There were several things Angie knew: she knew she was adopted; she knew she was mixed-race; she knew she was an only child; she knew she had a talent for languages and spoke French, Italian, and Spanish. There were several things Angie did not know: she did not know who her birth parents were, or where they were from; she did not know Russian (yet); and she did not know that her mother and her father’s girlfriend had ever been friends, or even that Claire had once lived in Des Moines. Claire only said that mothers were very hard for daughters to understand; one of the nice things about sons was that they didn’t even try. Even though Claire and Carl weren’t married, she operated on the stepmother principle, which was that an intelligent stepmother never takes the bait, never criticizes, and, if there is something that the stepchild really really wants but her parents won’t give her, then the stepmother gives it to her. Claire did not think Angie liked her, but she was always polite, which was enough.
But they had seen Angie, only because they had taken a rare weekend off from Claire’s party business and gone to Lake Geneva. Sitting on the dock of the house they borrowed, eating breakfast, they saw a pontoon boat go by, eight kids laughing and yelling, and Angie among them. Claire’s orange, which she was peeling, dropped right out of her hand into the water and sank. Carl hardly reacted, which was one of Carl’s charms. He just moved his folding beach chair closer to the end of the dock and kept watching the boat. It circled around the lake, disappeared from sight, reappeared, finally docked at a house about a quarter-mile down the shore. Carl took note of which house it was (A-frame, main entrance flanked by two tall cedar trees), then got in his truck and drove down there. When he came back, Angie was with him, and so was the boyfriend, named Tyler. Tyler was seven inches taller than Angie and seemed to know her quite well. It was Saturday. Claire suggested they come for French toast, bacon, and scrambled eggs the next morning—all the kids should come. Tyler’s eyes lit up—nothing like a good meal—and Angie didn’t say no.
It did turn out that the parents were in Europe and didn’t know the house was being put to use by the son, who they thought was safely ensconced in Beloit. Boys did outnumber the girls five to three, but the host boy, Tony, was twenty-three and had been driving the boat since he was sixteen. Liquor had abounded, but at 10:00 a.m. Sunday, everyone was awake, pink-cheeked, and hungry, no evidence of violent hangovers. Claire was in her element, serving these kids as if they were guests at one of her parties. (And a nice living it was—“Leave It to Claire!” said her flyers and ads in the Trib. “You should enjoy your own party, not be a slave to it! Contact Claire’s Party Central for information! References supplied!”) She served thirty slices of French toast and a pound and a half of bacon and ate a few bites herself—probably the reason she was now doing parties was that there were many more things she wanted to cook and taste than she and Carl could eat on their own. Three of the boys followed Carl out behind the house to look at his antique Ford pick-up, a ’47(!), painted grass green with a blue roof. Tony was glad when Carl offered to help him get the boat into the boathouse, hoisted out of the water, and winterized. Neither Claire nor Carl asked what Tony had planned to do if Carl hadn’t shown up. Everyone, it seemed, was lucky, and Angie had bestowed a reluctant kiss upon Claire’s cheek when they parted. Carl still said little, but all the way back to Winnetka, he was in a wonderful mood. Carl’s wonderful moods were not all that different from his terrible moods—he was an even-tempered sort of fellow, the kind of guy who could open the basement door and see six feet of dirty water and not be daunted. She loved him. Yes, Ruth had found him stolid (she remembered that), and Henry said, “When’s the last time he read a book?” and he could sit through supper on the farm without saying a word, not out of shyness but because he didn’t have a word to say. Claire had never met anyone else like him. She thought he was the rarest of rare birds, and reached across the console to touch his cheek.
—
MINNIE AND LOIS’S ARGUMENT had started in the kitchen, but, with her usual determination, Lois had eased Minnie out the back door by pretending that she had to get some fennel from the garden, and now they were under the old lilac trees. The argument was not about any of their real differences, such as religion (Minnie had declared herself an “Indifferentist,” and Lois had said, “That’s not something you say in front of the children”), or travel (Lois had asked her in all seriousness why in the world she wanted to go to Athens—it was dirty and full of feral cats), or even about making a piecrust with shortening rather than lard (not possible, said Lois).
No one other than the two of them would have known they were having an argument. Lois continued to dig up the fennel bulbs and also to smile. Minnie was nodding at her sister, as if she agreed with her—that was an old habit. Lois said, “But you have to let them know early that they are on the wrong path. It’s cruel not to.”
