Early Warning (17 page)

Lillian said, “I didn't hear about that.” It was the job of all the wives never to hear about anything.

“January 2, and that was part of the problem. The South Vietnamese forces had to wait for the Americans to sober up after New Year's, so they let the enemy get the jump on them.”

“They knew you were coming.”

“They baked us quite a cake.” He didn't smile.

“Well, sir, I suppose, since you bring it up,” said Lillian, “that's Arthur's problem. No one is surprised at any given action except our side.”

“Yes! That is so true! A perennial frustration. Perennial!”

Lillian said, “I think Arthur has made up his mind.”

“Oh, he has. Indeed, he has. I know that. But have you made up your mind?”

“Excuse me?” said Lillian.

He stood up and went over to the window. “What a wonderful place this is, ideal for children, adolescents. A very welcoming and comfortable place. Lovely landscape. Nothing like this even exists around Bethpage.”

“You know we're going to Bethpage?”

He smiled. Of course he did.

“Arthur is a figure around here! Respected for his conscience and his wit, not to mention his belief in our country. Arthur is irreplaceable, and I shudder at the thought of doing without him.”

He came back to the sofa and sat down again, but this time he leaned forward and took Lillian's hands in his own. “Lillian. Do you know what my job is?”

Lillian shook her head.

He said, “I am the national security adviser. My job is to apply the brakes. I recognize as well as anyone that the road leads downhill, a steep hill. There are plenty of people that I see and talk to every day who want to step on the gas and drive the car straight over the cliff. There are a few who want to turn off the road and stop. They don't have a chance, no matter what the President truly thinks—and, between you and me, even I don't know what the President truly thinks. But I can apply the brakes, with Arthur's help. I can and I do, and I will.”

He was hypnotic, the way he cocked his head and caught her eye, and then nodded ever so slightly until she was nodding with him. And then the brilliant smile—the smile that told her that she agreed with him, Arthur was essential, they couldn't do without Arthur.

It was on the tip of her tongue to say that she wasn't sure that Arthur could take the pressure any longer, but she didn't say it, because she knew, as soon as she thought it, that to say it, or even imply it, would be the greatest betrayal of all, would be a kind of
catalyst. Instead, she said, “I think Arthur will certainly appreciate your desire, sir.”

“Please don't call me ‘sir,' ” he said. “Makes me feel about eighty. I know he's kept quiet about this in order to avoid having me plead with him.”

“Arthur is a secretive person anyway,” said Lillian.

He knew he had won. He glanced at his watch, and stood up from the pinkish sofa.

At the door, he took both her hands, just the way the Realtor had done, and shook them up and down. He said, “You must do what's best.”

She knew what that was.

Arthur, of course, knew that he had been there. After the kids left the dinner table, he said, “Persuasive, isn't he?”

“He is, Arthur. But I am not going to try to persuade you. He thought I would, but I won't.”

“I have been at this for seventeen years—twenty if you count the war, Lil.”

“I know.”

“The Grumman people Frank knows have interviewed me three times.”

“I know.”

“There's a fortune to be made there.”

“Is there?”

Arthur didn't say anything, but, yes, there was. “However.”

Lillian turned her fork over on her plate.

“I can't say I liked my prospective new colleagues terribly much. Very serious, serious people.”

“Aren't your present colleagues very serious people?”

“They have been whittled and honed and pared and polished. At the bottom they have a few qualities left.”

“Which ones?” said Lillian.

“Wit. Dread. Hope. Not always in that order.”

“I don't really like the new house.”

Arthur said, “Shall we do the easy thing, then?”

And once again that day, Lillian just nodded.

