Early Warning

1973

JANET THOUGHT that Marla Cook, who moved into their house after Liza went to live with her boyfriend, looked exactly like Cicely Tyson, but she knew perfectly well that you weren’t supposed to talk to black people about how they looked or discuss how they looked with others. There were a lot of land mines there, because, even if you came from a family where only your grandparents ever used the word “Negro” (no one in Iowa that she had ever heard used the other “n” word), there were plenty of words that you had to be careful of, like “boy.” When she was (and it was rare) feeling fond of Richie or Michael, she would say, “You are a cute boy!” And then, one day in Oakland, when she was talking to Hunter Morrison, who was about the same age as the twins and worked with her at Lasagna Paradise, she laughed and said, “Oh, you are a cute boy!” and that was that. They were both so embarrassed for her that they never joked around again, and yet she couldn’t apologize.

Marla’s room was next to hers, and they shared a bathroom — she had moved in because she knew Bobby at Safeway and also knew Cat, who had gone from nude modeling to being in a movie — admittedly, a short movie, but nevertheless a movie. Maybe because Marla was so beautiful, she and Cat were rather formal with each other. After about four days, Marla got more relaxed with Janet, and invited her into her room. It was important in a house like theirs not to form teams or gossip about one another, and so neither of them talked about anything that was going on (including food storage, which was an issue). They talked about French plays and movies. Whereas Janet had seen two Alain Delon films, Marla had seen eight — if there was a tiny little theater somewhere playing something obscure, Marla made an effort to get there. As beautiful as she was, she did not want to be a movie star; she wanted to be a director. She was saving the money she made working two jobs so that she could go to France — she wanted Janet to talk French to her. Marla knew two things about France: a beautiful woman, black or white, could get ahead there, and a play in France could be about anything; it could be about four people sitting on a stage, crossing and uncrossing their legs and occasionally coughing.

Marla was from Los Angeles — not Hollywood, but Crenshaw. Nothing about Los Angeles impressed her. When Janet asked her about it (especially on rainy days), she turned her feet edgewise and wiped them on the rug. Her father worked for the city and her mother for the costume department at Paramount, sewing.

Marla was impressed only by Paris — all Janet had to do was say words like “Tuileries” and “Montparnasse” and Marla would smile. After a week, she got Janet to read plays to her in French. The first one was Rhinocéros, by Ionesco, then Antigone, by Jean Anouilh. They each had a copy; Janet would translate a line, then read it in French, and then Marla would read the line. If her pronunciation was wrong, even a little bit, Janet was supposed to stop her and correct her. Marla was absolutely dedicated to this, and since she had a sense of her own future that was built of stone, Janet thought of this as her vocation more than her job at Lasagna Paradise. She told Marla that her father was a farmer in Usherton, Iowa, and that she had gone to the University of Iowa. Marla didn’t ask if the University of Iowa had a junior-year-abroad program. Anyway, in a just world, Uncle Joe would be her father and Aunt Minnie would be her mother. It was a good thing to lie about.

Cat was nice, too. In the ongoing tensions about food, Cat was the only one who didn’t care if one of the boys drank her milk, as long as they didn’t drink directly from the carton, and she was the only one who brought popcorn into the living room when everyone was watching television and passed it around. The source of the food problem was really Louis, the mailman. He was always hungry. He bought a lot of food, but if he had eaten it all and it was late at night and there was leftover spaghetti Bolognese in the refrigerator, he would eat it. As for Janet herself, she got a free lunch at Lasagna Paradise, so she didn’t care about anything except dried apricots, and she kept them in her room. She was white, she was bland, she had no stories to tell. She was glad they let her stay and were nice to her.

—

ITHACA WAS farther north than Richie had lived before — already in May it was light into the evening. He looked at his watch, wondering what he was going to eat. He was half a block from the Haunt, and it was a Sunday night. He’d been studying most of the day, which he had to do in order to make up almost the whole semester’s work in his American Twentieth Century History course before his final exam in a week. He liked the Haunt — just the night before, he’d taken Alicia there for a Roscos set and she had gotten pretty wild. Back at his dorm, she had left while he was still sleeping. Since then he hadn’t heard from her. Balch Hall was a good walk from his dorm, and the weather had been cold.

