Early Warning

1985

THE DAY AFTER Claire’s divorce was finalized, the temperature was thirty below zero, and her windows were rimed with frost flowers. The streets of downtown Des Moines were slick and nearly empty, and Younkers was opening an hour late to give the employees time to get in. Paul had agreed to the divorce when he met Veronica, who was twenty-seven and also a doctor. He had always laughed at the idea of women doctors, but Veronica confined herself to the appropriate field of gynecology. Also, she was petite, and she had maintained an A average at Grinnell and at the University of Iowa College of Medicine. In other words, Claire thought, it would take her thirteen to fifteen years to wake up and realize that she couldn’t take it. She had considerable debt from college and medical school, and so it was fortunate for her that the family-law judge had decided that half of Claire’s inheritance from the sale of the farm should go to Paul. Claire was therefore down to about $150,000. Others were angry on her behalf — most notably Lois and, less passionately, Minnie. But Paul was paying for Gray at Penn and Brad was headed for Haverford, which was, at least, on the East Coast. Brad’s acceptance to Johns Hopkins had nearly caused Paul to ejaculate in ecstasy, according to Gray, but Brad adamantly refused to go there, and Paul had had to settle for the nearest thing.

Claire liked to think that he would also be spending a pretty penny of her money on the Valentine’s Day wedding to Veronica, which was to take place at the ever-desirable Wakonda Country Club, and who would certainly be there but her former best friend, Ruth. According to Gray, Ruth was bosom buddies with Paul, and she had urged him to let her take Veronica in hand and give her advice on how to cook Paul’s favorite dishes. Gray said this in an ironic tone, with his eyebrows raised in amusement. Claire thought that, whatever it was she had done to damage her son’s psyche, he seemed to express it in a stream of jokes that were charming and rueful. He could not possibly have gotten his sense of humor from Paul, so she took credit for that. One day, he had said to her, “Do you hate my dad?” She had surprised herself by saying that she didn’t — of course she didn’t. When he responded, “I do, sometimes,” she had said, “He does his best.” And that was the tragedy, wasn’t it? Just like Hamlet, just like Macbeth, just like Lear, he did his best (Claire thought it was funny that she had read all of those now, on her own, just sitting up in bed). And that was the point — not that they were kings or princes, and therefore grander than you or me, but that they made their own downfall by being who they were (something that, even more tragically, was not set in stone, according to the divorcees and therapists she knew). So she felt sorry for Paul now, and her hatred had left no tangible trace.

She finished her cup of coffee and set the cup in the sink, then started to get ready to go to work: fur-lined boots; her goose-down calf-length hooded and belted coat, which she had bought in Minneapolis; her sheepskin gloves. When she opened the street door of her apartment building, the wind nearly yanked it out of her hand, and she had to clutch her handbag tightly and turn her hooded head to one side. Even then, her eyes teared up. Was this nuclear winter? Three blocks, and because she lived downtown, she was expected to be there. Two cars passed her, going very slowly, and when she stepped outside of the shelter of the tall buildings and had to negotiate the streets, the buffeting crosswinds nearly knocked her down. The sky was clear, which was the reason for the winds, but at least there wouldn’t be any more snow. She dipped her chin more deeply into her hood.

When she got to the store, Les, one of the maintenance staff, was waiting. He let her in, and he let in Bev Kinder, who worked in the shoe department. From inside her scarf, Bev said, “You should come over and see my spring styles. You can’t believe how high my stilettos are going to be. Scares me to death.” Claire laughed, and Les said, “I’ve given up stilettos myself, ladies, ’cept for hammering stuff.” Bev said, “Oh, Les.”

Claire unsnapped her coat. “I can’t believe there’ll be many customers in this weather.”

Bev shrugged. “If they make it, they’ll buy something, just because they feel so heroic. I love days like today.”

