Moo (22 page)

And then there was that word, “market.” Dr. Gift intoned the word “market” the way her minister back home intoned the word “Creation.” All the goodness in the universe, Dr. Gift seemed to say, was contained in the market. Well, it was clear from one single detail of her childhood and adolescence that she would never pass economics, because she had learned early to leave the room when her father turned on the market reports. She hated that word “market,” whether attached to hogs, feeder cattle, corn, soybeans, or any other word. “Market” was synonymous with “impending doom.”

Every class period, she ended up sitting transfixed, gazing wanly at the spectacle of Dr. Gift on the podium. He spoke emphatically, jestingly, seriously, informatively, for all she knew, well-meaningly. The boys around her were caught up, though surely some of them had backgrounds in practical economics similar to hers.

Dr. Gift LOVED them. You could tell that by the way he let them know every day in all sorts of little ways that in America, a boy, a girl even, could always succeed by hard work and a little knowledge of the market. Though world-famous, he let them know he was personal savior-consultant to each of them. All they had to do was pass the test, see the light, believe. But Keri simply had no capacity for faith, willing though she was, deeply though she felt that faith in economics, though it might not lead to good works, would surely lead to goods.

He wound up, startling her once again with how quickly the hour had passed and how depressed she felt as a result.

“Bring your own blue books,” he said. “Exams will be returned in exactly one week after the date of the midterm. I remind you that exams are graded on a strict statistical curve, so seven percent of you
will get F’s, no matter what. You may not thank me for that now, but I hope you will later, when you have attained greater wisdom.” He smiled to show that this was meant as a joke. The customers laughed as they were intended to, and in the hubbub, the mysterious blond beauty vanished from the hall.

O
N THE OCCASION OF
his engagement, Dr. Nils Harstad felt it appropriate to spread his benevolence as widely and deeply over the campus as he could. To this end, he invited everyone he had ever known to witness his happiness. On the one hand, he was a little disappointed that Marly invited only a few people from the church, plus her brother and sister from the north-side splinter. On the other hand, he liked the idea of her mysteriousness. He asked her to wear something long and dark, to put her hair up. She complied. He liked that, too.

In the month or so of their acquaintance, he had found no reason to regret his choice. She had confessed that she wasn’t quite as young as he thought, but he didn’t blame her for that. In all fairness, he was willing to admit that the misapprehension had been his, and the person who had disappointed him was himself, not her. If he thought of her slightly differently as a thirty-five-year-old than he had thought of her as a twenty-seven-year-old, well, it couldn’t be helped, and the blow to his vanity was probably deserved.

The father, too, had turned out somewhat differently than he had expected, not so wise and upright, a little more cantankerous and rigid, especially in regard to doctrine, frivolous amusements (like drinking—he had insisted that no liquor would be served at the engagement party and Nils had reluctantly agreed), and the respect due him by Nils himself. He did not seem at all impressed with Nils’ résumé or his position at the university, proclaiming all such things as vanity every time they happened to come up in conversation. It had become clear that the father would be living with them (something Nils hadn’t quite had the courage to tell Ivar yet) rather than staying harmlessly in his own bungalow on the south side of town, a convenient, in Nils’ opinion, 4.2 miles away.

However, Marly seemed at least receptive to his childbearing plans, and there Nils pinned his hopes. He could not feature either Father
or Ivar comfortable in the same house with six children under, say, three years old. He was confident that they would move out.

He had not actually told Ivar the extent of these plans, all the better to leave him unprepared as well as to avoid arguments. Father undoubtedly had no idea of them at all.

Nils, himself, was surprised by the power of those six children (three boys, three girls). As he guided the caterers in their last-minute preparations for the party (250 guests, nine dollars per person for hors d’oeuvres and soft drinks, and no liquor or wine or beer), he could see them everywhere—a dark-haired boy under the table, a sweet girl reading in the window seat, two boys on the stairs, soberly chatting, two girls in the kitchen, helping, glad to help, and all of them looking up as he passed, with admiring and affectionate regard. Now every time he went to church, they marched in front of him, heads down, perfectly behaved, handsome and always dark, never pale, as he was. The girls would wear glasses and look studious. The boys would reveal a contained fire—boyish spirit reined in for the Lord’s sake.