“I don’t think she is on the wrong path. She’s just curious.”
What Felicity had asked, at the supper table, was, what was that thing Perky had in his underwear? She had asked this in her usual matter-of-fact tone, and instead of someone saying, calmly, “It’s called a penis” (and here was yet another reason why farmers should be raising animals, Minnie thought: much easier to talk about penises belonging to horses and cattle), Grandma Lois had gasped, Papa Jesse had barked a laugh, and Mama Jen had said, “Shhh. I’ll tell you later.” Is this the nineties, thought Minnie, or the thirties? With her customary seriousness, Felicity said, “Why?”
Minnie pushed. “Is curiosity the wrong path?” Then, “Really?”
“About some things, yes.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” exclaimed Minnie. “You can’t possibly mean that.”
“She’s my only granddaughter. I want what is best for her.” She stood up and stared at Minnie, her hands suddenly on her hips. “For everyone. For you, too.”
“I know what is best for me.”
“No,” said Lois, but only in her facial expression, “you don’t.”
Minnie said nothing about Pastor Campbell or the Rapture or the Harvest Home Light of Day Church—she never did, though she was often tempted. She said, “She is almost seven years old. We knew what male sex organs were by the time we were three or four, and what they were used for, too. I remember watching Pa’s ram mount one of the ewes, and Mama saying—”
“You think that was good? Nothing was sacred then. It was all dirt, everywhere. Makes me shudder to think about it—oh, tetanus; oh, mad-cow disease; oh, swine flu.”
“Oh, walking into the street and getting hit by a car!” said Minnie. “How does this relate to Felicity wondering about the difference between herself and her brother?”
“She is exactly the sort of person who eventually goes too far.”
“Like everyone else we know, Lois. If they’re lucky.” Like you, thought Minnie, but again kept it to herself.
Lois pursed her lips, and Minnie leaned toward her, put her hand on her sister’s shoulder, and kissed her on the cheek. Lois would not be convinced, since she could not be convinced of anything, but Minnie thought that she would drop the subject long enough to find that book they had censored at the Usherton Library, A Kid’s First Book About Sex, ages five and up. She might have to go to Des Moines to get it, but, Minnie thought, she was glad to be reminded of it. It was perfect for Felicity.
—
RICHIE HADN’T MET the broker before, but their Realtor was taken ill, so, at the last minute, the broker agreed to show them the listing. The property was on Prospect Park West—the whole building, four floors including a basement apartment they might rent out. It was three and a half blocks from where they lived already, four blocks from the boundary between his district and the next one. It had come on the market Thursday, and the broker expected it to sell before Tuesday. They had given Leo his breakfast, thrown on their winter coats, and run most of the way in the sleet, but that was good, because it got Leo a little tired, tired enough so that Richie or Ivy could, between
them, jiggle him into silence for the half hour it took to look over the place.
The broker was, like all brokers, full of smiles and information, and very glad to meet Congressman Langdon in person—sometime they would have to talk! He opened doors with a flourish, invited them to peek into closets, knew the names of all the varieties of wood that made up the woodwork in this incredibly woody house. With its bay windows and its original parquet floors and its many moldings, the place was the opposite of Richie’s mom’s house in Jersey; living here would throw him back fifty years, immerse him in every single thing that Frank Lloyd Wright had detested. That was a point in its favor, Richie thought. Two and a half baths, not counting the basement apartment; a doctor’s office on one side, a couple on the other side with a child a year or so older than Leo. No one had to tell Richie it was perfect; they hadn’t seen any other place in four months of house hunting that they hadn’t had to talk themselves into. Until now. Until, standing in the kitchen wondering if she could replace the twenty-year-old Maytag gas range with a Wolf, Ivy put her hands over her face and said something that sounded suspiciously like “I can’t do it.”
Leo was pulling on one of the cabinet doors. He had a speculative look. He let it go, and it slammed.
Richie stepped toward Ivy, gently removed her hands, kept holding them, and said, “You can’t do what?” Behind her, he could see the shadow of the real-estate broker on the herringbone floor of the hallway.
Leo opened the door again, squatted, peered into the cabinet.
Ivy looked up at him, her dark hair, now flecked with gray, bouncing, the tendons of her throat quivering. “I can’t go on with this.”
“We don’t have to buy a house. This is a big undertaking. We’d have to replace the—”
This time, Leo gave the cabinet door a little push—bang! Leo laughed.
