Early Warning (46 page)

A few days ago, Jesse had called from Ames, supposedly just to say hi, but after Joe talked to him (“Yeah, Dad, I got two A's and two B's, and Professor Holland says I'm doing really well on the scours research”) and Lois talked to him, then Minnie talked to him. She was sitting on the couch in the living room, and Joe stood quietly on the landing above her, out of sight, and listened. She said, “Oh, you mentioned her.” Then, “I know you did like her.” Then, “You hadn't told her you were planning to farm? What did she think you were going to do?” Then, “Well, farm life is hard for some girls. It's isolating. Not like when I was young.” Then, “Well, of course you're disappointed, but it's better to find out now.” Then, voice lowered, “Well, I'm sorry, Jesse. My heart goes out to you. No, I won't say anything.” Joe had tiptoed up the stairs and gone into the bathroom, where he turned on the water and sighed several deep, deep sighs.

Now he stared out over the empty landscape, the fields still dark and frozen, the trees bare and shaking in the wind (a wind that was numbing the tip of his nose). The dogs had their noses to the ground—the ground was endlessly fascinating for a retriever, the tracks of deer, raccoons, mice, rabbits, birds, and even a turkey or two. Opa had raised them on stories of flocks of turkeys, flights of ducks, waves of prairie chickens, and even cougars slinking past the window in the night, heading for the sheep in the pen (always, according to Opa, to have a pleasant conversation about the meaning of life). Joe imagined D'Ory and D'Onut sniffing layers of tracks heading in every direction, from all past eras. But Joe was a man, not a dog, and what he couldn't see, he couldn't perceive. He was lonely, and he knew that his loneliness had nothing to do with Lois or Minnie. He looked at his watch: two-forty-five. He let the dogs lead him on.

—

WHEN MICHAEL DECIDED
that he was getting married, Richie could hardly remember who the girl was, even though Michael swore he had met her—Loretta Perroni. She was just about to graduate from Manhattanville College, she was really smart, and her dad owned a hundred-thousand-acre cattle ranch in California. “Dark hair?” he said over the phone.

“Most of the time,” said Michael. “It was blond when I met her, but she dyed it back.”

“Long?”

“Really dark hair and blue eyes. She's short. When you met her, you pretended to rest your elbow on the top of her head.”

Richie said, “You're going to marry her? You've known her, like, three months.” Susan, the girl Michael had been in the accident with, had broken up with him once she was back on her feet, and Richie knew that Michael was lucky he wasn't being sued. Michael himself had been shaken enough at the time to go with their mom to AA for a few weeks. It was Richie who had stopped double-dating, because he and Ivy decided to move in together—bed by eleven, because Ivy enjoyed her job at Viking and wanted to succeed. Her goal was eventually to have her own imprint. Richie spent half his day showing office space, and half his day writing ads, finding out the status of new construction, and servicing renters. Mr. Rubino hardly ever came in. He could take a four-hour lunch, or put on his sneakers and go for a run in the park. Sometimes he read two or three newspapers in one day. Michael was now a trader. It was said (by Michael) that Jim Upjohn loved him, that he had great instincts. Obviously, thought Richie, marrying into a hundred thousand acres was another of his great instincts.

The first thing that happened was that Loretta's parents, Ray and Gail Perroni, flew in from California to meet his mom and dad. His mom took Mrs. Perroni to the house. His dad took Mr. Perroni first to the office, then to lunch at the Century Club. That night, Richie and Ivy were to drop by after dinner (the Waldorf), for dessert. Ivy said that the prospect of crème brûlée was her only incentive, since she disapproved of rich people, but Richie knew that she was dying
to meet and observe the strange ducks from the West Coast (she had never met Loretta or traveled farther than Philadelphia).

At the Peacock Alley restaurant, Richie could see them all at the table, his parents and Michael sitting across from the three Perronis. It was a bizarre sight, because the older Perronis, slender and weathered as they were, were hardly tall enough for their feet to touch the floor. Ray stood up to greet them; he came to Richie's shoulder and Ivy's eyebrow. But his face was darkly tanned and deeply wrinkled from the middle of his forehead down, and his hands were square and strong and maybe as big as his head. He was wearing cowboy boots. Mrs. Perroni looked just as weathered. She said, “Well, you boys do look alike, don't you? Had a mare foal out a pair of twins just this spring. I went out in the morning, and the mare was standing by the gate with the tiniest little filly at her side, so I went looking around for the placenta, because you have to make sure it's complete, you know, and, oh, I found it, all right. Inside it was another little filly, but she was dead. They must have been identicals, which is rare in horses, because they had the same cowlicks. That foal could barely reach her mama's teats, but she made it. She's going to be a nice animal, I think.”

