Early Warning

1986

FOR THEIR WEDDING, which, Richie was told, would take place at City Hall with Ivy’s assistant, Jeanine, as a witness and then would be announced by postcard to all of their friends and relatives, Ivy had required only that they go on a Friday morning, always a slow day at her office, and that it be followed by a cab ride to Katz’s Deli just in time for lunch. Her cousin, four years younger, had gotten married in the fall, at their very liberal synagogue in Philly, under a chuppah, with only the two sets of parents present. No one cried, everyone ate blintzes, and, the cousin told Ivy, they’d spent the first night of their honeymoon at a bed-and-breakfast on the Jersey Shore, ripping open envelopes and counting the money. Somehow, for Ivy, this wedding balanced Michael and Loretta’s “show-off capitalist bacchanal,” and though its effects were slow, they were sure. He had asked her six times if she really wanted to get married, until, finally, she’d taken him to Macy’s, where she helped him buy a navy suit and a pink-and-white striped shirt with a white collar.

They got the license before going to work on Thursday. On Friday, Richie left the office at ten and took a cab over to Worth Street, where he saw Ivy and Jeanine climbing the steps, pulling the big gold door open, and disappearing inside. He didn’t call out, because the requirements of secrecy meant that he would just happen to encounter her there, and they would just happen to get married. It pleased him to see her from across the street. She was attractive from the front, but she was dynamite from the back, with her square shoulders, slender waist, pert ass, and sassy walk: Oh, how nice to meet you, Mr. Roth, Mr. Updike, Mr. Cheever, Ms. Morrison — who do you think you are? Inside, he saw her down the hall, and followed her. As he watched her open the door to the clerk’s office, he got a weird feeling, but it wasn’t until he opened the door himself that he understood the reason — Michael and Loretta were standing there, big grins on their faces. As soon as Michael saw him, he whooped and started laughing. Ivy must not have noticed them in the crowd; she spun around. And then Loretta was putting her arms around Ivy and kissing her and exclaiming, “Why would we let you get away with it? Oh, you look great! You must not be pregnant after all!”

Ivy pinched him, hard, on the biceps as she kissed him hello, so he said to Michael, “What an asshole you are. You’ve been in my stuff.”

“Always,” said Michael, and Richie knew that this was true.

They hadn’t seen Michael and Loretta in months, mostly because of the Donald Manes flap. Back in January, he said he was carjacked, and then it came out that he’d actually tried to commit suicide. In March, he did commit suicide, stabbing himself in the heart while his psychiatrist had him on hold. And then it all came out — bribery, payoffs, Mayor Koch at the top and who knew at the bottom, maybe Alex Rubino. Richie’s boss, Congressman Scheuer, was rich and didn’t need to pay any attention to this, and he rather smoothly, Richie thought, eased himself away from the whole thing. Richie explained to donors that, whatever the flamboyant Queens Borough president may have done, his congressman was a war hero, a polio survivor, a harmonica virtuoso, one of the most powerful men in Washington, but Michael went on and on about how corruption was the soul of the Democratic Party, and not only in New York — Loretta could tell you any number of stories about San Francisco, where her parents would not even go anymore. Richie had met Koch. He hadn’t met Manes, but, oddly enough, he had met Manes’s twin brother when he and Ivy were in Queens, looking at cars. This Manes — Morton, his name was — had the BMW dealership there. “Manes” was an odd name, so Ivy asked him if he knew Donald Manes; Morton said that he was the older twin; then Ivy pointed to Richie and said that he was a twin, also an older one. “Is your twin out of control?” she asked, and Manes rolled his eyes and laughed.

Richie had thought that Loretta, Chance, Tia, and now Binky (also known as Beatrice) were in California for the winter. With a smile, Loretta handed him his boutonniere, a small, fragrant lavender rose. She presented Ivy with bouquet of gardenias and wore a gardenia in her hair. When their names were announced, they went before the officiant, said their vows, and signed their papers; Loretta took pictures with the camera that was in her bag. It wasn’t bad; Richie was almost feeling normal, almost feeling, well, positive, until they went back out onto the front steps of the building and saw twenty or thirty of their friends, shouting congratulations and throwing rice. Ivy pressed herself against him and said, “Oh God!” Richie saw at once that Lynne, Michael’s newest mistress, was in the group, next to a friend of Loretta’s from her cooking-class days. He gripped Ivy’s hand and walked her down the steps, and then there were hugs and congratulations, and they were swept over into Foley Square, where, it appeared, the reception was to take place. How Michael and Loretta had gotten all these phone numbers without Xeroxing Ivy’s Rolodex, Richie could not imagine, unless…He stared at Jeanine — she was smiling, she did not look guilty.

A table, a tablecloth, a cake, champagne, little sandwiches. Richie overheard Loretta telling the woman from her cooking class that she had just gotten in from the ranch three days before; she’d brought the nanny, the nurse, and all three children; they were camped out on top of one another at the place on Fifty-seventh. Michael had done most of the inviting, but of course he’d forgotten the flowers, even the cake — what did he think they were going to eat? She’d done all that. Well, she said, if she ever moved back to New York year-round, she had her eye on Park Avenue in the Sixties, which had a pastoral quality, didn’t you think? As she turned away, the cooking-class woman rolled her eyes. Ivy stood beside the cake, staring at it; it looked like white marble encrusted with carved architectural embellishments, two layers. Jewish weddings never had cake. Richie didn’t know whether this was true. Michael had not bothered to invite any parents. But, then, neither had Ivy. Michael popped the champagne — Moët & Chandon — and Jeanine went around with small plastic cups. When she came up to Richie, he said, “Were you in on this?”

