Early Warning (57 page)

He told her about Jesse's exchange at the market.

“The kids got any cash?”

“I doubt it,” said Joe.

“Min always said there was a reason she did her banking in Usherton, but she could never remember what it was. Now we know. I guess she'll take care of them for a few weeks.”

And so in spite of the suicides and foreclosures they kept hearing about, it wasn't exactly like the thirties—there was the FDIC—but Joe had no idea how long it would take for their accounts to be repaid, or, indeed, whether there might be some snafu there, too. And the farm, well, in the thirties it had been worth fifteen or was it ten dollars an acre—Rosanna had told him that. Now it was worth maybe a thousand, a third of what Frank had paid Gary, and sliding. Would Walter have considered him a success or a failure? He was getting so many bushels per acre that the government was going to subsidize the farmers to take acreage out of cultivation, but no one in the Denby Café was going to take his best land out of cultivation—only the parts that had some slope or were swampy or ran along the river or were, frankly, exhausted. And that's what Joe was going to do, too, and he expected to get 175 bushels an acre of corn and forty of beans and not to be able to pay his bills and to get a little check in a Christmas card from Frank to cover the shortfall. Dave Crest and Russ Pinckard and Rudy Jenkins always seemed to give him the eyeball, as if they knew he had a rich relative, and of course they did know it. It was an embarrassment to have a rich relative, and Joe knew perfectly well how specific knowledge of the shortfall got to Frank—Jesse's correspondence with him was pretty regular. He probably told Frank all sorts of things he didn't tell Joe or Lois. Wasn't that always the way? Joe felt a stab of jealousy.

He pulled into the drive beside John's old house, which he and Lois had moved into, leaving the big house to Jesse, Jenny, and Minnie. Jesse called it “the Maze”—it was more spacious than it looked, seven rooms. Back in the 1880s, the builder had marked out a forty-two-foot square, divided it into nine parts, designated the two parts across the right front as the parlor, and two parts along the east side in the back as the kitchen, and the other five parts, square rooms, you could do with as you pleased, so it did have a mazelike quality and Joe liked it. But there was none of the elegance of Roland Frederick's kit house, with its oak paneling and sliding French doors and wide-planked floors. The Fredericks' barn was just as rough and simple, but it was big and sturdy. Since they had pulled down Walter's barn, the only trace of the place he'd grown up on was the Osage-orange hedge, which was thriving and, as always, a pain in the neck.

When he turned off the truck and opened the door, he was hit with a blast of heat. He went up the steps of the porch and looked at the thermometer—over a hundred, but the porch faced south. Might be ninety-eight in the shade. The weather had been doomfully good, and you really could hear the corn grow this time of year, if you could stand it. Chest-high by the Fourth of July.

The farm was still peculiar to him from this vantage point: It spread to the south and west of where he was standing, rather than to the north and east. The house was on a long gentle hill with a view, where John had kept cattle until he died, and which Joe had tried in hay and in beans—that was the part he would take out of cultivation. But the house wasn't on the hill. For an Iowa farmer, there was nothing desirable about a long sweeping driveway or a grand vista. John had planted a few apple trees; the apples from one of the trees were red streaked with green, not like any of the others, but they made a wonderful pie. And so, yes, all of his dreams had come true.

Joe crossed the road. The roof of the big house was just visible over the ridge, and inside it were the precious ones, Joseph Guthrie, two years old, and Franklin Perkins, ten months. They were another dream come true—they'd sit on the carpet, stacking colorful blocks, knocking them over, laughing, while across the room Lois and Jenny compared notes on how to bake zwieback. But he could see it, looking south—he could see all the layers lift off—the roof of the house, the second floor, the first floor. He could see the children and Jesse and
Jenny and Lois and Minnie being lifted out on a fountain of debt and scattered to the winds; then he could see the corn and beans scoured away, and the topsoil, once twelve inches thick, now six inches thick, and below that, the silty clay loam, more gray than black, then the subsoil, brownish clay all the way down, down, down to the yellow layer, mostly, again, clay, all of it exposed, all of it flying into the atmosphere like money, burning up in the hot sunshine, disappearing. He shook his head, closed his eyes, took his cap off, and put it back on. The vista re-formed itself: blue sky, green corn, brown roof.

F
OR THEIR WEDDING
, which, Richie was told, would take place at City Hall with Ivy's assistant, Jeanine, as a witness and then would be announced by postcard to all of their friends and relatives, Ivy had required only that they go on a Friday morning, always a slow day at her office, and that it be followed by a cab ride to Katz's Deli just in time for lunch. Her cousin, four years younger, had gotten married in the fall, at their very liberal synagogue in Philly, under a chuppah, with only the two sets of parents present. No one cried, everyone ate blintzes, and, the cousin told Ivy, they'd spent the first night of their honeymoon at a bed-and-breakfast on the Jersey Shore, ripping open envelopes and counting the money. Somehow, for Ivy, this wedding balanced Michael and Loretta's “show-off capitalist bacchanal,” and though its effects were slow, they were sure. He had asked her six times if she really wanted to get married, until, finally, she'd taken him to Macy's, where she helped him buy a navy suit and a pink-and-white striped shirt with a white collar.

