Early Warning (14 page)

Inside, the call had come—no school. She prevented herself from
mentioning snowstorms in Decorah—that time they were walking home, which normally took fifteen minutes, and so much snow fell just in that struggling half-hour that she and Sven had to take refuge in the house at the foot of their block, and be taken home an hour later by that neighbor boy—what was his name?—who pulled them on a sled. She said, “What are you going to do today, then?”

Janny looked up at her. “Can anyone come over?”

“In this weather? I doubt it,” said Andy.

“I think we should bake some Christmas cookies,” said Nedra.

“Spritz would be nice,” said Andy.

“I like those best,” said Janny.

“What about the boys?” said Andy.

“They will do what they do,” said Nedra.

“At least they have their own rooms now,” said Andy.

“When they need solitary confinement,” said Nedra.

Andy laughed.

Frank was somewhere. Andy couldn't remember where. All she knew was that after Christmas she was expected to go with him to Caracas, take kisses on each cheek, and speak a little Spanish. And after that, he had told her, now that they were moved in and the decorators had finished their work, she would be expected to have parties, at least cocktail parties—catered, it was true, but still busy and invasive. Possibly she would talk to Dr. Grossman about that very thing today.

The plow had gone by when she came out again, and done an excellent, quiet job. It took her no time to shovel out the car, and quite soon, she was heading toward East Palisades, carefully but smoothly. Most of her neighbors were snowed in. East Palisades was fine, and when she turned south on the Parkway, she saw that everyone was moving along. The jam on the GW Bridge was a pleasant jam—the sun was shining now, and the Hudson, not frozen, sported glinting lozenges of thin, floating ice. Then she turned south on the West Side Highway, and from there, only five miles, however long it took. Since she had given herself an hour, she could take her time. Riverside Park was as beautiful as her own road had been, but in a bright, urban way, and plenty of people were out, walking in their furs and boots, smiling, enjoying the novel cleanliness.

When Dr. Grossman opened the door to Andy, she looked a little
surprised—how had Andy made the trip on such a day? So Andy thought of telling her that old story about the snow: six inches in half an hour, an avalanche. Had they been frightened? She couldn't remember, and Sven would not have admitted it if they had. She could say that they were layered and piled with bright-colored knitted hats and sweaters and mittens and vests and leggings and stockings—imagining it made her feel happy as she settled down on the couch.

But there, there she was again, and what she did tell was the story of Uncle Jens and Aunt Eva, the immigrants, the first to come, who tried Minnesota, or was it North Dakota? Wherever the most Norskies had gone and the land was cheapest. They had no luck, though: Aunt Eva went mad with the endless horizon and took refuge on a wooden trunk they had brought with them from Stavanger, and then Uncle Jens got caught in a blizzard, skiing from town with provisions. He took refuge on the leeside of a haystack, and was found frozen there days later. Dr. Grossman said not a word as she told this story, and why was she back to doing this, telling stories? It had nothing to do with her family. Uncle Jens had made a fortune, for his time, and Aunt Eva had been a well-read and well-respected matron, who spoke not only Norwegian and English but French, and had traveled to Copenhagen and then to Paris as a girl, before coming to America. She'd thought that Dr. Grossman was immune to this, and had refrained for months, but then Dr. Grossman had made the mistake of saying that every story, every dream, everything that you were moved to relate had meaning, and often those things that seemed most meaningless had the most hidden meanings. Andy didn't know whether to believe her, but she had succumbed to temptation. Now there was a long silence, and Andy brought into her mind once again the way the lattice of snow had lain so gently upon the tree branches that morning, how fluffy it was, how beautiful and transient.

A
T FIRST
Joe and Minnie had laughed about Rosanna's opinions of the new President and the new First Lady. Since Rosanna was Catholic by baptism, Joe thought she would be proud that a Catholic had gotten to the White House. All Rosanna said was “Irish Catholics and German Catholics do not see eye to eye.” But, really, she didn't mind the President himself—he was a good-looking boy and had a pleasant speaking voice, if you could get over the Boston twang. It was the wife who got her goat.

“Jacqueline!” exclaimed Rosanna as they watched the Inauguration. “What a name for a First Lady! What happened to ‘Eleanor,' or ‘Mamie,' or ‘Ethel'?”

“The sister-in-law is Ethel, as you know,” said Minnie, who was home with a flu, a fever of 102.

“She's younger than Lillian! And old man Kennedy is a crook—everyone knows that—and hand in glove with Daley and worse.”

“I didn't know you cared,” said Minnie.

“What do I do? I sit and watch TV. And you can't have the late movie all day, which I wish you could, then I wouldn't bother with the
Today
show, the
Five O'Clock News
, or the
Ten O'Clock News.
Goodness me. Look at her mouth. She has the strangest mouth. That's what I don't like about her. Her fake smile.”

