Golden Age

2005

EMILY HAD BEEN a little surprised to be asked to be a bridesmaid for Chance and Delilah’s wedding (Delilah Rankin, lawyer, two years older than Chance, Emily’s own age, supposedly the daughter of a big Texas family), but when Tina pointed out to her that twelve bridesmaids was standard for a hundred-thousand-dollar wedding, Emily saw that she was being dressed and cast in a supporting role. Her only job was to smile and not catch the bouquet. Her aunt Loretta had prevailed on her maternal counterpart to have the wedding at Pebble Beach rather than in Dallas, which was fine with Emily, since she could go there with her mom, stay two nights, go home to Palo Alto (thank God, she thought, Jonah was too old to be cast as ring bearer). And so she stayed in the background most of the time, eating treats, reporting her observations to Tina by cell phone. One thing she hadn’t told anyone, though (and everyone was in a flurry, because they were dressing the bride and the service was due to start in half an hour), was that, if they hadn’t roped Delilah into her bridal corset, at least some people would have noticed the bulge, though maybe not Chance. Maybe Chance would be amazed to commence parenthood about a month after his twenty-third birthday.

She’d seen dresses that she knew were chosen by the bride to make sure that the bridesmaids looked appalling, but this dress even Tina approved — it was silvery, with an irregular hem and a slanted collar. The shoes were silver, too, and so were the decorations. At least nine out of the twelve bridesmaids looked pretty good in the dress. What Delie saw in Chance, Emily could not imagine, unless it was pure sex. Since moving to Idaho, Emily had slept with plenty of cowboys, and eventually they all came to look alike — limber and dry, their cheekbones getting sharper and sharper, their eyes getting twinklier and twinklier. They all had stories about being rousted out of bed at four in the morning to go retrieve the calves in the freezing rain. Her favorite was one a very nice guy had told her: He was following a cow and her calf up the side of a mountain, he was bored, he tickled his horse with the tip of his quirt, the horse startled and jumped off the cliff. Fortunately, Ryman was quick — he went left when the horse went right and landed on his feet, looking down at the horse, who landed on a ledge. The horse assessed his situation, then scrambled up the mountainside on his own, a good thing. But Ryman was exactly why Emily would never marry someone like Chance.

Finally, the girls got Delie into her dress. Her mom handed her her bouquet; the wedding planner set her veil on her head and floated the netting over her face. Delie did look happy. It seemed as though she saw Chance as a real catch.

The wedding planner opened the door to the corridor. When they lined up, Emily found herself beside one of Delie’s Texas cousins, who was fat and did not look like a cowboy. Tia was a maid of honor, and Binky was fourth in line, craning her neck to see everything while talking and talking, the way she always did.

Most of the family had flown in on a jet her uncle Michael had rented. They were sprinkled here and there like clover blossoms in a green field. You could recognize them even if you didn’t know them, because they didn’t have the hair — the men weren’t wearing pompadours and the women weren’t puffed up. Even Aunt Loretta was neatly trimmed. Mrs. Perroni was wearing a dress from the eighties — encrusted with beads — and Grandma Andy was wearing a dress from the Kennedy era. Emily had plenty of time to notice all of this as she walked down the aisle they had made in the ballroom (the Rankins were not Catholic, so there could not be a Catholic wedding). Emily and her partner reached the satin-draped platform and parted. When she took her place, Emily realized that the bridesmaids were arranged in order of height. All of this was interesting; Tina told her over and over that she would be much happier if she observed rather than judged, but they both knew how hard old habits were to break. And so, during the reception, she observed her uncle Michael and Chance. They did a lot of the same things: they danced with Delie, they danced with Aunt Loretta, they danced with Mrs. Rankin. They looked rather alike — more alike now, Emily thought, than Michael and Richie. She leaned over to Tia and said, “Don’t you think your dad and Chance dance alike?”

Tia tossed her head, watched, then said, “Chancie dances like he’s doing it with you. Dad dances like he’s doing it to you.”

Emily laughed out loud.