Swedish meatballs in a chafing dish. He said, “Rather than having those on the dining table, let’s set them up with some napkins in the living room. I don’t like it when all the food is in the same place, don’t you think, dear?”

Marly nodded. This was her first cocktail party, and she had no actual opinions of her own.

Tiny sausages in barbecue sauce. Spinach puffs. Cheese toasts. Miniature quiches. Garlicky stuffed mushroom caps. Nils went around after the caterers, straightening things, spying his children everywhere. There was a creak on the stairs. Nils looked up to see Ivar surveying it all in a charcoal gray flannel suit with an expression of such obscurity that Nils, even after fifty-five years and more of life together, couldn’t begin to penetrate it. Ivar glanced toward Father, who was reading his Bible in the sunroom. Nils shifted uneasily from foot to foot, an old habit from the days when Ivar seemed to accrue some sort of authority from his extra six minutes in the world. Of course Nils felt nothing of that now, at his age.

Even so, he had yet to tell Ivar about his one significant conversation with Father. Father had issued a number of instructions, to wit: He expected to have his breakfast served promptly at eight a. m., no matter what. He preferred to be the first one in the house to look at the mail, read the afternoon paper, and do the crossword puzzle. He watched
“NBC Nightly News.” He did not eat pork and any sort of beans made him gassy. He would not sleep on the second floor. There would be no television watching or radio listening on Sunday, and only a cold dinner on Sunday and Wednesday. These were all, said Father to Nils, rules that he lived by and was too old to change. Furthermore, to be perfectly candid, he thought Marly and Nils were both too old to get married, and so he disapproved of their plans and, since he disapproved, he didn’t feel obliged to change his style of life to accommodate them. When Nils’ hopes had begun to rise just a degree at this last remark, Father had dashed them again at once: The one good thing about the whole deal was, in Father’s opinion, that he could sell his little house that he’d paid twelve thousand dollars for twenty-five years ago, and the realtor fellow said he might be able to get forty or even forty-five for it.

The doorbell rang. The old house looked terrific—festive with sunlight and an abundance of good food. What could go wrong, really?

Ivar mastered his impulse to answer the door, even though he was nearer to it than anyone. Nils practically leapt for it, but then one of the catering people smoothly intervened, and Nils stepped back, to the side of his fiancée. The door opened to reveal two agronomists and their wives, with a soil scientist and and a plant geneticist and his wife close behind them. More guests were coming up the walk. The catering woman stepped aside, and they came in with something of an avid look that Ivar saw was satisfied as soon as they laid eyes on Marly. There would be a big crowd, all of them curious. Ivar experienced a little moment of embarrassment, then mastered that, too. He had drawn the conclusion years before, almost in childhood, that though they looked uncannily alike, Nils’ orbit was to be far more unorthodox than his, and that to probe the sources of this would be both fruitless and frustrating. He knew that in some way he had early accepted the mystery at the heart of their twinship, far earlier than Nils had, and in accepting it he had smoothed their relationship and his own course through life. But then he looked again at Old Man Hellmich, and his lips tightened. No matter what they said, and they had said it each of them already about a hundred times, he did not intend to call the old bastard “Father.” The door opened, and Ivar smiled. It was Helen in her reddest suit, red like a California poppy, or an ash berry, vividly alive and full of promise. He stepped forward
and took her elbow. Her squeeze of his hand was discreet. After five years, discretion was their habit, and a monumentally pleasant habit it was.

Chairman X could not figure out why he had been invited to celebrate Nils Harstad’s engagement. How much hostility did you have to display before even the most resolutely forgiving person got the point? For a week, since receipt of the invitation, he had been telling the Lady X that of course they wouldn’t think of going, so when she came into the bedroom and found him taking an ironed shirt and a sport jacket out of the closet to wear with his jeans, she seemed a little surprised. He said, “You don’t have to go.”

“You don’t, either.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Why?”