Jeanine said, “Not till this morning. I got there first, and they were waiting. They asked me not to tell.”

“Ivy hates this.”

“Only because she didn’t arrange it,” said Jeanine.

Once everyone had their champagne, the toasts began, and Richie had to stand there smiling — with his arm around Ivy, sometimes gazing at her fondly — while shouts went up. Michael declared himself the best man, raised his glass, and said, “I’ve spent years looking out for my little brother here, making sure that he stayed out of trouble, or at least didn’t get caught, and, finally, here we are, I can pass him over to a better caretaker than I am, knowing he’s safe, or safe-ish — let’s say that!” Everyone laughed and took a sip. The biggest laugher was Lynne. Just for a moment, Loretta looked at her curiously; then she pulled her gaze away from Lynne and lifted her glass. She said, “I never had a sister or a brother, and as soon as I met Ivy, even before she delivered my boy Chance in a bathtub on the twelfth floor of some rat trap, I knew she was the one I wanted. I don’t know if this is their dream, but it is mine, and I’m glad it’s a dream come true!” Everyone shouted “Hurray!” and drank again.

It was time to cut the cake. To Lynne, who was now standing next to Michael, Loretta said, “Oh, excuse me,” her tone implying that maybe Lynne had strayed over from East Broadway. Lynne looked nothing like Loretta: she was compactly built, with short hair and glasses. Richie felt that he was reading Loretta’s mind: Maybe; no; not sexy; not possible. Ivy exclaimed, “It is a beautiful cake. I am so surprised, I’m sort of struck dumb!” and that distracted both Loretta and Lynne. Richie didn’t have to look at Michael to sense that he was thrilled out of his tree at the dangers he was courting. Loretta handed Ivy a silver knife tied with a white satin bow. She held the knife, and Richie held her hand, and they cut a piece out of the cake. They had been to enough weddings to know that now they had to feed each other. Richie’s hand was trembling, so Ivy had to cock her head a little to receive his offering. After everyone shouted and applauded and Ivy started cutting the cake, he heard Loretta say, “We’ve never met. I’m Loretta Langdon.” She was talking to Lynne. Behind them, off to their right, Michael was practically hugging himself with pleasure.

Lynne said, “I thought we did meet. But, if not, we should.” Everyone knew that Michael had mistresses. Everyone knew that, on the very day Binky was born, the reason Loretta hadn’t been able to get hold of him (and had had to give him the news through Richie) was that Michael was up in the Catskills, looking at old Victorians with one of them. Perhaps it was Lynne.

“Why is that?” said Loretta.

Having made her way through ten or twelve slices, Ivy set down the knife. She said, “It really is delicious. Infused with some liqueur — Amaretto? Loretta! Pay attention to me! I am the bride! Who made the cake?”

Loretta turned and smiled again, and Lynne, now looking red-faced and very young, slipped away.

Loretta said, “Veniero’s. They were the real reason I needed you to have a wedding!”

Richie slipped his arm around Ivy, turned her toward him, and kissed her as he had failed to do after the ceremony, deeply, lovingly, thankfully, appreciatively. Saved again.

—

CHARLIE WAS a blond now. He had been a blond for fourteen hours, and every time he looked in the rearview mirror and saw his springy hair, he laughed. Riley, his girlfriend, laughed, too, and squeezed his hand. She was now a redhead. First she had done herself, and then they had gone to the drugstore, gotten the dye, and done him. Riley maintained that if you were leaving home in your new Tercel wagon, heading west on the I-70 toward Kansas and Colorado, out of the woods and onto the plains, to Denver, then new hair was the best preparation. After Denver, who knew? But they both had jobs. Charlie would be working for an outdoor outfitter that also ran hiking tours and rafting trips in the Rockies, and Riley had an internship with the Solar Energy Research Institute. If that jerk Reagan hadn’t cut 90 percent of the institute’s funding (“What did I tell you?” his mom always said, as if anyone she knew had ever voted for Reagan), she might have had a paid job, but an internship could evolve. Rents were cheap; parks were plentiful; guiding raft trips down the Colorado would be fun for Charlie, with his restless temperament. Riley was a great believer in temperament and nature over nurture. Charlie loved Riley. She was never depressed, she could always figure out how to talk people into something (most notably Charlie’s mom and dad), and nothing scared her, not even defunding of solar initiatives. As a redhead, she was quite striking.

And so they drove on, past Topeka now, almost to Abilene. The landscape was flat and hot and larded with names that Riley read off the map to him—“Tonganoxie!” “Salina!” “Cawker City!” “Kanopolis!”—that he then said backward to her “Eixonagnot”—which he pronounced in the French manner—“Anilas, Rekwac Ytic, Siloponak.” Why did they all sound Slavic? (And then they laughed again.) She threw down the map, got up on her knees, and kissed him while he was driving, all along the side of his face. He was twenty-one; he had a wonderful girlfriend and a new car. He stepped on the gas, and the needle eased toward ninety.

—

FRANK WAS SITTING across from Loretta at the dinner table when Andy said, “I got a letter from Frances Upjohn today, and Jim isn’t joining her, not even for the Arc. I guess that’s in three weeks or something.”

