Jane Smiley - Some Luck

Upjohn’s face, which had looked professionally good-natured, shifted through several different expressions just in the time that it took Andy to smile — they were confusion, surprise, pleasure. He said, “Thank you for coming. I’m sure we haven’t met before.” Frances Travers Upjohn’s head swiveled to the right. Andy said, “Of course not. We are new in town. I’m Andrea Langdon, and this is my husband, Frank.” Frank held out his hand. Upjohn’s grip was brisk and manly — up, down, out. He also gave the tiniest bow, a flattering thing that acknowledged in its half-second of existence that Andy, and therefore Frank, could expect to see more of James Haggard Upjohn, Esq. Frank could not help looking a little extra merry as they proceeded down the line.

The entrance hall at the Met, now decorated with casts of all sorts of famous old statues (Frank recognized the Winged Victory and the Laocoön ), was a far cry from Floral Park, but Frank had prowled all over the museum once Arthur had arranged the invitation. He had memorized the names of pictures and artists (Raphael, Picasso, Maillol), so that he could at least pretend familiarity. He didn’t have a terrible eye — standing in front of the Maillol female nude, next to the cast of Aphrodite, he could get interested enough in the similarities so that when Jim Upjohn appeared next to him and spoke, he started a little. Upjohn offered him a smoke. Frank said, “Don’t do that. Thanks, though.”

Upjohn said, “Who are you two? I’ve never seen you before.”

“Just hicks,” said Frank. “Newly arrived in the big city.”

“How’d you get into this party?” He said it not suspiciously but with true curiosity, like a kid. If this guy was a spy, Frank thought, he would eat his hat. Frank said, “Andrea knows everyone.”

“I would like her to know me.”

“That’s what they all say,” said Frank. “Thank you for stating your business so clearly.”

Upjohn grinned. “That isn’t my business. Mrs. Upjohn makes sure of that. But in a dull town full of dull people, when new prospects turn up, one gets a little excited.”

“Are we still in Des Moines?”

“Even New York is a small town if there are only four hundred respectable folks and half of those have chips on their shoulders.”

“I can’t imagine you have offended anyone,” said Frank.

“I haven’t, but I have lots of relatives.”

After the cocktails, during the dancing, Upjohn cut in on Frank and Andy twice. Frank went straight over and asked Frances to dance, and he was so good at leading her and spinning her and sweeping her around the room that she squeezed his hand when the music stopped.

Frank reported to Arthur that he had made contact, and that Upjohn would certainly be making a pass at Andy before the month was out.

“Think of it as your patriotic duty,” said Arthur.

“I’ll try,” said Frank.

But the next time they met, at a gallery opening two weeks later, Upjohn followed Frank out into the street when Frank went to get some air, and they gabbed for fifteen minutes. In his report to Arthur, Frank said, “I think he’s grooming me for something.”

“Did you say anything about Eloise?”

“No. Why Eloise?”

“Well, we’re watching her. Maybe they’re watching her, too.”

“Why are you watching Eloise? She hates Stalin with a passion. She tells Rosa that Stalin and Mountbatten killed her father. On Halloween, they name two jack-o’-lanterns ‘Joe’ and ‘Lou,’ and the day after, they smash them with sticks.”

“She talks to Browder. There’s a file.”

“Well, I guess you know more about her than I do. When I saw her last Thanksgiving, she didn’t say a word about the Party. I assumed she’d quit and gone over to Shachtman’s Socialists.”

“I’m not worried about Eloise. But keep your eye on Upjohn. And—”

“Is there a file on Upjohn?”

“More than one,” said Arthur. “It’s chaos, all these files. Anyway …”

“Anyway what?” said Frank.

“You should be aware that she’s been arrested.”

Involuntarily, Frank thought of his last breakfast with Judy, the red velvet birthday cake, the look of her face, pale through the window of the streetcar, and maybe more dumbstruck than he had admitted at the time. He said, “How sure are you that she was passing documents?”

“Caught her red-handed in Union Square. Caught Gubitchev, too. She had papers in her purse.”

“What papers?”

“Well, that’s interesting. Not bomb-making information or anything like that. She spies on us while we spy on them.”

Frank said, “Don’t tell me any more. I kind of liked her.”

“I don’t think she knows that you spied on her spying on us spying on them. But if she did, she might enjoy it.”

“She did hate Hoover,” said Frank.

“Well, he has recorded just about her every move since I made my report, so he has had his revenge.”

ON JUNE 11, when Andy talked him into taking her to the Belmont Stakes, they were standing in line at a betting window when the Upjohns came right up to them. Frances Upjohn even kissed Andy on the cheek and said, “I love your suit, darling! Do you have a box?”

And, easy as you please, Andy said, “A box of what?”

They all laughed.

Jim and Frances didn’t have a box, either, but they had borrowed one from Frances’s cousin, who had racehorses with a trainer named Hirsch Jacobs, right there at Belmont Park, though he had nothing in the big race that day.

The box looked down on the finish line from above, and Andy fit right in, sitting gracefully, half turned toward Frances, with one gloved hand on her knee and the other holding her program and her patent-leather handbag. She was wearing that hat Frank liked. Her skirt swept down from her tiny waist and floated above the ground. Behind her head, the vast emerald infield of the racetrack was seething with men in rolled-up sleeves who had pencils behind their ears and Racing Form s in their hands. Frank said, “This must be the biggest lawn in New York.”

“You could set the Brooklyn Bridge in there, did you know that?” said Jim.

Jim and Frances peppered them with questions, and seemed gratified to learn that they were poor, that they rented their little apartment in Floral Park, that they had $751 in savings, that Frank worked at Grumman, grubbing for government contracts, that Andy was adept at remaking her clothes to keep them up-to-date, that Frank had seen two and a half years of steady action in the ETO — in the mud in the ETO, not the sky — that Frank had ended up with twenty-six kills (if you counted that German officer), that Frank didn’t know how to read the Racing Form and had never been to a race before. The oddest conversation, Frank thought, was about farming. Had Frank driven a plow or a harrow? Had he actually castrated a baby hog? How many chickens were in a flock? Did anyone farm with horses anymore? If he, Jim, were to buy a farm, was Pennsylvania better, or Ohio, or Minnesota, or Nebraska? Frank said, “Have you ever thought about this before, Jim?”

Jim shook his head. “I never met a farmer before. I mean, other than a horse breeder who grows tobacco on part of his land.” He thought for a moment, then said, “Oh, once I thought of buying an apple orchard in the Catskills.” Frank couldn’t figure him out.

In the race, Frank bet on Ponder, and Andy bet on Capot. She took home fifty dollars. On the way home (they waited until the Upjohns left, then walked the two miles), Andy declared that she was going to become a racetrack tout, and the fifty dollars was her investment fund. Frank said, “That’s not very Norwegian. Did you say your mother’s maiden name was Mahaffey?”