Early Warning

1983

THE WEDDING, everyone knew but no one admitted, was very sudden. Lillian had never even heard that Jesse had a girlfriend, and maybe, Debbie implied, but only by raising her eyebrows, he still didn’t. However, the girl (her name was Jennifer Guthrie) wasn’t far enough gone to look obvious in her wedding dress, and Lillian was sure that, as the date of parturition approached, there would be some discussion of the eight-pound baby’s having been born six weeks prematurely. You had to say for Lois that she put on as good a wedding as if she had been hired by the bride and her parents for the purpose, and you had to say for Jesse that he looked happy, and you had to say for Jennifer that she was local and knew what she was getting herself into. Frank was saying that he remembered her grandfather, who had been six or seven when Frank was five, and who maybe was on the first football team ever fielded by North Usherton High School, and didn’t he marry Betty Prince, who was what passed for a cheerleader in those days? Lillian had no idea, but she could see that her brother Joe was more cheerful than she had ever seen him in her life, strolling around the Usherton American Legion Hall in a new suit, grabbing elbows and shaking hands, and laughing.

Jesse was a handsome groom, too — muscular the way a twenty-seven-year-old could be. Best to get married at your physical peak and have a year or so of feeling like you really were Warren Beatty and she really was Natalie Wood, and you could evolve into your humdrum paunchy selves a little at a time. Lillian looked over at Arthur, who was dancing with Andy. Andy had not evolved — she was more like a fly in amber — but she gracefully followed where Arthur led, and every time Arthur swung her around, he looked past her ear, caught Lillian’s gaze, and smiled. Lillian said, “Andy is a good dancer.”

“She’s pliable,” said Frank.

Lillian disapproved of the casual disrespect Frank always showed when he talked about Andy, but she had to admit that Andy didn’t seem to notice, or else seemed to think she deserved it. Lillian said, “She told me her brother broke his leg.”

“His sixty-year-old leg, on a black-diamond slope in Vail. Running the moguls. They had to helicopter him out, and it wasn’t easy. But he’s getting around. I think he abandoned his crutches after two weeks. Andy said that he doesn’t consider pain to be important.”

“Emily is cute.”

“Isn’t she?” said Frank. “She likes to stand there with her hands on her hips, giving you a disapproving stare. She reminds me of Mama.”

“She’s like Janet. She has high standards.”

“Indeed,” said Frank.

Lillian decided not to pursue this line of conversation. She said, “I would have loved to see Richie, and I’m sorry Michael and Loretta couldn’t come.”

“Loretta is calving again, you know,” said Frank. “And the yearling isn’t even weaned yet.”

“That’s very traditional.”

“Very California. Andy is all in favor. Richie has a new job, and he has to look like he’s paying attention for at least three months.”

“Our kids seem better prepared than we were.”

“Do they?” said Frank. “The older I get, the more amazed I am that parenthood is reserved for the young and foolish. Seems like a recipe for doom, if you ask me.”

“You never seemed young and foolish.”

Frank turned and regarded her. His suit fit perfectly, and he still had that predatory look. He said, “The less young and foolish you seem, the more young and foolish you are.”

“If you could give them one piece of advice, what would it be?”

“Don’t do what I did. How about you?”

Lillian looked at Arthur, who was spinning Andy around. She, of course, had a catalogue of worries, but they couldn’t be boiled down to a single thing to avoid. In fact, she was taken aback by Frank’s remark. Finally, she said, “Don’t wait too long to go to Paris?”

Frank laughed out loud in a way she’d hardly ever heard him, and she could not help being ignited into merriment herself. He said, “I think I’ll write that down.”

Just then, the music ended. Arthur escorted Andy back to the table, where she smiled, picked up her handbag, and wafted toward the ladies’ room. Arthur sat down and took a sip of his champagne, then a bite of the wedding cake. He said, “Well, I kept my ears open. You want the news?”

“So much,” said Lillian.

“Let’s see. They met at a party in Ames when Jesse was down there last fall, visiting his old roommate, who is now in the engineering school, and when they started talking, they realized that they remembered each other from the crèche at Sunday school, lo these twenty years ago, before her family switched to the Foursquare Gospel in Usherton, and she went to South Usherton High, because their house was just inside the boundary between the two districts. She went to Cornell College over in Mount Vernon and studied chemistry.”

“Due date?” said Frank.

“Hush-hush. Didn’t get that one yet,” said Arthur.

“Family income?”

“The farm is paid off,” said Arthur.

“Oh, stop,” said Lillian, then, “Good.”

“She has an aunt by marriage who once knew Frank here.”

“Who was that?” said Frank.

