Jane Smiley - Golden Age

He slept so badly now that Jen had moved across the hall — not all night, but every night. They undressed, chatted, and got into bed as they always had. He turned out his light, and she finished the chapter she was reading or the article, then arranged her pillows and turned out her light. They kissed. He turned on his right side, because his left shoulder hurt, and she stretched out on her back, her hands crossed. He could hear her go to sleep — she was good at that. Eventually, he would go to sleep (when depended on how effectively he fended off all actual thoughts). After that, according to her, he would bundle the covers so tightly against his chest that she could not get them away from him, so she would wake up from the cold. Then he would shift about halfway onto his back, lift his chin, and start snoring. No matter what she did, he kept snoring, but he was working so hard, she didn’t want to wake him up, so she slipped out and went across the hall to Guthrie’s old room and got into bed there. They always woke up at the same time, but in separate rooms. This morning, he had been rolled so tightly in the quilt that when he woke up he had to unroll just to move his arms. Jen thought talking things through might comfort him, so she tried that once in a while, but just knowing that she shared some of his fears made him more afraid, not less.

There was nothing to the north but clouds — no rain, nothing swirling. To the west, there was a patch of blue sky; maybe it was getting bigger. Jesse dug his heel into the soil. Certain plants had reappeared on the hillside: a few pale-purple pasque flowers already, and the foliage, though not yet the blossoms, of prairie smoke and phlox. Violets — a few groups of those; what he thought was a trillium plant or two, lost in space, looking for some woods and not finding that here, but maybe protected by the slope. And, yes, wild foxtails, undead. Jesse walked away rather than reaching down and pulling them out. You could get some government money now for a conservation easement, but it was like pulling teeth compared with other subsidies.

At the house, he unlocked the door and pushed it open. The place was dark and chill, absolutely quiet and empty. His mother, of course, had done a superb job of erasing every sign that she had ever lived here or cooked here. Jesse had meant to check the hot-water heater and the faucets for leaks, look at the foundation for cracks, but he couldn’t stand it, walked out, shut the door. He looked at his watch; it was nine-thirty. He was wearing thick-soled boots, but he decided to trot the three-quarters of a mile to his own back door, for the sake of his belly.

When he got home, the breakfast dishes were stacked beside the sink, and he could hear the TV from the living room, an odd sound. He called out, then called out again, noticing that his voice shook, though, he hoped, only to his own ears. Her voice came down the stairs—“Here I am!”—and he jumped.

She looked upset, still in her robe.

Jesse said, “What is it?”

She said, “Earthquake. Tsunami.”

“Where?” He thought of Janet first, then Emily and Jonah. After that, the New Madrid fault.

Jen said, “Off the coast of Japan. There isn’t much on TV — you can turn that off. There’s plenty on the Web. I guess three nuclear-power plants are right there. Can I have a hug?” He went up the stairs. Jen was not supposed to react like this. She was supposed to accept fate in good spirits. He said, “Do we know anyone there?”

“Didn’t Aaron Cartwright’s nephew go teach English there?”

“That was years ago. He’s in Davenport now, training to be a chiropractor.”

“I guess we don’t, then.”

She still looked devastated. Jesse put his arms around her and held her for a long, long moment. But he wasn’t devastated. He had gotten so small-minded, he thought, that he was mostly grateful that this one disaster, at least, was far away.

—

AFTER HE PAID his fine, Michael must have had some money, because he bought himself a house in Georgetown that looked like a shoebox on end. It had a yard the size of a deck, square, plain rooms, and almost no kitchen. Jessica loved the sunporch, a tiny room with eight rattling mullioned windows that looked over the alley. The previous owners were in the State Department, leaving to take a position in the embassy in Peru. Michael bought their furniture, and had never, he told Richie, felt so clean and comfortable in his life. And it was true that the whole house, upstairs and downstairs, was painted brilliant white. Jessica presented him with a 36-pack of Zwipes, “to clean as you go.” Michael laughed and kissed her on the cheek. A week after he moved in, Andy drove down from Far Hills, and Michael served a meal, admittedly ordered in, but ordered with thought: a Caesar salad for their mom, and a roast chicken with sides of sweet-potato fries and sautéed spinach for the three of them. Binky and Tia came, looked around, and left a few personal items, which also made Michael laugh.

Two weeks later, he showed up in the old way, at seven in the morning, before Jessica had left for her run, before Richie was out of bed. Richie could hear them in the kitchen, talking about the massacre in Norway, how bizarre, how horrifying — how American, really. Then their voices dipped, and he knew they were talking about him. He had been going to get up, but he lay there, staring at the ceiling of the bedroom, until Jessica came in to say goodbye. She put one hand on either side of his face, kissed him, and said, “He’s got a plan.” Richie took a deep breath. That anger he had felt earlier in the year had seeped away again. Perhaps he was growing up. He said, “Good plan?”

“You decide.” She kissed him again, tenderly and with concern. He understood that she hoped he would go along with the plan, whatever it was. He heaved himself out of bed and put a shirt on over his shorts. His breakfast was on the table — a bowl of Special K, a carton of strawberry yogurt, and a cup of black coffee. Michael was reading the paper. He said, “This is what Jessica says you like.”

“I like that.”

“You’re welcome.”

Richie took this to mean that it was Michael who had set out the meal. He sat down. Michael pushed the sports section of the paper across the table, and without saying anything, Richie read the article about the north/south rivalry between the Cubs and the White Sox in Chicago. He wondered if their uncle Henry had ever been to a baseball game. He ate his cereal and his yogurt and drank his coffee. Michael said, “First, the haircut.”

“Excuse me?”

“You have a ten a.m. appointment at Bang Salon with Umberto. He’s level four, very hip. If he doesn’t have any ideas, no one will. After that, we’ll have a look at Universal Gear, but I’m sure we’ll end up at J. Press.”

Richie said, “I have clothes.”

“Congressmen’s wear. No. Time for a change. We don’t know what you will actually look like after your haircut, so I’m reserving judgment about the style statement you will end up making. Are you finished?”

He actually stood up and cleared the dishes, not forgetting to fold the paper neatly and set it in the middle of the table.

A little disoriented, Richie put on plain old khakis and a green polo shirt. Better start with a blank slate, he thought. Minutes later, they were in Michael’s Acura, heading up 9th Street. That was Monday. It went on like that for the rest of the week; Michael even took him for a foot massage at the Thai Institute of Healing Arts, where they seemed to know him. The masseur was kind, but kept shaking his head when Richie flinched in pain. He was told to come back “at least once a week” and to buy himself a foot roller, nine bucks, something that looked like a miniature of what he had always imagined a medieval rack to look like. They drove around. They went to a matinee of Mr. Popper’s Penguins , after which Michael told him that he was now making a practice of seeing just about anything, as a way of being more open. Richie would not have said that they talked much during the week, but, then, neither did they avoid talking. It was peculiar and lulling.