Jane Smiley - Golden Age

She kept walking — past the main building of the Smithsonian, toward the Washington Monument, which got taller and taller. Richie glanced surreptitiously down at his chest and swept what might have been a few crumbs off the gray cashmere blend of his overcoat. It was too warm for gloves and a hat, but he looked respectable, congressional. She was a good walker, long-strided and self-confident. He caught up to her at 14th Street and stood beside her as they waited to cross. Their shadows stretched before them. He glanced at her sideways, and smiled. She said, “Are you following me?”

Richie nodded.

She said, “Why?” But she didn’t seem nervous in any way.

He said, “I want your vote,” then held out his hand. “Richard Langdon, congressman, New York ninth district.”

Without missing a beat, she held out her hand. She said, “Jessica Montana.”

Richie said, “You’re kidding, right?”

And now she did smile — the smile made her. She said, “No, I’m not. But it’s been an inspiring name.”

“Because?”

“My great love is women’s semi-pro boxing. Do you know anything about that?”

“Nothing,” said Richie. “I am in politics. Do you know anything about that?”

“Nothing,” said Jessica.

“Then,” said Richie, “let me take you to dinner. We are made for each other.”

“I’m always hungry,” said Jessica.

EMILY HAD BEEN a little surprised to be asked to be a bridesmaid for Chance and Delilah’s wedding (Delilah Rankin, lawyer, two years older than Chance, Emily’s own age, supposedly the daughter of a big Texas family), but when Tina pointed out to her that twelve bridesmaids was standard for a hundred-thousand-dollar wedding, Emily saw that she was being dressed and cast in a supporting role. Her only job was to smile and not catch the bouquet. Her aunt Loretta had prevailed on her maternal counterpart to have the wedding at Pebble Beach rather than in Dallas, which was fine with Emily, since she could go there with her mom, stay two nights, go home to Palo Alto (thank God, she thought, Jonah was too old to be cast as ring bearer). And so she stayed in the background most of the time, eating treats, reporting her observations to Tina by cell phone. One thing she hadn’t told anyone, though (and everyone was in a flurry, because they were dressing the bride and the service was due to start in half an hour), was that, if they hadn’t roped Delilah into her bridal corset, at least some people would have noticed the bulge, though maybe not Chance. Maybe Chance would be amazed to commence parenthood about a month after his twenty-third birthday.

She’d seen dresses that she knew were chosen by the bride to make sure that the bridesmaids looked appalling, but this dress even Tina approved — it was silvery, with an irregular hem and a slanted collar. The shoes were silver, too, and so were the decorations. At least nine out of the twelve bridesmaids looked pretty good in the dress. What Delie saw in Chance, Emily could not imagine, unless it was pure sex. Since moving to Idaho, Emily had slept with plenty of cowboys, and eventually they all came to look alike — limber and dry, their cheekbones getting sharper and sharper, their eyes getting twinklier and twinklier. They all had stories about being rousted out of bed at four in the morning to go retrieve the calves in the freezing rain. Her favorite was one a very nice guy had told her: He was following a cow and her calf up the side of a mountain, he was bored, he tickled his horse with the tip of his quirt, the horse startled and jumped off the cliff. Fortunately, Ryman was quick — he went left when the horse went right and landed on his feet, looking down at the horse, who landed on a ledge. The horse assessed his situation, then scrambled up the mountainside on his own, a good thing. But Ryman was exactly why Emily would never marry someone like Chance.

Finally, the girls got Delie into her dress. Her mom handed her her bouquet; the wedding planner set her veil on her head and floated the netting over her face. Delie did look happy. It seemed as though she saw Chance as a real catch.

The wedding planner opened the door to the corridor. When they lined up, Emily found herself beside one of Delie’s Texas cousins, who was fat and did not look like a cowboy. Tia was a maid of honor, and Binky was fourth in line, craning her neck to see everything while talking and talking, the way she always did.

Most of the family had flown in on a jet her uncle Michael had rented. They were sprinkled here and there like clover blossoms in a green field. You could recognize them even if you didn’t know them, because they didn’t have the hair — the men weren’t wearing pompadours and the women weren’t puffed up. Even Aunt Loretta was neatly trimmed. Mrs. Perroni was wearing a dress from the eighties — encrusted with beads — and Grandma Andy was wearing a dress from the Kennedy era. Emily had plenty of time to notice all of this as she walked down the aisle they had made in the ballroom (the Rankins were not Catholic, so there could not be a Catholic wedding). Emily and her partner reached the satin-draped platform and parted. When she took her place, Emily realized that the bridesmaids were arranged in order of height. All of this was interesting; Tina told her over and over that she would be much happier if she observed rather than judged, but they both knew how hard old habits were to break. And so, during the reception, she observed her uncle Michael and Chance. They did a lot of the same things: they danced with Delie, they danced with Aunt Loretta, they danced with Mrs. Rankin. They looked rather alike — more alike now, Emily thought, than Michael and Richie. She leaned over to Tia and said, “Don’t you think your dad and Chance dance alike?”

Tia tossed her head, watched, then said, “Chancie dances like he’s doing it with you. Dad dances like he’s doing it to you.”

Emily laughed out loud.

But, still, your eye was drawn to the older man, not the younger, wasn’t it? She could see around the room: Her mom was looking at Uncle Michael. Two of Delie’s aunts were looking at him, too. One of the bartenders was watching him. Emily shivered, just slightly, but she didn’t know why. At the next table, she saw Tina scribbling on a napkin — a cloth napkin. She made up her mind that that objet d’art would not be left behind. The music stopped, then started again. Her uncle Michael went over and asked Grandma Andy to dance. Everyone fell silent, even the singer, but the music swelled, and her grandmother — what was she, eighty-five? — curved the line of her body, stepped out, and let her son spin her across the floor.

—

FELICITY WAS SITTING on her old purple rug. The sleeping porch looked out over the fields to the north. It was a sunny Sunday morning. Her dad and mom had gone to services, but she had said she had a sore throat so she wouldn’t have to go. Some Sundays, she just could not take Pastor Diehl. His lips were too big or something. He looked like a cartoon to her, though her mom thought he was nice enough. There was also that thing about how he got out on the basketball court with the kids. His feet were really big. He looked disgusting. Her room had a door to the sleeping porch, and so did Perky’s, and she was listening to Perky and Guthrie talk about something. They thought their conversation was private. They didn’t realize that Felicity had opened their door just enough to hear.

Guthrie was on leave. His first deployment had ended, and now he was waiting for the second one. According to her dad, Great-Uncle Frank had been in Europe for a whole war, but that wasn’t the way it was anymore. Perky said, “That was the biggest battle.”