Early Warning (16 page)

“I guess this gentleman did.” She glanced at the page. “Herbert Kupferberg. In between watching
Tannhäuser
and Mozart, he taught
himself to play ‘Taps.' ” She glanced at her wristwatch and moved her feet. Frank stood up and fetched her coat. Then she stood, and he held it for her. He said, “I would like to talk with you again.”

She smiled. It was that same smile from eighteen years ago, sunny, retreating. She said, “Perhaps we shall run into each other.” She shook his hand, then turned and walked briskly through the White Horse Tavern door and click-click down Hudson Street. When she turned her head to look at something, Frank felt ravished and limp.

—

RUTH BAXTER
'
S CONSIDERED OPINION
was that an autumn wedding was more unusual and therefore smarter than a June wedding or even a Christmas wedding, though you had more freedom with a Christmas wedding in choosing the colors of the bridesmaids' dresses; but if, as Claire insisted, there were only going to be three bridal attendants (you could not say “bridesmaids,” because Lillian was not a “maid”), and four junior bridesmaids (Debbie, Janny, Tina, and Annie), then the color problem was easily solved—autumnal yellows and golds, with a touch of red here and there to go with autumn flowers (“Not the brightest of the year, but very classy,” said Ruth). Ruth's own marital plans remained unclear, but Claire had become firmer in her identity as the future wife of Dr. Paul Darnell. For one thing, she had gotten fairly adept at her secretarial job, and it seemed silly for Paul to employ his current secretary when Claire could do the work for free; for another, she was almost twenty-four. Even if she got pregnant right away, she would be almost twenty-five when the baby was born, which meant that it might be rather difficult to regain her current figure afterward.

She went in and out of Paul's house, installing her cookbooks on a shelf in the kitchen, even cleaning the frozen remains of unidentifiable leftovers out of his freezer for when they got back from their Point Clear, Alabama, honeymoon. She spent a morning clearing shelves in his garage, and then went to his bedroom—she just stood in the doorway and looked around, knowing that, in a few weeks, folding, washing, and hanging up all of these articles of clothing that were so redolent of Dr. Paul Darnell would be her job.

She loved him. Her mother was proud of the way she had come around to that—not by means of romance or being swept off her
feet, but by means of patience and friendship. After Claire made it clear that she was going to marry Paul, Rosanna said, “Well, he is a diamond in the rough, a very good man deep down, and the children will smooth off the edges.” These days, Rosanna recalled Walter as the opinionated one, the hard-to-please one; though neither Claire nor anyone else remembered the two of them in this way, Claire thought it reassuring that Paul reminded Rosanna of her father. The wedding was set for October 14. Minnie and Lois were putting together the reception, to be held at Joe and Lois's house, and Annie was training Jesse to carry the rings on a pillow.

Around the first of October, the crying started. Claire and Ruth went to a movie called
I Thank a Fool
, expecting that Susan Hayward was going to be good, but the movie was irritating and confusing, not sad. Nevertheless, at the point when the villain broke through the fence he was leaning against and fell over the cliff, Claire felt herself seize up, and then there were tears off and on all the way back to the apartment she and Ruth were sharing. They made popcorn, and she forgot about it. In the morning, more tears came when she ran her stocking, and then tears again when, after lunch break, her boss told her that she had to retype a letter she had given him, because she had misspelled “receipt” three times. Two days later, she froze in that weird way again and cried over a chicken sandwich in the commissary, and the day after that, Paul called her late at night, and when he hung up without saying, “I love you,” she cried again, even though he had called her “honey” three times and “sweetheart” once.

Crying was a little time-consuming when you were going to the florist and the bakery and calling the justice of the peace on the phone about last-minute arrangements and reading Lois's list of what she was making (finger sandwiches with tiny shrimp and rémoulade sauce, Swedish meatballs, sliced apples smeared with blue cheese from Kalona). She cried on the phone with Rosanna while they were talking about where the Darnells were going to stay the weekend; Rosanna was suspicious and reluctant to drop the subject of why she was crying.

Ruth thought the crying was charming and appropriate—she was getting married! She would be with Paul for the rest of her life! That could be fifty or sixty or seventy years, and much sadder if it were not that long than if it was! Obviously, it was sad to leave Ruth herself
behind, but Ruth had hope, because there were three men she knew now, and one had gone to Grinnell.