But today was sunny. As Richie came around the curve on Willow, he saw the door open, and a couple come out of the Haunt, laughing. The couple was Alicia and himself. They turned left and headed toward the golf course. He slowed down, because they weren’t walking very fast, and followed them.

Even though he hadn’t seen Michael in a week, the two of them were wearing about the same clothes — jeans, leather jacket. Michael’s hair was longer than his, but only by half an inch or so. Alicia was wearing what he’d last seen her in — a long green skirt, brown boots, and a coat she made herself out of old jeans cut up and sewn together in a star pattern. She had her big canvas bag over her shoulder. Clothing design was her thing; she was a freshman, intending to major in art. Michael had his arm around Alicia’s waist. Richie thought, in a sort of brainless way, “How alike do we look? Does she think she’s with me?” He had never introduced her to Michael.

Michael and Alicia came to the T in the road, where Willow turned left along the inlet where the boat docks were, and Pier Road went right, around the golf course. Since it was May, the golf course was quite green. The sky was clear, too, which was a change. If Michael had decided to take Richie’s girlfriend out to the golf course and fuck her in a sand trap the day before, he would have been out of luck because of rain.

Richie and Alicia had been dating a couple of months. She was from Indianapolis — Alicia Tomassi. She talked a lot, so he knew a lot about her. Her dad worked for a big supermarket chain. Her brother had gone to work there, too, after graduating from Indiana University. Alicia had gone on a hunger strike to get her dad to let her go as far away as Cornell, but that was okay — she’d lost ten pounds and looked a lot better in her designs. She had dark hair to her waist, usually pinned up, and a wiry, serious body, evidently destined for professional success. She never minded a hunger strike, though at Cornell they were called “fasts.” Her hair was already going gray — she plucked a hair or two every day, but she had plenty to spare. She had a great ass, pretty good tits, and great lips. She had a temper, and she hated any kind of tardiness. He’d met her walking across campus: she slipped on some ice, and he caught her. He had not told her that he had a twin.

They passed the green and walked along between the boats and the fairway. He was still maybe twenty-five yards behind them. One foursome was on the green, and he could see another in the distance, getting ready to tee off, waiting for the first foursome to putt. Michael pinched Alicia on the ass. She jumped and yelped, then pushed him away. He laughed a laugh that Richie recognized with his whole body — good-natured on the surface, but vengeful underneath. If there was anything Michael was sure of, it was getting even. Richie’s steps were making sounds on the pavement; he was surprised that Michael hadn’t looked around, because Michael was as jumpy as a cat, a lot like their dad in that way. And if he did look around? Well, that would save Richie a little trouble.

Michael and Alicia paused to watch the foursome at the tee hit their balls. The fairway was long and narrow, but no balls went into the water, and one got most of the way to the green. Michael, Alicia, and of course Richie resumed walking. Ahead, beyond the golf course, was a little park, with plenty of trees. Richie sped up. The breeze was blowing in his direction, and he could just hear what they were saying to each other — Michael had a naturally resonant voice, and Alicia’s was high and piping. Michael was saying, “…should stay around here for the summer. You never know what might happen if you go home.”

“Anything might happen, right?”

“Right.”

They both laughed in a conspiratorial way, and then she said, “You could come to my Dairy Queen. I would serve you.”

“I bet you would.”

They laughed again. Now they came to the woods, and as they stepped from the road onto the path, Alicia took off her coat and handed it to Michael to carry. She was wearing a different shirt from last night — one she had tie-dyed to look like sunbursts were popping out of a blue sky. Last night she’d been wearing whitish lace, also homemade. Richie followed them into the woods, and when they were all three pretty deep in the shadows, he scraped his feet in the dirt and leaves, and the other two spun around. Really, he was no more than fifteen feet behind them at this point.

Michael grinned, and said, “Shit, man! What the hell?”

Alicia’s mouth opened in a little O, but then she smiled, too. She swayed her hips and let her eyelids drift half shut. She moved away from Michael just a centimeter, but he pulled her to him and made her keep walking. He said, “How’d you do that, man? You popped out of nowhere.”

Richie didn’t say anything, just went up on the other side of Alicia and put his arm around her, though her bag bounced between them. Three Musketeers. They kept walking.