They got the license before going to work on Thursday. On Friday, Richie left the office at ten and took a cab over to Worth Street, where he saw Ivy and Jeanine climbing the steps, pulling the big gold door open, and disappearing inside. He didn't call out, because the requirements of secrecy meant that he would just happen to encounter her there, and they would just happen to get married. It pleased
him to see her from across the street. She was attractive from the front, but she was dynamite from the back, with her square shoulders, slender waist, pert ass, and sassy walk: Oh, how nice to meet you, Mr. Roth, Mr. Updike, Mr. Cheever, Ms. Morrison—who do you think you are? Inside, he saw her down the hall, and followed her. As he watched her open the door to the clerk's office, he got a weird feeling, but it wasn't until he opened the door himself that he understood the reason—Michael and Loretta were standing there, big grins on their faces. As soon as Michael saw him, he whooped and started laughing. Ivy must not have noticed them in the crowd; she spun around. And then Loretta was putting her arms around Ivy and kissing her and exclaiming, “Why would we let you get away with it? Oh, you look great! You must not be pregnant after all!”

Ivy pinched him, hard, on the biceps as she kissed him hello, so he said to Michael, “What an asshole you are. You've been in my stuff.”

“Always,” said Michael, and Richie knew that this was true.

They hadn't seen Michael and Loretta in months, mostly because of the Donald Manes flap. Back in January, he said he was carjacked, and then it came out that he'd actually tried to commit suicide. In March, he did commit suicide, stabbing himself in the heart while his psychiatrist had him on hold. And then it all came out—bribery, payoffs, Mayor Koch at the top and who knew at the bottom, maybe Alex Rubino. Richie's boss, Congressman Scheuer, was rich and didn't need to pay any attention to this, and he rather smoothly, Richie thought, eased himself away from the whole thing. Richie explained to donors that, whatever the flamboyant Queens Borough president may have done, his congressman was a war hero, a polio survivor, a harmonica virtuoso, one of the most powerful men in Washington, but Michael went on and on about how corruption was the soul of the Democratic Party, and not only in New York—Loretta could tell you any number of stories about San Francisco, where her parents would not even go anymore. Richie had met Koch. He hadn't met Manes, but, oddly enough, he had met Manes's twin brother when he and Ivy were in Queens, looking at cars. This Manes—Morton, his name was—had the BMW dealership there. “Manes” was an odd name, so Ivy asked him if he knew Donald Manes; Morton said that he was the older twin; then Ivy pointed to Richie and said that he was a twin,
also an older one. “Is your twin out of control?” she asked, and Manes rolled his eyes and laughed.

Richie had thought that Loretta, Chance, Tia, and now Binky (also known as Beatrice) were in California for the winter. With a smile, Loretta handed him his boutonniere, a small, fragrant lavender rose. She presented Ivy with bouquet of gardenias and wore a gardenia in her hair. When their names were announced, they went before the officiant, said their vows, and signed their papers; Loretta took pictures with the camera that was in her bag. It wasn't bad; Richie was almost feeling normal, almost feeling, well, positive, until they went back out onto the front steps of the building and saw twenty or thirty of their friends, shouting congratulations and throwing rice. Ivy pressed herself against him and said, “Oh God!” Richie saw at once that Lynne, Michael's newest mistress, was in the group, next to a friend of Loretta's from her cooking-class days. He gripped Ivy's hand and walked her down the steps, and then there were hugs and congratulations, and they were swept over into Foley Square, where, it appeared, the reception was to take place. How Michael and Loretta had gotten all these phone numbers without Xeroxing Ivy's Rolodex, Richie could not imagine, unless…He stared at Jeanine—she was smiling, she did not look guilty.

A table, a tablecloth, a cake, champagne, little sandwiches. Richie overheard Loretta telling the woman from her cooking class that she had just gotten in from the ranch three days before; she'd brought the nanny, the nurse, and all three children; they were camped out on top of one another at the place on Fifty-seventh. Michael had done most of the inviting, but of course he'd forgotten the flowers, even the cake—what did he think they were going to eat? She'd done all that. Well, she said, if she ever moved back to New York year-round, she had her eye on Park Avenue in the Sixties, which had a pastoral quality, didn't you think? As she turned away, the cooking-class woman rolled her eyes. Ivy stood beside the cake, staring at it; it looked like white marble encrusted with carved architectural embellishments, two layers. Jewish weddings never had cake. Richie didn't know whether this was true. Michael had not bothered to invite any parents. But, then, neither had Ivy. Michael popped the champagne—Moët & Chandon—and Jeanine went around with small plastic cups. When she came up to Richie, he said, “Were you in on this?”

Jeanine said, “Not till this morning. I got there first, and they were waiting. They asked me not to tell.”

“Ivy hates this.”

“Only because she didn't arrange it,” said Jeanine.

