voice was soft and vaporous, almost like memory itself. Richie could see how, once upon a time, her voice had been taken to indicate that she was dumb or thoughtless, and even she said that she had been both, but now listening to her talk was like feeling a light breeze that made you wake up to something, maybe your own existence, for a moment. She said, “I always thought my dear friend Arthur’s great tragedy was that he knew what love was better than anyone else in the world, and he could feel it wavering and swelling or dissipating and flowing away as no one else could. It was a terrible burden for him. It was as if he had an extra sense, the way dogs hear sounds that we can’t. That’s why he did what he did, that’s why he loved Lillian as he did, that’s why he put up with me and Frank, that’s why Tim’s death and Charlie’s death tormented him so. If he took you in, then he saw something in you that was worth caring for, sort of like a vibration in your surface, and so he tried and tried, but we all slipped away from him, because that’s what life is. So many times he would say to me, Andy, I give up, but he could never give up; something or someone would pull him back. I am eighty-one now, and so Arthur would be almost eighty-two, and the last time we saw each other”—here she looked at Debbie, who was crying, but she went on anyway—“he said, ‘When do I break out of this joint?’—you know, the way he had of always making a joke — and I do believe I said, ‘When you’ve given up on us, darling,’ and we laughed.” She laid one hand on the casket and then the other one. Then she said, “I know you are not supposed to say this at a funeral, but I’m nearly as old as he was, so I am going to be a crazy old lady and say, ‘I am glad that he did.’ ” Now she looked at Debbie again, but Debbie was, in fact, nodding, just a bit, even if she didn’t realize that she was nodding.

Well, she looked sixty, that’s what Nadie and Riley agreed as they drove back to Washington after the interment. Graceful and unlined. Richie joked and said, “I’m not sure she has actually used her body much over the years. My dad might have had two hundred thousand miles on his, but Mom has been driven very little.” Uncle Henry said, “It isn’t that. It’s the Norwegian bloodlines. Survival of the most efficient.” Riley unconsciously put her hand on her belly. At the brunch, Debbie and Tina had both made much of the fact that they were going to be great-aunts, and at such a miraculously young age; they couldn’t wait to give Riley all sorts of unnecessary advice, how exciting, many kisses, much holding of hands, many reminders to stay in touch, until Riley had begun to reciprocate. When they were back in D.C. and had dropped her off at her place, he, Nadie, and Uncle Henry watched her for a few extra moments before waving one last time and driving away. Then Nadie said, “Maybe that did the trick. She seems more like her old self. Her old self can handle anything.”