Early Warning

1961

AT FIRST Joe and Minnie had laughed about Rosanna’s opinions of the new President and the new First Lady. Since Rosanna was Catholic by baptism, Joe thought she would be proud that a Catholic had gotten to the White House. All Rosanna said was “Irish Catholics and German Catholics do not see eye to eye.” But, really, she didn’t mind the President himself — he was a good-looking boy and had a pleasant speaking voice, if you could get over the Boston twang. It was the wife who got her goat.

“Jacqueline!” exclaimed Rosanna as they watched the Inauguration. “What a name for a First Lady! What happened to ‘Eleanor,’ or ‘Mamie,’ or ‘Ethel’?”

“The sister-in-law is Ethel, as you know,” said Minnie, who was home with a flu, a fever of 102.

“She’s younger than Lillian! And old man Kennedy is a crook — everyone knows that — and hand in glove with Daley and worse.”

“I didn’t know you cared,” said Minnie.

“What do I do? I sit and watch TV. And you can’t have the late movie all day, which I wish you could, then I wouldn’t bother with the Today show, the Five O’Clock News, or the Ten O’Clock News. Goodness me. Look at her mouth. She has the strangest mouth. That’s what I don’t like about her. Her fake smile.”

Minnie never forgot that Rosanna herself had been quite a beauty in her day, though her day hadn’t lasted very long. The final thing to go had been her smile — open, sudden, and bright. Even when Minnie was a teen-ager, she had noticed that about Rosanna — always cloudy, always serious, and then the smile piercing the darkness. Her teeth had been good, too, large and straight, not like Minnie’s mother’s teeth, which she usually hid behind her hand. Ah well. Every thought of her mother still made Minnie sad. Almost fifteen years now since her passing.

Rosanna said, “You want some more tea? The chamomile pot is warm. You need it.”

Minnie slid her cup across the table, and Rosanna poured more of the pale-green liquid into it. She inhaled as she did so and said, “My favorite. The fragrance of June, right here in January.”

“It is nice,” said Minnie. “Which reminds me, I found a last jar of spiced peaches down in the cellar. Lois must have hidden it.” The cellar where her father had died. Minnie contained a sigh. If you lived in the same place long enough, everything reminded you of everything else.

“Well,” said Rosanna, “we’ll let her present it to us. I’m sure she has a plan.”

“Doesn’t she usually?” said Minnie.

“The second child always does,” said Rosanna.

They went back to watching the TV.

“You see?” said Rosanna. “She can’t take the cold. She looks very uncomfortable. Those French clothes aren’t made for warmth, that’s for sure.”

The new President began his Inaugural Address, and Minnie, who had voted for him (without telling Rosanna), was impressed. It was just the sort of thing she would wish her students to hear (and since she had purchased five televisions for the high school, she knew that they were, indeed, hearing it). It was a war hero’s speech, recalling younger days, glorying in dangers survived. He made Eisenhower seem dreadfully boring and old. Wrinkled, too. It was strange, Minnie thought, to have a president her own age. She had always thought of presidents as old old men.

Rosanna was shaking her head from side to side, but not saying anything.

Minnie said, “When does Lois get home on Tuesdays?”

“About three-thirty. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, she picks up Jesse at the kindergarten.” Rosanna’s voice had warmed up. Everyone’s voice warmed up at the thought of Jesse (really Joe Jr., but his own charming self already). Lois was working at Dave Crest’s store part-time now. Rosanna said, “If there was ever a mother who needed more children, it is Lois. She was born to raise a brood.”

“I think she’s decided to quit while she’s ahead,” said Minnie.

Rosanna laughed and said, “Well, no matter how long this brouhaha takes, I will sit around making myself comfortable until she brings that darling child home, just to get a hug from him.”

“She can drop you, if you want.”

“I do not want. I am not Jahqueleen Kennedy, afraid of a little snow, sleet, wind, or subzero temperatures.”

Minnie said, “Did you ever not have an opinion, Rosanna?”

Rosanna said, “Never.”

—

THE EVENING AFTER Arthur had his first meeting with a man named McGeorge Bundy, Lillian was surprised at his mood. Arthur was not impressed by the Kennedys, either Jack or Bobby. Both were hotheaded know-it-alls; the only difference between them was that one had a modicum of tact and the other didn’t. But when Lillian chuckled at Bundy’s name, Arthur frowned, though only a little — he never frowned at Lillian as if he were angry at her. She kissed him to make up, and Arthur started talking at once, leaning against the sink with his whiskey and soda in his hand while Lillian stirred the spaghetti sauce and watched Tina coloring at the kitchen table. She did it in her own way — every figure was done in different shades of the same color. Arthur said, “Well, how long have I been aware of him? I know he was working with Kennan and Dulles as long as ten years ago. On our side of the Marshall Plan.”