“What arc?” said Chance.

Loretta said, “The Arc is a horse race.”

Chance, who was four, had his own pony in California, which he was required to ride bareback. He nodded knowingly.

“Why not?” said Frank.

“He doesn’t want to miss the cranberry harvest, he says, but I—”

“What cranberry harvest?” said Loretta as she sat Binky upright in her lap and hooked the cup of her nursing bra. Frank had to admire the shameless way she nursed Binky wherever she was and whenever Binky crossed her eyes in dissatisfaction. It made for a quiet babyhood. Andy held out her arms, and Loretta gave Binky to her, then went back to eating her own food, which she herself had cooked — veal scaloppini, good. Frank said, “East of Philadelphia. Near Chatsworth. He’s got three thousand acres down there, and the cranberry harvest started a week or so ago.”

Loretta’s face blossomed into a look both delighted and approving. She said, “Three thousand acres?”

“He’s talked about buying a farm for twenty-five years. Horses, plums in France, poppies in France, a vineyard in Sonoma, even wheat there for a while. But he ended up with cranberries.”

“Not scenic,” said Andy. “Frances says that he won’t go to Paris at all anymore. And apparently, it’s very hard to find escorts to take her to parties. You can’t go without an escort. She’s furious.”

“She can find an escort,” said Frank. “But she’s used to standing beside the lightbulb and having the moths flutter around her. He doesn’t want to be that anymore.”

“Will you take me?” Frank realized that Loretta was speaking to him, and talking about New Jersey, not Paris.

Oddly enough, he said yes.

They started early the next morning. Enough milk for two bottles had to be pumped, and the little bag with the pump and the cooler and another bottle had to be taken along for when Loretta began lactating on the road. Dalla had to be instructed about Chance’s and Tia’s activities, although she supervised these activities herself every single day. Even so, Loretta ushered Frank out of the house as Michael was sitting at the kitchen table in his robe, taking his first sip of coffee. Andy was still asleep in her room. Frank liked it. It felt strangely surreptitious.

They got into the Mercedes. Loretta said, “This is comfortable. I’ve never ridden in a Mercedes before.”

She was always full of surprises.

Frank said, “What do your parents drive?”

“My dad drives a Chevy truck, and my mom drives an El Camino.”

Frank burst out laughing.

“My dad swears that his headstone is going to read, ‘Here lies Raymond Perroni, who drove twenty-five Chevy pickups into the ground, 1938 to whenever.’ He doesn’t want it to include anything insignificant.”

“And your mother?”

“Well, she says she’s going to be cremated. There’s an altar at the house…. I guess we’ll put her between the Catrina she bought in Oaxaca and Hickock’s left front hoof, which she had plated in silver after he colicked and died.”

Frank said, “Catrina?”

“Oh, that’s a Mexican statue. It’s a ceramic skeleton of a woman, all dressed up. Mom’s is wearing this red picture hat with yellow flowers sculpted over the crown.” She stared out the window. They were approaching the Garden State Parkway. She adjusted her breasts and kicked her feet. It was interesting to Frank how he enjoyed Loretta, Ivy, and Jesse so much more than his own children. Being around his own children was like having sand in his underwear that could not be gotten rid of — the timbre of Janet’s voice, the knowledge of Michael’s empty brutishness, the sight of Richie’s temperature rising and falling in perennial reaction to Michael’s slightest move. Such thoughts didn’t come up with other people’s children; you appreciated them for themselves. Loretta was a one-of-a-kind eccentric who did not seem to know how rare she was; ambitious Ivy was sharp and amusing company; and Jesse was the son he could not have had because he was not his brother. And he didn’t at all mind his son-in-law, Jared, who was reserved in his Minnesota way, but knew all there was to know about 1’s and 0’s and how to string them out until they magically spiraled into some sort of electronic DNA. Janet had talked Jared out of North Carolina and into Silicon Valley, just because, Frank knew, she couldn’t stand Frank’s presence in their lives, but money was getting more and more disembodied every day, and Jared was no more averse to it than any red-blooded American. Frank drove steadily. The traffic was sparse; the Mercedes had a kind of feral quickness; they were already passing Elizabeth.

Frank said, “Chance is very good-tempered.”

“And so he always gets his way. You can deflect him or forbid him or put him to bed, but as long as that idea is in his mind, he keeps at it. This summer, he decided that there was a treasure under one of the flagstones by the driveway. He went into my father’s shop and found a big nail, and started scraping out the cement around that flagstone. Every time anyone saw him, they’d say, ‘That’s enough,’ and Chancie would nod and put his nail in his pocket and walk away, and then he’d be back. It took him two weeks. He even figured out how to lever it up with a table knife. There was nothing under there. He didn’t care. He just had to know.”

“I was like that,” said Frank. But, he realized, what he meant was, he’d just had to break it, whatever it was — not see what something was, but feel it fall apart. “Some kids are curious.”

“Well, I wore a pair of underpants on my head for a year, because I thought they made a very nice hat. But Chancie isn’t opinionated, he’s dedicated. Tia doesn’t talk much yet. I see her staring at Chancie, making up her mind to do everything exactly opposite to the way he does it.”