Loretta, staring at her mother, said, “Oh, for God's sake, Mom!”

Mrs. Perroni leapt to her own defense. “Well, it's an interesting story.”

“Yes,” said his mom, in her usual distracted way, “it is.” Richie smiled to himself, pulled out Ivy's chair, which was right beside the minuscule Mrs. Perroni, then went around the table and sat down beside his dad, who seemed to have turned to stone, he was so self-contained.

Things had moved quickly, because the first thing his mom said after they ordered dessert was “Well, what is it today? May 18? I guess Loretta and Michael, of course, want a June wedding, and the only Saturday they can get in June this year is the 23rd, so we have five weeks to put it together.” Richie now understood without being told that Loretta was saving herself for marriage, and nothing Michael might have done or said would change her mind.

“Oh goodness. Easy as pie,” said Mrs. Perroni.

And it was, because the Perronis had all the money in the world
and knew every single person in Carmel and Pebble Beach, California, and it was as if the waves rolled apart, and all Michael and Loretta did was walk between them to the door of the Carmel Mission (the second in California). His dad flew them out: Richie himself, best man; Ivy, one of eight bridesmaids; and his mom. They left at 6:00 a.m., stopped in Des Moines to pick up Uncle Joe, Aunt Lois, Aunt Minnie, Jesse, and Annie, and landed in Monterey at noon. From there, they were driven in a stretch limo to a huge hotel on the ocean. Aunt Lillian, Uncle Arthur, Debbie, Hugh, and the kids had arrived the night before. Janet, with Emily and Jared, showed up in time for lunch beside the pool (the golfers were out in droves), and then Aunt Claire, Gray, and Brad (though Uncle Paul could not get away) in time for dinner, a huge buffet. Uncle Henry had promised to come, but called at the last moment to say he was stuck in Chicago. Aunt Eloise showed up for the rehearsal dinner, having driven down from San Francisco “just to have a look,” but she seemed rather at home, especially after Rosa, Lacey, and Rosa's husband, Ross, the violin-bow maker, arrived. Apparently, Ross was very famous; all the Perronis' guests went up to him and threw their arms around him; even the hotel staff smiled at him and shook his hand. The wedding party took up a floor of the hotel, and everyone stayed up talking. Aunt Eloise and Ivy went off in a corner and chatted about John le Carré and Henry Kissinger, and Uncle Arthur said, “Who are they, again?,” which caused Aunt Eloise to take Aunt Lillian off into another corner and have a serious talk with her. His mom stayed with Emily, carrying her, kissing her, sitting her in chairs and on beds, bouncing her on her silk-clad knee. Ivy never looked at the baby at all.

The wedding was at four. The mission was a long, pale building set against a hillside not far from the ocean. Richie could smell the garden of flowers through the open doors all through the ceremony. The Langdons sat in four rows of pews on the groom's side of the church, and when everyone had to kneel during parts of the Mass, they gave each other covert glances, leaned forward, and did not make the sign of the cross. Aunt Eloise sat through the whole thing and kept her mouth shut, as did Ivy, but Rosa and Lacey knelt and bowed their heads. After the ceremony, they took a bus along the winding,
breezy roads back to the hotel, where the reception, for three hundred guests, was in a golden room with a huge set of windows that looked out onto the bay. Loretta, who Richie now understood was an only child, and therefore spoiled rotten, according to even her own father, wore her mother's dress, updated slightly. It had a huge skirt and a twelve-foot train, and was covered with lace. Ivy kept whispering, “That dress is ridiculous!” All the bridesmaids were required to wear gloves to the middle of their upper arms, and black gowns. Once again, according to Ivy, ridiculous. Most of the men wore cowboy boots. Everyone was friendly. People kept coming up to him and saying, “Oh, you're the twin! Are you the lefty?” There were two congressmen there, four state legislators, the mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, as well as Nancy Reagan, Clint Eastwood, Doris Day, and three other actors Richie only sort of recognized. They all stared at his mom, who was wearing a beautiful Chanel suit. But there were lots of other people, too, who weren't dressed any better than Uncle Joe or Aunt Lois, and who ran around dancing and laughing, so much so that Ivy had to go upstairs and change out of her long skirt. The champagne was Veuve Clicquot, and Richie had plenty, but he saw Loretta stop Michael after one glass, and Michael was smiling. So a miracle had happened after all.

