Jane Smiley - Golden Age

The horse’s name was Go For It, or Goofy. He was a bay showjumper, nice-looking, and obviously used to lots of attention. When she came into his little barn, he whinnied to her as if he had been pining for her, and even after she threw down the hay and he started eating, he would keep his eye on her, lifting his head and whinnying if she headed for the exit. She had never thought of horses as convivial, but clearly this guy was as lonely as could be. She began giving him carrots and petting him — she bought herself a whole box of disposable latex gloves in order to pet him.

Now that she was actually at ISU, working at the vet school had succeeded in convincing Felicity that veterinary practice was not her future. When she assisted in the clinic for a semester, she found herself extremely abrupt with the owners of the patients. The turning point was when a woman and her daughter brought in a cat, not very old, with a lung infection from soil-borne bacteria. The woman asked what the vet might do, and Dr. Latham described opening the chest, laving it thoroughly, closing it up — certainly a major operation. Was the doctor sure that would cure the infection? No, could not be sure. Might have to do it more than once. Even looking at the limp, weak black cat and thinking about it made the woman and the little girl burst into tears. They couldn’t imagine putting the cat through that. Dr. Latham nodded in sympathy. They decided to put the cat down. Felicity was disappointed, because she didn’t much care about the cat, but she was thrilled by the idea of seeing what might happen. She must have harrumphed or something, because, after the woman and her daughter left, her supervisor took her aside and said that she needed to be “more empathetic” if she expected to have a clientele.

It was hard for Felicity to believe that she would turn twenty-one in the fall. By rights, she should be turning twenty-five, or thirty, if only so that people other than her parents would take her seriously. Her parents took her very seriously; she had trained them, with a combination of treats and punishments, to allow her to do as she pleased and express herself, and to pay attention to her opinions. Thanks to Aunt Minnie, she was a researcher first and foremost, exhaustive, organized, and curious. She owed a lot to Aunt Minnie, who had died lying in her bed at the old folks’ home, all her possessions boxed and labeled, the day before her ninetieth birthday. Felicity never forgot to leave some locally sourced flowers and herbs on her grave, which was right beside Uncle Frank’s. No one had planned it that way — that was where the space was. Aunt Minnie had once told Felicity (after being probed) that, yes, she had loved Uncle Frank, but then he had gone off. Aunt Minnie made sure Felicity understood that Uncle Frank had never loved her back, and Felicity did understand that, so when she laid the flowers on Aunt Minnie’s grave, she left nothing on Uncle Frank’s grave.

Felicity had four girlfriends, five colleagues/friends who were guys, and a semi-boyfriend, Max, whom she slept with enough so that they were satisfied and not distracted by sexual yearnings. Max was in the math department, and he was not unlike Canute in personality type — INTJ (Felicity herself was ESTJ). She liked to be in charge, and Max liked someone to be in charge of him. She fit beautifully into the world of Iowa State. She liked her job, she thought the campus was exceptionally well organized, and she enjoyed being surrounded by engineers. Her father had taken her once to the spot where Uncle Frank was struck by lightning, and then they looked for the spot where he was said to have lived in a tent by the river for a month, a year, the whole time (Felicity was inclined to think this was family folklore). He had put himself through school with rabbit skins? They had tried to make gunpowder out of cornstalks? And also there was nuclear waste out past the university graveyard? Yes, but. Felicity was not saying that she did not believe these stories, only that she had not researched them, and so could not verify them to her own satisfaction.

What Felicity thought about her family’s worries and upsets, she kept to herself. What she felt about them, she also kept to herself. Her feelings did not seem to be as strong as everyone else’s, and the conclusion she drew from this was that her attachment to her family, though sufficient, was not in the upper percentiles. Perhaps, someday, she would regret this, but perhaps, someday, she would not. Her coolness had benefits: Her girlfriends complained more or less incessantly about their parents and their brothers and sisters. Everything any sibling or parent did caused a crisis full of discussions and tears. Max was not like this — he confessed that he often forgot about his parents entirely, and had gotten to be sixteen without ever learning his paternal grandmother’s maiden name (he could barely remember her first name). Felicity gave good advice, but she viewed all these upsets as through a window — slightly muffled. Spending so much time tending Goofy had caused her to think; she didn’t want to be like Goofy, and she didn’t mind hours in the isolation wing at all. If there had been a use for it, she would have listed and analyzed Goofy’s idiosyncratic behaviors to pass the time. Instead, she organized her future and reconfirmed her freedom.

—

IN AUGUST, and not in the Hamptons or Savannah or Nice or Bora-Bora, but lolling on the deck at his and Jessica’s condo in D.C., Richie told Michael that he had never been this happy in all his life, and Michael looked right at him, nodded, and said, “Me, too.” It was as hot as could be, but apparently only here — Richie was glad not to have to argue with Riley about weather predictions versus climate change and extrapolating from the daily forecast to civilization collapse. Riley had sashayed quite easily from congressional aide (“aide deluxe,” as she called herself) into a very well-paid and visible job at a prestigious think tank, and Richie now saw her on television more often than in person. Richie had not sashayed anywhere. He was still too disgraced to enter the private sector visibly. He didn’t mind, he didn’t worry, he covered the condo payment and let Jessica cover the food and the gym membership.

Jessica let Michael be underfoot; made him do the dishes, did not ask about the state of his marriage, and told Richie not to ask, either. In the meantime, Richie found it irresistible to compare their progress through the aging process. On this very day, they happened to be fifty-six and a half years old, though Richie hadn’t mentioned this. Michael still had the scar on his knee from the accident with that girl before Loretta, where the car key had gone into the flesh, and, Richie thought, he also still had a faint red line in his biceps from Alicia’s scissors. What had they been, twenty, when that happened? His chest hair was thick, a little gray in the upper area, not unlike Richie’s own chest hair. They were old. He had felt so young for so long that this rather surprised him. Even Leo now seemed older to Richie than he himself was, and Ivy, who took pity on him from time to time and called him, seemed to have outpaced him by a generation. Perhaps this was a side effect of the congressional lifestyle — not perennial youth, but perennial immaturity. However, in accordance with Jessica’s advice, once he thought about the House, he redirected his attention — to bellies. His was moderately large, but, he guessed, Michael’s was 10 percent larger. They didn’t look quite as sleekly predatory as his father had looked at the same age.

Michael said, “Sold the place.”

Richie said, “How much?”

“Five.”

“What do you think about that?”

“Good riddance.” Possibly, Richie thought, including the money, which would have to go to some litigation-settlement account.