“What side was that?” said Lillian.

“Funding anti-communist groups in France and Italy.”

“Oh,” said Lillian.

“But I never met him. What is he — about my age, I guess. But he looks younger. He’s a hopper.”

Arthur hadn’t seemed this impressed in years. “Everyone knows he’s Mr. Smart.” Arthur snorted, then downed his drink and turned toward her. He said, “But listen, Lil, here’s the thing. He looks you in the eye. He listens.”

“What did he say?”

“Only ‘Oh, you’re Manning, I think we need to have a cup of coffee sometime soon. Call me.’ ”

“Maybe he says that to all the boys,” said Lillian, but with a smile.

Arthur said, “He should say that to all the boys. You know how I think. The servants know what is going on. The prince who consorts with the paupers ends up learning how the world operates.”

At the dinner table, he was in such a good mood that he did something he hadn’t done in ages, which was to tell a story. They were almost done with supper (though Arthur made them say “finished with dinner”), and Debbie was just picking up her plate to carry it to the sink, when Arthur said, “Guess what?”

Debbie’s head turned, and Dean said, “What?” Timmy and Tina looked up. Even at almost fifteen, Timmy (Tim, he insisted) couldn’t resist his father.

Arthur said, “I saw the funniest thing in town today. I was walking back to the office after lunch, and there was a dog — you know, a big dog, like a greyhound — and it was walking along. It had a wool coat on and a little hat.”

Tina said, “We should have a dog.”

“We should have this dog,” said Arthur. “It was walking on its hind legs, easy as you please, and almost as tall as I was.”

Tina laughed.

Tim said, “Was it wearing high heels?”

“No shoes,” said Arthur, “and it wasn’t a female. That much was evident.”

Now Tim laughed, and Lillian did the obligatory “Goodness, Arthur.”

“So,” said Arthur, “I can’t tell you how many people were ignoring this dog. I don’t know why that was. Embarrassment, maybe. But I was staring at him, and he saw that, so he came striding over to me and said, ‘How do you do?’ I shook his paw. His nails were very neatly trimmed.”

“He could talk?” said Tina.

“He could,” said Arthur. “Though obviously he was not fluent in English. He said, ‘Purrrrhaapppss yew cn tll I are new in tawnnnn.”

Lillian tried not to think about why Arthur had stopped telling stories.

“I said, ‘You seem to fit in well enough. Are you looking for a particular office building?’ He reached into his pocket and pulled out a little note. I couldn’t read it, though — it was in code, scratches and pokes in the paper. But he said, ‘Depppertmnt if Stet.’ We weren’t far from that building.” Now he fell silent, and went back to eating, as if this were all he had to tell. Debbie gazed at him for a moment, then took her plate to the sink, but Dean wasn’t going to give up. He said, “That’s all, Dad? What happened?”

“Oh, nothing much,” said Arthur. “I accompanied him to the entrance of the building. I could hardly keep up with him. We chatted. He was from Boston, gone to Yale, worked at Harvard. Very ambitious for a dog, I thought. I decided that it was just the Boston accent that was putting me off. When we arrived, I could see immediately that they knew him perfectly well at the Department of State.”

Long pause.

“What did they do?” said Lillian.

“Well, the Great Dane came out — the fawn one, you know, the brother of the black one — and the two of them sniffed each other’s front ends and back ends, then they went around, pissing on all the bushes. And then the greyhound mounted the Great Dane, and the Great Dane lay down and put both paws over his eyes, and the whole world was saved.”

Debbie said, “Oh, Dad!” and rolled her eyes, Tina looked a little confused but willing, and Tim and Dean laughed.

But it didn’t last. Only a week or two later, Arthur was getting up in the night and roaming the house again. Lillian knew it was because of what happened at the Bay of Pigs. She also knew his pattern now. He would sit in his study after work and stare out the window; then he would summon some sort of strength to get through an hour or so before going back into his study until bedtime. He would sleep for two or three hours and roam the house. After a while — this time it took two weeks — he would tell her something. He said, “We sprang it on them!”

“On who, Arthur?” They were sitting up in bed, half whispering in the darkness.

“On Bundy! On Kennedy!”

“I thought you meant Castro.”

“That’s the problem right there. Didn’t spring a thing on Castro! The Soviets had warned him. He knew more about it than I did. Dulles just went in to Kennedy and said, The operation is ready, it’s going to work, let’s do it — and he fell for it. It’s only April, for God’s sake. Half his staff is still looking for a place to hang their hats!”

“What now?”

“Well, I won’t be surprised if they disband the agency. The President is fit to be tied, and I don’t know what all.” He said this rather calmly, as if his whole career would not be destroyed, and so Lillian held her tongue, just to see what he would say next, if his first thought would be about herself and the children or about that other world he lived in. He blew out some air and groaned. Then he said, “Lillian, my darling, my dear, I want to tell you a story.”