“I’ve been having an—”
With smooth congressional tact, Richie put his hand on her shoulder and turned her toward a dark back room—a family room, it looked like—but she said it out loud anyway: “—affair with—”
Richie propelled her a little harder, and she stumbled over the threshold. He glanced back, not quite sure what to do with Leo, but Leo seemed reasonably well occupied. He had moved on to the lazy-Susan corner cabinet. Richie called back to him, “Don’t catch your finger.”
The family room was carpeted and had drapes, and thus darkened and muffled what Ivy had to say: the affair was with a lawyer, he was in his fifties, he and his wife had been divorced for seven years, his two kids were in college, he had given up on love and sex, and now he’d met Ivy.
“How long?” said Richie.
“A year,” said Ivy. “I don’t dislike you.” Then, “But I knew when you started talking about a new place that it was only a matter of time. I’m sorry I left it this long.”
“Where does he live?”
“The house is in New Rochelle, but he stays mostly in his place on Riverside Drive and Seventy-ninth.”
Richie tried to imagine Ivy in New Rochelle. A guy he knew lived in a brick Georgian palace up there with a grand foyer, circular staircase, formal garden, portico, elaborate crown moldings. He didn’t think Ivy’s parents would even enter such a place. Then he said, “Bob Newton?”
“Do you know him?” said Ivy.
Richie blew out some air.
“He never said he knew you.”
Bob Newton was a slender, dark guy with a predatory look, beak and all. He was worth millions, certainly did not subscribe to The Nation. Richie wondered what Ivy’s parents would say. Richie leaned backward so that he could see Leo, who had moved on to the refrigerator. He was standing with the freezer door open, staring into the interior.
Ivy said, “He’s an avid reader. He’s read all of Trollope. He belongs to some club.” Then, a little embarrassed, she said, “Can we talk about this later?”
“Of course,” said Richie, and that was that. They thanked the broker, who was as smooth and friendly as he had been an hour before, as if he had heard nothing. They said goodbye, and helped Leo down the outside steps, agreeing as they did so that maybe that house had too many steps for an active six-year-old. On either side of Leo, each holding a hand, they walked to the corner of Eighth and turned left. Ivy said, “The sleet seems to have stopped completely.”
Richie said, “It’s not really that cold.” He glanced at her from time to time. It was true that a woman who would carry on with Bob Newton for a year couldn’t possibly be interested in him. They were like worlds that did not, could not overlap, could only intersect at the point where Bob was giving him some campaign financing.
By the time the item appeared on Page Six, “Congressman’s Marital Ship on the Rocks,” Richie didn’t even care anymore—better, at least in New York, to nod, shrug, say, “It happens. The most important thing is Leo.” A congressman didn’t have to defend the institution of marriage; that was entirely up to the president.
1996
THE ONLY DIFFERENCE Henry could perceive between his former self and his present self was that he could not stand the cold anymore. A week after his sixty-third birthday last October—perfectly aware that Frank had been struck by lightning, had been seventy-four, had been unique in many ways—Henry had gone to his doctor and asked for a full workup. He was not one of those old men who dressed carefully in the morning in classic styles, who shaved twice a day, who got hundred-dollar haircuts to make the best of the bald pate, and then, when passing a plate-glass window, noticed that the hems of his trousers were above his ankle bones. When Henry passed a plate-glass window, he recognized his perennial self, trim, clean, coordinated, up-to-date. The doctor had told him, after two days of tests, that appearances were not deceiving. His blood pressure was 110/62, his lungs were clear and his heartbeat was regular, his reflexes were normal, his PSA was between 3 and 4, and his prostate was lump-free. He had good circulation in his toes. His LDL was 115, his HDL 62, his triglycerides 145. His blood type was O negative. His height was 6′½″ and his weight 158. But winter bore down upon him like an arctic blast. When his students were showing up for class in sweaters, he was wearing a down coat; when they donned ski jackets, scarves, and mittens, Henry wore all of the above, plus long underwear and thermal socks from Lands’ End. His boots were insulated, and he had the heat in his place up to seventy-eight—Claire and Carl couldn’t stand to come over, and didn’t dare invite him to their place.