—

JOE AND HIS UNCLE JOHN
kept arguing about what to plant, how much to plant, whether to leave some acreage fallow. Joe had seen a picture of stored corn reserves in a
Time
magazine, and the picture spooked him—hills and billows of grain just sitting there. The article said there were something like a billion bushels in storage, and no market—maybe no future market until 1980, not for seventeen years. Joe remembered the old saying “The best place to store corn is hogs, and the second best is whiskey.” His dad had made use of the first option, though not the second. However, Joe didn't have hogs anymore—they were too much work for one man with no one to help him. Yes, the government had bought the surplus corn in the winter; a few of those billion bushels no doubt had belonged to Joe Langdon and John Vogel. John had no doubt that the government would pay for it again this year, store it again, and come up with something to do with it—rocket fuel, maybe. In the fall, the Canadians had sold almost seven million tons of wheat to the Russians—a first, as far as anyone knew, but secret deals happened all the time, didn't they? Wheat wasn't corn, however, and Joe hadn't paid too much attention, though everyone sitting in the Denby café had been pretty hot under the collar, half of them wondering why the Canadians would feed the enemy (“Well, the Cuban missiles weren't pointed at Montreal, were they?” said Bobby Dugan. “Every man for himself, and why not?”), the other half wondering how the American government had been so stupid as not to get in on the deal (“Food is food; if they're starving, we're no better than Stalin was, not to sell it to them”). At least the government was consistent, thought Joe. It would be a sign of craziness to feed them with one hand and blow them up with the other.

But that didn't solve his problem about what to plant. He found himself longing for oats, but there wasn't even a pretend market for those, and how would he harvest them? Corn was the tall, golden darling. Those broad leaves rose, stretched out, and soaked up the sunshine, and one kernel planted turned into hundreds harvested—and there was your problem. Plenty of soybeans in those storage bins, no two ways about that, but Joe decided in the end to plant more beans this year than corn. They were starting to make stuff out of beans—not just oil and feed, but paint, plastic, and fiber. John thought beans were a passing fad, though the fad hadn't passed in fifteen years. Joe knew he could press the point, and John would yield.

—

AS SOON AS
she came back from Caracas, Andy made her first appointment with Dr. Smith, whose office was in Princeton. Dr. Smith's house on Green Street in Princeton was much more difficult to get to from Englewood Cliffs than Dr. Grossman's office on West Seventy-eighth Street, but the inconvenience of the trip was part of its appeal.

Dr. Smith was taller than Andy, with eyes so blue that they were used-up-looking, as if Dr. Smith were on his way to becoming an albino, but his gaze was keen, and he had a beaky nose and muscular wrists. He shook her hand and looked her up and down, then led her to his therapy room. His fee was twice Dr. Grossman's. She had not fired Dr. Grossman, or vice versa. Dr. Grossman thought that her issues with her father were on the verge of being resolved. Lars Bergstrom had always been a quiet man, but powerful in his way. If they could get to the heart of Lars's pattern of withholding affection and approval from Hildy (the child Andy) and Sven, there would be real improvement.

Dr. Smith said, “You may notice that I don't have a couch. Adults should sit up. If you need to lie down, or wrestle with some objects, or hit things, that's what those two mats in the corner are for. This room has been soundproofed. You are free to misbehave, and also to behave.” Andy looked around. The office could as easily have been a public bathroom—that was the thought that came to her. He asked her if she had ever seen a psychoanalyst or a therapist before. She shook her head no. He asked her how she had found him. She said in the phone book. That struck him so that he barked out a laugh. He said, “Well, I'm in there, but no one ever admitted finding me there before.”

Dr. Smith said, “Here is a piece of paper. I want you to write the first five words that come into your mind. I will give you thirty seconds.” Andy wrote “fallout, contamination, beautiful, screaming, maple.” The first two were obvious; the third was about Princeton; the fourth was about the boys; and the last word was about the trees she had noticed on the way into town. Dr. Smith said, “Can you make a single sentence that uses all of these words?” Andy shook her head, but Dr. Smith said, “Just try.” The sentence she came up with was
“Because of the fallout and contamination, the beautiful woman was screaming underneath the golden maple tree.” As soon as she said this sentence, she could see it, a blonde in a ski outfit, standing halfway up a wooded hillside, rubbing her hands madly down her arms, over her face, and the glittering particles of plutonium and uranium, rising up and falling back, dancing around like sprays of water as she attempted to brush them off. Every time she screamed, the particles would form a little tornado around her mouth and get sucked in.