Once everyone had their champagne, the toasts began, and Richie had to stand there smiling—with his arm around Ivy, sometimes gazing at her fondly—while shouts went up. Michael declared himself the best man, raised his glass, and said, “I've spent years looking out for my little brother here, making sure that he stayed out of trouble, or at least didn't get caught, and, finally, here we are, I can pass him over to a better caretaker than I am, knowing he's safe, or safe-ish—let's say that!” Everyone laughed and took a sip. The biggest laugher was Lynne. Just for a moment, Loretta looked at her curiously; then she pulled her gaze away from Lynne and lifted her glass. She said, “I never had a sister or a brother, and as soon as I met Ivy, even before she delivered my boy Chance in a bathtub on the twelfth floor of some rat trap, I knew she was the one I wanted. I don't know if this is their dream, but it is mine, and I'm glad it's a dream come true!” Everyone shouted “Hurray!” and drank again.

It was time to cut the cake. To Lynne, who was now standing next to Michael, Loretta said, “Oh, excuse me,” her tone implying that maybe Lynne had strayed over from East Broadway. Lynne looked nothing like Loretta: she was compactly built, with short hair and glasses. Richie felt that he was reading Loretta's mind: Maybe; no; not sexy; not possible. Ivy exclaimed, “It is a beautiful cake. I am so surprised, I'm sort of struck dumb!” and that distracted both Loretta and Lynne. Richie didn't have to look at Michael to sense that he was thrilled out of his tree at the dangers he was courting. Loretta handed Ivy a silver knife tied with a white satin bow. She held the knife, and Richie held her hand, and they cut a piece out of the cake. They had been to enough weddings to know that now they had to feed each other. Richie's hand was trembling, so Ivy had to cock her head a little to receive his offering. After everyone shouted and applauded and Ivy started cutting the cake, he heard Loretta say, “We've never met. I'm Loretta Langdon.” She was talking to Lynne. Behind them, off to their right, Michael was practically hugging himself with pleasure.

Lynne said, “I thought we did meet. But, if not, we should.” Everyone knew that Michael had mistresses. Everyone knew that, on
the very day Binky was born, the reason Loretta hadn't been able to get hold of him (and had had to give him the news through Richie) was that Michael was up in the Catskills, looking at old Victorians with one of them. Perhaps it was Lynne.

“Why is that?” said Loretta.

Having made her way through ten or twelve slices, Ivy set down the knife. She said, “It really is delicious. Infused with some liqueur—Amaretto? Loretta! Pay attention to me! I am the bride! Who made the cake?”

Loretta turned and smiled again, and Lynne, now looking red-faced and very young, slipped away.

Loretta said, “Veniero's. They were the real reason I needed you to have a wedding!”

Richie slipped his arm around Ivy, turned her toward him, and kissed her as he had failed to do after the ceremony, deeply, lovingly, thankfully, appreciatively. Saved again.

—

CHARLIE WAS
a blond now. He had been a blond for fourteen hours, and every time he looked in the rearview mirror and saw his springy hair, he laughed. Riley, his girlfriend, laughed, too, and squeezed his hand. She was now a redhead. First she had done herself, and then they had gone to the drugstore, gotten the dye, and done him. Riley maintained that if you were leaving home in your new Tercel wagon, heading west on the I-70 toward Kansas and Colorado, out of the woods and onto the plains, to Denver, then new hair was the best preparation. After Denver, who knew? But they both had jobs. Charlie would be working for an outdoor outfitter that also ran hiking tours and rafting trips in the Rockies, and Riley had an internship with the Solar Energy Research Institute. If that jerk Reagan hadn't cut 90 percent of the institute's funding (“What did I tell you?” his mom always said, as if anyone she knew had ever voted for Reagan), she might have had a paid job, but an internship could evolve. Rents were cheap; parks were plentiful; guiding raft trips down the Colorado would be fun for Charlie, with his restless temperament. Riley was a great believer in temperament and nature over nurture. Charlie loved Riley. She was never depressed, she could always figure out how to talk people into something (most notably Charlie's mom and
dad), and nothing scared her, not even defunding of solar initiatives. As a redhead, she was quite striking.

And so they drove on, past Topeka now, almost to Abilene. The landscape was flat and hot and larded with names that Riley read off the map to him—“Tonganoxie!” “Salina!” “Cawker City!” “Kanopolis!”—that he then said backward to her “Eixonagnot”—which he pronounced in the French manner—“Anilas, Rekwac Ytic, Siloponak.” Why did they all sound Slavic? (And then they laughed again.) She threw down the map, got up on her knees, and kissed him while he was driving, all along the side of his face. He was twenty-one; he had a wonderful girlfriend and a new car. He stepped on the gas, and the needle eased toward ninety.

—

FRANK WAS SITTING
across from Loretta at the dinner table when Andy said, “I got a letter from Frances Upjohn today, and Jim isn't joining her, not even for the Arc. I guess that's in three weeks or something.”

“What arc?” said Chance.

Loretta said, “The Arc is a horse race.”

Chance, who was four, had his own pony in California, which he was required to ride bareback. He nodded knowingly.

“Why not?” said Frank.