Jane Smiley - Some Luck

But the train was moving by sunrise, had already, in fact, crossed the Mississippi, a sight Frank was sorry to have missed. They were at Union Station in Chicago by nine, and Frank’s breakfast (eggs, bacon, an orange) had been free. He had thanked the two ladies for “saving” him. When they pulled in, he was picking his teeth, something that he saw one of the other passengers do and that he thought looked very urban. He looked out the window and could see Eloise running down the platform. When he got off, the first thing she said was “Frankie! What in the world would I have told your mother!”

“She’s seen plenty of snowdrifts,” said Frank. And then he said, “Call me Frank.”

And Eloise said, “Oh, you are so funny. Are you sure we’re related?”

“Only Mama would know,” said Frank, and they both laughed. Eloise reached up and ruffled his hair. But Frank was surprised, and maybe a little taken aback, by how happy she was. Maybe those people in New York really had frozen to death.

THE DRIFTS IN CHICAGO were still nearly as tall as the streetlights, but it was the end of March, and you could get around. Which was good for Frank and bad for Eloise, since he was gone most of the time and she had just about no control over him. The thing was, he was so charming. When he came in, he would say, “Oh, I was down at the Y, and they said to say hello to you,” and she knew he was at the pool hall or down by the stockyards or the train yards. But she had walked over to the school and talked to the principal about him, and the principal said that he was a very quick student and was making straight A’s. And, said the principal, “There is a sweetness about him. A bit of the country boy.” Right, thought Eloise.

She had her hands full with Rosa, who was three now, and with her job, writing articles for both the paper and the Daily Worker , and, of course, with Julius, who was turning into a Trotskyite, and so was she. But she kept her mouth shut about it and he didn’t, and if they expelled him from the Party, she would have to go, too, and then what? Half of her income came from the Daily Worker , and all of his came from the Party, since he was in charge of education.

Her worries about Frank only bothered her when she got a letter from Rosanna; she had one in her hand now and wasn’t all that eager to read it, but she put Rosa in her high chair, set her scrambled eggs before her, and ripped open the envelope.

Dear Eloise,

Thanks for your reassurances about Frankie. There is no out of sight out of mind with him, at least not for me. I wish he would write more often, and at greater length, but if, as you say, he has lots of studying to do, I understand that. Every word he reads and every math problem he solves is another step away from farming, and that is good, as you know.

Usually, Rosanna was not quite as open about these sorts of opinions. Eloise read on:

If there is more snow in Chicago, even in Chicago, than here, then the end really is at hand, because although now we haven’t had a new blizzard in a couple of weeks, we are still digging out. Walter has a tunnel between the house and the barn. You would think that he would be happy, but he says that if the ground stays frozen while the snow melts, it will just run off, and then the floods — I don’t like to think.

However, we are all fed, and the snow has insulated us from the winds, and so the rooms we are heating have been warm enough. I am in a mood to be thankful, because a terrible thing happened to Mrs. Morris, and Lillian and I have been over there twice.

Eloise didn’t want to read on, but she did. Mrs. Morris, she remembered, was Lillian’s best friend’s mother.

Last week, she had a baby, a boy. Her Jane is ten, Lucy is five, and Gloria is two, I think. I guess she’s had trouble before. They wanted a boy, but this one, Ralph, they named him, seems to have been very premature. He is tiny. He cries day and night — he even pulls away from nursing to cry. Of course he has to be swaddled because of the cold, and he can’t stand that. Mama says that in her day he would have been quietly passed on to the Lord, and maybe he would have been, I don’t know, but Mrs. Morris would never do such a thing. I help her a bit with the baby, and Jane stays here for the most part, with Lillian, which is fine, because there is still almost no school. Jane and Lillian read books to Lucy and Henry, and the two little ones don’t seem to care that they are hearing about the French and Indian War or the last of the Mohicans. Every time they stop reading, Lucy asks, “How’s Ralphie?” My goodness, so sad!

Eloise wished she didn’t know how this was going to end. The one thing she and Julius had formerly disagreed upon was procreation — Julius thought they should produce as many New Men and New Women as they could, whereas Eloise shrank from subjecting more children than necessary to the cruelties of life. Now, of course, they disagreed about lots of things, and if Julius were to come back to the apartment this very minute, no matter how many resolutions she made, they would resume their argument about Stalin, the trials, the vilification of Trotsky, solidarity versus truth. He was always manipulating her into the righteous but powerless corner — what was she willing to give up just to hold her own opinions? She was reacting, he was sure, to having grown up Catholic rather than to the needs of the working class. Obviously, it was a bigger leap for her from the Opiate of the Masses to the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, especially since she came from long lines of landed peasants on both sides, but eggs had to be broken, omelettes had to be made.

Her own analysis was that Julius, as the nephew and grandson and great-grandson, etc., of English rabbis, had a love of and talent for rhetoric, and no one else argued with the fine-hewn eloquence of communists. He wanted to stay in the Party in order to disagree with them. And the revolution in Chicago, the founding spot of the Communist Party in the United States, was burbling along just fine. They could afford a little thesis and antithesis. She picked up the letter again, but then put it down and looked at her watch. She said, “Rosa, Nancy is coming over with her mommy, and they are going to watch you while I do some writing, okay?” Rosa shook her head, but she didn’t cry. She said, “Nancy pulls my hair.”

“Doesn’t Mary stop her?” Mary was about Eloise’s age, in charge of writing up minutes from meetings.

Rosa shook her head. “She’s busy.”

Eloise picked Rosa up and set her on the floor, then said, “Okay, honey, listen to me. When Nancy pulls your hair, you take her by the shoulders and look her right in the eyes and say, ‘Stop that. Right now.’ No yelling, but very firm.” She knelt down and took Rosa by the shoulders and demonstrated. Then she said, “Understand? Speak up, but don’t retaliate, okay?”

Rosa nodded.

“Now go watch out the window until they come.” Rosa walked away, and Eloise picked up the letter again. It was strange to Eloise that Rosanna never complained, no matter how Job-like her life became. But, then, perhaps she didn’t know what had happened to her. Eloise was amazed every time she went back for a holiday. Rosanna, who had been so beautiful fifteen years ago, with blond hair so thick that it burst out of her hairpins, brilliant blue eyes, and a sudden, dazzling smile, now looked cadaverous, with hollow cheeks and a flat, controlled bun. She was thirty-six and looked fifty. The turning point had been the birth of Lillian — everything Rosanna had seemed to flow out of her and into the little girl, and no one noticed except Eloise, who had grown up thinking Rosanna was the most beautiful person in the world, and the luckiest, and the brightest. Eloise looked around, and then crossed herself for luck and in thanks for having escaped the farm. Life in Chicago was full of vociferous “struggle,” but Julius was right, wasn’t he? He had saved her.