Jane Smiley - Golden Age

“Elmo. They’re all Elmo,” said Dustin.

“Okay. We are right by Elmo. You guys stick together, and come back to me when you find something. Don’t go away from the toys, and don’t talk to anyone, okay?”

All at once, and involuntarily, she remembered an occasion at Younkers — when was this? The late eighties, anyway. A woman was trying on a coat, and she turned around to discover that her daughter was missing. She alerted Colleen — Colleen was the manager of Women’s Wear back then. Colleen wasted not a second, and had the store doors locked. The woman estimated that it had been at the most two minutes since she lost sight of the four-year-old. Then everyone who worked there combed every corner and room and aisle of that Younkers, and they did find the child, one floor up, in Children’s Clothing, curled in one of the dressing rooms. Claire remembered Colleen talking about it; the girl seemed okay, but she was not wearing the clothes she had worn into the store. It was creepy. Everyone knew that whoever had taken the child was still locked in the store, but there was no way to find him (or her). Claire stood on her tiptoes and watched the kids as best she could, but they were good. Petey rummaged among the Legos, and Rhea walked to both ends of the aisle, playing with the Elmos at one end and the Doodle Pros at the other. Lauren brought a leftover Holiday Barbie to Claire for safekeeping; she was dressed in elaborately embroidered, fur-edged black, with a thick braid falling over her shoulder. She looked as if she had come straight to Chicago from Salzburg, and was not quite what Claire would have picked. Samantha disapproved of Barbie, so Claire said, “Very lovely, sweetheart,” and set it on the floor beside her. As the toys accumulated, she would take them to the counter.

It was useless, she said to her friends and to Carl, to remark about their own childhoods that when they were ten or eight or six they were heading over hill and dale with only a cracker and an apple, six miles to school and back. Why should children do that? thought Claire. Did it toughen them up, as her friends asserted, or simply prove to them that the world was a cruel place, and so ensure that they would prolong that cruelty when they themselves were grown? Even a young child could tell the difference between circumstances and intentions. Claire could see, when she was growing up during the war, that their house was old and uninsulated, and therefore she was cold, that there was no extra gasoline, and therefore it was a long walk to school, that all scrap, all cloth, all extra provisions went to the war effort, and therefore her mother reknit sweaters and patched clothes and had meatless Wednesdays and Mondays (though never Friday). But if a child lived in the midst of plenty and got none of it, then he would quickly learn to blame his parents for neglecting him or teaching him a lesson — take your pick. Paul had gloried in his success, and so showered Gray and Brad with more belongings than their friends had. They seemed fine, modest in their display of wealth; they had learned a lesson from watching Paul, and not the lesson he had meant to teach them. Dustin brought a video game and set it next to the Barbie. After sitting cross-legged with the Doodle Pro for a while, Rhea put it back on the shelf, then brought Claire a board game based on a labyrinth. She went back and found another one, by the same company, called “Castles of Burgundy,” a game Claire thought quite seductive. Petey turned away from the Legos and chose a stuffed lion and an actual book, Millions of Cats , and Ned returned with a set of what looked like lethal weapons but turned out to be spinning tops. Claire did not like or approve of the case full of fake makeup that Lauren chose next, but maybe, she thought, it was better than a toy stove with toy pots and pans. Dustin found another video game, and Dash, who had more or less disappeared, suddenly turned up with a transparent gun that shot soap bubbles, a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle with a rock-and-roll theme, and a magic set. All the kids seemed happy. They did not look half drugged by greed, they looked intent and interested. Claire felt pleasantly vindicated.

After only half an hour, the kids started acting bored, and Dash said, “Can we get something to eat?”

They took the toys to the cash register, and Claire was especially friendly to the rather brusque sales associate while she bagged the toys in six separate bags. Claire asked her to staple them shut (there was a stapler on the counter). The kids were agreeable even to losing access to their toys until they got home. They ate in the Marketplace. Lauren ate only gelato, Ned only French fries, Petey only the toppings off his slice of pizza. All in all, when they got home, Claire decided that she had been an ideal grandmother, and that all six of the kids would remember this day, at least for a while.

—

AROUND EASTER, Henry sent out a mass e-mail. It read,

Dear All,

Happy Easter. I hope you are well, especially those I haven’t talked to in a while (this means you, Claire — I miss you. I will try to call sometime soon). I am enjoying my life and my house in Washington, D.C. The weather is so strangely different from the weather in Chicago. I’m not sure I deserve it! Anyway, my work is going well, and I’m off to Ireland this summer for about two months — six weeks working with some materials at the University of Dublin, and two weeks in the west, driving around (with a friend! I would not attempt to drive in Ireland on my own).

My real news is that I have asked to adopt (though it is more complicated legally, it amounts to the same thing) Alexis Wickett, Charlie’s little girl, who is soon to turn five (May 11, to be exact). From “in loco parentis” to “legalis parens.” Charlie’s folks have agreed to this — I get along with them quite well when they come for their twice-yearly visits, and they agree with Riley and me that she needs some sort of safety net (will she be taking me to court for child-support someday? We shall see). Anyway, Alexis is very dear to me. I never thought I would become a father at 74, but it’s a very medieval thing to do.

Love to you all,

Henry

Obviously, this was a good thing, but it prodded at a point of contention that Claire thought she’d put aside, her discomfort at the way everyone in the family seemed to go crazy when Charlie died. Claire had liked Charlie — he was a charming boy — and the circumstances of his death were horrifying, but, still, he was only peripherally their child, and he had become the family obsession. At least, that’s how Claire saw it. Carl didn’t agree, but when she pressed him, he did his Carl thing, smiled and shrugged, leaving her to understand that, however crazy she acted, he had learned to live with it.

Claire put on her coat and went for a walk around the block. The daffs were blooming and the tulips had thrust up beside them. It had been a strange winter — sinister warmth over Thanksgiving, then, two days later, ten inches of snow, an inch of freezing rain, plummeting temperatures. Carl, whose business had dropped off, was suddenly overwhelmed: he spent long days for two weeks at a house in Evanston where a huge tree limb had fallen through the roof of the solarium. Then, after the calm over Christmas and New Year’s, more snow, more work. Claire had felt the same flutter in her customers — doubt because of strange happenings in the markets, followed by a surge of what Carl called “Spend-it-while-you-have-it” parties, Friday, Saturday, Sunday afternoon, Thursday, caviar, sterling silver, Cristal champagne, best orchestra you can find, is Elton John available. In her pockets, Claire crossed her fingers.

Why was the family not obsessed with Guthrie, who had returned from Iraq and was, Claire thought, just barely holding it together? Or with Perky, who had joined the marines over his mother’s loud objections, as if to say, You think the army and Iraq is something, try the marines and Afghanistan! And no one said a word about Chance, who was on the road nine months out of the year, as if he didn’t even have a wife and child. (And did he? Apparently, Delie had moved back to Texas.) Jonah, she had heard through the grapevine, had several “diagnoses,” but she hadn’t heard exactly what they were and was a little afraid to ask — Janet was Frank’s real failure, because she mistrusted not only him but anyone connected to him. Emily seemed to be emulating Tina and hiding out in Idaho. Tia and Binky were supposedly going to school, Tia at Georgetown, Binky on a year abroad in Paris (a likely story, thought Claire).