She went on. They were past Perth Amboy now, not far from Sea Bright. It was too bad, Frank thought, that listening to people talk about their kids was so boring, because there were lessons to be learned. One of them, in this case, was that Loretta was an observant and thoughtful young woman, with a measure of self-knowledge. If so, Frank thought, she was surely aware of Lynne Rochelle, whom, according to Richie, Michael had installed in her own loft in SoHo over the summer. Why Michael wanted two wives, Frank could not imagine. Richie said that it was for their explosive potential — Loretta was the nitro and Lynne was the glycerin.

Frank glanced at Loretta. She was looking out the window at the passing forest. Three children in three years had done no favors to either her figure or her face. She looked forty to Michael’s thirty-three. But she also looked like being a wife and a mother was her avowed destiny, and Michael could take it or leave it. If that was the case, then Michael’s strategy was maybe the only one.

When they got back to Jim’s double-wide after exploring the cranberry bogs, Loretta took her bag from the Mercedes and asked where the bathroom was. Frank and Jim went into the kitchen. The sink was full of coffee cups and soup bowls; the trash bin was piled with Campbell’s cans on top of plastic bread bags. Not the diet Frank would have thought Jim Upjohn preferred — or had even experienced, since his ancestors had been obscenely wealthy unto the fourth generation at least. What was he, seventy-one? Five years older than Frank? Over the years, Jim Upjohn had remained far more innocent than Frank had, far more innocent than anyone Frank knew, a nice boy who might cut your head off, but always gently, gracefully, with regret, a rare breed these days. Now he went to a kitchen cabinet and took out some peanuts. He said, “Come on, watch this.” Frank followed him onto the back porch of the double-wide. Jim Upjohn trotted down the steps and over to one of the taller cedars, where he slipped out of his loafers and set them side by side at the base of the tree. Then he whistled and called out, “Ronnie! Nancy!” He squatted down and sprinkled peanuts in the heel of each loafer, stood up, and backed away. There was chirping, and within moments, two squirreis, their tails fat and furry, their coats thick, scampered down the tree. Each took a different loafer, as though they knew just what they were doing. They sat upright on their tails, picking up peanuts and putting them in their mouths, all the time expressing various opinions. When the peanuts were gone, they paused a moment, almost bidding adieu before scampering back up the tree. Jim Upjohn said to Frank, “It’s surprising how little they cost.” He was twinkling.

But then he spun around and said, “Miracle you came, Frankie, because I need a favor. Involves you firing up that plane of yours and heading into the sunset.”

“Everyone agrees that I’m semi-retired and have too much time on my hands, so I am at your service.”

“I know.”

“How do you know? I haven’t talked to you in four months, and you don’t have a phone.”

“You don’t think the complaints go only one direction between Paris and Englewood Cliffs, do you?”

“Andy doesn’t complain.”

“She remarks upon.”

This would be true, thought Frank.

“Anyway, I want you to go to Aspen and meet someone. There’s a conference there. I was supposed to go and help take over the world, but I can’t stand the odor anymore, so I stayed home.”

“Do you go anywhere?”

“To the beach over at Barnegat. There’s a fellow supposed to be in Aspen, Prechter. He’s got a theory about how the market works, and I want you to talk to him about it.”

“What is his theory?”

“Well, basically, it’s a mathematical version of Yes, uh-oh, well-maybe, or-maybe-not, okay-one-more-time. Large-scale, small-scale, middle-scale. He resurrected it, he’s not taking credit for it.”

“What do you care? Look at this place. You have it all.”

Jim didn’t disagree. He said, “I don’t have a theory. I would like to have a theory.”

The ultimate luxury, thought Frank.

Jim said, “Anyway, you like to fly your plane, you like to get out of the house.”

Frank didn’t say yes, he didn’t say no, but he knew he would do it.

Loretta was charmed by the bogs, the floating cranberries, the mysteriousness of the landscape. She wanted to stay as late as she could, even though she also wanted to get back to Binky. In the end, they watched the men use long booms to push the brilliant berries into one corner, a ground of shining red in the sparkling sunlight. Then, as they left, Jim Upjohn stopped them, ran back in the house, and came out with a pot containing a flowering plant, an upright lavender blossom shading downward to white. “Arethusa,” he said. “An orchid.” Loretta balanced it on her lap all the way home.

Binky was screaming when they walked in the door, Chance was arguing with Dalla, and Andy was bouncing Tia on her knee. Loretta straightened her shoulders with a military air and handed the orchid to Frank, then said, “You were nice. Thank you.”

Frank knew that she hadn’t thought such a thing was possible before today.

—

PRECHTER DID INDEED have a theory, and it was interesting enough. When Frank floated the name “James Upjohn” in the air around them, Prechter turned toward it like a sunflower toward the sun. Prechter seemed to be rich, but that was not the point — the point was to be right. Frank apologetically recorded their conversation for “Mr. Upjohn, who can’t make it because of the press of business,” but there was no need to apologize: Prechter waxed all the more emphatic and eloquent at the thought of explaining himself to such a deity. Frank said that Mr. Upjohn would be getting in touch, he was sure. Or he was unsure. Prechter had that look when they shook hands goodbye of being stretched on a rack of longing, his goal within sight but out of reach.

Otherwise, Frank nodded to a few men he recognized, ate lunch, eavesdropped, did his best to breathe and not fall asleep. One man was sure that the Dow would hit 2,000 by Christmas (Frank had heard that one before). Another man had heard Maggie Thatcher supported apartheid in South Africa, to which the man across the table from him replied, “Well, you know, the old dear is sending help to Pol Pot, though she would deny it unequivocally.”

