Early Warning (40 page)

Lucas opened his eyes and smiled, then said, “No dialogue, though.”

“You think I can't do that?”

“We'll see,” said Lucas.

Marla zipped out the door and down the hall as if she was going to get started that very night.

In the eighteen months they had been seeing each other, Janet had been careful of boundaries, as her mother would have said, not because Lucas was touchy, but because she was always careful of boundaries. As a result, though, she knew nothing about his boundaries. She, perhaps, didn't have any, at least where he was concerned. He was three years younger than she was, but six inches taller, five years less educated, but 50 percent better-looking, 20 percent less self-confident, but twice as talented, half as well traveled but half again more experienced. Really, they were equal in no way, and her support of the civil-rights movement told her nothing about how to manage herself or him. She looked at her watch. It was after ten. Usually, they stayed up until midnight, but she said, “It's cold. You want to go to bed?”

“What do you think?”

“About what?”

“You think I'm stupid?”

“Do I think that a person who can recite lines from a play after a single reading is stupid? Or who can do a drum solo that is actually worth listening to without having smoked six joints is stupid?”

He laughed, but then said, “They did use to put that dunce cap on my head. Sit me in the corner.”

“What were you doing that was bad?”

“My own thing. Looking out the window and thinking of songs. Refusing to pay attention. When the teacher called on me, I'd pretend not to hear her.”

“My cousin Tim really would have liked you.”

Lucas stripped down to his shorts and got under the covers. Janet finished straightening the room, then pulled down the two shades and got in with him. He took her in his arms, and that was enough.

D
EBBIE AND HUGH AGREED ON
everything having to do with Carlie, who was now four months old, weighed sixteen pounds, and was twenty-four inches long. She had been born with plenty of reddish hair, though that had fallen out, and a darker fringe was growing in. They agreed that she would be breast-fed until she gave it up on her own; they agreed that, pacifier or thumb, it was her choice; they agreed no baby food and no table food until she seemed interested; breast milk was a complete nutrient for a baby. They agreed no hot peppers until she was eight months old. (But this was a joke. They had taken a visiting historian out for Chinese food, and Debbie, in her attentive way, had pointed out the dried peppers in the Kung Pao chicken. The historian, from Ghana, had picked one up and, with a smile, swallowed it down. Another man in their party, who had visited Ghana and was eager to demonstrate his worldly savoir-faire, had done the same thing and burst into tears. The Ghanaian man had then explained that where he was from, mothers introduced hot peppers at eight months.) They agreed no playpen. They agreed no crying herself to sleep. They agreed no pink or baby blue, and an equal number of girls' toys and boys' toys—Carlie could choose. They agreed on this partly because Hugh's mother had taught her three sons to knit when they were eight or ten, and he had knitted Carlie a red baby hat with flaps and a pom-pom. If the baby had been a boy,
they would not have agreed on circumcision, but they had avoided that conflict.

However, after four months, Debbie did not like getting up in the night to nurse. She had asked her mother about it, but Lillian, of course, had never nursed. Aunt Andy had—“smoking the whole time, and turning her head to keep the ash from dropping on the baby.” When the twins were babies, there were two nurses named Sally and Hallie who brought Richie and Michael to Aunt Andy in bed. What a pleasure that would be, Debbie thought. She lay on her back in the dark, wide awake. Hugh was snoring lightly, facing the wall. Carlie had not started crying yet, but she would any second now. Debbie often awakened before the crying began, and what could be the signal from the next room? Some biological connection? Carlie could move now, which made Debbie a little nervous. Her aunt Claire had always been told to lay the boys on their stomachs, and now you weren't supposed to do that. Backs were worse, in case they threw up and aspirated the vomit. You were supposed to lay them on their sides and prop them with a rolled blanket. Debbie had been propping with extra punctiliousness lately, because what if? And then there was a woman she knew in her feminist reading group who said she had worn a sling over her shoulder with the baby in it for eight months, only putting him down when he was ready to crawl away. She wore long skirts to meetings and said that real feminism was not getting a better job but reclaiming the matriarchy and the Goddess. She was undecided about whether her son was going to be allowed to learn to read and write, because reading and writing privileged analytical, left-brain thinking. Debbie despised this woman, who, when she said the word “Goddess,” smiled slightly, as if she was thinking of her ample self.