The next afternoon, once Michael and Loretta had gone on to Maui, everyone got into a bus that took them to the Angelina Ranch. It was a long ride, even after they entered the gate. A hundred thousand acres was ten times the size of Uncle Joe's farm, 156 square miles, all contiguous, all running up and down hills, over fields, into arroyos. In the seat in front of him, Uncle Joe was staring out the window at the pale-golden hills and the occasional groups of cows and calves. Next to him, Ivy was reading a manuscript. Across the aisle, his mom and Janet were talking about Emily. His dad was sitting in the first row of the bus, hunched forward, listening to little Mr. Perroni and the bus driver. Aunt Eloise and Aunt Lillian had decided to “forgo” the trip to the ranch, Aunt Eloise to go to the beach with Rosa instead, Aunt Lillian because Uncle Arthur seemed very jet-lagged. Lacey's boyfriend had shown up, so they had gone into Monterey, and Ross was sleeping off the party. Richie heard Rosa say to his mom, “No, no booze. But he hasn't seen that many people all in one place since
the last Dead concert he went to, in 1969. It sort of freaked him out.”

The weather, warm and sunny by the coast, was now hot. All the windows of the bus were open, and everyone's hair was blowing in the breeze. Ivy had to hold her pages flat with two hands. She looked at him and said, “I prefer Central Park.” They drove.

At last they turned in past a tall gate, crossing a metal grate in the road. The bus went up a hill through some huge trees that twisted in startling shapes. When they crested the hill, they looked down on the most beautiful house Richie had ever seen. He poked Ivy with his elbow and pointed. She said, “Oh, nice,” and went back to reading. Spanish-style, long, two stories, a balcony running most of the length of the second story, painted a pinkish color, with dark beams and a tile roof. The main door, dark wood, was two stories high. An adobe wall extended from each end in a big oval, embracing a courtyard. Water bubbled out of a dish that the hands of a fountain statue were holding aloft, then flowed down its arms, around the laughing face, and over its body, to disappear again into a pool at the figure's feet.

Everyone piled out of the bus and went into the house. Though it was hot outside, maybe ninety-five degrees, it was cool inside—the window openings were a foot deep. The first thing they did was follow Mrs. Perroni into a large dining room, where they were given a Mexican brunch, including all kinds of food with hot sauce and tortillas that Richie had never eaten before, but also plates of peaches and apricots, melon and cantaloupe, blackberries and raspberries in heavy cream. There was also corn, like they had at home and in Iowa in the summer, but it was roasted in the husk, so that the kernels were brown and sweet; Aunt Lois and Uncle Joe ate three of those apiece. His mom carried Emily around the table, picking up bits of things and offering them to her with the tip of her finger. She did this as if she knew what she was doing, something that surprised Richie. He glanced around, but no one else was staring at her—the least motherly woman in the history of the world, fifty-nine years old and still built like a teen-ager.

After that, Mr. Perroni walked them all over the house, up the uneven stairs and down the uneven hallways, opening doors and peeking into rooms, looking at chandeliers and paintings and displays
of dried flowers and a broom made of branches. At the end of the downstairs hall was a painting of Jesus gazing upward, and at the end of the upstairs hall was a painting of the Virgin Mary looking downward. Both, according to Mrs. Perroni, were from Spain, and she had seen ones by the same painter in Oaxaca, which was a city in southern Mexico with a cathedral plated in gold. “Alta California could never afford that!” said Mrs. Perroni.

The Angelina Ranch had started out as Angelina Rancho, a mere sixteen thousand acres given to a Mexican soldier in 1835. A battle in the Mexican-American War had taken place right over there—they could see the site from the window of the master bedroom. Three Americans and two Mexicans killed, but the Americans preserved their horses, and managed to get themselves to Colonel Frémont. That family had lost all their money, so, when Mr. Perroni's people came over from Switzerland at the end of the nineteenth century, they bought this rancho, with its old house, and another one, which had never had a house, the Rancho Rojas, just across the river, and that was that. It was a hard life at one time—everyone out rustling cattle at the crack of dawn, including Gail herself, who was from Los Angeles and had never seen a live cow before she married into the Perronis, but it didn't take long to learn if your livelihood depended on it, and in the end it was easier than writing for Hollywood, which was what her father did—had they ever seen
Rubies for Rent
? Or
The Wide River
? Well, no one had. They went for a walk.