“She’s not the only one,” said someone else. Because of the time change, Frank fell asleep in his room at eight-thirty and was up by four. At dawn, he left the Jerome and turned left. Aspen reminded him oddly of Iowa — maybe it was the wide streets and short buildings — he half expected to see a grain elevator over his shoulder. Even this early, the sunlight was getting ready to be brilliant. It was September 24th, wasn’t it? Lillian would have been sixty today. He reminded himself to call Arthur when he got back to the hotel. He stared at his reflection for a moment in the window of a café that was already open, saw kids — hikers, it looked like — lined up at the counter, pointing to the menu overhead, or else sitting in their boots, equipment piled beside them, their hands arced around large yellow cups. When a girl passed him, grabbed the door, opened it, and entered, Frank could smell vanilla, chocolate, and butter. His reflection looked metallic, as if his skin were flaking away to reveal the tin man beneath. He had lost ten pounds in the last year, though his doctor said he was in perfect health. The weight loss seemed to enlarge his hands in an unpleasant way. He looked at them and put them behind his back. When he looked through the window again, his eyes had adjusted. Looking through the window was like looking through binoculars, and what he saw, across the room, standing, kissing a girlfriend on her red hair, and then going for another cup of coffee, was himself.

He shaded his eyes, leaned forward. The kid was in his early twenties, blond, broad-shouldered, over six feet. He had teeth, and he showed them — his smile for the waitress was merry, triangular, almost heart-shaped. His eyes were no doubt blue, though Frank couldn’t tell that from where he was. The real resemblance was in his walk as he went back to his table, the shape of his hips, the tilt of his torso, and, oddly, the shape of his head. Frank could see his uncle Rolf, but cheerful rather than dogged. Frank turned away and went back across the street. He stood quietly, telling himself that he was getting some air, whatever air there was to get, but really, he was waiting, and when the kid and the redheaded girlfriend exited the café and headed down the block, Frank, on his side of the street, followed them. Lydia, his long-vanished mistress, must have produced a child. Perhaps that was why she had vanished. She had vanished in ’65, which could be right for the age of this kid, but he’d thought she was his own age, so she’d have given birth in her mid-to-late forties. Possible? Not possible? Frank wasn’t sure, but he found himself, as he watched them from the other side of the street, doing a thing that he always did, gauging the value of the girlfriend. This one was bulky but strong, carrying a backpack; her legs in her shorts were postlike and sturdy. Her hair was piled on her head. It fell out of its clip once, and flopped forward. She coiled it up without thinking about it, still talking. She was good enough, in her way.

He was carrying a backpack, too, and another bundle, maybe a tent. Frank looked at his watch — nearly eight. He slowed his steps, let his quarry get farther away. At a stoplight, the girl, talking, stepped into the street. The boy’s arm went out, automatically preserving her, as he looked both ways. She took his hand, and they obeyed the light, though no cars were nearby. Once across the street, they went along the side of a large brick building and stopped. The boy unlocked the door, pushed it open, and went inside, closing the door behind them. Frank made his way down his side of the street, crossed, took up his position. The building, an outdoor outfitter’s store, was in the sunshine now, and he couldn’t see much through the windows. He did see lights come on inside, he did see a man in a sweatshirt jerk on the door handle, rare back, look at the hours of operation, and turn and walk away. Nine a.m., probably. Frank went back to the Jerome and reserved his room for another night. His heart was pounding. Why this should be, he had no idea, except that it seemed to him a fixed and permanent truth that this kid was his, the son of Lydia Forêt. He picked up the phone again and dialed Arthur’s number.

Arthur lived in Hamilton, New York, now, near where Hugh was teaching at Colgate, in a small apartment above some shops across from a park. Arthur didn’t complain. Andy got him down to the city every so often, where she led him around art exhibitions and fed him. He was thin. That he was still alive Frank considered a miracle, but perhaps Arthur considered it a curse. He said he enjoyed his grandchildren.

He answered on the third ring, not “hello” or even “yes,” but a cough. Frank said, “How are you?”

“At the moment, vibrating with curiosity.”

“That I should call you on Lillian’s birthday and wish you well?” That Lillian had been dead almost three years amazed Frank. If you saw someone born, you were not supposed to see them die, an entire life nested within yours.

“Tell me one thing I’ve always wondered,” said Arthur.

“What is that?”

“What was her first word?”

“ ‘Mama,’ I’m sure. Isn’t that standard?”

“No, think. I mean after that.”

“How old would she have been?”

“Frank, you have three kids and four grandchildren. Debbie’s first word was ‘up!’ Tim’s first word was ‘kitty.’ ”

“Or ‘titty,’ ” said Frank.

Arthur produced his first laugh.

Frank said, “I do remember that her dolls were named Lolly, Dula, and Lizzie. She used to pat them on the back, then give a little burp, and then wipe their faces. She treated them very well.”

“Of course she did,” said Arthur.

“Of course she did,” said Frank.

Now came the time to not ask any questions about Arthur’s spirits or his mental condition, so Frank said, “If I were to write down a license-plate number here in Aspen, how would I go about finding out the name of the owner of the vehicle?”

“It would take a day or so.”

Frank noticed that Arthur didn’t say how. He said, “I’ll call you. I don’t want to send it by mail.”

