Jane Smiley - Early Warning

Minnie said, “Did you ever not have an opinion, Rosanna?”

Rosanna said, “Never.”

—

THE EVENING AFTER Arthur had his first meeting with a man named McGeorge Bundy, Lillian was surprised at his mood. Arthur was not impressed by the Kennedys, either Jack or Bobby. Both were hotheaded know-it-alls; the only difference between them was that one had a modicum of tact and the other didn’t. But when Lillian chuckled at Bundy’s name, Arthur frowned, though only a little — he never frowned at Lillian as if he were angry at her. She kissed him to make up, and Arthur started talking at once, leaning against the sink with his whiskey and soda in his hand while Lillian stirred the spaghetti sauce and watched Tina coloring at the kitchen table. She did it in her own way — every figure was done in different shades of the same color. Arthur said, “Well, how long have I been aware of him? I know he was working with Kennan and Dulles as long as ten years ago. On our side of the Marshall Plan.”

“What side was that?” said Lillian.

“Funding anti-communist groups in France and Italy.”

“Oh,” said Lillian.

“But I never met him. What is he — about my age, I guess. But he looks younger. He’s a hopper.”

Arthur hadn’t seemed this impressed in years. “Everyone knows he’s Mr. Smart.” Arthur snorted, then downed his drink and turned toward her. He said, “But listen, Lil, here’s the thing. He looks you in the eye. He listens.”

“What did he say?”

“Only ‘Oh, you’re Manning, I think we need to have a cup of coffee sometime soon. Call me.’ ”

“Maybe he says that to all the boys,” said Lillian, but with a smile.

Arthur said, “He should say that to all the boys. You know how I think. The servants know what is going on. The prince who consorts with the paupers ends up learning how the world operates.”

At the dinner table, he was in such a good mood that he did something he hadn’t done in ages, which was to tell a story. They were almost done with supper (though Arthur made them say “finished with dinner”), and Debbie was just picking up her plate to carry it to the sink, when Arthur said, “Guess what?”

Debbie’s head turned, and Dean said, “What?” Timmy and Tina looked up. Even at almost fifteen, Timmy (Tim, he insisted) couldn’t resist his father.

Arthur said, “I saw the funniest thing in town today. I was walking back to the office after lunch, and there was a dog — you know, a big dog, like a greyhound — and it was walking along. It had a wool coat on and a little hat.”

Tina said, “We should have a dog.”

“We should have this dog,” said Arthur. “It was walking on its hind legs, easy as you please, and almost as tall as I was.”

Tina laughed.

Tim said, “Was it wearing high heels?”

“No shoes,” said Arthur, “and it wasn’t a female. That much was evident.”

Now Tim laughed, and Lillian did the obligatory “Goodness, Arthur.”

“So,” said Arthur, “I can’t tell you how many people were ignoring this dog. I don’t know why that was. Embarrassment, maybe. But I was staring at him, and he saw that, so he came striding over to me and said, ‘How do you do?’ I shook his paw. His nails were very neatly trimmed.”

“He could talk?” said Tina.

“He could,” said Arthur. “Though obviously he was not fluent in English. He said, ‘Purrrrhaapppss yew cn tll I are new in tawnnnn.”

Lillian tried not to think about why Arthur had stopped telling stories.

“I said, ‘You seem to fit in well enough. Are you looking for a particular office building?’ He reached into his pocket and pulled out a little note. I couldn’t read it, though — it was in code, scratches and pokes in the paper. But he said, ‘Depppertmnt if Stet.’ We weren’t far from that building.” Now he fell silent, and went back to eating, as if this were all he had to tell. Debbie gazed at him for a moment, then took her plate to the sink, but Dean wasn’t going to give up. He said, “That’s all, Dad? What happened?”

“Oh, nothing much,” said Arthur. “I accompanied him to the entrance of the building. I could hardly keep up with him. We chatted. He was from Boston, gone to Yale, worked at Harvard. Very ambitious for a dog, I thought. I decided that it was just the Boston accent that was putting me off. When we arrived, I could see immediately that they knew him perfectly well at the Department of State.”

Long pause.

“What did they do?” said Lillian.

“Well, the Great Dane came out — the fawn one, you know, the brother of the black one — and the two of them sniffed each other’s front ends and back ends, then they went around, pissing on all the bushes. And then the greyhound mounted the Great Dane, and the Great Dane lay down and put both paws over his eyes, and the whole world was saved.”

Debbie said, “Oh, Dad!” and rolled her eyes, Tina looked a little confused but willing, and Tim and Dean laughed.

But it didn’t last. Only a week or two later, Arthur was getting up in the night and roaming the house again. Lillian knew it was because of what happened at the Bay of Pigs. She also knew his pattern now. He would sit in his study after work and stare out the window; then he would summon some sort of strength to get through an hour or so before going back into his study until bedtime. He would sleep for two or three hours and roam the house. After a while — this time it took two weeks — he would tell her something. He said, “We sprang it on them!”

“On who, Arthur?” They were sitting up in bed, half whispering in the darkness.

“On Bundy! On Kennedy!”

“I thought you meant Castro.”

“That’s the problem right there. Didn’t spring a thing on Castro! The Soviets had warned him. He knew more about it than I did. Dulles just went in to Kennedy and said, The operation is ready, it’s going to work, let’s do it — and he fell for it. It’s only April, for God’s sake. Half his staff is still looking for a place to hang their hats!”

“What now?”

“Well, I won’t be surprised if they disband the agency. The President is fit to be tied, and I don’t know what all.” He said this rather calmly, as if his whole career would not be destroyed, and so Lillian held her tongue, just to see what he would say next, if his first thought would be about herself and the children or about that other world he lived in. He blew out some air and groaned. Then he said, “Lillian, my darling, my dear, I want to tell you a story.”

Lillian felt herself get a little nervous, but she took his hand in hers and said, “Please do.” The closet door was open. She really wanted to get up and slide it closed, but she stayed put.

“Once upon a time,” said Arthur, “there was a woman named Sarah Cole DeRocher, and she was given in marriage to Second Lieutenant Brinks Manning not long after he graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.”

“Your mother and father,” said Lillian.

“Sarah Cole was an only child of older parents. Her family had long resided in Macon, Georgia, and most of the uncles and aunts were ancient and unreconstructed loyalists to the Confederacy. They referred to the Civil War as the War of Northern Aggression. Marrying Lieutenant Brinks Manning in 1915, as he was preparing himself mentally for the probable American entry into the Great War, was an act of the highest rebellion for Sarah, and when he took her away to the North, her parents disinherited her — though from what, you have to ask yourself, since they had nothing. She was nineteen. But, darling, she was not Lillian Langdon, a girl with a job and some money and a large fund of vitality. She was a child, and within a year, she bore another child — not me, I am not suddenly forty-four years old, but a girl child that she named Sarah, after herself, a very unwise thing to do. And in the influenza epidemic of 1918, when my father was still far away in Europe, Sari, as my mother called her baby, died in the course of twenty-four hours. Life to death, breakfast to breakfast, here today and gone tomorrow.”