After five days of the crying, she decided that it was just another thing to organize, so she equipped herself with plenty of Kleenex and continued about her business. October 14 barreled toward her; soon enough, Lillian and Arthur and Tim and Debbie and Dean and Tina and Frank and Andy and Janny and Richie and Michael and that woman Nedra, who had to come along, and Henry (no girlfriend) were wandering in and out of Rosanna's house and Joe and Lois's house, and there were two boys from the high school, too, whom Minnie had hired to hand around trays, put out chairs, and empty ashtrays. Eloise couldn't come, but she'd sent a set of dessert plates with seashells painted around the rim that were Claire's favorite present, and reminded her of that New Year's trip to California with Granny Elizabeth, who had died this past spring (and the only thing sad about her passing, at almost ninety, was that she had never made it to Hawaii). Claire thought Granny Elizabeth would have said that she had done a good job—just what she herself advised, waiting this long, and choosing Paul.

Debbie got the younger girls dressed, and when they stood up in a row to have their picture taken, Claire thought that the way their velvet dresses shaded in color from green to gold made a beautiful effect. Lillian, Ruth, and Paul's sister, Irene, looked nice, too, and Lillian, of course, made much of Claire's own dress—how lovely it looked on Claire; the one thing she, Lillian, would never have in this lifetime was a wedding; of course, the war had made everything different, but what a luxury, and Claire had done such a good job planning all of this—Lillian just kept talking, in spite of the hairpins between her lips, as she buttoned all of the buttons down Claire's back, and secured her bun and pulled out the curls on either side of her forehead so that they framed her face for when Paul would lift the veil and kiss her. Lillian had never understood the idea of a morning wedding—late-afternoon weddings, like this one, gave you such a warm, cozy feeling.

Joe gave her away. He looked very handsome—Lois had basted some alterations into his rented tux, and he had gotten a good haircut. When they were standing in the vestibule, watching the girls follow Jesse (who did succeed in balancing the rings on the pillow all
the way down), he put his hand on her shoulder and kissed her on the cheek and said that he was very proud of her, and then he squared up and off they went, and tears leapt into her eyes when Paul turned and watched her come, smiling happily. Then he grabbed her hand when she got there, as if he might have missed her at the last moment, and so, when it came time to say, “I do,” she said it a little loudly. On the way back up the aisle, she saw that her new in-laws were smiling at her as if they meant it, even Dr. Evan. Then Arthur had to leave, rush back to Washington all of a sudden, but Lillian said that was the Kennedys for you—they always wanted everything right now, no matter how unimportant it was. “If people only knew what they are really like. Shocking.” But then she made a lip-zipping gesture and rolled her eyes.

Lois managed the reception perfectly—the whole house was lit with candles, and there were plates of food everywhere, all of it delicious. And when Claire stood on the landing of Lois and Joe's staircase, and tossed her bouquet, Debbie made sure to catch it. Moments later, they were off in Paul's cream-colored Oldsmobile, Dr. and Mrs. Paul Darnell, 1209 Ashworth Road, West Des Moines, Iowa.

E
VEN THOUGH
Richie had said several times that he would like to move back to the old house, Mommy and Daddy either laughed at him or didn't say anything, and finally Janny came into his room one afternoon and said, “Stop talking about it. They are never moving back to the old house. This house cost sixty-two thousand dollars!” Now it was better, and Richie was willing to admit that he liked his room—having it to himself, and also that he could keep his train set up all the time. And it was his train set. All of the engines had been given to Richie, and if you owned the engines, then you were the boss.

Donna Fitzgerald's house was on the way to a pond they liked, so they had to pass it if they were going to play at the pond. The pond had plenty of frogs and also lots of fish, and the most fun was to throw stones at the frogs. Richie had hit a frog three times in the fall (Michael had hit four). Throwing stones at the fish was fun, too, but because of
refraction
, you could not actually hit one. Nedra had said that they should have a fishing pole or two if they promised not to poke each other's eyes out, but they didn't get any fishing poles, and now the pond was frozen, and so it was much more fun to run and slide from one side of the pond to the other.

Donna Fitzgerald had skates, and one day she yelled at Michael and said that the pond was her very own. But there was a fence between
her house and the pond, and the next day, Michael had watched in secret as Donna came out of her front door, walked to the road, turned right, and went toward the pond, her skates slung over her shoulder. If the pond were hers, she would not have walked there by the road. So the pond was not hers, according to Michael.

Richie said, “Well, it's not ours, either.”

“But she can't stop us, and we can go there whenever we like.”