Minnie never forgot that Rosanna herself had been quite a beauty
in her day, though her day hadn't lasted very long. The final thing to go had been her smile—open, sudden, and bright. Even when Minnie was a teen-ager, she had noticed that about Rosanna—always cloudy, always serious, and then the smile piercing the darkness. Her teeth had been good, too, large and straight, not like Minnie's mother's teeth, which she usually hid behind her hand. Ah well. Every thought of her mother still made Minnie sad. Almost fifteen years now since her passing.

Rosanna said, “You want some more tea? The chamomile pot is warm. You need it.”

Minnie slid her cup across the table, and Rosanna poured more of the pale-green liquid into it. She inhaled as she did so and said, “My favorite. The fragrance of June, right here in January.”

“It is nice,” said Minnie. “Which reminds me, I found a last jar of spiced peaches down in the cellar. Lois must have hidden it.” The cellar where her father had died. Minnie contained a sigh. If you lived in the same place long enough, everything reminded you of everything else.

“Well,” said Rosanna, “we'll let her present it to us. I'm sure she has a plan.”

“Doesn't she usually?” said Minnie.

“The second child always does,” said Rosanna.

They went back to watching the TV.

“You see?” said Rosanna. “She can't take the cold. She looks very uncomfortable. Those French clothes aren't made for warmth, that's for sure.”

The new President began his Inaugural Address, and Minnie, who had voted for him (without telling Rosanna), was impressed. It was just the sort of thing she would wish her students to hear (and since she had purchased five televisions for the high school, she knew that they were, indeed, hearing it). It was a war hero's speech, recalling younger days, glorying in dangers survived. He made Eisenhower seem dreadfully boring and old. Wrinkled, too. It was strange, Minnie thought, to have a president her own age. She had always thought of presidents as old old men.

Rosanna was shaking her head from side to side, but not saying anything.

Minnie said, “When does Lois get home on Tuesdays?”

“About three-thirty. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, she picks up Jesse at the kindergarten.” Rosanna's voice had warmed up. Everyone's voice warmed up at the thought of Jesse (really Joe Jr., but his own charming self already). Lois was working at Dave Crest's store part-time now. Rosanna said, “If there was ever a mother who needed more children, it is Lois. She was born to raise a brood.”

“I think she's decided to quit while she's ahead,” said Minnie.

Rosanna laughed and said, “Well, no matter how long this brouhaha takes, I will sit around making myself comfortable until she brings that darling child home, just to get a hug from him.”

“She can drop you, if you want.”

“I do not want. I am not
Jahque
leen Kennedy, afraid of a little snow, sleet, wind, or subzero temperatures.”

Minnie said, “Did you ever not have an opinion, Rosanna?”

Rosanna said, “Never.”

—

THE EVENING AFTER
Arthur had his first meeting with a man named McGeorge Bundy, Lillian was surprised at his mood. Arthur was not impressed by the Kennedys, either Jack or Bobby. Both were hotheaded know-it-alls; the only difference between them was that one had a modicum of tact and the other didn't. But when Lillian chuckled at Bundy's name, Arthur frowned, though only a little—he never frowned at Lillian as if he were angry at her. She kissed him to make up, and Arthur started talking at once, leaning against the sink with his whiskey and soda in his hand while Lillian stirred the spaghetti sauce and watched Tina coloring at the kitchen table. She did it in her own way—every figure was done in different shades of the same color. Arthur said, “Well, how long have I been aware of him? I know he was working with Kennan and Dulles as long as ten years ago. On our side of the Marshall Plan.”

“What side was that?” said Lillian.

“Funding anti-communist groups in France and Italy.”

“Oh,” said Lillian.

“But I never met him. What is he—about my age, I guess. But he looks younger. He's a hopper.”

Arthur hadn't seemed this impressed in years. “Everyone knows he's Mr. Smart.” Arthur snorted, then downed his drink and turned
toward her. He said, “But listen, Lil, here's the thing. He looks you in the eye. He listens.”

“What did he say?”

“Only ‘Oh, you're Manning, I think we need to have a cup of coffee sometime soon. Call me.' ”

“Maybe he says that to all the boys,” said Lillian, but with a smile.

Arthur said, “He should say that to all the boys. You know how I think. The servants know what is going on. The prince who consorts with the paupers ends up learning how the world operates.”

At the dinner table, he was in such a good mood that he did something he hadn't done in ages, which was to tell a story. They were almost done with supper (though Arthur made them say “finished with dinner”), and Debbie was just picking up her plate to carry it to the sink, when Arthur said, “Guess what?”

Debbie's head turned, and Dean said, “What?” Timmy and Tina looked up. Even at almost fifteen, Timmy (Tim, he insisted) couldn't resist his father.

Arthur said, “I saw the funniest thing in town today. I was walking back to the office after lunch, and there was a dog—you know, a big dog, like a greyhound—and it was walking along. It had a wool coat on and a little hat.”