The $150,000 at 9 percent interest gave her $13,500 per year — not much. Her job at Younkers was in the housewares department, and most of the time she either made beds or demonstrated KitchenAid mixers. Though she would have given herself up to Nicaraguan revolutionaries before using a dough hook on her own time, the fact was, she looked just like a woman in a Betty Crocker ad, bright and slender, but too domestic to be a threat. At work, she wore a thin gold band that looked like a wedding ring. Her badge read “Claire,” though, so she was not actually lying about her postmarital status. Young brides and brides-to-be came up to her every day and asked for advice about what they would need in their new lives. She was a whiz with the bridal registry.

After hanging up her coat and changing into her store shoes — two-inch stacked heels, very matronly — she walked around the bedding displays. The whites and laces in which she had done up the display beds the week before now looked frigid, so she rustled up two livelier ensembles, a nice old-fashioned patchwork quilt in pink and green with four different pillow shams that was springlike and cheerful, and a red, white, and blue set that was always appropriate. She even changed the dust ruffles, because the one for the red, white, and blue set was pleated, which looked really elegant. Her “ensemble” at home was a beige down comforter from Lands’ End, plain and thick. Two people could not sleep under it without going into a sweat, which was fine with Claire.

She had thought of moving away from Des Moines, but if she wanted to stay with Younkers, her only choices were Fort Dodge, Waterloo, Burlington, and Dubuque. She had flirted with moving to Minneapolis and finding a job at Dayton’s. She loved downtown Minneapolis, which had turned into a giant mall, with really good food and great shopping, but each of the three times she’d been there, it had been at least twenty degrees colder and 20 percent darker than Des Moines. Claire did not understand quite how a mere 250 miles could make such a difference, but it seemed to. In other words, she was stuck, and clearly the rest of her family thought so, too, because Andy kept inviting her to New York, Minnie said she could accompany her on her trip to Oaxaca or to Maui, the two places she would be going next, and Lois kept inviting her up to Denby to see Guthrie, who was nineteen months old, and Perky, short for “Franklin Perkins,” four months old. She had seen the babies. The babies were fine, and nothing more than babies, in Claire’s view.

—

THIS LATEST CRISIS WAS not seen by anyone but Janet herself as a crisis. What had happened was, the weather was terrible, her mother missed Emily, and so, during one of those meandering conversations she did not mind having with her mother these days, but which lulled her into relaxing her vigilance, she agreed that they would meet for a week at the Pinehurst Resort. Before they left, Janet had simply imagined herself wandering around in the humid warmth of North Carolina, maybe going over to Southern Pines for a day or so to watch a horse show. Even though Jared had said to her that he was on the verge of a breakthrough that was going to make them a lot of money, Janet had not sensed the danger.

She watched him on the putting green with her father. She went to one little Wednesday horse show and wondered if having a horse would be possible in Iowa. Emily looked at the horses with fear and distaste, standing at a distance, holding Andy’s hand, but Janet got close, stroked equine noses with her fingertips, took in the mesmerizing scent, appreciated the snorts and head tossings, asked mildly intelligent questions of the owners. The closed-in piney warmth of the environment, the ease of the rocking chairs on the veranda, the casual beauty of the place were delightful, but then Jared said that they should buy property — you could buy a square-yard lot on the grounds and get privileges at the club. And they could live in the Research Triangle. Even compared with Iowa City, houses in Raleigh were…

“The Research Triangle is more than an hour from Pinehurst — it would be like working in Iowa City and living in Davenport.”

Jared blinked, informing her that her voice was sharp, then said, “Your dad says Raleigh is a great place to invest, a real center of education and on the East Coast….”