But, still, your eye was drawn to the older man, not the younger, wasn’t it? She could see around the room: Her mom was looking at Uncle Michael. Two of Delie’s aunts were looking at him, too. One of the bartenders was watching him. Emily shivered, just slightly, but she didn’t know why. At the next table, she saw Tina scribbling on a napkin — a cloth napkin. She made up her mind that that objet d’art would not be left behind. The music stopped, then started again. Her uncle Michael went over and asked Grandma Andy to dance. Everyone fell silent, even the singer, but the music swelled, and her grandmother — what was she, eighty-five? — curved the line of her body, stepped out, and let her son spin her across the floor.

—

FELICITY WAS SITTING on her old purple rug. The sleeping porch looked out over the fields to the north. It was a sunny Sunday morning. Her dad and mom had gone to services, but she had said she had a sore throat so she wouldn’t have to go. Some Sundays, she just could not take Pastor Diehl. His lips were too big or something. He looked like a cartoon to her, though her mom thought he was nice enough. There was also that thing about how he got out on the basketball court with the kids. His feet were really big. He looked disgusting. Her room had a door to the sleeping porch, and so did Perky’s, and she was listening to Perky and Guthrie talk about something. They thought their conversation was private. They didn’t realize that Felicity had opened their door just enough to hear.

Guthrie was on leave. His first deployment had ended, and now he was waiting for the second one. According to her dad, Great-Uncle Frank had been in Europe for a whole war, but that wasn’t the way it was anymore. Perky said, “That was the biggest battle.”

Guthrie said, “You know what it was like? It was like attacking St. Louis. It’s right on the river. It’s about the same size, and St. Louis has a lot of churches. Well, Fallujah has a lot of mosques. And they were all full of weapons. Not much happened there during the invasion itself, so the insurgents had plenty of time to get ready.”

Felicity’s mom had told her that Guthrie would be different when he got home. No really bad things had happened to him, like getting shot or driving over a bomb (an “improvised explosive device”—Felicity mouthed the words), but every war was full of things that you didn’t want to see unless you had to, and Guthrie had seen plenty of them. He came home more serious, more jumpy. But he did want to go back.

“I mean, we kicked them out once, but that didn’t work. There was this old Baathist resort nearby. Kind of like that casino outside of St. Louis, in St. Charles. So they weren’t going to let it go easy.”

“What was the scariest thing?”

Felicity saw that she was fiddling with her hair, winding it around her finger over and over. She unwound it, put her hand in her lap. Guthrie didn’t say anything for a moment. The dark-red oak floorboards of the porch were cool and smooth, and one of the windows rattled in the breeze. She imagined either Guthrie or Perky noticing the crack in the doorway and discovering her, but just then Guthrie said: “I don’t know. It’s scariest before you go in. It’s scary to imagine the IEDs and the booby traps and the insurgents around every corner. Then you do go in, and something happens, and you’re so jacked up you don’t take it in at the time. You just keep going. I mean, this guy in my unit who was behind me got hit by a rocket. Just blew him up. We saw it, but no one said anything. There was nothing to say.”

Felicity rested her palm on her forehead. She was suddenly feeling a little dizzy. She knew that there were women soldiers in Iraq, who wore camo and everything.

Guthrie said, “It’s fucking hot. You’re covered from top to toe and wearing boots and carrying, carrying like a hundred pounds of shit. If you’re in a tank, it’s boiling. A guy passes out, you just shake him and hydrate him, and he’s got to get it together.” Then he said, “I mean, there were almost twenty thousand troops. That seems like a lot, and it was way more than when they went in there the first time, a year ago, and fucking lost. But they learned their lesson. Forty thousand would have been better, in a way. Or bombing the place flat with NE — you know, novel explosives. Those are scary. The marines did some of that. That’s what the IDF would do.”

Felicity knew that the IDF was the Israelis. They had talked about it in school.

“What about the white phosphorus?”

“Who said anything about that?”

“I read about it.”

“I’m not saying you can’t use it. You got to use what you got to use.”

