Jane Smiley - Early Warning

THE DAY AFTER Claire’s divorce was finalized, the temperature was thirty below zero, and her windows were rimed with frost flowers. The streets of downtown Des Moines were slick and nearly empty, and Younkers was opening an hour late to give the employees time to get in. Paul had agreed to the divorce when he met Veronica, who was twenty-seven and also a doctor. He had always laughed at the idea of women doctors, but Veronica confined herself to the appropriate field of gynecology. Also, she was petite, and she had maintained an A average at Grinnell and at the University of Iowa College of Medicine. In other words, Claire thought, it would take her thirteen to fifteen years to wake up and realize that she couldn’t take it. She had considerable debt from college and medical school, and so it was fortunate for her that the family-law judge had decided that half of Claire’s inheritance from the sale of the farm should go to Paul. Claire was therefore down to about $150,000. Others were angry on her behalf — most notably Lois and, less passionately, Minnie. But Paul was paying for Gray at Penn and Brad was headed for Haverford, which was, at least, on the East Coast. Brad’s acceptance to Johns Hopkins had nearly caused Paul to ejaculate in ecstasy, according to Gray, but Brad adamantly refused to go there, and Paul had had to settle for the nearest thing.

Claire liked to think that he would also be spending a pretty penny of her money on the Valentine’s Day wedding to Veronica, which was to take place at the ever-desirable Wakonda Country Club, and who would certainly be there but her former best friend, Ruth. According to Gray, Ruth was bosom buddies with Paul, and she had urged him to let her take Veronica in hand and give her advice on how to cook Paul’s favorite dishes. Gray said this in an ironic tone, with his eyebrows raised in amusement. Claire thought that, whatever it was she had done to damage her son’s psyche, he seemed to express it in a stream of jokes that were charming and rueful. He could not possibly have gotten his sense of humor from Paul, so she took credit for that. One day, he had said to her, “Do you hate my dad?” She had surprised herself by saying that she didn’t — of course she didn’t. When he responded, “I do, sometimes,” she had said, “He does his best.” And that was the tragedy, wasn’t it? Just like Hamlet, just like Macbeth, just like Lear, he did his best (Claire thought it was funny that she had read all of those now, on her own, just sitting up in bed). And that was the point — not that they were kings or princes, and therefore grander than you or me, but that they made their own downfall by being who they were (something that, even more tragically, was not set in stone, according to the divorcees and therapists she knew). So she felt sorry for Paul now, and her hatred had left no tangible trace.

She finished her cup of coffee and set the cup in the sink, then started to get ready to go to work: fur-lined boots; her goose-down calf-length hooded and belted coat, which she had bought in Minneapolis; her sheepskin gloves. When she opened the street door of her apartment building, the wind nearly yanked it out of her hand, and she had to clutch her handbag tightly and turn her hooded head to one side. Even then, her eyes teared up. Was this nuclear winter? Three blocks, and because she lived downtown, she was expected to be there. Two cars passed her, going very slowly, and when she stepped outside of the shelter of the tall buildings and had to negotiate the streets, the buffeting crosswinds nearly knocked her down. The sky was clear, which was the reason for the winds, but at least there wouldn’t be any more snow. She dipped her chin more deeply into her hood.

When she got to the store, Les, one of the maintenance staff, was waiting. He let her in, and he let in Bev Kinder, who worked in the shoe department. From inside her scarf, Bev said, “You should come over and see my spring styles. You can’t believe how high my stilettos are going to be. Scares me to death.” Claire laughed, and Les said, “I’ve given up stilettos myself, ladies, ’cept for hammering stuff.” Bev said, “Oh, Les.”

Claire unsnapped her coat. “I can’t believe there’ll be many customers in this weather.”

Bev shrugged. “If they make it, they’ll buy something, just because they feel so heroic. I love days like today.”

The $150,000 at 9 percent interest gave her $13,500 per year — not much. Her job at Younkers was in the housewares department, and most of the time she either made beds or demonstrated KitchenAid mixers. Though she would have given herself up to Nicaraguan revolutionaries before using a dough hook on her own time, the fact was, she looked just like a woman in a Betty Crocker ad, bright and slender, but too domestic to be a threat. At work, she wore a thin gold band that looked like a wedding ring. Her badge read “Claire,” though, so she was not actually lying about her postmarital status. Young brides and brides-to-be came up to her every day and asked for advice about what they would need in their new lives. She was a whiz with the bridal registry.

After hanging up her coat and changing into her store shoes — two-inch stacked heels, very matronly — she walked around the bedding displays. The whites and laces in which she had done up the display beds the week before now looked frigid, so she rustled up two livelier ensembles, a nice old-fashioned patchwork quilt in pink and green with four different pillow shams that was springlike and cheerful, and a red, white, and blue set that was always appropriate. She even changed the dust ruffles, because the one for the red, white, and blue set was pleated, which looked really elegant. Her “ensemble” at home was a beige down comforter from Lands’ End, plain and thick. Two people could not sleep under it without going into a sweat, which was fine with Claire.

She had thought of moving away from Des Moines, but if she wanted to stay with Younkers, her only choices were Fort Dodge, Waterloo, Burlington, and Dubuque. She had flirted with moving to Minneapolis and finding a job at Dayton’s. She loved downtown Minneapolis, which had turned into a giant mall, with really good food and great shopping, but each of the three times she’d been there, it had been at least twenty degrees colder and 20 percent darker than Des Moines. Claire did not understand quite how a mere 250 miles could make such a difference, but it seemed to. In other words, she was stuck, and clearly the rest of her family thought so, too, because Andy kept inviting her to New York, Minnie said she could accompany her on her trip to Oaxaca or to Maui, the two places she would be going next, and Lois kept inviting her up to Denby to see Guthrie, who was nineteen months old, and Perky, short for “Franklin Perkins,” four months old. She had seen the babies. The babies were fine, and nothing more than babies, in Claire’s view.

—

THIS LATEST CRISIS WAS not seen by anyone but Janet herself as a crisis. What had happened was, the weather was terrible, her mother missed Emily, and so, during one of those meandering conversations she did not mind having with her mother these days, but which lulled her into relaxing her vigilance, she agreed that they would meet for a week at the Pinehurst Resort. Before they left, Janet had simply imagined herself wandering around in the humid warmth of North Carolina, maybe going over to Southern Pines for a day or so to watch a horse show. Even though Jared had said to her that he was on the verge of a breakthrough that was going to make them a lot of money, Janet had not sensed the danger.