The screaming commenced. Debbie waited to see if Hugh would react, and somehow rise from his side of the bed and go get Carlie, but he snored again and then again. He didn't even hear her, though to Debbie the crying was loud enough to rouse the neighbors, which, in the end, got her up.

She started on the left, lifting the bottom of her T-shirt and unsnapping the cup of her nursing bra. Her breast was enormous and hard; the nipple jutted forth, dripping milk. Carlie latched on with enthusiasm—she was starving after six hours. Her little hand,
her right hand, waved around for a moment, then settled gently and appreciatively on Debbie's breast. Carlie sucked with concentration for a few seconds, her eyes almost crossing with the effort, and then her eyes rolled up and caught Debbie's gaze. She had beautiful big eyes, true blue heading for blue, not baby blue heading for brown. Debbie smoothed her forehead. Carlie sucked three or four more minutes, and then her mouth relaxed around the nipple, and she smiled a friendly smile. She had only just started doing that. Debbie smiled back and said, “Darling, darling, darling.” She made a kiss.

Carlie went at the second breast with more enjoyment and less desperation. Debbie had read that there were three milks—cream, milk, and water—but she couldn't remember in which order they came. Carlie was looking at her and grinned again; then her hand slapped Debbie gently on the breast. She sighed a deep sigh, and Debbie did the same thing.

Was this the best part, the soporific effect of either the sucking or the milk or the rocking beginning to take effect? Debbie had to concentrate on the baby's face or on the picture of Black Beauty above the crib so as not to fall asleep and, God forbid, go limp (though she never had). She herself yawned, and yawned again. Now Carlie let go, asleep. Debbie stood up slowly and carefully, leaning forward, placed the baby smoothly in the crib, wedged the rolled blanket behind her back, and covered her with the quilt her mother had given her, her own little quilt from twenty-nine years ago, faded but soft.

Hugh had pushed the covers down; she straightened them and got in next to him. He was lying on his other side now, apparently sound asleep. She settled on her back and closed her eyes, consciously picturing Carlie's gay smile. Everyone she knew who had babies found it impossible to understand how they themselves had managed to survive bottles and formula and playpens and refrigerator mothers. They talked about it all the time. Lillian, Debbie knew, had done her best, given how she herself had been raised. That smile. That smile. Debbie slept.

—

FRANK WAS SITTING
in his office, staring at rain falling on the Chrysler Building and pondering his favorite project, the supercavitating torpedo. It was pretty evident to the navy that the Russians
were further along with their something than Frank's company was. Apart from the extreme danger of the something that the Russians were pretty far along with—should they deploy it, a fleet of nuclear subs would become as fish in a barrel—the safest thing to assume was the thing that Frank always assumed, that the Russians would do unto others as they feared others would do unto them. The West was superior in almost every other weapons system, so it was all the more galling that the Russians might have pre-emptively mastered this supersonic underwater missile. Frank suspected they had uncovered a cache of Nazi documents that the Americans had not known about and kept them to themselves. Or perhaps there had been another Wernher von Braun, who disappeared behind the Iron Curtain without the Americans' suspecting. Frank often thought about the war—not himself in it, but how the larger picture had played out. He had written in a letter to Jesse that he could not decide—had the outcome of the war been a close call, because of the V-2 rocket and the atomic bomb, or had it been a foregone conclusion, because of Allied intelligence, American manufacturing, and the overwhelming surge of Stalin's armies from the east? And since you could not decide even now, more than thirty years later, whether the outcome of World War II had been a close call or a foregone conclusion, then you certainly could not foretell the outcome of the Cold War. As a result of these cogitations, Frank was on the verge of authorizing further investment in the torpedo, although his board was getting restive at the expense.

Wendy, his secretary, announced on the intercom that Gary Vogel was here to see him. It took Frank a second to remember who Gary Vogel was.

Gary looked like the long-distance trucker he had become—his hair was short, his paunch was big, and his demeanor was cautious. Frank had last heard that he worked for an outfit out of Omaha. Frank went around his desk, shook Gary's hand, and said, “Sorry to hear about Uncle John, Gary.”