She was a big girl. The other kids said she was eleven, or maybe twelve, but she was heavy-shouldered and she had breasts, and she also had big feet. She went to the public school, and the other kids also said that she should be in seventh grade but she had been held back twice, and she was still in fifth grade. Michael grabbed Richie and pushed him through the opening in the fence, and then kind of poked him so that he would walk along ahead. By this time, Donna was on the far side of the pond, lacing up her skates. The ice was a foot thick. It was pure white, with lines of cracks in it that had frozen over, and it ran smoothly into the snow on every side. There were two places where you could climb to the top of a little hill and run down through the snow, then launch yourself, sort of leaning back, and slide to the middle of the pond. Richie had gotten most of the way to the other side once.

Now Donna stood up and made twisty steps to the edge, then lifted her arms and one leg and slid onto the ice. It was not like that girl in
Snow White and the Three Stooges
, though, because Donna Fitzgerald was so fat.

The pond was tear-shaped, and the tip of the tear was long and curved. Donna headed in that direction. Richie could hear the sound of her skates scraping on the ice—it was that still today. Nedra said more snow was coming. Donna disappeared.

Michael had picked up a piece of a branch, rather thick, and was bending over the edge of the pond, smashing the end of the branch into the rim of the ice, breaking it into little pieces. Richie scrambled to the top of the hill and ran down as fast as he could, and when he passed Michael, he smacked his brother and knocked him down. He then slid a long ways without even trying. He could almost, he thought, have spread his arms and taken off. When he came back to the hill, Michael punched him in the stomach, and then they both
ran down the hill and slid. Michael slid two feet farther than Richie. They slid four more times.

Richie said, “We should learn to skate.”

“Nedra said you can go to a rink in Englewood and take lessons.”

They both sighed. They had been kicked out of swimming lessons and out of tennis lessons for fighting. The tennis coach had even given them a second chance, but they had then been kicked out again when Michael smacked Richie with the rim of his racket, and not just the strings.

“Dad said you just put the skates on and skate. The faster you go, the less you fall down.”

Michael punched him in the stomach again, but he could hardly feel it with his heavy coat. He pulled Michael's hat down over his eyes, and then pushed both of his shoulders until he sat in the snow, got around behind him, and pushed his face in the snow. Michael came up gasping, his face all red and icy, grabbed Richie's mittens right off his hands, jumped to his feet, and ran. Richie laughed and fell backward, then lay on his back in the middle of the pond, looking up at the clouds; Michael returned and dropped the mittens on his face. Michael was laughing, too.

At the edge of the pond, a little hidden under a wooden box, were Donna Fitzgerald's galoshes. They were large and black, with buckles. Inside them were some thick wool socks. They removed the socks, then filled the boots with snow and a few pebbles that were lying around, and some sticks. The socks were red. Michael picked them up and headed down to the tear-shaped part of the pond, where the water came in. Donna was practicing spinning around or something, and he ran past her, waving her socks, to where the ice was pretty thin. He got down on his knees. When he started soaking her socks in the cold water, she shouted, “Hey, you little brat!” and skated at him as fast as she could. He stepped gingerly toward the even thinner ice and stood there, waving the socks.

She got closer and closer, and then she went right through the ice. Michael shouted, “Fatso, fatso, fatso!” and ran past her, throwing the wet socks at her. He turned around once and saw that she had dropped into the pond up to her thighs. She started screaming and waving her arms. Michael kept running.

Michael passed Richie and said, “Come on, let's go home,” and Richie followed him. He did not stop or turn around to look at Donna. They came to the edge of the pond, ran up the hill, got out to the road, and ran home. When they got there, Nedra was making a meatloaf. She said that Mommy and Daddy were going out for dinner, and they would be eating early. Michael followed Richie into his room and said, “There are two of us and one of her, and if you ever say that we were even at the pond, I will break your arm.”

“What did you do to her?”

“I think I killed her.”

Richie didn't answer, and Michael went back into his own room.

Richie thought it was interesting, a few days later, to discover that Donna was fine and Michael hadn't killed her. Life wasn't like in the movies, then.

—

ARTHUR HAD ALREADY ACCEPTED
the Grumman job, and Lillian had gone around Bethpage and a few other towns on Long Island with Andy, and Andy had helped her put a bid on a house—much smaller than the one they had in McLean, but big enough. Tim had persuaded her to let him stay with the Sloans for the rest of the school year, and Dean had found a hockey team not far from Bethpage that looked pretty good. Debbie wasn't saying anything, and all Tina wanted to know was whether she would have a bigger room in the new house. The day before the Realtor came and went over the McLean place, she got a cleaning crew in and made it look as good as she could. The Realtor hummed here and smiled there and stared at the pool and admired the view from Arthur's office, and all in all, Lillian decided that getting Arthur out of the agency was the less evil alternative.

