Jane Smiley - Early Warning

“I have a job,” said Frank.

“Oil pays very well,” said Jim.

They parted at the door, and Frank headed into the park.

—

FIRST, ROSANNA SAID what she always said: “How’s the weather?”

Lillian had long since learned that her mother wanted to know in detail and could not be put off, so she said, “Not bad. Warmish — maybe in the high forties. Sunny.”

Rosanna said, “Well, that cold snap here is over, but it’s still below zero every night. You know it got down to fifteen below. In November. I am not looking forward to actual winter.”

“Brr,” said Lillian.

Rosanna said, “How did those boys behave themselves?”

“They were fine,” said Lillian. Frank, Andy, and their three kids had flown down Wednesday for Thanksgiving and left that morning. Rosanna waited. Lillian said, “Really, they had one fight with each other. They were fine with Tina. She had some toy — oh, the Mr. Potato Head — and Michael asked her for it very nicely. That doesn’t mean that he’s as nice with his brother, Richie….”

“I never saw anyone for taking what the other child had just to get it like Frankie was. Whatever Joe had, Frankie swiped it, and then, as soon as Joe was out of the room, he lost interest and dropped it. Didn’t matter what it was. It could be a piece of lint.”

“They argued over pieces of lint?” Lillian was always amazed at what Rosanna said they had played with during the Depression.

“You know what I mean,” said Rosanna.

“Janny stuck to Timmy like glue, so they went bike riding, and the twins couldn’t get enough of Dean. There was one hair-pulling incident, and then Dean got them to run around the yard with him, trying to keep the paddleball going. They were laughing.” Lillian waited for Rosanna to ask about Andy’s drinking. She had her reply all ready—“Hardly anything, Arthur was the one who…”—but Rosanna said, “Well, good for Dean. Those little boys always strike me as deadly serious.”

Now it was Lillian’s turn to cluck. “Well, Janny is serious, too. It’s just their temperament. I mean…” Lillian hesitated, then went on: “When have you seen Andy laugh out loud? She smiles, and she chuckles once in a blue moon, but I’ve never seen even Arthur get a real laugh out of her.”

Rosanna said, “Dear me.”

Lillian decided to change the subject. “Did you have anyone besides Claire?” They both knew what that meant.

“He’s a doctor. Ears, noses.” Rosanna said this rather dismissively.

Lillian smiled, but said, “Was she wearing a ring?”

“No ring,” said Rosanna.

“How did they act?”

“Like good friends.”

“No hand holding?”

“In front of me?”

“You can tell if there has been hand holding in the last minute or two.”

“Didn’t see any of that. He talked mostly to Joe and Lois, as a matter of fact.”

“What about?”

“Crop prices with Joe, and ear infections with Lois.”

“How is Henry?”

Rosanna clucked again. Lillian waited. Rosanna said, “I thought Henry was going to bring home this girl, what was her name, Sandra. But he said that was all over.”

“Really?” said Lillian. “He seemed to like her.”

“Did he bring her there?”

“He was going to, but she got the flu or something. She sent along a tin of cookies with him. In the spring sometime. I did think they were serious. She has her Ph.D. from the University of Manchester.” Then she said, helpfully, “In England. I thought she was kind of his dream girl. Her last name is Boulstridge. He said it was very rare.”

“He would know,” said Rosanna. “But you never saw her.”

“I saw a picture of them. She was cute. He had a picture when he visited.”

Rosanna clucked, then said, “Same thing happened with that other girl, the Canadian girl. He talked all about her for months and months, said she couldn’t wait to come visit, and then she was gone with the wind.”

“He’s picky,” said Lillian.

“Where does that get you?” said Rosanna. “He’s too good-looking. He’s smart, he’s got himself a good job at Northwestern, teaching crazy old languages; he goes to Europe every summer and has a ball digging up old junk, if you can believe that.” Lillian could almost see her mother’s eyes rolling. Then, “How is Arthur?” Rosanna spoke suddenly and sharply, in order, Lillian thought, to take her by surprise and trap her into saying some revealing word. But all words were revealing—“fine,” “better,” “okay,” “not bad,” “the same,” “eating well,” “sleeping sometimes,” “roaming the house and the yard,” “sitting in the car without doing anything.” Losing his mind. When they were having just one drink before dinner (beer for Lillian and Frank, martini for Andy and Arthur), Arthur had asked Andy what she thought of psychoanalysis, and when she answered that she enjoyed it, that, yes, it was worth the money (she and her analyst, Dr. Grossman, were learning a lot of things), he had stared at her almost, Lillian thought, in pain. She said, “Arthur is working hard.”

“I never met anyone like Arthur,” said Rosanna.

“There is no one like Arthur,” said Lillian.

There was a pause; then Lillian said, “Did you make the gravy?”

“Always do,” said Rosanna.

“I made mine just like you make yours,” said Lillian. “When dinner was over and we were all just so full, Arthur took the gravy boat and poured the last few tablespoons right into his mouth. Then he licked his lips and rubbed his stomach. I thought Debbie was going to disinherit herself, but the other kids were laughing.”

“Oh yes, your Arthur is one of a kind,” said Rosanna.

—

DR. GROSSMAN’S OFFICE was farther up Riverside Drive, at Seventy-eighth Street. It was easy to get to, there was plenty of parking, and Andy could imagine herself and Dr. Grossman as friends rather than doctor and patient. It wasn’t just that Dr. Grossman was a woman, it was that she seemed to have a naturally sunny disposition, and also that she was nicely dressed — not only expensively, but with thought as well as taste. It was sort of a perverse victory, Andy thought, that Dr. Katz had fired her, or, rather, kicked her up the ladder to someone more expensive, and less accommodating. Dr. Grossman didn’t let her get away with telling stories as dreams, or lying silently on the couch for more than a minute or two. Sometimes Dr. Grossman even argued with her. Now Andy felt that she was truly brave, forging ahead as Dr. Grossman uttered one skeptical noise after another.

“Considering what has happened to Eunice since, I don’t feel terribly bitter, and I know she was, we were, very young.” Dr. Grossman did not rise to this bait, so Andy went on. “She set out to seduce Frank — I knew that at the time, because she told me she wanted to. You know how girls are. Some of them, like me, just go around a bit underwater, and everything comes so slowly. So, oh, I guess it was the summer, six months after our friend Lawrence died, that Eunice just came out with it in a letter. She was going to lose her virginity anyway — it was as inevitable as the war — she didn’t believe for a moment that Roosevelt would leave the English in the lurch — so why not lose it to someone like Frank Langdon, the best-looking guy you’d ever seen? It was such a small thing compared to, say, the collapse of France. I mean, she wrote that.” Andy fell silent; Dr. Grossman cleared her throat. Andy added, “Small compared to other things, too.” It was true that seeing Dr. Katz and then Dr. Grossman every day, the only Jewish people she had ever known, really, made her think of the concentration camps, then atom bombs — she could hardly remember the war itself through the smokescreen of hydrogen and atom bombs. And there was no remembering with Frank. He never said a word about what he had done or not done. “Of course, at that time, I didn’t know that she had already lost her virginity years before, and not in a very nice way, to an uncle, I believe, though he was fairly close in age — I think she was fourteen and he was seventeen.” Dr. Grossman made a low noise, maybe disbelieving, maybe disapproving, but, as far as Andy knew, this tale of Eunice’s was as true as any other. “Of course, I didn’t tell Frank what she wrote. I never talked about sex to Frank, and to be honest, he seemed a little shy about that sort of thing.” She paused for a long time and waited for Dr. Grossman to prompt her, but Dr. Grossman said nothing, just uncrossed and recrossed her legs.