“Are you afraid I’ll wad up the letter and choke to death on it? The presence of the KGB in Aspen, Colorado, is intermittent at best.” Then, “I await your next communication with interest.”

“I’ll call you later today.”

“Be sure it’s from a pay phone, and people are least observant around lunchtime.”

At eleven-thirty, he wandered into the shop. He didn’t see the kid. The fellow behind the counter was in his forties, balding, cheerful. And doing a good business — he kept ringing up goods, a hundred dollars, $270, is this really the vest you want? Frank moved into the footwear area, less suffocating. He passed the door to the stockroom and glanced in. There he was, shelving boxes of boots. Unencumbered, he was graceful, with a limber gait and a long reach. He was humming to himself. Frank turned an ear and leaned toward him, but he didn’t recognize a tune. At that moment, the kid looked his way and said, “Oh, hi! May I help you?” The smile came to his face as if it was second nature.

No, Frank thought. This was not his child. None of his children were this lacking in distrust. He said something about hiking boots. The kid glanced around, reached for a box. He said, “These are my favorites. What are you, about an eleven? These are Timberlands. They last forever.”

Frank sat down and let him kneel at his feet, slip on the reddish, heavy boot, and lace it partway up. He said, “I don’t lace them all the way unless I’m hiking in pretty rough country, but they’re great for stabilizing your step….” The patter went on. “They were eighty-five dollars, but I’m marking them down to seventy-five this week. In Europe, they’re twice that. This is the last pair of elevens.”

“Okay,” said Frank.

“You’ll love them,” said the kid. “Bob will ring them up for you. May I find you anything else?”

Maybe he was indeed the child of Lydia, kind, generous, who had accepted him, asked nothing from him, might indeed have been “Joan Fontaine,” a whore who had not stolen his money, had not had him shot, had not even kicked him out of her room when he fell asleep on the job. His mother had always professed to know where someone “had got that from”—every animal and human was a walking exhibition of traits inherited from Opa or Grandma Mary or, for goodness’ sake, Cousin Berta, who ended up in the asylum in Independence, less said about that the better. Frank thanked the kid; got up and walked away from him, not even turning around, over to the cash register, where his boot box was tied with a string. Bob couldn’t have been more friendly — was he new to the area, wonderful country, Bob himself came from Georgia, could you imagine that? Frank said, “Your salesman was very helpful.”

“Oh, Charlie? He’s turned into a good boy. You should see him on a rock face. Yakking the whole time. Scary sight.”

“Risk taker,” said Frank.

“Good thing his parents live in the Midwest.”

“Oh, where?” said Frank.

“Kansas City, I believe. Well, wear ’em in good health. Thank you for your patronage.”

It was seven minutes past twelve. Frank stationed himself across the street, in the shadow of an awning, where he could watch both the front door and the side door. Sure enough, at twelve after, Charlie let himself out the side door and walked across the street to the nearby parking lot. When the car drove past Frank, he noted the Colorado license-plate number — FIL 645. Toyota wagon, light green, filled with equipment.

—

ARTHUR WOKE UP, as he always did, just before dawn, though dawn at the beginning of December in upstate New York was at seven-thirty in the morning. Carlie and Kevvie would be eating their breakfast — no Frosted Flakes for them, not even Cheerios. Then they would be bundled in wool mittens, scarves, and hats, hand-knit by Hugh’s mother (and beautifully done, Arthur had to admit). Debbie would walk them to the school-bus stop and wait with them there. Carlie was eleven and in sixth grade, and Kevvie was almost nine and in third grade.

The report was locked in Arthur’s desk, even though he knew that the last place you should put something secret was in a locked drawer in your desk. But he wasn’t keeping it secret from Debbie and Hugh, who would never investigate his apartment. Nor was he keeping it secret from Frank — he’d told Frank the bare-bones fact that this young man, Charles Morgan Wickett, age twenty-one (birthday June 4, 1965), adopted (through the Our Lady of Mercy Home, St. Charles, Missouri, on June 23 of that year), son of Morgan Feller Wickett and Nina Wickett, née Lewis, of 402 Tuxedo Boulevard, Webster Groves, Missouri, graduate of Webster Groves High School and Washington University (Bachelor of Science), and recipient of one speeding ticket (June 17, 1983, eighty-three miles per hour in a seventy-mile zone), employee of Owl Creek Outfitters, Aspen, Colorado, Social Security Number 499-78-5432, was not related to any woman Frank could have known. He was the son (he hadn’t yet told Frank this) of Fiona Cannon, student at the time of the birth, at Stephens College, Columbia, Missouri. Arthur remembered Fiona perfectly well — a short, daring girl, a talented equestrienne, Debbie’s great friend. What Arthur saw in the boy’s driver’s-license photo and the high-school photo included in the report was not Frank, but Tim. The person he wanted to keep the report secret from was himself.