Richie couldn’t have said that they were both going to have sex with her. He didn’t know if his mind proposed the idea or received the idea, and though he often received ideas from Michael, he also didn’t know if this idea was Michael’s or Alicia’s. Alicia seemed to like rough sex — she fought him off a little bit, and then laughed when he pushed her. She picked fights about other things, too, like whether a compliment he gave her was sincere or not, and then she made up quite enthusiastically, so he had come to realize that arguing was a bit of a game with her. He’d thought she was beyond him in some ways, but now Michael was looking down at her and laughing at her as if she were funny.

At a clearing, not grassy but soft with leaves and mulch, Michael said, “Lie down, bitch,” and Alicia said, “Fuck you, asshole.” Richie couldn’t tell if they were joking. He held back for half a second, and then stepped over the tree root. He said, “You two been seeing each other long?”

“Couple of weeks,” said Michael. “Long enough.”

Picking her bag up and setting it beside her, Alicia said, “How about you guys?”

Michael said, “Never saw this little fucker in my life before,” and laughed.

Alicia said, “Looks like two against one.”

But which two against which one? thought Richie.

In their two years at Cornell, Richie had made it a point to wait a split second before Michael said what he was going to do, and then say that he was going to do a different thing. Their paths had not diverged; they had run parallel. Some people knew that they were twins — they did still look very much alike — and some people had been fooled. One professor the previous spring had told Richie he’d taken that class already. The first thing Richie said was “How’d I do?” and the professor looked at him like he was crazy while saying, “You got a B+. You could have worked harder.” Richie said, “Must have been my twin brother. I’m sure to get a B—.” Then the teacher looked at the roster of students and laughed, as if this were a joke. A girl who had met both of them at mixers but was able to tell them apart said, “I met your brother last week.” Richie said, “How do you know?” She said, “Your left eyelid is a little droopy, and his right one is.” Richie had been impressed. He’d told her she ought to be a private investigator. They’d danced a few times and had a beer. But he was not going to ask how Michael met Alicia, or whether Michael knew Alicia was his girlfriend. Then it occurred to him that maybe Michael had met her first.

Alicia scooted over so that her back was against one of the trees, pulling her bag with her, and when Michael came near her, she kicked him in the shins with her boots, then laughed again. Richie recognized her laugh; it was an I-dare-you sort of laugh. When Michael leaned toward her, she ducked to one side, grabbed his wrist, and pulled him down. He bumped his knee on something. Richie knew in his body that Michael was beginning to get mad. It could easily be Richie and Alicia against Michael, so he said, “Why did you leave last night? I woke up around four and you were gone.”

Michael glanced at him.

Alicia said, “I got my period, and I didn’t have any tampons in my bag.”

Richie hadn’t seen any blood, but, fine, as good a reason as any. He said, “You should leave some in the same little box as your toothbrush and your hairbrush and your deodorant.” Michael, kneeling, now put his hand under Alicia’s chin and kissed her long and hard. Alicia’s arms stayed limp, and her eyes rolled in Richie’s direction. He could not read their expression — was she scared, was she appealing to him, was she saying two are better than one? Why would a girl secretly date a pair of identical twins? And yet, he saw, Alicia was just the girl to do it. She was always trying stuff — never a Daiquiri, better a Hurricane; not a joint, better a bong; not marijuana, better kif; not mescaline, better LSD; not Last Tango in Paris, better Deep Throat. Suddenly her hand came up and smacked Michael in the balls, and then she popped away from the tree and scrambled to her feet. Michael doubled over for a second, jumped up, and went after her. Richie stepped to the side and knocked into him. Michael spun toward him, but Richie put his arm up and deflected the blow. “Oh yeah?” barked Michael, and Alicia said, mockingly, “So I get it: you’re the bad twin, huh, Mike?” But she was backing away.

Richie said, “Alicia, you should get out of here. I know when he’s mad, and he’s mad.”

Alicia said, “I can take care of myself, thanks.”

Just then, Michael punched her, not him, right on the jaw. Having been the recipient of one of these on several occasions, Richie flinched. “Leave her the fuck alone, Michael!” he shouted. “Just mind your own business!” He stepped toward them.

Alicia opened the flap of her bag. She had a pair of scissors in her hand, holding them like a knife. Richie had the swirling feeling that things had gotten out of control. He shouted again, in a kind of strangled voice, “Why did you start in with him? You were dating me! We were having fun!”

