Jane Smiley - Early Warning

“What would you have done?”

“I have no idea. I was kind of glad not to be involved.”

Minnie didn’t say anything. Frank put his arm around her shoulders. She had only time to be surprised before he kissed her smack on the lips, and then, when she could not help sort of softening through her whole body, he put his arms around her. She felt her scalp prickle, and she had a profound sense of being taken by surprise, but that was all. She bent her knees and slipped out of his embrace.

—

FRANK HAD NOT EXPECTED her to be receptive — the last time he kissed her was forty years ago, in the cloakroom at the school, as she was hanging her plaid coat on her hook. He had taken her by surprise then, too. Probably that was the point, since Minnie had always seemed to be a half-step ahead of him. He said, “I’m sorry.” It was the appropriate thing to say.

“ ‘I apologize,’ or ‘I regret’?”

“Apologize. I won’t regret unless you hold it against me.”

“I don’t hold it against you.”

But she stepped out of reach. Frank said, “You can say it’s chilly and go back inside.” He was being quite a nice person, he thought.

“I might. But not if you want to talk.”

Why would this suggestion take him aback? But, then, who did he ever talk to, and what about? Lately, shooting differently shaped bullets into water and calculating how quickly they lost forward motion. The men he talked to about this had no names and no personalities. He said, “I don’t believe I know how to talk.”

Minnie said, “Frankie, you seem sad.”

“Already? I’ve hardly said anything.”

“Well, I was watching you at dinner and afterward.”

“I thought all eyes were on my wife.”

“Yours were.”

He said, “You know what she needs? She needs to drive a prairie schooner with a team of oxen across Colorado and into the Rockies, where she needs to save the party of settlers from three grizzly bears and a long winter.” He laughed at the thought.

“This is a lovely neighborhood.”

“I told Andy to find something around here. She did. One hundred percent class. Then she had it decorated and redid the grounds. But it’s done. What now? Her brother is the same way — born to own a large farm on the North Dakota prairie, but he missed his moment, so he trains every child he meets for the Winter Olympics. She goes to her therapist.” He was talking pretty well now, he thought.

There was a silence; then Minnie said, “Maybe that’s not working.”

He pivoted toward her. “Well, damn me, Min, it’s not working. The shrink is a creep who puts it to her every time she decides maybe she needs some other form of treatment.”

“Puts it to her?”

“Fucks her.”

Minnie looked shocked.

Frank said, “I believe he’s calling it Kama therapy. It’s not very common in New Jersey. What are they reading these days? Oh, Nature, Man and Woman. They finished The Psychedelic Experience. ”

“She took LSD?”

“She says that he took LSD; she just pretended. It was a tiny yellow pill, and she pushed it under the radiator for any passing mouse. Arthur told me his agency is crawling with people who took LSD and lived to tell the tale. No one is impressed by LSD anymore, Minnie.” Then he said, “But that’s what I mean! Look at her. She’s healthy as an ox, and looks about thirty-five! She has no vocation and no outlet, and the house has central heating, so what’s there to do with herself?” Frank had expressed none of this stuff, ever, especially not to Andy. Of course, he was hardly ever alone with Andy, since the door between their rooms was always locked.

“She said that you play golf.”

“Golf is infinitely boring.” He reached out and took her hand. It was cold. He said, “What do you do?”

“For fun?”

“Of course.”

“I can’t think of anything.”

“Oh, Min!”

She said, “Now I feel backward. Let’s see. Lois and I have a lot of flowers in the garden. They’re all perennials, though. We ponder them and discuss them. And we smell them — jonquils, lilies of the valley. Your mother’s lilacs are amazing. I guess you never come out during lilac season, but it’s like a canopy. You can smell them at our house. I clean things. Take stuff to the church and the Salvation Army. I listen to kids talk. Kids are funny. These days, my student teachers are like kids to me, so they’re funny, too. I read books. Joe and your mom watch TV, but Lois doesn’t have time, and I’m not that interested.” Her eyebrows lifted. She said, “Listen to me. I do nothing for fun!”

And then he kissed her again. This time he kissed for real, because he suddenly, after all these years — was it forty-five now? — appreciated her. And she felt it. She didn’t slip away. There was no alarm. It was a nice kiss, an appreciative kiss. When it was over, she put her arm around his waist and laid her head briefly on his shoulder; then she kissed him on the cheek and went into her room.

—

FRANK SAT UP and looked at the clock. It was almost three. He had dropped off once, and dreamt of, not the real Lydia, but a short woman in heels whom he identified as Lydia. She was walking down the street — a street in London, not New York. That was all he could remember. He was hot. He threw off the covers, then got up to take a piss.

Wide awake. There was something disquieting about having Minnie, Andy, and Lydia in the same house. He reached for a Kleenex from the box on the lower shelf of his bedside table and blew his nose.

Frank sensed a presence when he pushed on the swinging door, but whoever was sitting at the kitchen table hadn’t even turned on the light above the range. Frank paused. It was Arthur. His chair pushed back from the table, Arthur was resting his forearms on his thighs and looking straight ahead, neither up nor down. His head didn’t turn when Frank came in. Frank assumed he was on some sort of drug. He said, “Arthur.” Frank’s eyes now adjusted completely to the darkness. He said, “Can I do something for you?”

“Not that I know of,” murmured Arthur.

“Are you all right? Is Lillian all right?”

Arthur didn’t answer. Frank pulled out a chair and sat down. The fact was, he almost never came into his own kitchen; Nedra served every meal, in either the dining room or the breakfast room. If Arthur were to ask him for something, he would be hard put to find it. Frank cleared his throat, then said, “You’ll like what I did all last week. I watched a couple of guys shoot projectiles of various shapes into tanks of water. They were testing their calculations of how quickly the projectiles slowed and stopped. I enjoyed it. They asked me to estimate, and I was always wrong. Water is a brick wall, if you’re a projectile.”

Arthur said nothing.

Frank got comfortable, and said, “Theoretically, they told me that you could shape the tip of the projectile so that it created a vacuum just in front of it as it moved. Theoretically, it could get faster and faster.” He didn’t ask whether Arthur already knew this. The rumor was that the Soviets were quite advanced on this very project; he half expected Arthur to nod, or to let his gaze flicker some acknowledgment, but again there was nothing. He said, “Supersonic.”

Finally, Arthur yawned and looked at Frank. In the day he looked fine, but right now, in this light, he looked cadaverous. How old was he? thought Frank. Frank said, “Arthur, you’re making me think about dead people.”

And Arthur laughed.

As always, his laugh was contagious, and so Frank laughed, too.

“Sorry,” said Arthur. “I was half asleep. I know it didn’t look like it. It never does, but I cultivated that skill in boarding school. It’s been a valuable trick.”