Tina said, “We should have a dog.”

“We should have this dog,” said Arthur. “It was walking on its hind legs, easy as you please, and almost as tall as I was.”

Tina laughed.

Tim said, “Was it wearing high heels?”

“No shoes,” said Arthur, “and it wasn't a female. That much was evident.”

Now Tim laughed, and Lillian did the obligatory “Goodness, Arthur.”

“So,” said Arthur, “I can't tell you how many people were ignoring this dog. I don't know why that was. Embarrassment, maybe. But I was staring at him, and he saw that, so he came striding over to me and said, ‘How do you do?' I shook his paw. His nails were very neatly trimmed.”

“He could talk?” said Tina.

“He could,” said Arthur. “Though obviously he was not fluent in English. He said, ‘Purrrrhaapppss yew cn tll I are new in tawnnnn.”

Lillian tried not to think about why Arthur had stopped telling stories.

“I said, ‘You seem to fit in well enough. Are you looking for a particular office building?' He reached into his pocket and pulled out a little note. I couldn't read it, though—it was in code, scratches and pokes in the paper. But he said, ‘Depppertmnt if Stet.' We weren't far from that building.” Now he fell silent, and went back to eating, as if this were all he had to tell. Debbie gazed at him for a moment, then took her plate to the sink, but Dean wasn't going to give up. He said, “That's all, Dad? What happened?”

“Oh, nothing much,” said Arthur. “I accompanied him to the entrance of the building. I could hardly keep up with him. We chatted. He was from Boston, gone to Yale, worked at Harvard. Very ambitious for a dog, I thought. I decided that it was just the Boston accent that was putting me off. When we arrived, I could see immediately that they knew him perfectly well at the Department of State.”

Long pause.

“What did they do?” said Lillian.

“Well, the Great Dane came out—the fawn one, you know, the brother of the black one—and the two of them sniffed each other's front ends and back ends, then they went around, pissing on all the bushes. And then the greyhound mounted the Great Dane, and the Great Dane lay down and put both paws over his eyes, and the whole world was saved.”

Debbie said, “Oh, Dad!” and rolled her eyes, Tina looked a little confused but willing, and Tim and Dean laughed.

But it didn't last. Only a week or two later, Arthur was getting up in the night and roaming the house again. Lillian knew it was because of what happened at the Bay of Pigs. She also knew his pattern now. He would sit in his study after work and stare out the window; then he would summon some sort of strength to get through an hour or so before going back into his study until bedtime. He would sleep for two or three hours and roam the house. After a while—this time it took two weeks—he would tell her something. He said, “We sprang it on them!”

“On who, Arthur?” They were sitting up in bed, half whispering in the darkness.

“On Bundy! On Kennedy!”

“I thought you meant Castro.”

“That's the problem right there. Didn't spring a thing on Castro! The Soviets had warned him. He knew more about it than I did. Dulles just went in to Kennedy and said, The operation is ready, it's going to work, let's do it—and he fell for it. It's only April, for God's sake. Half his staff is still looking for a place to hang their hats!”

“What now?”

“Well, I won't be surprised if they disband the agency. The President is fit to be tied, and I don't know what all.” He said this rather calmly, as if his whole career would not be destroyed, and so Lillian held her tongue, just to see what he would say next, if his first thought would be about herself and the children or about that other world he lived in. He blew out some air and groaned. Then he said, “Lillian, my darling, my dear, I want to tell you a story.”

Lillian felt herself get a little nervous, but she took his hand in hers and said, “Please do.” The closet door was open. She really wanted to get up and slide it closed, but she stayed put.

“Once upon a time,” said Arthur, “there was a woman named Sarah Cole DeRocher, and she was given in marriage to Second Lieutenant Brinks Manning not long after he graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.”

“Your mother and father,” said Lillian.

“Sarah Cole was an only child of older parents. Her family had long resided in Macon, Georgia, and most of the uncles and aunts were ancient and unreconstructed loyalists to the Confederacy. They referred to the Civil War as the War of Northern Aggression. Marrying Lieutenant Brinks Manning in 1915, as he was preparing himself mentally for the probable American entry into the Great War, was an act of the highest rebellion for Sarah, and when he took her away to the North, her parents disinherited her—though from what, you have to ask yourself, since they had nothing. She was nineteen. But, darling, she was not Lillian Langdon, a girl with a job and some money and a large fund of vitality. She was a child, and within a year, she bore another child—not me, I am not suddenly forty-four years old, but a girl child that she named Sarah, after herself, a very unwise thing to do. And in the influenza epidemic of 1918, when my father
was still far away in Europe, Sari, as my mother called her baby, died in the course of twenty-four hours. Life to death, breakfast to breakfast, here today and gone tomorrow.”