Now there was a long pause, so long that Felicity had to extend her legs, very slowly, and she made a noise, because the rug shifted. Outside, in the top of the apple tree, two squirrels started running along a big branch, as if they were playing tag. Finally, Guthrie said, “Well, we saw some stuff. I’m not saying that our guys aimed it at anyone. Stuff goes up, stuff comes down. You flush them out and then shoot them. Maybe that’s putting them out of their misery.”

Perky said, “Yeah.” Dully, agreeing.

Then Guthrie said, “The skin just gets burned off where the crap lands, then it keeps burning into the flesh as long as there is any of it. I mean, you fucking took chemistry.”

Felicity stared at her pale, cold knees and shins, imagining this.

Suddenly the door opened, and Guthrie stepped onto the porch. She thought he was going to yell at her, but he didn’t even notice her. He went over to one of the windows, opened it, lit a cigarette. Felicity pulled her knees up again and sat quietly. He was wearing briefs and a T-shirt, even though it was cold. She hadn’t seen him in briefs for a long time — in their house, everyone was very modest. His legs were hairy, all the way down to his ankles. His tattoo was a little covered up, but she knew he would shave his head again when he was ready to be sent back. He was all muscle; that was another way he had changed. He stared out the window long enough to smoke the whole cigarette, then stab the butt into an ashtray that she hadn’t seen on the windowsill. He turned around and saw her. “Hey, kiddo. What are you doing?”

She was brave. She said, “Eavesdropping.”

He smiled his usual old smile and said, “Well, I guess someone has to.” He came over and held out his hand to her. She took his and stood up. He said, “I hear you learned how to make popovers.”

“Grandma taught me.”

“Well, let’s have some.”

She said, “Have you killed anyone?”

He said, “No one I know.”

“Do you care if I ask?”

“No. Because I think about it.”

She got a little closer to him, and put her hand in his. He squeezed it. When they made the popovers, he separated the eggs.

—

IT TURNED OUT that Jessica Montana was really Jessica MacKenna, or would have been if her ancestors had not moved from County Cork to Butte, Montana, in the early twentieth century. This was what Henry found interesting about her. Otherwise, she seemed like a good match for Richie. Riley, however, found the name change highly suspicious. Jessica was sitting at the table, with her back to the kitchen door, saying to Henry that she herself had never been back to Inishannon, or anywhere in Ireland, though her sister, Aileen Montana, had rented a car and driven from Dublin to Galway to Limerick to Cork to Waterford and back to Dublin. Henry was saying, “I would love to do that,” but even so he heard Riley snort. Richie turned his head in Riley’s direction, but Jessica paid her no mind. Jessica seemed like the type who went blithely forward, eternally surprised but not daunted by impediments. There were Calhouns from Ireland, and plenty of Rileys, but when Henry prodded her, Riley said that her Riley grandmother was English and her Calhouns were Scottish. She said nothing about her Menominee side.

Henry knew he tended to go on at boring length about all sorts of origins, and it had taken Richie months to agree to this little supper, so he made himself shut up. Alexis, who was almost three, about as big as a minute, and had Riley’s dark, penetrating eyes, said, “Do you like tofu?” in a serious voice, and looked at Jessica. Riley had been trying to get Alexis to eat tofu for a couple of weeks now, with no success. Alexis was a good talker and a good passive resister. One of her ploys was to solicit opinions on those things that her mother was trying to foist upon her.

Jessica said, “Not really. Grilled, maybe.” She answered as if she were talking to an adult.

Riley came in, set the eggplant Parmesan on the table, and said, “So — you’re a meat eater? How many times a week?”

“Every day, I suppose,” said Jessica. “I don’t really think about it. I have a big appetite.”

She looked as though she did, thought Henry.

“We’ve been vegetarian for a long time. Alexis has never had meat.”

Except for those bits of hot dog Henry had given her.

“But she doesn’t like tofu, I’m sorry to say.”

“Yuck,” said Alexis, but with an alluring smile on her face.

