Jane Smiley - Some Luck

But they all knew that Papa wouldn’t say anything.

“I do love pea soup,” said Joe.

“This is fresh pea soup, and cold. Because it’s a hot day. And I made cornbread and some chicken from last night.”

And then Claire heard the sound of a kiss, a small kiss, but definitely a kiss. At this very moment, there was a flurry and a scratching on the stairs, and here came Nat, wagging his tail. Claire grabbed his nose before he could bark, and started petting him. He flopped into her lap and rolled over. She pushed the book and the glasses across the floor so he wouldn’t roll on them.

Two chairs scraped, and then scraped again. Joe said, “Oh, this is good.”

“These are the last of the peas.”

“They were good this year.”

“The lettuce topped out early, though.”

Silence while they ate. Thinking of those cupcakes, Claire had made up her mind to do something noisy and then trot down the stairs when Lois said, “Let’s get married.”

Joe said, “You and me?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Oh, Lois …” His voice tapered off.

“It’s a good idea.”

“Lois, you’re twenty-one years old and I’m twenty-nine, that’s such a …”

“Eight years is not a big difference.”

They must have gone back to eating, because after a moment Joe said, “The cornbread is really good.”

“Do you like the chicken?”

“Of course.”

“I rolled it in the breadcrumbs twice.”

“It’s crispy.”

Lois’s tone of voice hadn’t changed during this whole conversation. She had proposed, and Joe was going to say no, and Lois just kept on talking. It was not at all like, say, Little Women . Lois said, “I know you’re in love with Minnie. I don’t care.”

“I …” said Joe, but then he chickened out.

“She’s never going to get married. I asked her last night to tell me for sure, and she said that she wants to have her free time to herself, and after Mother and Pop, she’s had enough.”

“She told me that,” said Joe.

“Well, then,” said Lois, still in the same tone, as if the conclusion they should come to would be self-evident.

Joe said, “There’s something wrong with me.”

“What?” said Lois, so brightly that Claire almost barked out a laugh.

“I get fixed in my mind on something and I can’t let it go. You want to know something?”

“Of course.”

“I think I was about five when this stray came to live in the barn, and she had puppies. I guess there was a lot of rabies around back then, and Mama made Papa drown the puppies and shoot the dog, and of course they had to do it, because we had sheep and cows and horses. But I thought about those puppies every day until I got Nat. That was seventeen years. A couple died and I wrapped them in handkerchiefs and buried them. I named the bitch ‘Pal.’ Look at me.”

“You have tears in your eyes?”

“I don’t get over things.”

To Claire, this somehow felt like it was a pretty definite no to her asking him to marry her. Claire very carefully shifted her position and reached for her glasses. Her back was starting to hurt.

“You add things. You added Nat. Add me.”

“Lois! Why do you want that? Why would you want that?”

“Joe, I want this! I want this exact thing. Making lunch for you. Living here. Having some babies, and them living here. Right here. Anybody else, and I would have to do what he wants to do, go where he wants to go.”

Now there was a long silence, then a scraping chair, then footsteps. Lois would be carrying the dishes back to the kitchen.

Joe said, “What would we do if it didn’t work out?”

“You’d move back to your house and it would be just like this. There’s no bad thing that would happen.”

“What if you fell in love with someone?”

“I am in love with someone. You. And I don’t think you’re in love with Minnie, either. I don’t think you know how to be in love yet. I want a chance. It’s like an arranged marriage, except that I am arranging it.”

Joe laughed.

Claire crawled over to one of the bedroom doors, then through it into the bedroom, through the bedroom onto the sleeping porch; then she stood up and half walked, half stomped through the bedroom into the hallway. She picked up her book and ran down the staircase. Joe and Lois looked up, sat back, startled. She said, “I was reading on the sleeping porch and I dozed off. What time is it?”

They fell for it. Lois said, “Want a cupcake? Lemon icing.”

Claire reached for one.

JIM UPJOHN CALLED Frank at the office and asked what he was doing that afternoon. Frank looked at the clock. He had skipped lunch. It was a quarter to one. He said, “I am reading descriptions of rockets.”

“American or Soviet?”

“German.”

“Old hat,” said Jim.

“You wish,” said Frank. “They had something so much bigger than the V-2 in the works that we still haven’t totally figured it out.”

“Mm,” said Jim, and Frank remembered to shut up. He said, “Nice day.”

“Yes, Corporal Langdon, it is. And that’s why I’m calling.”

“Yes, sir,” said Frank.

“Meet me in half an hour at Anderson Field, building one. We’re going to take my new plane for a spin.”

Frank was out the door in less than a minute.

It was beautiful — bright but calm. The breeze was southerly, straight from Florida, it felt like, light and warm. The apple trees that edged the parking lot of his building were heavy with fruit, and the grass was thick, the way it got before the first frost. He didn’t get into the car, though — Anderson was only a quarter-mile from where he was standing. He left his jacket and his briefcase in the Studebaker, and sprinted. Jim was waiting for him. The plane was already outside of the hangar, and the two of them pulled the blocks away from the wheels. Frank said, “What’s this one?”

“It’s a Fairchild Argus. I’ve been wanting one of these for years, but with four seats. I finally found one. With the see-through canopy. Just wait.”

It was as pleasant as Jim had predicted — buzzing down the Anderson runway and then lifting over Jamaica Bay and turning south toward New Jersey. Frank had been having an especially tedious day, but now his spirits lifted with the plane, and he said, “A pilot’s license seems like a good idea right about now.”

“Wait till we come in for a landing, then decide. I flew the first time when I was twelve. I was too stupid to think that anything could go wrong, so, obviously, the Army Air Force was the place for me. Ever ridden a horse?”

“Only a plowhorse.” They were shouting, but they didn’t seem to be.

“Well, when you ride horses really fast, you learn to never look down. Same with a plane. What draws the eye draws the body.”

But Frank knew that he could be good at this, that it was the natural culmination of every step forward that he had ever taken. They flew on — along the Atlantic coast of New Jersey, low enough to look at Sandy Hook, then the thinly peopled length of the boardwalk at Asbury Park, then down along the coast to the Barnegat Lighthouse (according to Jim), then farther south, over the flat green of the Pine Barrens. Jim turned north, and they flew past Trenton, along the Delaware River. Here and there, the leaves were beginning to turn. Moment by moment, Frank ceased looking at every spot as a potential home-buying opportunity, and began seeing the earth again, the way he had on the farm, when he was living in his tent, when he was marching through Africa and then through Italy, France, and Germany. He said, “You know, this reminds me that I’ve never spent so much time in one place as I do now. It’s either the apartment or the office or the bus between them.”