Jane Smiley - Golden Age

Jesse got up from his desk and went upstairs to go to the bathroom and find out what else Jen was throwing away, but also to go through Guthrie’s old room, out to the back-porch windows to the north, to look over the bean field. A bean field wasn’t as dramatic as a cornfield — just rows of leafy green, this year a little damp and yellow to the east of them, a little dry to the north and south, but perfect here. His field ran as far as he could see in both directions. It was clean, healthy, mostly weed-free; he wasn’t having the problems with monster velvetleaf that some farmers were. He had always been precise, and precision seemed to be paying off, but, to be honest, he didn’t know how long that would be true. His field contrasted pleasantly with the Constable print — as a reflex, he congratulated himself. But the longer he looked, the more the field looked as though something was about to happen, as if it were a blanket about to be sucked into the sky. He shook his head. There was no peace on the farm — that man carrying the scythe could have told John Constable that.

—

IF RICHIE HADN’T NOTED it already by himself, he would have been reminded by Loretta that when the money guys met to consider a crisis, they always met somewhere expensive and grandiose, like Aspen or Davos. Richie wondered if this made it easier for the losers among them (those worth less, say, than a hundred million) to throw themselves off a cliff? Loretta was sure to e-mail from wherever it was (this year, Jackson Hole), just to complain about how sleepy she was in the economic stratosphere, though enjoying herself anyway. And there was a crisis — everyone in the world except Michael seemed to acknowledge it. When Richie and Jessica went to their now intermittent Sunday supper two weeks later, there was no discussion of the housing bubble and its collapse, and Richie did not remark, glancing around the palatial ground floor, where they dined among the collection of California artists, that the place must be worth — what? — ten million now, rather than fifteen. He and Jessica did admire the painting of men panning for gold in 1849 that Loretta had picked up from a private collector in Los Angeles. She said, “I don’t think people realize there was a series of these. The most famous one is in a museum in Boston, but I like this one better. It’s more intimate.” She had added a lot of paintings to her “collection” recently. Richie hadn’t realized that it was a “collection”—here he had been thinking these dusty things were just reminders of the ranch.

Over their roast chicken (which Jessica seemed to be devouring, much to Loretta’s pleasure), Richie kept his eye on Michael, but he could see nothing. Michael’s cheeks weren’t flushed, his eyes weren’t rimmed in tears, he was not wringing his table napkin, his hair hadn’t turned gray. Given the economic news, Richie was a little surprised, and, maybe at last, a little gratified to feel that his lifelong desire for Michael to suffer had dwindled away. It was the Jessica effect, surely — she was so indifferent to so many painful things that he seemed to be imbibing her indifference. Even in the spring, when Leo had been quoted in his school newspaper to the effect that his father could and should be replaced in Congress by someone with real convictions — his example was Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC), who in 2003 had come up with the name “Freedom Fries” but now opposed the Iraq War and wanted to publish redacted pages from the 9/11 Commission Report pointing to the Saudis. Richie had laughed and asked Jones if he was looking for an intern, but only as a joke.

After dessert, Loretta got up from her place, carried the pie plate (maple-walnut, delicious in every way) into the kitchen, and invited Jessica to go with her into the front room. Jessica got up, dropped her napkin on the table, and glanced at him with a merry look. They walked out. After the door closed, Richie said, “Where are we? Windsor Castle?”

“Not yet,” said Michael. He leaned back until his chair was teetering, and reached his long arm for the Cognac. No butler. He poured Richie an inch, himself nothing. One thing to be said for him — he made up his mind to do something or to stop something, and his mind was made up. The Cognac was in a spherical bottle set in a sort of blue crystal bed with a blue crystal stopper. Richie had never seen anything like it. He took the tiniest sip. Michael said, “What does it taste like?”

Richie considered, then said, “A little smoky. I wouldn’t dare say sweet, but it’s not a hundred percent removed from a chocolate latte. Are you tempted?”

“Only to take a whiff.”

Richie handed him the glass. Michael took a whiff. He said, “That’s the best part, really.” He took another whiff and handed it back. Richie enjoyed his second sip more than his first; then he said, “Are we supposed to discuss Mom here, or national policy? Loretta must have a plan.”

“Always,” said Michael.

Then he dared. He said, “You okay?”

Michael knew exactly what he was talking about. He said, “The office could be better. I saw the writing on the wall in March, though, and stashed my own portfolio in concrete goods.”

“Like concrete?”

“Not quite, but close. Zinc, cadmium, neodymium, sulfuric acid.”

“What is neodymium?”

“It’s a rare-earth. They use it in batteries. Priuses, that sort of thing.”

Richie nodded, took another sip, consulted his inner sensor to see if Michael really did seem calm. He did. So Richie hazarded, “Everyone else is fucked, right?”

Michael said, “Maybe not. I’m not as bearish as some people are. But here’s the real problem.”

He stopped, stared at the Cognac bottle for a moment. Then he said, “As many are fucked as are not fucked. That means, as far as I can tell, that you guys can’t really do anything, and you had better not do anything. Some have to live and some have to die, because almost as many are short as are long. There’s too much fucking money.”

“I never thought I’d hear those words out of your mouth.”

“Well, let me say them again: there’s too much fucking money. It’s like a hurricane of money, or, no, better, a quantum field of money. It pops here and it pops there, and settles somewhere else, but the wrong signal will explode the whole thing, and all the money will disappear.”

“But not the neodymium, right?”

“Maybe not. Maybe not.”

“You don’t seem as, I don’t know, as worried as you could be.”

“That’s only because I don’t quite know what to be worried about, so I’m taking a worry vacation. Do I worry about the Fed? Do I worry about Greenspan? Do I worry about the rising tide of stupidity?”

“You never have worried about that,” said Richie.

“Something to fucking float onto the surface of,” said Michael.

“Did Dad ever give you any advice?”

Now Michael looked right at him and grinned. He said, “He did, actually.”

Richie felt a weird and unexpected stab of pain. His father had never given him any advice. “Do tell.”

“He said to never forget that money is boring.”

“So — the equation would be, too much money equals too much boredom, and that’s the root of the problem?”

“I think he would say so, but he never told me which came first, the chicken or the egg.”

“I would like to be bored,” said Richie.

FELICITY AND JESSICA, Richie discovered, were two of a kind. Jessica, like Felicity, had been a pudgy, earnest girl in glasses that were always slipping down her nose, and then boxing had given her purpose, strength, and contact lenses. Felicity had grown into a willowy young woman (though strict). Over Christmas, when Richie, Jessica, and Leo made their postmarital promenade to Chicago, Denby, and Montana to demonstrate their familyhood, Jessica did with Felicity what she did with everyone in Richie’s family: she showed a sincere interest in Felicity’s yakkety yak about the personalities of animals, and she went with her one day to the local animal shelter to look at cats. They also compared their biceps and their quadriceps, and Jessica gave Felicity tips about stretching before and after stall cleaning. Richie thought that Felicity didn’t look like any of the Guthrie women or Aunt Claire, or the sainted Aunt Lillian — more like he himself might have looked as a girl. In the meantime, he and Leo went jogging with Guthrie. Richie huffed and puffed in the back while Guthrie and Leo pressed ahead, talking about Iraq and Afghanistan, too far away to ask him any questions about Robert Gates or Merrill Lynch — a good thing.