“Do you remember a Eunice someone?”

Lillian saw it — Frank turned pale. Then he said, “Maybe.”

“She’s at the wedding.”

“No, she is not,” said Frank.

“She is.”

Lillian thought Frank almost looked angry. Arthur seemed not to notice. He said, “To the left of the buffet, in the blue dress. Short, a little osteoporotic.”

They all stared. Andy, who returned, said, “What are you looking at?” Then, “Oh, Eunice. Poor Eunice. She is unrecognizable.”

Frank said, “But you recognized her.”

“She recognized me. She’s Betty Prince’s cousin’s second wife. He works for Monsanto. They came up from St. Louis.”

And now Lillian saw the really odd thing: Andy, the most dizzy, accepting, hapless woman in the world, drove her gaze into Frank like a knife, daring him to react. Arthur saw it, too. He and Lillian exchanged a glance and dropped their eyes. When they looked up again, normal life had somehow resumed. Frank said, “I should say hi, anyway.”

“Yes, you should,” said Andy.

It was time to toss the bouquet. There wasn’t a stairway in the American Legion Hall, but there was a small stage, so the three bridesmaids and two other girls gathered just in front, where the stage bowed out, and Jenny stood above them, now dressed in a green suit with big shoulder pads and white trim. She turned her back and threw the gardenias straight into the air. All the girls in their yellow bridesmaids’ dresses threw their arms out and started shouting. It was the youngest who caught them, athletically, as if she were going for a rebound. She laughed and put her face into them, then handed them to someone who looked like her older sister. Now everyone followed Jesse and Jenny out to the car — Rosanna’s eleven-year-old Volkswagen, still running like a champ. They were driving to the airport in Des Moines, then honeymooning at a resort in Arizona.

Lillian, who was holding on to Arthur’s arm, caught sight of the Eunice woman making her way up to Frank. It was amazing — they didn’t even look like members of the same generation. The woman had blue hair and a frail demeanor. More amazing than that, she gave Frank’s arm a familiar little squeeze. Arthur said, “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“I’m not sure I would,” said Lillian.

“Just for the drama aspect,” said Arthur.

Lillian shook her head.

That night, settling into the very comfortable bed Joe and Lois had vacated for them, Lillian said, “Do you think Frank has a sense of humor?”

“Frank is a terrible romantic, sweetheart. He has always worn his heart on his sleeve.”

“Frank? I never noticed that,” said Lillian.

“It’s a very small heart,” said Arthur.

—

IN THEIR ROOM at the Usherton Best Western, Andy had taken the bed by the window and Frank had taken the bed by the bathroom. It was the first time they’d shared a room in a number of years, and Frank decided his best bet was to pretend to fall right to sleep, thereby avoiding any conversation. Andy said nothing about Eunice in the car; the only thing she said at all was that Arthur acted worried and Lillian looked pale and tired. In fact, she seemed in pain. Frank had thought so, too, but what business was it of theirs? The more interesting one for him was Claire, who’d come into the church flanked by two tall young men who could not be, but were, Gray and Brad. There was plenty of good news about the boys — Gray had gotten early admission to Penn; Brad was a forward on the junior varsity basketball team, and his team was in contention for the league title. Throughout the wedding and reception, they had shadowed their mother — not as if they were shy, but as if they dared not let her out of their sight. Even when two of Jenny’s cousins had come up to flirt openly, Gray kept one eye on his mother. Thinking of Jenny made Frank think of Jesse. Jesse had been quietly attentive, had asked him if he had any advice, had seemed to want to be sure that Frank was not just satisfied with Jen, but impressed by her. He wasn’t, but she was a Guthrie — Guthries were harmless. And she had hugged him with easy good nature, as if she was expressing affection rather than obligation.

Content with this small pleasure, Frank began his customary going-to-sleep ritual, which was counting backward in fives from a thousand, but around the time he got to 435, he couldn’t help coughing, which unfortunately indicated that he was awake, and when he did, Andy said, in a perfectly clear and nonsleepy voice, “Claire has grown into her looks.”

He said, “I was thinking about Claire, too.”

“I always felt sorry for her.” Her tone was even and cool.

“You did?” said Frank. He opened his eyes. The room was hardly dark at all, with the lights from the parking lot blazing on the ceiling. Frank wished they had somehow managed to fly home after the wedding, but the weather was threatening even now. There could be another night in the Best Western.

“She only married Dr. Paul because she was still in mourning for your father. But your mother didn’t like her enough to notice.”

Frank did not feel that it was his job to defend his mother — she defended herself from the grave perfectly well. However, he didn’t disagree with Andy’s assessment. Andy said, “But now I think she’s lucky.”