Arthur pushed the covers back, lay there for just another moment, then turned and put his feet on the cold floor. Suddenly he thought of his roommate, freshman year at college. He was from out west somewhere, and he had once told Arthur that his earliest memory was from when he was seven years old — only ten years before. Everything else was a blank. What was it a memory of? Arthur had asked. It was having some hash set before him for some meal, at the orphanage where he lived. Arthur, whose memories at the time were all too precise and abundant, had envied him. He remembered that envy now, and trailing behind it was another memory, of himself in the summertime, he must have been three or four, neatly dressed, sitting on the veranda of their house in Maryland (green mat underneath him, his legs pushed through the white posts, leaning forward, his hands gripping his bare knees). Walking down the street were three older boys. One was pushing a bicycle, another had two baseball bats, and the third was tossing and catching three balls as he walked. They were laughing. Undoubtedly, moments later, little Arthur was removed from the porch, so the memory was pinned into his brain like a photograph, emblematic of the moment he realized what he was missing, predictive of his future embrace of Lillian and Frank and the noisy, wild Langdons, who sometimes did what they were told, but always had something to say about it. Solitude was not good for him, and here he was again.

If Charles, or Charlie, as Frank had referred to him, had been born full-term, then he would have been conceived under Arthur’s very nose, around the time Tim was heading off to the University of Virginia. That Tim had had a relationship, romance, one-night stand, episode of intercourse, whatever it might have been, with Debbie’s adored — worshipped, he realized — Fiona both surprised Arthur and did not. Also in the report was some information about Fiona: Her name was now Fiona Cannon McCorkle, she ran a riding school with her husband, Jason McCorkle, in Pasadena, California. The McCorkles owed $126,000 on their house, a large sum, but maybe not for California. Jason McCorkle had been an alternate for the show-jumping team at the L.A. Olympics.

Arthur hoisted himself to his feet and walked to the window. The great attraction of upstate New York was bad weather — if not snow, then wind; if not ice, then cold; if not rain, then overcast skies. He had not been party to the negotiations that brought him here. Tina was in Sun Valley, Idaho, now, running a gallery, still making glass sculptures. Dean was in Yardley, Pennsylvania; he and Linda both had their real-estate licenses. Real estate, as everyone knew, was a time-consuming occupation.

Arthur didn’t remember much about the fall of ’64—that would be the point of his many shock treatments, wouldn’t it? If Arthur were to tell Debbie about the report, she would insist on contacting Fiona. If the report stayed locked in his drawer, nothing would be set in motion.

Arthur turned from the window. The brass keyhole of the locked drawer sparkled. He looked away.

Over Thanksgiving, Frank had said again, “The resemblance was uncanny. When I watched Charlie walk down the street, I felt his gait in my body. If you saw this kid, you’d agree with me.” At some point, Frank would think of Tim, Arthur was sure of that — they had always laughed about how similar Tim was to Frank, especially as an ornery and determined little boy. Arthur shook his head. He had no rights over this young man, none whatsoever.

Coming up on three years now, since his life had ended. After Lillian died, he’d embarrassed himself thoroughly, but it was logical, really — if you would prefer to be dead, why shave, or wash, or sleep, or talk? Why take out the trash? Why eat, especially if you literally could not swallow, if your stomach clenched up and prevented entry, and the smallest items of food felt jammed in your lower esophagus, making you gag? Why not leave the doors of the house open even in the coldest weather, why not empty everything of everything — let the coal burn and the heat fly away and the mice and rats raid the larder, let the water run out of the sink and over the floor, let the lightning strike the trees and the lawn grow and the garden disappear in weeds. Let the fencing collapse. And so he had been taken in hand, and there was not so much pain now. Now there was simply nothing, more convenient for everyone.

But they had returned him to the childhood he’d made every effort to leave behind, including restricting his access to dangerous objects like butcher knives and throw rugs. Was it like this for everyone when they got old? The phone was ringing now. It would be Debbie. Having gotten the kids on the bus, she would be calling to ask how he’d slept, what he was having for breakfast, what he planned to do today — would he like to come with her to the rec center and have a swim? The pool was warm. They could stop at the library on the way home, if he needed a book. She had been reading Anna Karenina; had Arthur ever read it? Did he think it was the greatest novel ever written? If Arthur remembered correctly, Tolstoy had written Anna Karenina in his late forties. Arthur was not interested in a novel someone had written in his late forties, and he suspected that if Tolstoy were beside him or, say, across from him, sitting on the rim of the bathtub, brushing his teeth, his beard to his waist, turning to spit down the bathtub drain, his hair in tangles, then hoisting himself, leaning to stare into the mirror at what he had become, he would agree. This is what they would do, he and Lev, they would creep down the stairs, making sure to hold both of the banisters. They would wince at the squeal of the front door as they opened it. They would stagger onto the street, turn right, and walk along, waving their arms. Passersby would avoid them.

The phone rang again, right on time, ten minutes after the first ring. Arthur picked it up. As usual, he couldn’t bring himself to speak. But it wasn’t Debbie. A voice on the other end of the line (buzzy — long distance) said, “Is this Arthur Manning?”

Arthur coughed, then forced himself to say, “Yes.”

“Oh! Wow! I can’t believe…Anyway, my name is Charlie Wickett. I hear you’re trying to get in touch with me.”

Arthur said, “Actually, Mr. Wickett, I am doing my best to not get in touch with you, but I see that I’ve failed.”

Charlie laughed, and it was, indeed, Tim’s laugh, full-throated but self-possessed, and Arthur burst into tears.