“Shit, it wasn't a surprise. He kept arguing with the doc about going on oxygen, and I guess this saved him the trouble. Nice place you got here.” He walked over to the window and looked out at the Chrysler Building. Then he said, “You must be on the pricey side, rent-wise.”

“We got in early.”

Frank understood that this was not a social call, but he sat on the edge of his desk, mimicking informality—in any negotiation, it was better to wait until the other party committed himself. Gary said, “You know why I'm here?”

Frank remained silent.

“I'm no farmer, in case you didn't notice.”

“I heard you're driving big rigs now.”

“That's what I hated about the farm. The view never changes, except for the worse.”

Frank smiled.

“But my dad loved it. So.” He walked over to the window again, stared at the triangles and the curves that always reminded Frank of papal headgear. “You know what they say, this acreage is available.”

“You mean your part of the land your dad and my brother have been farming.”

“That's what I mean. The price of land is way up there now. We didn't even tell my dad what a fellow from Des Moines estimated. Mom thought the shock would kill him.”

Frank said, “What did the fellow from Des Moines say?”

“Three grand an acre.”

“And you have—”

“Three hundred fifty acres.”

“As I remember, some of that is too hilly to cultivate.”

“Twenty-nine acres. Pasture and woodlot. Badger Creek cuts off the one corner—another two and a third acres.”

“You've had it surveyed?”

Gary nodded.

Frank said, “You want me to buy you out.”

“I do,” said Gary.

Everyone in Iowa scratched their heads at the pivot between the generations, and if Lois had pushed Roland Frederick down the basement stairs, as Frank sometimes thought she had, well, it was the practical thing to do and Frank respected her for it. He asked, “What have you said to Joe?”

“Ah, Joe doesn't want to talk about it. Why would he? Everything is just the way he likes it now.”

“I don't think we can give you three grand an acre. It's not going to produce enough to pay off that kind of investment.”

Gary pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose, then folded it thoughtfully and stuck it back in his pocket. He said, “Frankie, you know that, and I know that, but there's a lot of fellas in Chicago and Omaha who don't seem to know that, and I'm not going to kid you, I plan to get out while the getting out is good.”

Frank said, “What's your time frame?”

Gary said, “I don't see myself investing in seed this year.”

“All right, then,” said Frank.

After that came the usual Iowa discomfort about saying goodbye. Gary and Frank exchanged a few niceties, but the door was conveniently near, and soon Gary was through it. Frank closed it behind him. It appeared as though he was about to invest in farmland. This was not a good idea, but when he caught sight of the Chrysler Building, now wet and shining in the late-afternoon sun, he got an idea, not one that Uncle Jens would have cared for, but one he thought might solve the problem, at least for a few years. He picked up the phone on his desk and dialed Lillian's number.

—

THERE WAS
a rule at the Y that kids ten years old and under could not be in diving classes—or at least real diving classes. They could learn to swan-dive off the low board, and Charlie had gotten the teacher to let him try a jackknife, but off the high board they could only jump, and not even cannonball. Charlie had been grumpy all winter at the rules, but Mom had pointed out more than once that the pool at the Y was only ten feet deep in the diving end, and that was dangerous. The fact that Charlie could swim down and touch the bottom easy as pie worked against him rather than for him. But now it was summer, he was eleven, and enrolled in the diving class at the outdoor pool—that pool was twelve feet deep at the diving end. Charlie felt that the high board was ready for him.

At eight o'clock, he swam laps for an hour, perfecting his backstroke. He had grown an inch in the last year, and though Alex Durkin was faster than he was, Alex was a year older and three inches taller. From nine o'clock, he was supposed to sit around, reading
some book that was on his summer reading list, and stay out of the pool until his diving class, but he often took his book up onto the high dive and sat there, dangling his legs and enjoying the view. His teachers—Mr. Jenkins for swimming and Mr. Lutz for diving—let him alone as long as he had his book with him and didn't make any noise. Mr. Lutz taught diving at the high school, and Charlie wanted to keep on his good side forever and ever.