Jane Smiley - Early Warning

—

ANDY LOOKED AROUND and smiled. Only about ten members here today; quite a storm brewing — cold, blustery, dark, and you could see your breath — but the church basement was probably warmer than her house. It was at least better populated. Frank was in— Well, Frank was somewhere. There had been a breakthrough with his supersonic underwater missile. She could say he was in Hollywood, selling it to the movies. This was her joke, and it made her smile even more cheerfully. Then, when Roman was finished talking about his birthday (he had written notes of apology to both his ex-wives), she stood up. She said, “I’m Andy and I am an alcoholic. I just want to list a few things that I am grateful for today, not including the weather, of course.” She cleared her throat. “The first thing is that my son Richard flunked out of Cornell and is now at Rutgers. The reason I am grateful is that I can see how this might be the best thing for him, because his twin brother, Michael, is still at Cornell, and this is the first time they’ve been separated. I was at Rutgers over the weekend to take him some things, and a girl called him, and he smiled when he was talking to her, which made him look very handsome. I know both my sons were drinking at Cornell, but enough said about that. Anyway, I am grateful to have Richard closer now, less than fifty miles away.

“Another thing I’m grateful for,” said Andy, “is that I finally got a letter from my daughter, Janet, and it included a return address. She left home in the summer, and the only thing she’s sent us up till now was a postcard, telling us that if there were an emergency we could call her at a certain number, and when I tried that number, a voice said it was a restaurant, and when I asked for my daughter, the voice said, was it an emergency, and I had to say it wasn’t, because, since coming to meetings, I don’t lie anymore. So the person who answered the phone hung up, and I was pretty sure that it was her. But now I’ve written her a letter, and I did apologize and try to make amends for neglect.

“And, finally,” said Andy, “speaking of lying, I am grateful that I don’t lie anymore. I have to say that my lies did not get me into trouble, at least as far as I know, but, between the lies and the alcohol, I did absolutely get lost, so that I didn’t know which way was up half the time. When you are growing up and the last thing you want to do is make trouble, then lying seems like the easier thing, but so quickly you lose your way.” She looked around, and everyone nodded. They had all had the same experience, hadn’t they?

—

JANET DIDN’T SEE HIM before he squeezed into the pew right beside her and stepped on her foot. Janet pushed over into Cat, and Cat pushed over into Marla, who said, “Ouch.” He said, “Oh, sorry,” and gave Janet a smile, and then he kept looking at her, and smiled again. Janet, Cat, and Marla were at the Temple in San Francisco. The weather was wet — they had taken the ferry, since none of them had a car, and then the bus out to Geary. It was a long trip. Reverend Jones was getting to be an important man, and you could tell that he knew it and that it just made him more enthusiastic. The Temple had been pretty run-down, but the members had gotten together and fixed it up. Marla said that it was an old Scottish Rite building, “Oh, no black folks in those days. Ha!” One of the reasons for going was to fill that building with black folks and drive out the ghosts of the Masons, and every time they went, they saw that Reverend Jones was able to do that very thing. Reverend Jones was not unknown to Aunt Eloise — according to her, he had started out as a commie, and had told someone when he moved from Indiana to Eureka, up north, that the only way to bring socialism to America was through the back door of a church. Aunt Eloise heard that he had faced up to the bigots in Indiana without flinching. Marla, who did not have any religious background, saw the whole thing as a show, but Cat said if she wanted a show Cat would send her to her AME church back in Texas.

Reverend Jones was going on and on about the nature of heaven, which was, indeed, somewhere over the rainbow, and it was a rainbow made up of all the people in the world. The way you got into heaven was to turn to your brother and your sister and welcome him or her into your heart and your life, and there was heaven, right beside you. Reverend Jones’s sermons didn’t vary much, but they were nice to hear, and harmless, Marla, Cat, and Janet agreed. But Janet wasn’t listening to him as much as she was watching the young man beside her. Because there was such a crush, he was bumped up against her. His leg ran along hers, warming it up. Her dearest wish, right at that moment, was to sneak under his arm and cuddle up to him. And then he glanced around and caught her eye again.

It turned out that his name was Lucas Jordan; he lived in Oakland, too, only about three blocks from their house. He worked as a house-painter and was also in a band — he played drums. Janet told him, “I knew a guy once who was in a band. He said that the drummer had to be the most boring and reliable guy in the band, the only one who never smoked dope.” Lucas Jordan said, “Did this guy know me?” He invited her to come the next night to the bar where they played, and she did, taking Marla with her. The bar was a dive, but the sound system was good, and she fell right in love with Lucas Jordan, who sat on his stool behind the bass drum and never let up, never lost the tempo, never stopped driving everyone in the bar forward into the future, beat by beat.

HENRY CALLED the number at the restaurant where Janet worked and said it was an emergency. The voice on the other end of the line said, “Oh, God! You’re kidding, what?” and Henry said, “Janet, the emergency is that I’ll be staying at the Mark Hopkins Hotel from June 3 to June 8, and I want you to come have lunch with me one of those days.” And the voice said, “Oh, for God’s sake, Uncle Henry!” But she said yes, and then he slipped in, “Bring the boyfriend,” and she giggled but didn’t say no. Philip had never been to California, and as a summer adventure, he wanted to drive down the coast in a rented car. Philip and Henry would spend a week in San Francisco and Napa before Henry flew back for summer school and Philip embarked upon his journey, which was to end at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.

Their room overlooked the drop of Mason Street toward the flatter, more relaxing areas. Earthquakes? They might imagine the hotel swaying back and forth like a sapling in a storm, but it wasn’t going to do that — even the fourteenth floor was original. Philip thought it was exciting, just the way he thought a tornado in Chicago might be exciting.

At noon, Henry positioned himself in sight of the hotel entry, in an overstuffed chair with a tall back. He had sent Philip away with instructions to meet them across the street at the Fairmont at one. The surprise when Janet came in was not that she was nicely dressed in a respectable outfit — a V-necked green jersey dress with a white jacket and darker-green heels — or that her boyfriend (he had his hand on her ass) was wearing a button-down shirt and a tweed jacket, but that the boyfriend was a black guy with a moderate-sized Afro. They came in together, stopped short, and looked around. Janet’s hair was thick and blond, and her cheekbones had emerged, giving her face more character — she looked more like Joni Mitchell than Linda Ronstadt, but she still looked less like a show-business personality than a lifelong bookworm. He stood up and said, “Janny!” She turned, and the boyfriend smiled. He was really quite good-looking, thought Henry. Janet hurried over, put her arms around Henry. The boyfriend’s name was Lucas Jordan; close up, he looked younger than Janet. His eyes moved around the hotel lobby, unimpressed but observant, as if it were a matter of survival to take in every little thing. In spite of himself, Henry’s spirits rose — he was no longer just checking up on the wayward niece. He held out his hand. “Any trouble getting here?”