Lillian felt herself get a little nervous, but she took his hand in hers and said, “Please do.” The closet door was open. She really wanted to get up and slide it closed, but she stayed put.

“Once upon a time,” said Arthur, “there was a woman named Sarah Cole DeRocher, and she was given in marriage to Second Lieutenant Brinks Manning not long after he graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.”

“Your mother and father,” said Lillian.

“Sarah Cole was an only child of older parents. Her family had long resided in Macon, Georgia, and most of the uncles and aunts were ancient and unreconstructed loyalists to the Confederacy. They referred to the Civil War as the War of Northern Aggression. Marrying Lieutenant Brinks Manning in 1915, as he was preparing himself mentally for the probable American entry into the Great War, was an act of the highest rebellion for Sarah, and when he took her away to the North, her parents disinherited her — though from what, you have to ask yourself, since they had nothing. She was nineteen. But, darling, she was not Lillian Langdon, a girl with a job and some money and a large fund of vitality. She was a child, and within a year, she bore another child — not me, I am not suddenly forty-four years old, but a girl child that she named Sarah, after herself, a very unwise thing to do. And in the influenza epidemic of 1918, when my father was still far away in Europe, Sari, as my mother called her baby, died in the course of twenty-four hours. Life to death, breakfast to breakfast, here today and gone tomorrow.”

Lillian felt tears come to her eyes.

“When my father got back from the war, he was disappointed in his bride. He had grown up, and she had not. But, of course, that was then, and he made the best of it, and in due course, another child was born, little Arthur. I looked just like a Manning, and my father was deeply relieved. He was a military man. His specialty was equipment. He was proud of everything he knew about equipment, whether it was a machine or a horse. He could deploy a flock of pigeons, fix an engine. He was just like me — he despaired of the glamour boys who always had to run out ahead of the supply line because they were too impatient to wait. But he liked the army, the order of it, and he was a great patriot. Just like me.”

“Just like you, Arthur.”

“One day, my mother put me down for my nap. I was two and a half, and a good sleeper. She rocked me, held me, carried me to my bed, and then she covered me and told me to have a nice long sleep, that we would have cake for dinner. I remember every word.”

Lillian felt her heart start pounding.

“Then she went into her room and got the belt of her dressing gown and she tied it to the bottom of a fat newel post, and then she hanged herself. When my father came home for his dinner, he saw her there. I was screaming from my room.”

Lillian started shaking.

“My father never hid any of this from me. He told me what I asked to hear, and he told it honestly. The woman he found to take care of me was a kind and loving woman, and when he sent me to boarding school, he sent me to a pleasant place with lots of animals and playing fields, and he made sure I was big enough and strong enough to defend myself, which I was. He never said an unloving word about my mother, but he would look hard into my eyes, Lil, and what he was looking for was that weakness, that failure of spirit. That fatal inability to take it, whatever it is.”

Lillian said, “You can take it, Arthur.” She was sure of this — he looked intent and perplexed, not broken, or breaking. But he said, “Wisner couldn’t.”

“You hated Frank Wisner.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“Because he was wrong and foolish all the time?” Then she said, “There is no one like you, Arthur. You make Frankie look dull and Henry look stupid and Timmy look shy. You make Joe look weak. I cannot live without you.”

And they both knew what that meant.

—

BY THE SUMMER before ninth grade, Debbie had become a pretty good rider, and she was too big for the pony, which was fine, because Fiona had a new horse, another old racehorse but more elegant than Prince, a bay with a star named Rocky (racing name Roquefort, with French bloodlines). Fiona loved him. He was a jumper; though he could not be hunted, he could jump six feet, and had done so. Oddly enough, he wasn’t bad on the trail — his problem was not spookiness, said Fiona, it was bossiness. He would go on the trail with Prince if he could go first. That was fine with Prince.

Fiona didn’t scare Debbie anymore — she was used to Fiona. Everyone at school thought Debbie was lucky to be friends with her.

In the hot weather, they rode trails every day. The first time they stole a watermelon, Debbie was nervous. But it was easy. They walked Rocky and Prince along a trail that ran along the far edge of a sandy watermelon patch that was hidden from the house and barn by both a line of trees and a stand of weeds. Fiona stared at the watermelons as they walked slowly past, and when she saw a ripe one, she slid off Rocky, handed the reins to Debbie, and skittered over to it, bright and oblong in the sun. Then she stood up, looked around, hoisted it (it was heavy), and dropped it. It burst open in a glory of reddish pink. Because she was Fiona, she offered pieces to the horses first, and Debbie saw that they knew what they were getting. Rocky stuck his nose into the wet sweetness and sort of slurped it up, licking and chewing at the same time. Fiona said, “We have to remember to wash their bits.” Prince had his turn, and then Fiona ran over and got pieces for Debbie and herself. After they were finished, Fiona took a dollar out of her pocket and secured it under the broken melon.