“My grandfather was a butcher,” said Jessica. “You can’t imagine the offal that my father and his brothers ate. Kidneys were just the beginning.” She helped herself to the eggplant, ate with pleasure. It took Riley about a minute to say, “What’s the difference, really?”

Jessica let this go by.

After Richie and Jessica left and Alexis was put to bed, Henry helped with the dishes.

Riley said, “This can’t last. She is the most oblivious woman I’ve ever met.”

“Maybe she’s just easygoing. I mean, what is she, forty? Never been married.”

“Yes, she just does what she wants. Boxing. Bacon. She drives a diesel pickup. She voted for Dubya once, then Kerrey once. I’m not saying she’s unprincipled, but—”

“Yes, dear, that’s precisely what you are saying.”

“She likes Michael.”

“I like Michael.”

“You have to like him! He’s your nephew. I mean, she likes him voluntarily.”

That seemed to be the crux of it. Henry wiped the last plate carefully and placed it in the cabinet. He said, “I know you have reasons to disapprove of Michael, but he’s got a sense of humor. He’s observant. He’s well read. He does his thing, and he lets others do their thing.”

“Fucking free market,” said Riley. “I would love to have a look at his portfolio. I’m sure every investment is in something that gets government subsidies, all the time that he is saying the free market must decide what works and doesn’t.”

“Hypocrisy is not confined to the financial sector.”

“I don’t understand how he thinks,” said Riley. “I just don’t.” Henry let it go at that.

Henry felt he did understand how Michael thought — he thought like a hunter, he thought like an invader, he thought like a predator. He sought high status, which in the modern world was measured by money, houses, cars, looks, rumored but unproven mistresses, and demeanor. A thousand years ago, he would have been wearing only the best furs, only the most brilliant neck chains; he would have spent his free time hunting wolves and bears. Two thousand years ago, he would have had slaves and concubines; five thousand years ago, he would have had multiple wives, many horses, and a nice circular dome for a house, with a neat fire in the middle of the stone flooring. What was to understand? The incomprehensible thing was that in the modern world his type seemed confined to certain regions — New York, Washington, L.A., London — but in retreat elsewhere — Berlin, Paris, Madrid, maybe Beijing. That he held no appeal for Riley was no surprise, either — all of her eggs were in the high-priestess basket. She adhered to a calling that molded her thinking, she had suffered a sacrifice, she had a three-year-old postulant, she hated profligacy of any kind. And she was in a battle for the soul of Richie. It was clear to Henry that Richie’s soul was indeed embattled, and thus he clung to Riley as an antidote to Michael. But what would she gain were she to win him? Better, in Henry’s view, to admit, not defeat, but that the prize was not what it appeared to be. Richie would never not fold, never not compromise. Henry had discovered Blockbuster, where he loved to wander as he had once wandered library stacks; recently, he’d come across a Hamlet he had missed, with Bill Murray as Polonius, set in New York City. He’d watched it in fascination and discovered that he did not want Hamlet to come to the point and avenge his father, he wanted him to cross the boundary from feuding society to a society of laws and bring his uncle to trial. In his whole life, Henry had never disagreed with Shakespeare, but now, old man that he was, he did. Michael had his place, but it was as a historical marker.

—

THE NEXT PERSON Richie took Jessica to meet was his mother. He didn’t know which one made him more nervous. He was well aware that Jessica cared nothing for her appearance. When she was naked, she was wonderful to look at, at least to him; she was muscular and strong, but her muscles were smooth, did not ripple and bulge. When he embraced her, he could feel the warmth and spring of her body. And she was indulgent. In the eight months that they had been dating, she had never once criticized him or told him what to do — she didn’t believe in it. Nor did she tell Leo what to do; when he challenged her, she said, “Suit yourself.” When he found out she was a boxer, he’d insisted upon donning boxing gloves and going a couple of rounds. She had rope-a-doped him for maybe six minutes, then given him one in the jaw that knocked him down, though not out. He hadn’t asked for a rematch, though she offered to take him along to the gym and get him a few lessons.