Janet had been hired just the previous fall as an adjunct assistant professor of technical writing. She taught three sections per week, twenty geeks in each section, many of whom did not speak English as a first language, even though they may have grown up in America and had American parents. They all spoke computer as a first language, and as a computer in-law, it was Janet’s job to show them how to reveal their thoughts and ideas to people whose last experience of math concerned the sides of a right triangle. She said, “I like my job.” She had to pretend that she understood almost nothing in order to motivate her students to be ever more clear and simple-minded. They thought she was a dope, but she brandished the weapon of grades. Her office mate in EPB, who taught beginning literature courses, had students who sat pensively outside the office door with their legs stuck out in front of them, waiting to discuss their revelations while reading On the Road and 1984. Janet had noticed at parties that when she said she taught technical writing, whoever she was talking to tended to start looking around the room. She said again, “I really like my job.”

Jared gave her a flat look, a look that informed her that she was sounding enraged or crazy.

That evening, sitting in the much-bewindowed dining room at the Pinehurst Resort, watching her father and Jared’s conversation drop from idle to intense, she understood that the self-protective little pod she had built — staying in Iowa City, avoiding family gatherings as much as possible, never taking money from or talking about her father, pretending Michael and Richie did not really exist — would crack apart. It would soon begin, flights in and out of Cedar Rapids, Jared alight with possibility, her father calling them. And what would she say—“I’ll get him,” or “I’m fine. Emily is good. I’ll get him”? That was the most she could imagine. Of course, Jared could install his own line, just for these calls. All these thoughts came to her within three or four minutes — long enough for her mother to walk with Emily over to the buffet and back. Emily sat in her chair, and Janet saw her father look at the child with interest, maybe for the first time ever, and why was that? Because she was related to Jared, and Jared had a lucrative idea. Janet stood up, said that she had a headache, and went back to her room.

Once there, she thought of phoning Debbie. She had phoned Debbie repeatedly since Aunt Lillian’s death. It was not that Debbie was especially sympathetic or even wise — Debbie was not quite three years older than she was, and about that much wiser. But Debbie had Aunt Lillian’s voice. It was a warm, good-natured, alto voice, and it pronounced certain words just as Aunt Lillian had. Debbie had let her know that she could not give Janet advice, much less let her go on and on long-distance. She was busy. She had a job and a family and grief of her own. Have I always been like this, Janet thought, so unself-consciously needy and talkative?

The answer was yes.

So she didn’t call Debbie.

Back in Iowa City, Jared didn’t speak to her for almost a week, but then his friend Oz suggested they move to San Jose. Jared brought this idea home as if it were a revelation. Janet did not panic, but said, “I’ve never been to San Jose.” She thought, no rain, no Lucas, no Reverend Jones, no Cat. And her dad three thousand miles away. She said, “I hear San Jose is quite sunny.” Jared threw his arms around her. She said, “Horses year-round in San Jose.”

Jared kissed her.

—

JESSE HAD GONE to the feed store in North Usherton to do some errands and stopped to buy Pampers. He didn’t have much cash — what farmer these days carried much cash? When he went to write out a check for the supplies, thirty-two bucks, Pete at the market said, “I can’t take that check, Joe,” and that was the first they heard about the Denby and Randolph Bank going under. For Jesse it was a shock and an inconvenience — Pete let him drive away, knowing someone would come in and pay the money — but for Joe himself it was something more. When Jesse found him and told him, Joe gazed into the hot, sunlit dust floating in the barn and felt paralyzed. They had a loan with Denby and Randolph, and they also had accounts there — Lois’s shop account, their joint checking account, the farm account, and a savings account. Joe jumped in the truck and drove to Denby, but he didn’t have to tell Lois: she was standing in the doorway of the shop, her lips a thin line, staring across the square at the bank, where a couple of guys were already taking down the bank sign. When she saw him, she said, “Good thing I sold that love seat yesterday, and an even better thing that I haven’t deposited this week’s receipts.”

He told her about Jesse’s exchange at the market.

“The kids got any cash?”

“I doubt it,” said Joe.

“Min always said there was a reason she did her banking in Usherton, but she could never remember what it was. Now we know. I guess she’ll take care of them for a few weeks.”