The second time, Debbie and Fiona were talking about a show Fiona had entered and didn’t notice the horses’ ears flicking. They took the exact same path to the melons, and Fiona jumped off Rocky and handed his reins to Debbie. Debbie was looking into the woods, not toward the farmhouse, because she was just a little afraid of having a deer jump out and spook Prince. Fiona broke the watermelon and brought some over, then went back for more. It was then that they heard the shout, and about a moment after that that they heard the other thing, the shot. Debbie had never heard a shot before, that she knew of. But the horses threw their heads, Fiona dropped the pieces of melon, and she jumped onto Rocky as fast as Debbie had ever seen her. They took off down the trail that ran past the edge of the melon field, Rocky in the lead, Prince right behind him, and there was another shot. Fiona, who was bending over Rocky’s neck, yelled, “Ouch!” and her hand came around and touched her behind. Then Prince shied to one side and almost lost Debbie, but she stayed on. They galloped. Debbie did not see a trail; she had to keep her head low and let Prince figure it out, because she had no idea where they were going.

They ended up near the top of the hill behind the farm, and when they came out into a little clearing, Debbie could see the farmer. He had his shotgun over his arm. The horses were breathing hard — the run up the hill had taken the wind out of them. Fiona dismounted and ran her hand over her behind and then over her right arm. There were marks — tiny red dots. She licked them. She said, “That’s salt. He fills the shells with rock salt and shoots them.”

“He’s done that before?”

“He shot me twice last year, but he didn’t hit me.” She ran her hand over her behind again. “It stung. Did it go through my breeches?”

“No. There aren’t any holes.”

“Okay. Well, I guess we’ll stay away from him for a while.”

“Maybe Prince got hit. He spooked.”

But there was no blood on Prince. Once again, when they got back to Fiona’s, a half-hour ride from the top of the hill, and the horses were cool and calm, Fiona kept her adventures to herself. It was summer, so her mom was home, sewing in the dining room. She said, “Oh, hello, girls. Beautiful day — not too hot, for once. You having a good day?”

And Fiona kissed her on the cheek, easy as you please, and said, “Not much going on.”

“Oh, that’s the good old summertime.” When Friday came, and Debbie had her slumber party with her other friends, the good girls, she had to admit that she found them a little numerous and irritating.

—

SHE WAS AHEAD of him, walking down Maiden Lane, almost to Front Street. Frank recognized her from the back, just the way her hips shifted from side to side. He sped up, and came up to her right at the corner, and they stood there, waiting on the traffic. He pretended not to look at her; he was adept at that. She was wearing a black wool coat, nicely cut, cheap. Of course, her face was much older — she would have been almost the same age as Frank in ’44, so in her early twenties. That would make her at least thirty-eight or so. Frank gave her a little smile, somewhere between friendly-on-a-deserted-street and would-you-like-to-get-a-drink. She glanced at him and looked away. Of course, she didn’t recognize him — he was no longer a GI, his hair had darkened, he was wearing a very expensive suit and custom-made shoes. He dropped back and let her go ahead. He slowed his steps and watched her, and the farther she got away from him the more certain he was that he was right — it was she, “Joan Fontaine,” the love of his life, the prostitute (but so unprofessional) that he had spent — what? — four, five hours with on Corsica after the Italian campaign. He watched her walk toward the entrance of a pleasant-looking red brick building on the corner. When she had closed the door behind herself, he walked that way and passed the door. He did not stop, but he noted the address: 158 Front Street, between Maiden and Fletcher.

He kept walking up Front until he found the subway station at Fulton Street, and went home. Once he got there, he was in such a good mood that he sat with Janny for half an hour, listening about the Halloween party at school (Mary Kemp had real wings — well, not real, but see-through — and Doug Lester came as Satan and the teacher sent him home). Richie and Michael had gone out dressed as a pirate and a cowboy. They were now fighting over the sword and the gun.

Frank had a long history of knowing exactly what he was doing. He looked at a thing, there was a click, and he was right. All he had to do was act on that thing. It hadn’t started in the war, but he had noticed it in the war — he always knew before he fired his weapon whether he was going to get a kill or not. The other snipers in his squad had talked a little about the same feeling. Lyman Hill, the best of them, thought it was a predatory instinct — not the instinct of a wolf, but that of a hawk or an owl, a sightline followed by a swoop. Frank pictured the woman again in his mind. He tried to imagine what she had been doing in the last seventeen years that had brought her to this street corner in New York City. He couldn’t imagine it, but he knew that he would find out.