“Who’s lucky?”

“Claire.” Then she rustled around in her bed and said, ruminatively, “When your parents don’t like you, then you are free.”

Frank rolled onto his side and looked at her. There was so much light reflecting off the pale walls that he could see her perfectly. He said, “Your parents liked you.”

“Didn’t they, though? My father especially. But, you see, there you are.”

And he knew right then that she meant that she had never been free. That was not what he had assumed she held against him, not at all. He said, “I am sorry if you never felt free, Andy.”

Just then, lying there, staring at her across the little space between the beds, he saw how the architecture of her face remained unchanged by forty years. Her cheekbones and her jawline and her nose were a little more finely modeled, and her blue, blue eyes were a little more deeply set. Her lips were thinner, but not too thin. He laughed at Andy these days, almost as a reflex — but he had not laughed at her at the beginning. He had, in fact, been afraid of her. That was why he had taken refuge in fucking Eunice, in obsessing about Eunice even though he’d hated her, hated her somehow for Lawrence’s sake. And now Lawrence had been dead for four decades. Andy smiled, and her smile was still wide and pleasing. She said, “You did your best, Frank.” Which wasn’t much — Frank finished the thought in his own mind. Then, just to be sure that he knew she was not being ironic, she reached across the space and squeezed his hand, a reassuring, motherly squeeze. She turned away from him. Frank started his counting ritual over but lost interest at 635. After that, he lay there, looking at the lights blaring and rippling across the ceiling. Andy went to sleep, silent and still. He was always surprised at how people thought of him, surprised that they did think of him. He thought of himself as the observer, but really, he was the observed, wasn’t he? Maybe he had spent his whole life trying to escape that very thing.

—

ELOISE WOULD HAVE LIKED to go to the wedding, but she hadn’t been able to get out — planes canceled because of the weather. She had finally given up, telling herself that maybe she would go in the late spring. She had a strange desire to see Iowa one last time — she hadn’t been there since Rosanna’s funeral. She always jokingly called everything east of the Sierras “the humid lands.” Nothing about Denby or Usherton ever tickled her imagination the way California did. But this year’s floods had killed the West Coast romance. San Mateo was a disaster area. Marin was a disaster area. Oakland, always in some sense a disaster area, was cloudy, dark, wet, and threatening, and for the first time in her life, Eloise had had the drapes closed all day — she felt the sense of something encroaching, something like a mudslide, slow and inexorable, not something like a tornado, quick and random.

Maybe her mood came from going through closets and tossing old clothes and shoes. Pink high heels! Could she have bought those? It boggled the mind. Good heavens, as Rosanna would have said, she was seventy-seven! Revolutionaries did not live to be seventy-seven. Buddhists lived to be seventy-seven, and she still knew a few of those, with whom she got along well enough. With three boxes of old clothes to take to the Goodwill, Eloise was wise enough to admit that her life had been a failure, but she didn’t exactly mind it. She liked to think of herself as a sport — a branch of a peach tree that had happened to produce nectarines. She had violated her Lysenkoist principles enough to wonder about some of the Vogels and the Augsbergers, both in Iowa and back in Germany — either there were some malcontents hiding back there, or some woman somewhere had imported another genome into the family. However, she knew by her sense of humor, so offensive to every comrade over the years, that she was indeed related to Opa.

Her first mistake today had been to look at the paper even though she hated Reagan. She had been suspicious of Reagan from the beginning. In California, he had extended the right of public workers to strike, but he had fired the air-traffic controllers when they struck, showing his true colors — born-again union buster. But more than Reagan, she hated his advisers: James Watt, made secretary of the interior specifically to destroy that very interior. She hated Anne Gorsuch, and she hated Rita Lavelle (now, thank goodness, fired). In her opinion, Rita Lavelle was not the bad apple, she was the open sore that indicates the underlying infection, and the underlying infection, in the Reagan administration, was the drive to suck as much out of the ground as possible and make a few people as rich as they could be. She’d heard that Watt said something about Jesus returning soon, so what did the earth matter — it was there to be put to the use of man, anyway. This was a sentiment people from places like Wyoming often expressed. It was a sentiment the Perronis adhered to, and it was a sentiment profoundly allied to another sentiment — that no one was going to tell a Perroni what to do. If someone tried, that person might get shot. It was not an Iowa sentiment; people in Oakland and Berkeley, who worked, like Eloise did, in co-ops and on local weeklies, laughed at this sentiment, but Eloise did not, having talked to Mrs. Perroni, who was if anything harder around the eyes and more uncompromising than Mr. Perroni. A hundred thousand acres! The hundred thousand acres owed them something, and Mrs. Perroni was going to make it pay. After Eloise looked at the paper, these feelings had rolled around in her head all day, and because the weather was so bad, she couldn’t get out and take a walk away from them.