Arthur now professed to be glad of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The only time he'd been really worried, he said, was when he was getting on the plane in Des Moines right after Claire's wedding—the U-2s had photographed the equipment in Cuba, and Arthur, not having yet seen the photographs, had imagined such powerful missiles and warheads that when he saw the medium-range R-12s that were there, he was almost relieved. He said to Lillian, “So they kill us in Washington. They can't get everyone with that crap.” And, yes, maybe it had been touch and go there for a moment—no one would ever know
the truth about that, would they? Even the Kennedy brothers, even Khrushchev, even General LeMay probably would never know—all of their memories of those moments would be filtered through a mix of relief and regret. At least no irretrievable impulse or accident had intervened. And so, Arthur told her, in the end, it did everyone good to have to face up to the implications of ten years of posturing, and when Khrushchev decided that he wasn't Stalin after all, and Kennedy decided that he wasn't Churchill, the subsequent clearing of the air was worth the shock. Not to mention that Kennedy had decided to dismantle the Thor missiles in England and the Jupiters in Italy and Turkey—he had turned out to understand the Golden Rule, and LeMay had turned out to understand that Kennedy was indeed commander-in-chief.

But Arthur was drinking more—four times since Christmas, Lillian had had to put him to bed, and another time she had found him passed out on a lounge chair by the pool. And hadn't the idea crossed her mind that he stopped at the lounge chair because he couldn't make it to his real goal, the deep end, nine feet of prospective release from every argument, every uncertainty, every dilemma? How long had it been since he wanted to make love? Valentine's Day he made a game of it, with chocolates and a new peignoir, but the old ardor, that combination of lust and paternal yearning, had been absent.

She stood at the door with the Realtor, nodding. The Realtor's instinct was that the place would show beautifully. She held both of Lillian's hands between hers and moved them up and down. Then the Realtor turned her head and said, “Oh, I think you have a visitor. Well, Mrs. Manning, I really look forward to this! How are you, sir?” And she clickety-clacked down the walk and got into her Lincoln. The man nodded to the Realtor and hurried up the walk, hunched over but smiling. Lillian's gaze flicked to his car—only a Ford, a Country Squire. And then Lillian was shaking his hand, and he was saying, “Mrs. Manning! We haven't met before, but your name is always on Arthur's lips. I gather you are a font of wisdom!” And Lillian said, “Would you like to come in, Mr. Bundy? I'm afraid Arthur isn't here at the moment.”

He said, “Thank you, I would like to chat with you for a moment or two. I won't take much of your time.” He did have that gaze that sought hers out. While he was shaking her right hand, his left hand
went to her elbow and then to the small of her back, and she was given to understand that she would do whatever he asked.

They went into the living room, and he sat on the pinkish sofa, leaning forward, his hands clasped between his knees, and his shoulders hunched. He said, “Now, Mrs. Manning—but I think of you as Lillian. May I call you Lillian?”

Lillian nodded.

“I just heard of Arthur's plans this morning, at breakfast, and I jumped in my wife's car because it was right outside the door with her keys in it. That's how worried I am about Arthur.”

Lillian said, “I think Arthur will be fine once he's got a different job.”

He smiled. “Ah. Maybe. What I'm worried about is Arthur abandoning me. Every day, I say to the President, ‘Mr. President, Arthur Manning says this, or Arthur Manning says that,' and if I can't say that to the President, I don't know what I
will
say.”

Lillian felt herself staring. Then she said, “I don't think Arthur realizes he has such influence. He's never even met the President.”

“That's the point, isn't it? The President is very, very good at ignoring everyone in the room. It's the ones outside of the room that make him nervous.” He smiled. Lillian realized that she was supposed to smile also, and did.

“What does Arthur say?”

“Arthur is very cautious,” said Mr. Bundy. “And I have to say, when we got the news of Ap Bac, it impressed me, and it impressed the President, that Arthur wasn't in the least surprised.” Arthur had told Lillian about Ap Bac—a battle in a village in South Vietnam where the Viet Cong had made the South Vietnamese and the American reinforcements look like fools. Bundy shook his head. “Terrible rout, that was, and about as far from Saigon as from here to Baltimore—less even.” He wrung his hands and shook his head.