But she was staring at Michael, and then she stabbed him in the arm, the wrong arm — the left arm was the wrong arm, since he was right-handed. He swung his right, knocked her to the ground, knelt down over her, and began slapping her. Blood was soaking the sleeve of his shirt, but he didn’t seem to feel anything other than fury; Richie had seen this many times, too. The scissors had been knocked away. Richie picked them up out of the leaves and tossed them deeper into the woods. Alicia was squirming, kicking, but Michael, straddling her, was pinning her hands with his legs and slapping. Richie did the only thing he could think to do, which was aim a kick right at him, right at his bleeding shoulder. He kicked him off her, and as Michael went down, he said, “Shit, whose side are you on, anyway?”

Alicia got up, grabbed her bag and her coat, and ran. She was crying. By now it was nearly dark. Michael lay on his back, quiet, and Richie stood next to a tree. They could hear Alicia running, and then they couldn’t. Then all they could hear was the sounds of birds. When it was really dark, Richie said, “When did you meet her?” and Michael said, “What do you care?”

At the infirmary, they gave Michael a bunch of shots and said that the wound was serious but not dangerous, as long as he kept it clean and didn’t use that arm — the “weapon” (the boys had said it was a knife) had pierced the triceps brachii muscle fairly deeply. Richie went back and forth about calling Alicia, but then was too cowardly to do it. On the last day of exams, two weeks later, he ran into her friend Eileen, who scowled at him and said, “Alicia told me you and your brother attacked her.” Eileen wanted him to explain or contradict this — Eileen had thought he was a nice guy. But he could think of nothing to say.

—

EVERYONE KNEW that the Russians had bought four or five hundred thousand tons of corn right after Nixon was elected in 1968, and everyone knew that Nixon had turned a blind eye to it. And why not? Joe said to John. They need it, we’ve got it. Clarence Palmby, the guy in the Nixon Ag Department who ran the deal, was about Joe’s age, from Minnesota. If you squinted, you could see him sitting in the Denby Café, sprinkling sugar in his coffee and making his case, just the way Dave Crest did, or Ralph Thorn. Everyone also said that the Russkies were paying cash — that’s what gangsters always did, wasn’t it? — and of course this was just the tip of the iceberg. Then everyone forgot about it, because the longshoremen said they wouldn’t load it and the Russkies said they wouldn’t pay for American ships to transport it, so that was that. What with Vietnam and then Watergate, there was nothing in the paper about grain deals, and the ag report you heard on the radio every morning was about the same as what you heard in town.

Earl Butz, the actual secretary of agriculture, everyone in Denby did not know. He was from Indiana somewhere, and wherever he was from, they did not do what Iowans did, which was to leave unpleasant thoughts unspoken. Joe agreed with that remark, though—“Adapt or die,” even if dying was the most likely outcome. As Rosanna said, “You know what he’s thinking, which is a welcome change.” When Butz and Palmby trotted off to Russia and came back, there were no rumors about what they had found out. Palmby disappeared, but Butz was right out there, saying this and saying that about how great for the average farmer this deal was going to be. Then Palmby reappeared, working for Continental Grain, so of course there was conflict of interest, and then Continental put through the biggest grain deal in the history of the world, and the Russians walked away with millions of tons of corn, wheat, and beans at a very good price — hardly a penny of which filtered down to the farmers sitting around the Denby Café. What did filter down was the conviction that it was time to get out of the hog business. All at once, corn was as golden as it looked, meaning expensive, and a farmer had to decide if he should send the hogs to slaughter and sell the gold itself. Some of the farmers at the café thought Palmby had made a typical Minnesota hash of his appearance before Congress. Had the sale to the Russkies driven up prices of wheat, flour, bread? Yes. Had the sale of corn driven up the price of meat and eggs? Yes. A fellow from Chicago would have said, “Maybe,” or “We can’t demonstrate that,” but a fellow from Blue Earth, Minnesota — what could you expect? The lesson Joe took from the whole thing was that people in the cities had no idea where their bread and steaks came from, and no one in the government was planning to tell them.

