Jane Smiley - Golden Age

It didn’t take her long to understand why she had apologized. Everything about this event felt to Janet like she was the one forcing the issue, the one requiring this “procedure.” Every story was plausible. The story about school — when Jared asked what Hanny wanted to study, she said, “Vet tech. Or I could be an accountant. I’d like that.” And who wouldn’t, if getting off the Perronis’ enormous Angelina Ranch and into the Bay Area was your choice? The story about Chance: “Oh, he’s doing great. The horses are perfect. He loves it all, everything about it. Of course, he travels most of the year.” The story about Loretta: “I can tell her anything. I think she’s so wonderful and kind. She sent me this bag I have for Christmas, and it was exactly the one I saw when we went to the mall in Salinas. I couldn’t believe it.” The story about her family: Her dad had come to California as a child from Guadalajara, her mother with her family from Mexico City. They had met in L.A., and moved to the ranch because Chance’s grandmother loved her grandmother’s cooking. Her dad no longer worked at the ranch; he drove a truck for a waste-management company. She had a sister and two younger brothers. One of them, Alonzo, went with Chance to rodeos to help with the horses and the equipment. How much does he get paid? thought Janet, meanly.

Hanny went into her room after supper, after asking to borrow Janet’s copy of Vogue , which was lying on the coffee table, after both Jared and Jonah watched her go, then looked at each other and shrugged. Later, Janet heard her crying and didn’t do anything, but when she heard her crying again, just before bedtime, she knocked.

Hanny was sitting up against the headboard, in a pair of blue pajamas with a feather pattern. Janet sat on the edge of the bed. Hanny licked the tears off her lips. Janet said, “Would you tell me why you’re crying?”

Hanny nodded. “I’m really scared.”

Janet said, “Who knows?”

“Mrs. Langdon. I think my mom has an idea, but—”

“But?”

“Don’t ask, don’t tell.”

She had washed her makeup off, and without it, she was prettier, but also younger-looking. Janet said, “Are you eighteen?”

Hanny didn’t say anything for a moment, then shook her head just a little bit.

“Does Chance know how old you are?”

“He thinks I’m eighteen.”

Janet had read about the parental-consent amendment in the papers, maybe five years before, and had been glad when the California Supreme Court struck it down, but now she wished she had some ally who actually knew this girl. She said, “Tell me the truth, Hanny. Do you want to do this?”

Hanny nodded, but she did pause before she nodded.

Now for the hard part — did she love Chance, what were her hopes?

Chance, she said, was a silly boy, not serious, an overgrown kid. When he wasn’t working with the horses or the cattle, he drank and smoked weed and did some other things that Hanny wasn’t sure of. He was moody. Hanny didn’t trust moody men. And she didn’t trust handsome men. And she didn’t trust Anglo men, either.

Why was she crying?

Because she was embarrassed, said Hanny. Humiliated. Because she was a girl who did all of her homework every day, and she was missing school. Because she was a girl who had always kept her half of her room much neater than her sister had, and now the same thing was happening to her that had happened to her sister. Because she was a girl with a rosary in the top drawer of her chest, and maybe she could never touch it again. Because she was afraid.

Janet reassured her that a vacuum extraction was a very safe procedure, especially at eight and a half weeks.

Hanny nodded.

Janet said nothing about what she always remembered as “the flutters”—that first sense she had had of Jonah’s presence, of the love it had set off in her. She saw right then that those sensations didn’t have to arouse love: they could as easily arouse fear and rage.

That night, Janet got up about twelve-thirty, put on her robe, and went out onto the patio, wishing she was a smoker or a drinker or could go to an AA or an SLAA meeting right now, this minute, and ask her fellow contemplators what to do. She hadn’t brought this up at the last meeting because she had mistakenly assumed that, although she was involved, it wasn’t her business. On the one hand, she thought as she stared at the thin sliver of moon that was visible through the branches of the largest oak tree, thank goodness Hanny’s view of Chance coincided with Janet’s own, and her griefs were appropriate for her age. On the other hand, she couldn’t sleep, she couldn’t think, she was beginning to obsess about whether she would be too tired to drive safely to Oakland. When she was finally freezing cold, she went inside and drank a shot of Jared’s Limoncello, which seemed to mildly electrocute her as it froze its way past her tongue and down her throat. But it did, if not put her to sleep, at least put her into a trance. She lay quietly next to Jared.

Who was that? Janet thought the next day when she was walking around the block in Oakland, passing the time while Hanny had her “procedure.” Some friend of hers whose husband had left her had booked a reservation to the most frightening and remote place she could think of — Port Arthur, Tasmania. It took her thirty-six hours to get there (from Philadelphia), by train, plane, and boat, and when she did, just as she was congratulating herself on being adventurous and exotic, an American couple walked by, from Pittsburgh. They had just arrived from New Delhi and Johannesburg, and would be returning to New York through Hong Kong. The man was wearing a Pitt T-shirt and the woman white sneakers. Janet’s friend told her — oh, it was Eileen Grogan, now she lived in Montreal — that she had lost all sense of her own adventurousness instantly, and in fact felt oddly comforted. That was how Janet felt after checking Hanny into the clinic. Oh, she realized. She was not the first. Oh, she realized, it happened many times a day. Oh, she realized, life continues.

Hanny was cramping on the ride home, but she looked less pale and happier than she had getting off the bus. Janet decided to believe the evidence of her own eyes and accept that they had done the best thing.

It was Loretta who had no doubts. When Janet saw her over Easter (she and Michael came into the city and vacationed for two days at the Mark Hopkins), Loretta embraced her, kissed her, thanked her, gave her an antique platinum brooch that looked like a dragonfly and was encrusted with amethysts and tourmalines. A commemoration? Hush money? All Loretta said was “I love you. You are the greatest.”

—

RICHIE’S TIME in office had begun after Cheney’s was over, so he hadn’t known him as a fellow congressman. When Bush was elected, with Cheney vice-president, even some of the Democrats thought they would be fine with him. He had a reputation of being able to listen, at least, and of not saying “Fuck you” to every Democrat every time. Michael liked Cheney because he was “uncompromising” and “had principles,” which Richie considered a truer indicator than the faulty memories of his colleagues. However, he had not expected the onslaught of arm twisting that began after they came back from recess. And he hardly had Riley to help him. She came to work with the baby (Alexis Aurora Wickett), but she was ruthless: she would work on solar and wind and electric cars and some idea about harnessing the energy of the tides, but she had no opinions about anything else, not even whether Cheney should pony up documents to the General Accounting Office about conflict of interest among members of the late and unlamented Energy Task Force. “Enron, Enron, Enron,” echoed in everyone’s heads, but Cheney brushed it off until, with the help of Richie, Congressman Dingell, and Congressman Waxman, the head of the GAO finally sued Cheney for the materials.