—

TWENTY-FOUR HOURS LATER, things had exploded as they always did. Debbie was both offended and dumbstruck, but she couldn’t decide precisely which aspect surprised or offended her the most, there were so many. Frank was relieved, disappointed, and curious, ready to fly Arthur out to Aspen to meet the kid. Tina, somehow, felt vindicated — he lived in Aspen, not so far from Sun Valley, where her studio was — something was significant about that. Dean seemed irritated by the whole thing, as if Tim were returning to the spotlight yet again. Frank said that Andy had said, “I’m sure he’s not the only one.” Arthur focused on the question of how Charlie had found him. He did not expect to be found, ever, unless he presented himself. But when he asked Charlie a few days later, Charlie was forthcoming — Sister Otilia at the adoption agency was tight with his mom, though not officially, of course, and there had been gossip, and his mom had driven up to St. Charles and gone right to the Mother Superior and given her a talking-to, and so had found out who was doing the looking. His mom, of course, had always been perfectly straightforward with him, had told him early on that he was adopted, and if you were five foot two and your husband was five foot eight, and your child was six foot three, the neighbors had to be told, and so they were; as far as Charlie knew, his mom had never kept a secret in her life. Arthur said that the Mannings and the Langdons were a big family, and Charlie said, “You’re kidding! Great! I always wanted a big family.”

After four days, Debbie settled on Tim’s betrayal as the real crime — he’d known Fiona was her friend, what in the world had he been doing, so that was why, when she saw Fiona at Madison Square Garden that time — fourteen years ago — and told her Tim had died, Fiona had turned white, nearly fallen down, and not ridden again that evening. Debbie didn’t blame Fiona.

“What do you care?” said Hugh, as her voice rose.

And then she set her fork on her plate and looked around the table. Carlie was staring at her, Kevin looked worried, and Hugh looked as though he’d had it. For once in her life, she said, “I don’t know,” and then she shook her head at Arthur and put her face in her hands. After he and Hugh did the dishes (not a word spoken other than “I’ll start the dishwasher in the morning”), Arthur went to the master bedroom and knocked on the door. She might have said something. He turned the knob and went in.

The master bedroom was a work of art — Hugh the historian had built the headboard out of spalted maple. His mother had knitted the bedspread, moss-green lace. The two bedside tables were etched glass, made by Tina. In one corner, there was an antique rocking chair with a rattan seat. Debbie was sitting cross-legged on the floor, as if she didn’t dare touch any of these beautiful things. Arthur sat in the rocking chair and eased it over toward her. Then he did what Lillian would have done: he started rocking and didn’t say a word. Lillian always said, “If you don’t ask them, they will tell you.”

Debbie didn’t look at him, but she did say, “Do you remember when you were forty?”

“More or less,” said Arthur.

“Did you feel grown up?”

“Only reluctantly.”

“Everyone says that!”

“They do?” said Arthur, genuinely surprised.

“Something like it. Everyone wants to be young, everyone wants to be irresponsible.”

“Or maybe,” said Arthur, “not responsible.”

“I always wanted to grow up!”

“I understand that. Our household was chaos.”

“And everyone loved it but me! Are you sure I wasn’t adopted?”

“I think you were a statistical outlier.”

Debbie said, “But I didn’t grow up! I didn’t! I just left certain feelings behind without realizing it, and they’re always coming back.”

“I know,” said Arthur.

“Don’t tell me that.”

“But I have to tell you that, sweetheart. I have to. Because that is my experience. Ask your uncle Frank; ask your aunt Andy. Ask her — she’s had as much psychoanalysis as anyone; she would know.”

“She is a mess,” said Debbie.

“But a strangely prescient mess,” said Arthur.

“Why did you love Tim for being bad and hate me for being good?” She said this quietly, as if she were only asking, as if no resentment remained.

Arthur leaned forward, took her chin in his hand. He didn’t know what to say, but he did want to look into her face. In spite of the fact that Arthur now experienced Debbie more or less as his jailer, he summoned up some appreciation: she was thorough, she was careful, she had premature wrinkles between her eyebrows from years of conscientious worry, and underneath it all, she had a phantomlike air of vulnerability-transformed-into-bravery that perhaps he had never noticed before. He said, “You must know that you don’t love children for being good or bad. I know you know that.”

“Why do you love them?”

“Because you do,” said Arthur. He paused, then said, “Because they don’t know what’s coming and maybe you do.”

“Doesn’t that make them tragic figures?” asked Debbie. “I can’t think that.”

“You do think that,” said Arthur, “because you—”

“Because I put them on the bus in the morning and take them off the bus in the afternoon, because I won’t feed them sugar, because the house has been childproofed, because they wear helmets when they ride their bikes.”

“And so,” said Arthur, “we loved you because you made sure the gate to the swimming pool was latched, and we loved Tim because he jumped off the roof of the house into the deep end, and we loved Dean because he was daring enough to get that fourth foul in every game but careful enough not to get the fifth, and we loved Tina because she tie-dyed all the pillowcases when everyone was out one afternoon. Who you are shapes how you are loved.”

“You didn’t love us equally.”

“We loved you individually. How could we not?”

“How could you not,” Debbie said.

After he got back to his apartment that evening, Arthur remembered how completely he’d thought he’d solved the problem of his own childhood once he’d claimed Lillian and enveloped her in his dream — no one idle, no one beset by solitude, everyone laughing. The problem he had not solved, or even known existed, was how quickly it passed, every joke, every embrace, every babyhood and childhood, every moment of thinking that he had things figured out for good, and also every moment, just like this one, when his spirits lifted though he hadn’t seen the boy, knew next to nothing about him, had only heard his voice and his laugh and his enthusiasm.