Jane Smiley - Early Warning

Paul made her cook with margarine.

Rosanna held out her hand, and Dr. Sadler put the corn dog into it. Claire was beginning to feel a little jealous.

Paul insisted that they go to the replica of the first church ever built in Iowa. “Catholic!” exclaimed Rosanna. “Built in Dubuque.” She turned to Dr. Sadler. “Were you raised a Catholic, by any chance?”

Dr. Sadler shook his head, and Claire felt her ears get bigger, but he didn’t say anything except “Nice woodworking.”

The pies, set out neatly on the display table, were judged at four. Claire thought Lois’s did look delicious, but she came in second. After the judging, she went up to the judges and smiled and shook their hands and thanked them for judging. Claire thought that Lois was always excessively polite. You never knew what she was really thinking.

And so they forgot about Tim for eight hours, and Rosanna was, indeed, perked up. As for Claire, she was so exhausted she let Paul put Gray to bed, which he did with better grace than he had all summer. She was lying on her side, and she could feel the baby moving around; she imagined her (him) doing backflips. After Gray was down, Paul came into their room and sat on the edge of the bed, took Claire’s hand, and pushed her bangs gently out of her face. He said, “That was a good idea, enjoying plant, animal, and human variety for a day. Let’s do that every year.” He was patting her hand, and she fell asleep right there, deep as a well and twice as dark — who used to say that?

THEIR CHRISTMAS HAD BEEN bittersweet. Debbie invited her boyfriend, an awkward kid but kind. He helped with the dishes, and he noticed things like rug corners turned up or stove burners left on. Lillian liked him. Tina had taken a class in printmaking and made their Christmas cards. After years of encouraging her because that’s what a mother was supposed to do, Lillian had loved the cards Tina made, two sheep, a goat, and three chickens peering through a door into a shed, and the Star of Bethlehem shining above them. Dean brought home an early admission to Dartmouth, which everyone imagined to be surrounded by acres of smooth ice. Arthur seemed energetic and almost happy, and maybe only Lillian noticed that his hair was nearly all gray now. They hung Tim’s favorite ornaments on the tree and drank to him at the table, and told a few of the funnier stories, just so the boyfriend would know that they had handled their loss.

Yes, when McNamara had turned in his resignation, Arthur was irritated watching it on the news, muttering, “Frank Wisner shot himself. What’s stopping you, Mr. Secretary?” then retreated to his office as he had so many times before. This was the first thing Lillian thought of when she found Arthur under the bed.

He was canny about it. Dean took swimming practice before school, and Tina liked to go in with him and study in the library, so Lillian was up by six, making breakfast. She ironed Tina’s blouse and found Dean a pair of socks, did the dishes, had a second cup of coffee. She thought Arthur had left — he said he was going to sneak out of the house early and not to worry about him. She even went in and out of the bedroom once, noticing only that the bed was made. When she was putting away her robe, she saw a wrinkle in the lower hem of the bedspread. First she touched the wrinkle; then she felt his shoe. There was no blood; he had no wounds, but he was out cold, and she knew he had done it at last. She threw the bedspread onto the floor and called an ambulance.

He was wearing trousers, a pressed shirt, a jacket, socks, and loafers. The ambulance people had to pull him out feet-first, which mussed his hair. One guy took the note out of Arthur’s fist and handed it to her. She unfolded it. It read, “Don’t call the office unless I’m dead.”

She said, “Is he—?” shaking her head and starting to cry. As they rolled him onto the stretcher, the medic said, “Not yet.” She didn’t call the office. She got into the back of the ambulance with him, and stared at him as they careened toward the hospital, maybe a twenty-minute trip. Every so often, the medic took his pulse and listened to his heart and nodded. Lillian herself kept her hand on his chest. His breathing was shallow, but he kept breathing. It was cold. The landscape was white and the sky was gray, and she knew that he had planned it and had intended to succeed. The unhappy ending, as far as Arthur Manning was concerned, was life.

When the doctor came to her in the waiting room, she was shivering in spite of still having her coat on, and she shook the whole time he talked. It was Seconal, was your husband suffering from insomnia, did he have a prescription for barbiturates, was he showing strange signs of drowsiness or disorientation, could he have fallen down and rolled under the bed. Lillian said, “Didn’t they tell you about the note?”

“No. No note.” He licked his lips and said, “Has Mr. Manning been treated for depression, or manic-depressive illness? Has he shown—”

“Our son was killed in Vietnam.”

The doctor for the first time looked into her eyes, said, “I am sorry. May I ask—”

“Almost a year and a half ago.”

“Has your husband shown signs…”

It went on.

He was to stay in the hospital for three days, for observation. Lillian said, “May I see him?”

“It’s going to take a couple of hours for him to wake up. I guess he’ll be surprised to find himself here.”

“Very disappointed.”

“Oh, maybe not. Second thoughts—”

Lillian shook her head.

It wasn’t until she was home to get the car that she threw the bedspread back onto the bed and saw the other note, the one written in a neat hand folded into Tina’s Christmas card. It read:

Dear Lily Pons—

I am doing a bad thing to you, my darling. I know even more clearly than you do that this is the ultimate betrayal, and the only way on earth that I could or would betray you is exactly this way. But you know I’ve been waiting for the chance. You know I’ve been putting my affairs in order — not my financial affairs, but my domestic affairs. I have been waiting for each of you to recover somehow from Tim’s death, and now we have reached the crossroads where everyone has a path to the future. I saw all the paths at Christmas. Even Debbie is in good hands. You are the only one. Why can’t I take you with me? I ask myself that. And I ask myself that again, feeling you beside me in the night, feeling your hand in mine, hearing you breathe. But I can’t do it, nor can I stay. Why is that? Because I literally and truly see no future. Blank. Empty. Nothing. At last. And I am glad of it. You are perfect. I love you.

Arthur

The first thing he asked her when she saw him in his room, and he was groggy when he asked it, was whether she had told anyone at the office. She said no, and it was true — she had not told anyone at the office. Who had she told? Minnie. She had to talk to someone; she had called the farthest-away person that she could think of, in her office at the high school, and cried to her for ten minutes. Minnie might or might not tell Rosanna, but Minnie did want to tell Joe — Joe wouldn’t say anything. Arthur swallowed several times, closed his eyes, and patted her hand as best he could. Finally, he said, “Well, I guess we’ll soon find out once and for all.”

“What?” said Lillian.

“Whether the phone is tapped.”

It was.

Wilbur and Finn appeared after dinner. They took Lillian into the living room, turned on the lights, and offered her a drink from her own liquor cabinet. No, not even one sip of the Rémy Martin. Wilbur poured himself a Scotch and soda. Finn, a shot of crème de menthe over ice. Sheppard Pratt was where he would be going, up in Towson; men like Arthur had walked its halls for years; nervous breakdowns were part of the job, Arthur knew that. Arthur had always taken everything very seriously. That had its good and bad aspects. Electroshock was of course a possibility.