Richie knew his mother could fall short in many ways, from a vacant look on her face, to wearing something truly antique and strange, to offering them six pieces of romaine as their entire meal. However, he had not imagined that she would fail him by inviting Michael and Loretta and Chance and Delie and the baby — what was his name? — oh, Raymond, after Loretta’s dad. Raymond Chandler Perroni Langdon, because there was also some old Hollywood connection between Raymond Chandler and Gail Perroni’s father. He was now three months old. They called him “R.C.”

The weather was pleasant, not so hot as it had been; everyone was in the tiny backyard. Richie had explained to Jessica that both Michael and his mom were veterans of AA, so Jessica received her virgin tonic water and lime wedge with her customary cordial good nature. One good thing was that Loretta had taken over food detail; she whispered to Richie that she’d brought along ribs, potato salad, carrot cake. (“There is exactly nothing in the refrigerator! I asked her what she lives on; she said there’s a bakery somewhere that makes wonderful chocolate croissants!”) Jessica observed where R.C. had been placed, and sat far away from him. That put her near to Chance, and Richie saw them start talking. Michael sat down beside him and said, “Hot.”

“I’d like to think you are referring to the weather.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

“She’s a lovely, harmless girl who could beat you to a pulp in about five minutes, so keep your opinions to yourself, okay?”

“Is she gainfully employed?”

“She’s a bouncer at a gay bar.” Out of the corner of his eye, Richie saw that Michael was impressed. He said, “I’m joking. She manages a fitness gym.”

“Low on fertility, is my guess.”

“I think she’s opted out of the asshole-reproduction role. She has six brothers and a sister. She is the second oldest.”

“You’re sure she’s a girl, right? I mean, you’ve had plenty of time to look by now. You can’t judge by the exterior add-ons or even the fake vagina. It’s really in the hips.”

Richie knew that part of his problem for his entire life was that he couldn’t come up with ripostes. Michael’s barbs surprised him every time, and he was missing whatever part of your brain it was that batted back.

Michael went on, “I have this Playboy in my permanent collection from five years ago, the December issue. You could tell the one who started out as a guy — great hair, beautiful face, but hips like Chance’s.”

And why not say something mean about Chance the dope or his floozy wife, whose hair seemed to have been put on like a football helmet? But Jessica was chatting with Delie in a pleasant, animated way. Chance had gone around to the other side of the house. Richie felt his teeth grinding. He said, “Mom seems immortal.”

“Gail Perroni is ten years younger than she is, and looks ten years older. Loretta says there’s some group that does calorie restriction and they live to be a hundred. Maybe that’s it.”

“It isn’t genetic. Uncle Sven died in his seventies.”

“I think she’s using an artificial preservative. Formaldehyde.”

Richie said, “You have a sick imagination.”

“I call it creative. If you refuse to think outside the box, then you get stuck in Brooklyn.”

Richie made up his mind to ignore this. Michael was clearly bursting with pleasure at some market innovation he had recently come up with. It was true that he never told Richie any of his networth particulars, but Loretta didn’t mind tossing around large numbers as if they were the price of pasta—“I think it was fifty million. Was it fifty million, Michael, or forty-five? Binky, have you put in your paperwork for the Year Abroad program, or haven’t you? Please give me a straight answer.” Or, “That place on East Seventieth I told you about — it went for twenty-four million! I nearly fell over. I can’t imagine what our place is worth now.”

Chance had returned, and what did he have with him but a lariat! Now he and Jessica walked toward the back of the yard, him swinging the rope in a leisurely way above his head. He and Jessica were still chatting away. He lassoed a lawn chair and pulled it toward him, took the rope off, set the chair upright. Then he performed some rope tricks that Richie had seen on TV from time to time — bringing the rope down around himself, then raising it up, enlarging the loop so that he could step through it, spinning the rope on one side of his body, then switching arms and spinning it on the other side. Michael said, “That’s the hard one, but he’s ambidextrous.”

“Did he bring a calf along, too?”