She had sold her car. Even Rosa didn’t know she had sold the car. But what happened was, she had fallen into the habit of not turning around to back up — her neck and her shoulders hurt too much when she turned around. She had carefully looked in all three mirrors, left, right, center, and she had done so three times each. She knew that there was nothing behind her. Except that there was something. She hit it, felt it drag, heard the sound of it scraping the pavement. In her panic, she touched the accelerator rather than the brake, and bumped out into the street. Only then had she stopped, turned off the car, leapt out, and rushed around to see one of those plastic tricycles toddlers rode these days — a Big Wheel or something, red and yellow, and fortunately without its toddler. Maybe it had rolled down the street from a neighbor’s house, since the toddler was nowhere. But Eloise had been so upset that she’d gone back in the house and lain on the couch for an hour, then called the Ford dealer to find out what she could get for her car, only four years old and with thirty-four thousand miles on it. She would not drive it again; the representative from the dealership came and got it the next day, and she was relieved to see it go.

It was no big deal to be without the car — she could rent her driveway for fifty dollars a month to her neighbor, who had three cars. She was a good walker, good enough to get to the co-op if she took her time and pushed a little trolley. And the co-op was next to the drugstore, and the drugstore was next to the clinic, and so on and so forth. It was manageable. But if she asked someone to drive her one more time to Drakes Bay, a couple of hours, the purest place in California, then could she walk the beach in her own time, and in total solitude make up her mind?

And what was she making up her mind about? And who cared? And why did she still care? Rosa had asked her this question this morning, when she called to report on conditions in Big Sur (Highway 1 was out again, but they were fine). Rosa was Eloise’s principal Buddhist, though she didn’t call herself that. If you asked in a mild tone of voice that didn’t imply a single thing (a tone of voice Eloise could rarely manage) how Rosa viewed her adult life, she would talk about phases, old mistaken desires that had been outgrown or shucked off. She “made no judgments” (except, of course, of Eloise), “had no desires” (except that Eloise stop harassing her), and “took things as they came” (except remarks by Eloise that sometimes caused them to be not on speaking terms for a month or two). But Eloise did make judgments, did have desires, and seemingly could not take things as they came, and she had this feeling that if she could just organize her self-contradictory thoughts she would come up with a program of why care and how to care, and, somehow, she would leave a record of this, and then her life wouldn’t be wasted. But she did not want to be someplace like Esalen, and have positive feelings and forgiveness cloud her mind. She wanted to figure out a way to get Rita Lavelle, Anne Gorsuch, and James Watt to denounce themselves, feel shame, feel regret, engage in sincere criticism and self-criticism, and then do penance.

And yet she knew at seventy-seven that it could not be done. And she also knew that James Watt, Anne Gorsuch, and Rita Lavelle would ask her, just as she asked them, was she ready to do penance for the slaughter of the Russian peasantry? For the Gulag? For the Great Leap Forward? For the takeover of Poland? For the Berlin Wall? For the Stasi? For the Khmer Rouge? For, indeed, Reverend Jones? And when they asked her this, she would squirm in her chair and say just what comrades had said year after year, decade after decade—“Mistakes were made.”

What if, Eloise thought, they were all nice people, as she herself was a nice person? What if, between gutting the Environmental Protection Agency and allowing PCBs to flood into the rivers, Anne Gorsuch worked in soup kitchens and nursed the poor? What if, between authorizations of the sale of every piece of public land in America, James Watt played with his grandchildren? Hadn’t Eloise been shocked at the murder of Lord Mountbatten, imperialist pig, whom she had detested ever since he sent Julius to his death at Dieppe? A few summers ago, when the IRA blew him up with his wife and his grandson and that poor local child, hadn’t Eloise thought first of how awful it was? Only later had she wondered whether at the final moment he’d had time for regret.

Was human nature inherently good? Eloise and Julius had disagreed on this one. Eloise had said yes, look at herself, look at her parents — if you showed people the way to do good, they would want to. Julius had said no, look at himself, look at his family — coercion was essential, eggs had to be broken. That was human nature. He thought she was naïve; she thought he was bad-tempered; neither of them saw the other one as the other one saw himself, herself.