The most unfortunate result was that he completely lost interest in everything he had ever loved. He could not teach his Old English students The Wanderer, much less The Seafarer. Beowulf made him shake in his boots—not because Grendel was a monster, but because the mead hall was freezing and Wealhpeow was wearing a dress. Norse literature was out of the question—he didn’t want to read the usual passages of Grettisaga, not because Grettir cut off several heads, but because he threw off his clothes and swam out into the winter ocean. Even the Song of Roland was difficult, because Roncevaux Pass was at three thousand feet, windswept and barren. He didn’t mind Orlando Furioso, because Ariosto did not successfully imagine snow and cold, but they wouldn’t be getting to that until spring. He was almost finished with his book of essays about Gerald of Wales, but he set it aside, not wanting to imagine St. David’s, thrusting like a thumb into the North Atlantic. Toulouse was not warm enough, Béziers was not warm enough, Rome was not warm enough.
And he was too much of a tightwad to make last-minute reservations for St. Thomas, too much of a snob to go to Miami, too unimaginative to go to Maui, where, it turned out, Miles, the guy who had the office next to his, went for two weeks, even though his specialty was the Victorian novel. He told Henry that they went to Hawaii every year. Why go to London? They could do that in the summer. How stupid was I, thought Henry, that I have spent every vacation of my entire life doing homework?
And, he discovered, you could lie in your bed under flannel sheets and two down comforters, in pajamas with socks, your hands under the s
mall of your back, a pillow over your face, and still feel the chill creeping over and around your shoulders and neck and the arches of your feet, across your belly, into your nostrils. You could decide very rationally that you were crazy, that the cold was something you were emanating rather than experiencing, you could sit up and take your own temperature and read that it was 98.8 and still shiver. Better to be one of those manic women who threw off all their clothes and ran naked into the street—at least those women were expanding rather than shrinking. To be freezing yourself to death was embarrassing by contrast.
However, it was not as though Henry didn’t know Freud had existed, or Jung, or Adler, or Beck. He had read Freud’s case studies of the Wolfman and Little Hans, though he didn’t have them on his shelves. He had read The Undiscovered Self and Man and His Symbols, but had tossed them, thinking that Jung’s take on literature was imprecise. There was, in fact, no book on his shelves that could help him; he had read too much, and grown too self-confident. And so he bundled up, went to the college bookstore, and bought a book about freezing to death, then read it under the covers, by flashlight. How did you revive someone whose body temperature had dropped below eighty-five degrees? Dry clothing, gradual warmth (he was sorry to discover that the old technique Frank had told him about—putting the chilled one in a sleeping bag with a warm naked person—could not work, because the chilled person would sweat and get colder). What you must not do under any circumstances was put the chilled person in a hot bath, which could cause sudden dilation of the circulatory system and probably a heart attack. And so Henry crept to his bathroom as across frozen tundra, turned on the hot water, waited until the tub was three-fourths full, shrugged off his layers of clothes, and slipped in, something he hadn’t done in years, since he preferred to shower. Possibly he felt a distinct contrast between his core temperature (cold) and his peripheral temperature (hot), but possibly he was simply remembering the time his colleague Marie, who taught structural linguistics, told him about taking a long walk and getting so cold that she had this very feeling. His problem was that he remembered everything, wasn’t it? That his mind was a library of images and interpretations, none of which helped him get over his lifelong solitude. Or perhaps his problem was that when Marie had told him this story—a little excited and scared—he had been less than sympathetic. He had stood still for a moment, said, “How peculiar,” and continued into his office, closing the door—in her face? He had been preoccupied with something. In faculty meetings, he eavesdropped (with a superior look on his face?), but did not contribute. When Harold, the chairman (Irish Renaissance, specialty J. M. Synge) called the meeting to order, Henry would give his report on budgeting, faculty salaries, potential new hires, take questions, then sit back and ignore the rest of the meeting. For years he had taken an interest in students—quite an interest, in fact, though nothing sleazy, he told himself—but then Ralph Markson (Keats, Shelley) was fired for sleeping with two young women and raising their grades; the policy that forbade this was not new, but, the department came to realize, it had to be enforced. Henry retreated immediately—stopped closing the door when students came for conferences, stopped even looking directly at his male students when they spoke in class. He had always called them “Miss So-and-So” and “Mr. So-and-So,” but now avoided even learning their given names. He was invited to the departmental Christmas party and the departmental Labor Day party, but he knew, and everyone else knew, that he didn’t care for children, so he was left quietly in some corner or other, self-satisfied and neat.