—

ANDY LOOKED AROUND and smiled. Only about ten members here today; quite a storm brewing — cold, blustery, dark, and you could see your breath — but the church basement was probably warmer than her house. It was at least better populated. Frank was in— Well, Frank was somewhere. There had been a breakthrough with his supersonic underwater missile. She could say he was in Hollywood, selling it to the movies. This was her joke, and it made her smile even more cheerfully. Then, when Roman was finished talking about his birthday (he had written notes of apology to both his ex-wives), she stood up. She said, “I’m Andy and I am an alcoholic. I just want to list a few things that I am grateful for today, not including the weather, of course.” She cleared her throat. “The first thing is that my son Richard flunked out of Cornell and is now at Rutgers. The reason I am grateful is that I can see how this might be the best thing for him, because his twin brother, Michael, is still at Cornell, and this is the first time they’ve been separated. I was at Rutgers over the weekend to take him some things, and a girl called him, and he smiled when he was talking to her, which made him look very handsome. I know both my sons were drinking at Cornell, but enough said about that. Anyway, I am grateful to have Richard closer now, less than fifty miles away.

“Another thing I’m grateful for,” said Andy, “is that I finally got a letter from my daughter, Janet, and it included a return address. She left home in the summer, and the only thing she’s sent us up till now was a postcard, telling us that if there were an emergency we could call her at a certain number, and when I tried that number, a voice said it was a restaurant, and when I asked for my daughter, the voice said, was it an emergency, and I had to say it wasn’t, because, since coming to meetings, I don’t lie anymore. So the person who answered the phone hung up, and I was pretty sure that it was her. But now I’ve written her a letter, and I did apologize and try to make amends for neglect.

“And, finally,” said Andy, “speaking of lying, I am grateful that I don’t lie anymore. I have to say that my lies did not get me into trouble, at least as far as I know, but, between the lies and the alcohol, I did absolutely get lost, so that I didn’t know which way was up half the time. When you are growing up and the last thing you want to do is make trouble, then lying seems like the easier thing, but so quickly you lose your way.” She looked around, and everyone nodded. They had all had the same experience, hadn’t they?

—

JANET DIDN’T SEE HIM before he squeezed into the pew right beside her and stepped on her foot. Janet pushed over into Cat, and Cat pushed over into Marla, who said, “Ouch.” He said, “Oh, sorry,” and gave Janet a smile, and then he kept looking at her, and smiled again. Janet, Cat, and Marla were at the Temple in San Francisco. The weather was wet — they had taken the ferry, since none of them had a car, and then the bus out to Geary. It was a long trip. Reverend Jones was getting to be an important man, and you could tell that he knew it and that it just made him more enthusiastic. The Temple had been pretty run-down, but the members had gotten together and fixed it up. Marla said that it was an old Scottish Rite building, “Oh, no black folks in those days. Ha!” One of the reasons for going was to fill that building with black folks and drive out the ghosts of the Masons, and every time they went, they saw that Reverend Jones was able to do that very thing. Reverend Jones was not unknown to Aunt Eloise — according to her, he had started out as a commie, and had told someone when he moved from Indiana to Eureka, up north, that the only way to bring socialism to America was through the back door of a church. Aunt Eloise heard that he had faced up to the bigots in Indiana without flinching. Marla, who did not have any religious background, saw the whole thing as a show, but Cat said if she wanted a show Cat would send her to her AME church back in Texas.

Reverend Jones was going on and on about the nature of heaven, which was, indeed, somewhere over the rainbow, and it was a rainbow made up of all the people in the world. The way you got into heaven was to turn to your brother and your sister and welcome him or her into your heart and your life, and there was heaven, right beside you. Reverend Jones’s sermons didn’t vary much, but they were nice to hear, and harmless, Marla, Cat, and Janet agreed. But Janet wasn’t listening to him as much as she was watching the young man beside her. Because there was such a crush, he was bumped up against her. His leg ran along hers, warming it up. Her dearest wish, right at that moment, was to sneak under his arm and cuddle up to him. And then he glanced around and caught her eye again.

It turned out that his name was Lucas Jordan; he lived in Oakland, too, only about three blocks from their house. He worked as a house-painter and was also in a band — he played drums. Janet told him, “I knew a guy once who was in a band. He said that the drummer had to be the most boring and reliable guy in the band, the only one who never smoked dope.” Lucas Jordan said, “Did this guy know me?” He invited her to come the next night to the bar where they played, and she did, taking Marla with her. The bar was a dive, but the sound system was good, and she fell right in love with Lucas Jordan, who sat on his stool behind the bass drum and never let up, never lost the tempo, never stopped driving everyone in the bar forward into the future, beat by beat.