Eloise went to the kitchen. Assam? Constant Comment? Mint? She made a cup of each and set them in a row on her coffee table. Finally, finally, finally, when she turned on the show, her show, Hill Street Blues, and saw that familiar attractive Sergeant Esterhaus starting the day’s shift at the mysterious precinct station (Eloise always imagined Chicago), she forgot, more or less, about Hobbes and Locke and her aches and pains and the rain that had been going on for days. Her brain remained a pleasant blank for the rest of the night — while she put her cups in the sink, while she made sure the doors were locked and checked the windows in the sunporch, while she brushed her teeth and put on her nightgown and straightened her bedclothes, which hadn’t been made by anyone that morning after she got up. By her, that was. Her book was by her bed—Memoirs of Hecate County. Hard to believe it had been censored, but it had. She was having a little trouble getting through it, though. She decided not to disturb her blankness by trying again tonight. She got into bed.

Oh, it was comfortable on a rainy day to do nothing. To think of that long beach, so flat, so remote from everything. Eloise sighed and yawned, then yawned again. If it stopped raining and she got to the co-op tomorrow, she had to remember Brie. She had a craving for Brie lately, and every night, she thought, Brie, and every day she forgot it. She had left the light on in the bathroom. No, she hadn’t. Brie, she thought, Brie.

—

EMILY HAD TO eat a bowl of Cheerios and some fruit, and she had to drink milk. Emily didn’t mind Cheerios. One of the main things that she held against Mom was that she had to drink four glasses of milk every single day while Mom stood nearby. Mom said, “You are very thin, Emily.” Then she shook her head. In order to make herself happy while she was choking down her milk, Emily watched her dog, Eliza. Emily knew everything about Eliza. Eliza was almost two, a black-Lab/golden-retriever mix; she slept in Emily’s room, right beside the bed (sometimes she worked her way under the bed, and then, when she wiggled, the bed jiggled, which made Emily laugh). She knew how to sit, stay, come, down, and catch a dog biscuit. When Mom told her to do these things, she did them right away. When Emily told her to do them, she lolled her tongue out of her mouth as if she were smiling, and did them, but a little more slowly. Eliza went to the back door and whined. Mom let her out.

Emily jumped off her chair, showed Mom her bowl, and set it next to the sink. Mom said, “Oh, okay.”

Emily walked toward the swings, but really she was watching Eliza, who looked sneaky, the way she looked when she was planning to steal something. Mom always laughed at the stealing — a glove, a shoe, always found in her dogbed.

Emily sat on the swing with her toe on the ground, pushing herself back and forth, her arm hooked around the chain. Eliza went over and lay down under the mulberry tree; Emily bent down and stared at her. In the next yard, Mrs. Gilkisson came out, carrying a bowl; she walked briskly across the yard, and opened the door of the chicken house. A few moments later, she came out, pulled the door, and walked back into her own house.

Now Emily went over to the sandbox and sat down in the middle. She picked up a trowel and began to smooth the sand idly. Eliza got up, walked along the fence, and, when she got to a certain spot in the honeysuckle, slipped through. Emily hadn’t realized a hole was there, but when she went over and pushed aside the honeysuckle, she could see it. Emily stood very still and watched Eliza, who crept along the fence line until she came to the chicken house. She pushed on the door with her nose. The first time it didn’t move, but the second time it did. Eliza went in.

Emily thought that maybe she should shout for Mom, because someone was about to get in trouble. There was noise in the chicken house — the chickens were squawking. Emily got a little afraid. Just then, here came Eliza, out the door. She did not have a chicken in her mouth, and so Emily felt a little less afraid. Even so, she ran back to the swing set and started to swing, pumping. She held tight to the chains, leaned way back, and stuck her legs out as far as they could go, then whipped them back and fell forward. In four strokes, she was pretty high, but she saw Eliza as she came through the fence and headed toward the back of the yard, where the garage was. Emily stopped pumping, let go, and flew out of the swing. She liked doing that.

Eliza had disappeared. Emily looked at the house. No sign of Mom. Emily went very slowly toward the garage, almost tiptoeing. She went around the corner, and there was Eliza, digging with her claws in the dirt. She was digging carefully, using both front feet. Emily watched. The hole she dug was pretty deep, but the ground was soft, so she didn’t have to try very hard. She paused and looked in the hole. Then she went over to something she had set to one side and, very gently, picked it up. She put it in the hole. All this time, Emily had been edging closer and closer, and finally, just before Eliza started filling the hole, Emily was close enough to see what it was. It was an egg, white and perfect. The dirt landed lightly on it and then covered it. When she was finished covering the egg, Eliza turned in a circle and lay down. She stared at Emily with her ears pricked. Emily went over and petted her, and Eliza licked her chin. Emily said, “Okay, Lizie. I won’t tell.”