Jane Smiley - Early Warning

After the funeral, he had come home to the very apartment where she had died, and not thought very often about it. In spite of having picked her up and lifted her and held her hand, he found himself sometimes dialing her number because he hadn’t heard from her in a while and felt guilty, and then he would remember. Was this failure to have experienced her death because, in spite of the evidence, he just couldn’t believe it, or because she had never accepted that he was gay (though he had never told her, either, leaving that to Lillian or Claire, and it was unlikely that they ever had)? Maybe she knew what a homosexual was, if she dared to think about it, but sexuality of any kind was not something talked about. You wanted to know the facts of life, you went out and watched some sheep. Were there boys in the neighborhood who tried putting it to a sheep once in a while? My goodness, why are we talking about such a thing? Henry smiled, stopped reading. The windows were flakily white. In the distance, he heard a siren. It had a futile sound.

If he called Philip now, Philip would be short with him, or maybe brusque. Henry wondered if Basil, too, visited him, and made better use of his opportunities than Henry did. In England, it would not be snowing, or if it was it would be mounding silently on the Gothic windowsills of elegant cathedrals.

For fun, he had taken a test that sorted personality types, and he had given it, too — to Beowulf, to Sir Galahad, to Sir Lancelot and King Arthur. All of them — were they sick, sick, sick, or just a certain type? He had come up I N T J — introverted, intuitive, thinking, judging — no surprise, and he had no trouble finding synonyms — stuffed shirt, irrational, persnickety (which was a lovely example of onomatopoeia, a variation on “pernickety,” which was in turn a variation on the Scots word “pernicky,” origin unknown), snobbish — that he was sure his colleagues thought were equally applicable. But, he had to lament, irrational, persnickety, snobbish ( sine nobilitate ) stuffed shirts had needs and desires, too! It didn’t help that, over the years, he had suppressed his sense of humor. When the department had to designate someone to write a gassy, sober report for the administration, Henry was the one. As for being gay, well, he accepted Philip’s view that if you were gay you were gay, but he sometimes wondered, did careful come first or did homosexual come first? Those times he had been with women (and, in retrospect, perhaps he had not experienced Rosa as a woman, because of her confidence, the chip on her shoulder, the clothes, the flat chest, the air of sophistication), had been looking at marriage and children, it had seemed as though being gay would be permanent relief from chaos, and this had turned out to be true. Every romantic encounter nicely arranged and self-contained, like a meeting of spies on the street corner, so careful to avoid the notice of MI5 or the KGB — Henry had liked that part. Could you break out of the box of your I N T J, or were you stuck with it? Was it temperament or training, nature or nurture? Maybe it was a little late, at forty-five, to be asking this question. But if you spent forty-four years arranging things to your satisfaction (according to Rosanna, as soon as he could pick up a block, he made sure that it coordinated with the block next to it), then who was to tell you that satisfaction was maybe the deadliest feeling of all? He looked out the window and decided to call Rosa — but when he tried to get her number from Information, none could be found.

—

ANDY WAS in the bathroom, reading a copy of Vogue on the john. She didn’t know what she thought about the Madame Grès draped look. Maybe you would have to feel the fabric against your skin to really enjoy the dresses; otherwise, they were rather dull. The phone rang. She had had a phone installed in the bathroom so that she could soak in the tub and talk, but, like — who was that? — LBJ, she often quietly picked up when she was doing her business. Janet’s voice said, “Mom?”

Andy closed her magazine. She hadn’t heard from Janet in two months, since Christmas. She carefully said, “Hi, honey,” as if this call were no big deal.

“How are you?” said Janet.

“Fine.” Janet had told her four times since her escape from those people in San Francisco that she really did not care to be reminded of that crap (that crap that Eloise had detailed for Andy with indelible outrage), and so Andy did not dare say, “And how are you?”

“Where’s Dad?”

“I’m sure he’s at the office.”

“It’s after eight there.”

“Maybe he’s getting a bite to eat, then.”

There was a silence, during which Andy assumed Janet was choking back some sort of disapproval of their domestic arrangements. But after Nedra retired (and with a nice package, Andy had assured her AA group), no one was interested in cooking. Andy could make her own salad.

“What are Richie and Michael doing?”

“You know they had their twenty-fifth birthdays?”

“I sent them cards.”

“Did you? I hope they received them. Michael’s apartment is such a mess, no one in their right mind would go in there, and Richie seems to be staying most of the time with a girl he knows on the Upper East Side. She’s Jewish.”

“Mom!”

“What? She is. I met her parents. They’re Jewish, too.”

Andy could hear her report this remark to someone. She was getting to that stage that her father had gotten to, where everything he said got laughed at, but if that was the price of conversations with Janet, Andy was willing to pay it. She said, “Her uncle is a furrier. They gave me a hat. It looks good on me. Can you call me back, I have to—”

“Mom.”

Andy shifted her position and set the magazine on the floor. She knew she was about to receive some news, felt a moment of dread, but then she sensed what the news would be. As Janet said it, she mouthed the words, “I’m pregnant.”

Andy forced herself not to exclaim, “Oh dear.”

Janet said, “He’s wonderful!”

“You know it’s a boy?”

“No, Mom. Jared. Jared Nelson, my beloved. The father of the pregnancy.” She laughed. There was a laugh in the background.

There were many questions that Andy did not dare ask: Are you married? Did you meet him in San Francisco? Where’s he from? What does he do? Is he divorced (not a bad thing, in Andy’s estimation)? Does he get along with his parents? What’s his birth order? Does he drink? Does he speak any Scandinavian language fluently (“Nelson” was possibly a bad sign, though “Nilsson” would be worse)? Janet forestalled her by saying, “He’s the funniest person I ever met.”

Andy smiled.

“Mom?”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Say you’re happy.”

“I’m happy that Jared is the funniest person you ever met.”

“Are you happy I’m pregnant?”

Andy let her gaze wander over the pink bathroom tiles, take in a tiny cobweb, then her shoes, which she had kicked off, then the tub and the sink. She shifted position again, and stood up. According to AA, you were not allowed to lie. When was it, sometime recently, she had seen a picture of a sculpture installation — Dad, Mom, six-year-old daughter, one-year-old baby son. All were the same height, six feet tall, but proportioned realistically. The result was that the baby was enormous, the hugest and most dominant member of the family, and the six-year-old came second. Andy thought it was the truest depiction of family life she had ever laid eyes on; all they needed for profounder horror was expanded premature twins. Even so, she said, “Sweetheart, I am happy for you. And I am happy it’s you and not me.” This was to be their future as mother and daughter, then — the past unmentioned, a fresh start, equals in keeping their feelings to themselves. Quite Nordic, in its way.