Jane Smiley - Some Luck

Well, Lawrence was dead by Monday morning. Eunice told Hildy, and Hildy showed up at Frank’s room on Welch before breakfast, and told him. The two of them stared at each other, and Hildy started crying. Frank said, “Didn’t you ever have anyone in your family die?”

“Not since before I was born.”

“My sister died when I was five. She was jumping around during a rainstorm, and the thunder clapped. She fell down and slammed the back of her head on the corner of an egg crate.”

Hildy said, “Oh, Frank!”

“I always wondered if it was me fiddling my heels on the rug that made her lose her balance.”

“You did? You did always wonder that?” Hildy sat down in his lap and wept with her head against his chest. “How can you die from a tooth?” she said. “How can God make that happen?” Frank said nothing, but tightened his arms around her. On a farm, you knew that you could die from anything, or you could survive anything. “Why?” was a question that his relatives never asked — they just told the stories, clucked, shook their heads. He said, “Okay, Hildy. We are going to walk up Hayward and find that dentist and ask him. We’re just going to do that.” Hildy was so distraught that he had to button her coat and tie her scarf. He made her walk down the stairs, out the door, to the left, over to Hayward, up the street. Forthright, warming steps. He put his arm around her waist, but he did push her forward, between the snowdrifts.

The dentist came out as soon as he saw them, and they told him what had happened to Lawrence. Hildy said, “I can’t understand it. How—”

“Massive infection. That kind of pain he had was a symptom of massive infection. I think I’ll call the fellow who operated.…”

And so it went, all the discussions of every little thing. Not even Eunice knew the truth, Frank thought, the truth of how Lawrence had lain there in that room, the truth that had nothing to do with what the doctor did or the nature of the infection. The truth would have been in that face that Frank was so familiar with — the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the expressions that passed over that face as life gave way to death. Everyone had missed that, that was the betrayal. It was okay to live or die, Frank thought (there was Rolf, for whom it was okay to die), but it was not okay that no one was there to see the passing.

Everything that others found comforting — fond memories of the dead, weeping, analyzing the last doomed decisions, praying, keeping silent, giving comfort, receiving comfort — Frank found pointless and enraging. The hearse drove the corpse away, Eunice went to Shenandoah for the funeral, someone was hired to take the car, Hildy wrote him every day from Decorah. Once he got back to the farm, Frank said nothing to Mama or Papa about the death, and when Eloise asked him how his friend Lawrence was, all he said was “Dead.” Which shocked her. But he walked away before she could ask any questions, and he went back to campus two days after Christmas, saying that he had to get back to work.

IT WAS HENRY who asked for a cake for Claire’s second birthday. Rosanna, who didn’t feel especially well, had let the thought slip her mind. When Henry began looking into cupboards and climbing on chairs, she said, “What now?”

“I’m looking for Claire’s cake.”

“I didn’t make Claire a cake. She’s too young for a cake.”

“She likes cake,” said Henry. “She knows it’s her birthday.”

“Goodness me,” exclaimed Rosanna, thinking of all the beating of eggs and the sifting of flour, but then she felt that particular torment she always felt when she was caught overlooking Claire in some way. She said, “Well, you can help me. Lillian can play with her in the front room.”

“Can we have chocolate?”

“We have no chocolate. But angel food is much healthier, especially for a little girl.”

Henry scowled for the barest second, until Rosanna said, “You can separate the eggs.” They had plenty of eggs, and separating twelve of them would keep Henry well occupied. They had cream for whipping as icing, too, and there was white sugar left over from Christmas baking — thank Heaven for that. “Go tell Lillian.” Henry ran through the door to the dining room, calling “Lil! Lil!” and Rosanna found the tube pan. The range was hot — hot enough to warm the kitchen, as always in January — so she had nothing to complain of.

But Claire was Walter’s child, and it was true, as much as she tried to hide it, that her own services for Claire were tinted more with obligation than with adoration. What she told herself was not that she did not like Claire — Claire was a very good child. It was that adoration had not paid off — look at Frankie. And as soon as she looked at Frankie, she wondered what motherhood was for. Everyone said you could not ask for a better son than Frank — successful, personable, and so handsome. Even Walter was satisfied with him, at last. But Rosanna knew better. Frank didn’t care a fig about any of them, not even her, his adoring mother. But did every child have to be a loving child? When they were your brothers and sisters, you accepted without hesitation that they had reservations about your parents. In fact, in her own very private opinion, her brother Rolf had not had enough reservations about their parents — her father told him what to do all day, and her mother told him how to do it — and look what happened. Rosanna had been more independent, at least more than Rolf. And Eloise was practically a renegade. And then there were the three boys (now all grown up — Kurt worked in Mason City, Gus was married to an Irish girl who hated farming, and John worked for her father). Six children, six different degrees of love and respect for her parents, and occasional discussions about exactly in what ways Mary and Otto Vogel deserved what they had gotten.

Henry came back into the kitchen and went over to the sink and washed his hands. He was good about that, and about doing all kinds of things that Frank and Joe had never cared about, like taking his supper plate to the sink and, for goodness’ sake, changing his underwear. Henry did what Lillian did, and Lillian was perfect. But Henry did not look into his mama’s eyes and adore her. Rosanna set a bowl on the table in front of him, a bowl with a thin rim, and next to that she set two smaller bowls, and the egg beater. He looked up at her eagerly. She said, “Okay, Henry. Now, remember — what should you remember?”

“Crack them good, so the shell breaks rather than crumples.”

“Right.”

“Then put the white first in this small white bowl, and then, if it’s clean, pour it into the big bowl.”

“Okay, get started.”

While he was cracking the eggs in his direct but careful way (no wonder he had learned to sew — his hands were amazingly adept; Minnie always complimented his penmanship, too; maybe Henry was the genius she was looking for?), she buttered and floured the tube pan and looked for the old 7 Up bottle that she hung the pan on to cool after it came out of the oven. She said, “What sort of jam do you want to ice it with?”

“Strawberry!” said Henry.

“Claire’s favorite,” said Rosanna.

“I love Claire,” said Henry. Rosanna did not ask why, but she thought of it.

IT TURNED OUT that Eunice was in his English class. Frank saw her across the room the first day, but he came in late and was sitting beside the door — she was in the front row and didn’t see him. The professor, a very old man, mumbled on and on about Alexander Pope and a poem Frank hadn’t read yet called “The Rape of the Lock.” Frank couldn’t hear him very well, because the pane of the window next to his seat was rattling in the west wind. It was six weeks since Lawrence’s death. Eunice looked as if nothing at all had happened — she was wearing the same green sweater she’d had on the day they drove him to the hospital. As he sat there, Frank felt absolute hatred for Eunice begin to soak through him. And hatred for Lawrence, too, that he’d taken up with this cold fish, this self-important bitch whose body temperature was 88.6 rather than 98.6. Frank dragged his gaze away from Eunice, across the front of the room, the podium, the blackboard, the backs of the heads of the other students, and looked out the window. It was snowing, but not blizzarding — the path across the campus in front of the building had a white dust on it. Hildy and her brother, who was a freshman, had an avid love of snow, and of skiing — any kind of skiing. The smallest hill was fun for them, and the fact that Birger Ruud, of Norway, had won the gold in ski jumping at the ’36 Winter Olympics was a matter of personal pride. Hildy’s brother, Sven, thought ski jumping was the ultimate sport, way more important than baseball, for instance. It was windy out there — first he saw someone slip and sit down on the pavement, a professor-looking type, then he saw a girl’s scarf blow right off her head, and though the girl grabbed for it, it blew away.