“Your automatic response, Mrs. Langdon, would seem to be awe. You speak of fearful things, but they don't frighten you, they impress you. I would go so far as to say that they stun you, and slow your reflexes in some way. They preoccupy you, and you don't mind that. You gain nourishment from them, even at the expense of some sort of imagined negation of the self.” Andy stared at the doctor. He sounded like an ass.

“Mrs. Langdon,” said Dr. Smith, “it may simply be that your capacity for spiritual experience hasn't yet been realized. That what you perceive as ennui or even indifference is simply your search for meaning in a life that strikes you as false and superficial.” Andy nodded. “You may or may not ever return to this office. I don't suggest that you do. Part of the reason that my fees are so high is that I want them to mean something to my patients—and the thing I want them to mean is sacrifice. Are these fees, should you come three or four times a week, difficult for you to meet?” Andy nodded, though they weren't—Uncle Jens's investments were up to several millions. Everything she had spent on Dr. Katz and Dr. Grossman had been mere fiscal effervescence. But “yes” was the right answer, of course. “What I show you, the paths down which I lead you, might well be frightening, but that is what enlightenment entails.” Andy nodded again. “No, please don't nod or say yes right now. Go away. Think about it for a long time. Look at your children and your husband and your life, and make up your mind. The journey you will embark upon is a journey into the unknown.” Andy prevented herself from nodding again. They stood up. He walked her to her car.

—

AT EXACTLY
the same time that Andy was turning from Nassau onto Witherspoon, Frank was standing on the corner of Forty-eighth and
Eighth Avenue, scanning the crowd for Lydia Forêt, Joan Fontaine, the love of his life. They had chosen the Belvedere as just the sort of hotel that no one at Fremont Oil or
The New York Times
would ever frequent, and also a place too expensive for Lydia's husband, Olivier Forêt, from Calais, France. Olivier managed construction sites. He found the beams and the boards, the teamsters and the plumbers, the painters and the Mohawk construction workers. Olivier did not believe in fashion; he believed in utility. When Frank expressed disbelief that a Frenchman could feel this way, Lydia said, “Not only is he not like a Parisian, he's never once been to Paris. The French from the countryside aren't like Parisians at all.” There she was. He saw her at least a minute and a half before she saw him, and so he had time to admire the way, as she turned her head to check the traffic, her jawline sharpened and her cheekbone accented itself. She smiled. Frank hoped it was because she was thinking of him.

Moments later, they were sitting at separate tables in the bar of the Belvedere. As soon as they had their drinks, Lydia's gaze began to drift toward his, at first shyly, but then more boldly. Frank did the same: he pretended not to know her, then not to be interested in her, then to feel a dawning of desire. Their gazes locked; she took a deep breath and put her hand to her bust. Frank licked his lips and took another sip of his gin and tonic.

They both had keys to the hotel room, of course. It was their usual room, 312. Frank went up the stairs while Lydia went up in the elevator. They met at the door, still behaving as if they were strangers, and then Frank unlocked the door, and once they were inside, she pressed herself into his arms, and he carried her to the bed. In every conversation they had had since he first saw her, in the course of every lovemaking, in every hour they had spent after making love, lying tight against one another, she had never alluded to her early life as a prostitute, had never admitted living in Corsica, had never admitted meeting Frank, taking his packet of cigarettes. She admitted only that she was from Milan, was married to Olivier, had come to the United States in 1952, that she was thirty-nine years old. For his part, Frank never said a word about Andy or the kids, about Dave Courtland, or Hal, or Friskie. When he had to go on business to Texas or Caracas, he simply disappeared, and she asked no questions.

If he had doubted that he recognized Lydia's face (but he never
really did) or her posture or the back of her head, Frank knew that he did recognize her crotch, the texture of her pubic hair, the shape and prominence of her labia, the exact way she took him in and held him, the recesses of her vagina. He always preferred the way they had done it that first time, him lying on his back on the bed, so sleepy from the war, and her sitting on him. But they tried different things, just so he could pretend that he wasn't that boy anymore, that he had had experiences and learned from them. However Olivier Forêt treated her, and she said nothing about that, she seemed to enjoy Frank's ardor, and his kindness. He never told her that, outside this room, he was not known for kindness.