Jane Smiley - Early Warning

But that didn’t solve his problem about what to plant. He found himself longing for oats, but there wasn’t even a pretend market for those, and how would he harvest them? Corn was the tall, golden darling. Those broad leaves rose, stretched out, and soaked up the sunshine, and one kernel planted turned into hundreds harvested — and there was your problem. Plenty of soybeans in those storage bins, no two ways about that, but Joe decided in the end to plant more beans this year than corn. They were starting to make stuff out of beans — not just oil and feed, but paint, plastic, and fiber. John thought beans were a passing fad, though the fad hadn’t passed in fifteen years. Joe knew he could press the point, and John would yield.

—

AS SOON AS she came back from Caracas, Andy made her first appointment with Dr. Smith, whose office was in Princeton. Dr. Smith’s house on Green Street in Princeton was much more difficult to get to from Englewood Cliffs than Dr. Grossman’s office on West Seventy-eighth Street, but the inconvenience of the trip was part of its appeal.

Dr. Smith was taller than Andy, with eyes so blue that they were used-up-looking, as if Dr. Smith were on his way to becoming an albino, but his gaze was keen, and he had a beaky nose and muscular wrists. He shook her hand and looked her up and down, then led her to his therapy room. His fee was twice Dr. Grossman’s. She had not fired Dr. Grossman, or vice versa. Dr. Grossman thought that her issues with her father were on the verge of being resolved. Lars Bergstrom had always been a quiet man, but powerful in his way. If they could get to the heart of Lars’s pattern of withholding affection and approval from Hildy (the child Andy) and Sven, there would be real improvement.

Dr. Smith said, “You may notice that I don’t have a couch. Adults should sit up. If you need to lie down, or wrestle with some objects, or hit things, that’s what those two mats in the corner are for. This room has been soundproofed. You are free to misbehave, and also to behave.” Andy looked around. The office could as easily have been a public bathroom — that was the thought that came to her. He asked her if she had ever seen a psychoanalyst or a therapist before. She shook her head no. He asked her how she had found him. She said in the phone book. That struck him so that he barked out a laugh. He said, “Well, I’m in there, but no one ever admitted finding me there before.”

Dr. Smith said, “Here is a piece of paper. I want you to write the first five words that come into your mind. I will give you thirty seconds.” Andy wrote “fallout, contamination, beautiful, screaming, maple.” The first two were obvious; the third was about Princeton; the fourth was about the boys; and the last word was about the trees she had noticed on the way into town. Dr. Smith said, “Can you make a single sentence that uses all of these words?” Andy shook her head, but Dr. Smith said, “Just try.” The sentence she came up with was “Because of the fallout and contamination, the beautiful woman was screaming underneath the golden maple tree.” As soon as she said this sentence, she could see it, a blonde in a ski outfit, standing halfway up a wooded hillside, rubbing her hands madly down her arms, over her face, and the glittering particles of plutonium and uranium, rising up and falling back, dancing around like sprays of water as she attempted to brush them off. Every time she screamed, the particles would form a little tornado around her mouth and get sucked in.

“Your automatic response, Mrs. Langdon, would seem to be awe. You speak of fearful things, but they don’t frighten you, they impress you. I would go so far as to say that they stun you, and slow your reflexes in some way. They preoccupy you, and you don’t mind that. You gain nourishment from them, even at the expense of some sort of imagined negation of the self.” Andy stared at the doctor. He sounded like an ass.

“Mrs. Langdon,” said Dr. Smith, “it may simply be that your capacity for spiritual experience hasn’t yet been realized. That what you perceive as ennui or even indifference is simply your search for meaning in a life that strikes you as false and superficial.” Andy nodded. “You may or may not ever return to this office. I don’t suggest that you do. Part of the reason that my fees are so high is that I want them to mean something to my patients — and the thing I want them to mean is sacrifice. Are these fees, should you come three or four times a week, difficult for you to meet?” Andy nodded, though they weren’t — Uncle Jens’s investments were up to several millions. Everything she had spent on Dr. Katz and Dr. Grossman had been mere fiscal effervescence. But “yes” was the right answer, of course. “What I show you, the paths down which I lead you, might well be frightening, but that is what enlightenment entails.” Andy nodded again. “No, please don’t nod or say yes right now. Go away. Think about it for a long time. Look at your children and your husband and your life, and make up your mind. The journey you will embark upon is a journey into the unknown.” Andy prevented herself from nodding again. They stood up. He walked her to her car.

—

AT EXACTLY the same time that Andy was turning from Nassau onto Witherspoon, Frank was standing on the corner of Forty-eighth and Eighth Avenue, scanning the crowd for Lydia Forêt, Joan Fontaine, the love of his life. They had chosen the Belvedere as just the sort of hotel that no one at Fremont Oil or The New York Times would ever frequent, and also a place too expensive for Lydia’s husband, Olivier Forêt, from Calais, France. Olivier managed construction sites. He found the beams and the boards, the teamsters and the plumbers, the painters and the Mohawk construction workers. Olivier did not believe in fashion; he believed in utility. When Frank expressed disbelief that a Frenchman could feel this way, Lydia said, “Not only is he not like a Parisian, he’s never once been to Paris. The French from the countryside aren’t like Parisians at all.” There she was. He saw her at least a minute and a half before she saw him, and so he had time to admire the way, as she turned her head to check the traffic, her jawline sharpened and her cheekbone accented itself. She smiled. Frank hoped it was because she was thinking of him.

Moments later, they were sitting at separate tables in the bar of the Belvedere. As soon as they had their drinks, Lydia’s gaze began to drift toward his, at first shyly, but then more boldly. Frank did the same: he pretended not to know her, then not to be interested in her, then to feel a dawning of desire. Their gazes locked; she took a deep breath and put her hand to her bust. Frank licked his lips and took another sip of his gin and tonic.

They both had keys to the hotel room, of course. It was their usual room, 312. Frank went up the stairs while Lydia went up in the elevator. They met at the door, still behaving as if they were strangers, and then Frank unlocked the door, and once they were inside, she pressed herself into his arms, and he carried her to the bed. In every conversation they had had since he first saw her, in the course of every lovemaking, in every hour they had spent after making love, lying tight against one another, she had never alluded to her early life as a prostitute, had never admitted living in Corsica, had never admitted meeting Frank, taking his packet of cigarettes. She admitted only that she was from Milan, was married to Olivier, had come to the United States in 1952, that she was thirty-nine years old. For his part, Frank never said a word about Andy or the kids, about Dave Courtland, or Hal, or Friskie. When he had to go on business to Texas or Caracas, he simply disappeared, and she asked no questions.