He looked at her. She had the baby on her hip and a banana in her hand. He said, “I don’t know. Because Communism is collapsing all over Europe and cocaine is the ultimate cash crop and I can’t figure out an alternative, and my whole life is a failure and I just want to SEE.”

“See what?”

“See THEM, the winners.”

The Lady X sighed and let Amy take a piece of the banana, which she did with delicate precision. She said, “Do you want me to go?”

Chairman X thought Cecelia would probably not be there. He said, “Yes, but only if you want to. Garcia might be there. He could restrain me.”

“More likely egg you on.”

Now they were inside the big brick house and the odor of professional courtesy wafted everywhere. The Lady X was issuing him instructions in a low voice—you do not have to defend the idea of communism, or insist that mistakes were made and that it could have succeeded if capitalism hadn’t destroyed it; you do not have to make audible comments about the meat dishes, you can just avoid personal intake of them; you do not have to lecture anyone about perennial polyculture; you do not have to talk about blood money at any time. Chairman X nodded and nodded. She was only reminding him of social niceties that he preferred to conform to. Keep smiling and don’t say much, she advised. Don’t let them draw you out, and be thankful they aren’t serving any booze. As an alternative to offending anyone, Chairman X took a large glass of mineral water and sat down beside
an elderly man who seemed to be ignoring the party and reading. The man paid no attention to him, and Chairman X sipped his cooling drink. The Lady X, who was wearing a rather nice blue dress, had joined some friends. Garcia wasn’t there.

Well, it was a blow that Cecelia wasn’t here, either. He could have quietly tormented himself by watching her and the Lady X circulate through the same rooms, creating patterns like the pattern a cigarette coal fluttering in the darkness made on the retina, patterns that only he could see, since he hadn’t actually told the Lady X about Cecelia and hadn’t actually broken off his acquaintance with the Costa Rican woman yet, either. Since this option was unavailable, he got into mischief by noting that the elderly man was reading the Bible, the actual Book of Revelation. Chairman X remarked, “I think the world is so screwed up because so many people ignore the visible in favor of the invisible.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, if you’re always thinking about the afterlife, then you can ignore this life. If you’re always thinking about something you call spirit, then you can destroy the physical, both in yourself and in the world, without caring about the consequences. It’s just a kind of self-evasion, if you ask me.”

“I didn’t ask you anything.”

“I admit that.”

They sat in silence. Chairman X knew that if he were to stand up right there, he would avoid an argument and refrain from embarrassing himself. He knew that if he continued to sit there, the old man would not be able to resist a reply, and that neither of them would ever ever see eye to eye with the other. He sat there, twisting his glass in his hand. At last the old man said, “There is peace here.” He tapped the book. His voice was warm and knowing, as if he could have as easily tapped Chairman X’s head and said, “but none here.”

Chairman X, taken by surprise, did not immediately reply. Finally, he said, as gently, “That’s the peace that costs the Earth.”

The old man looked at him. After a moment, the corners of his eyes creased, and he suddenly laughed. Chairman X found himself laughing, too.

Two rooms away, Beth heard the laugh above every other sound, the way she heard all the noises, large and small, that her family made. Relieved, she laughed suddenly herself, even though Ivar was just then lamenting the budget crisis right into her ear. She caught herself
when he looked at her quizzically, and said, “I’m sorry. Please go on.”

In a corner of the dining room near the kitchen, within touching distance of the other guests, but totally cut off from them, Dr. Bo Jones had Elaine Dobbs-Jellinek all to himself, and he was quizzing her about available funds for something she did not quite understand. She said, “Really, Dr. Bo, if you’d just look into what the swine breeding companies are interested in—”

“No, ma’am. No, ma’am. I know what they’re interested in and you do, too. I’m interested in something different. I’m interested in HOGS.”

“Isn’t that what they’re interested in?” He was standing so close to her that the only way she could get a sip of her, what was it, tonic water with lime? Why
wasn’t
there any gin? was to sort of slide it up her front and introduce it into her mouth from below. And then he moved a half step closer. He said, “No, they’re interested in what you do to hogs, with hogs. I’m interested in who hogs are.”