“Only R.C.”

Richie glanced over toward the rest of the group. R.C. was snuggled against his mom, a baby blanket over his head. Ivy had never been so modest. Once, when she was nursing on an airplane and the flight attendant said they had run out of food, Ivy snapped, “This is making me hungry, so I’ll take what the captain is having.”

The flight attendant brought the food. Richie had been the one who wanted to hide his head.

Now Chance coiled up the rope and handed it to Jessica. She was tentative at first, so that the rope caught and fell, but within a few minutes she was leaning over it, her arm up, getting it to go around. “Told you,” said Michael. Very slowly and smoothly, but with evident strength, Jessica now began making the lariat twirl unevenly above her head, and then, quite smoothly, she tossed it toward the lawn chair. It hit the top of the curved back, slid downward. Chance and Jessica both laughed.

It was Loretta, with, perhaps, some input from Delie, who decided Chance was having too much fun. She got up, went in the house, and came out with plates, napkins, silverware, the food. When she called out, Jessica looked up, startled, as if she’d been enjoying herself quite a bit.

On the way home, Richie was in a bad mood for the first time since he’d met her, but Jessica seemed not to notice. She said, “Chance is a cute kid. He’s practicing being able to do rope tricks and talk at the same time.”

“That’s been done before.”

“Oh, really! Who did that?”

“Will Rogers.”

“Who was that?”

Richie didn’t answer, just said, “What does he want to talk about?”

“Well, the goal is, someone in the audience yells out a word, and he talks about it for a minute; then someone else yells out another word. We tried it.”

“What word did you give him?”

“ ‘Campaign.’ ”

“What did he say?”

“He said that that was a region in France where they grow a Pinot Noir and a Chardonnay grape, and then he described the two kinds of fermentation.”

“Did you correct him?”

“Yes.”

“Then what did he say?”

“He sang a verse of that U2 song, ‘Beautiful Day.’ But then he lost control of the rope. He needs practice.”

Richie was willing to admit that if Chance had been his son he would have liked him better.

—

JANET HAD ASKED AROUND, and so far, she hadn’t found anyone else her age who was getting regular e-mails from his or her eighty-six-year-old mother. And concerning things that Janet knew next to nothing about. The one she opened (her mom’s e-mail address was handyandy435@aol.com) read, “Janet, dear. How are you? Trees are very bright this year. You should come for a visit. It is a little frosty, though, so I brought in the pots of herbs, including the lavender. Mary Watkins (next door? Don’t know if you met her) made me a batch of lavender ice cream. It is profoundly purple. Am almost afraid to eat it. Did you know that if you eat too many carrots, the whites of your eyes turn orange? BTW, what is a CDS? Your brother seems to be after my money. He wants to infest in something — oh, I mean invest, isn’t that funny. I tried to get him, OVER the PHONE, to explain what he is talking about, but I couldn’t tell if he had no idea or if he wasn’t willing to tell me. I looked it up. The only thing I could find out was that sometime last month a lot of bankers had to meet and apologize to the head of the Federal Reserve about not keeping their records up-to-date. This seemed like a bad sign. So I said no. Oh, do you remember that woman Richie knew who was after Cheney? Here is an article about her (link). You should read it. She lives in Reston. I remember when Arthur and Lillian were looking for a place there. So they fired the woman. The man who fired her was careful to say that it was ‘not in retaliation for any disclosures of alleged improprieties she may have made.’ So that’s how you know it was. Do you have a recipe for Aunt Lillian’s angel food cake? I always thought that was delicious. Love.” Janet looked up the recipe, which she hadn’t made herself in twenty years. It called for ten egg whites. She found it in an online cookbook and sent it. She read the article her mother had linked to, about Bunny Greenhouse. She wondered why Michael wanted her mother’s money, and then she wondered how much money her mother had; then she went over to the family-room wall and looked for the hundredth or thousandth time at the picture she’d bought from Tina’s exhibition, of her mother sitting in the light, looking out the window, innocent, harmless, still beautiful. Or not.