And so in spite of the suicides and foreclosures they kept hearing about, it wasn’t exactly like the thirties — there was the FDIC — but Joe had no idea how long it would take for their accounts to be repaid, or, indeed, whether there might be some snafu there, too. And the farm, well, in the thirties it had been worth fifteen or was it ten dollars an acre — Rosanna had told him that. Now it was worth maybe a thousand, a third of what Frank had paid Gary, and sliding. Would Walter have considered him a success or a failure? He was getting so many bushels per acre that the government was going to subsidize the farmers to take acreage out of cultivation, but no one in the Denby Café was going to take his best land out of cultivation — only the parts that had some slope or were swampy or ran along the river or were, frankly, exhausted. And that’s what Joe was going to do, too, and he expected to get 175 bushels an acre of corn and forty of beans and not to be able to pay his bills and to get a little check in a Christmas card from Frank to cover the shortfall. Dave Crest and Russ Pinckard and Rudy Jenkins always seemed to give him the eyeball, as if they knew he had a rich relative, and of course they did know it. It was an embarrassment to have a rich relative, and Joe knew perfectly well how specific knowledge of the shortfall got to Frank — Jesse’s correspondence with him was pretty regular. He probably told Frank all sorts of things he didn’t tell Joe or Lois. Wasn’t that always the way? Joe felt a stab of jealousy.

He pulled into the drive beside John’s old house, which he and Lois had moved into, leaving the big house to Jesse, Jenny, and Minnie. Jesse called it “the Maze”—it was more spacious than it looked, seven rooms. Back in the 1880s, the builder had marked out a forty-two-foot square, divided it into nine parts, designated the two parts across the right front as the parlor, and two parts along the east side in the back as the kitchen, and the other five parts, square rooms, you could do with as you pleased, so it did have a mazelike quality and Joe liked it. But there was none of the elegance of Roland Frederick’s kit house, with its oak paneling and sliding French doors and wide-planked floors. The Fredericks’ barn was just as rough and simple, but it was big and sturdy. Since they had pulled down Walter’s barn, the only trace of the place he’d grown up on was the Osage-orange hedge, which was thriving and, as always, a pain in the neck.

When he turned off the truck and opened the door, he was hit with a blast of heat. He went up the steps of the porch and looked at the thermometer — over a hundred, but the porch faced south. Might be ninety-eight in the shade. The weather had been doomfully good, and you really could hear the corn grow this time of year, if you could stand it. Chest-high by the Fourth of July.

The farm was still peculiar to him from this vantage point: It spread to the south and west of where he was standing, rather than to the north and east. The house was on a long gentle hill with a view, where John had kept cattle until he died, and which Joe had tried in hay and in beans — that was the part he would take out of cultivation. But the house wasn’t on the hill. For an Iowa farmer, there was nothing desirable about a long sweeping driveway or a grand vista. John had planted a few apple trees; the apples from one of the trees were red streaked with green, not like any of the others, but they made a wonderful pie. And so, yes, all of his dreams had come true.

Joe crossed the road. The roof of the big house was just visible over the ridge, and inside it were the precious ones, Joseph Guthrie, two years old, and Franklin Perkins, ten months. They were another dream come true — they’d sit on the carpet, stacking colorful blocks, knocking them over, laughing, while across the room Lois and Jenny compared notes on how to bake zwieback. But he could see it, looking south — he could see all the layers lift off — the roof of the house, the second floor, the first floor. He could see the children and Jesse and Jenny and Lois and Minnie being lifted out on a fountain of debt and scattered to the winds; then he could see the corn and beans scoured away, and the topsoil, once twelve inches thick, now six inches thick, and below that, the silty clay loam, more gray than black, then the subsoil, brownish clay all the way down, down, down to the yellow layer, mostly, again, clay, all of it exposed, all of it flying into the atmosphere like money, burning up in the hot sunshine, disappearing. He shook his head, closed his eyes, took his cap off, and put it back on. The vista re-formed itself: blue sky, green corn, brown roof.