Some Luck: A Novel

by Jane Smiley

  “Frank didn’t like her much,” said Lillian. “She baked him a cake for his birthday, and then he broke up with her twenty minutes later.” She thought this would be reassuring for Andy. “It was all business for him.”

  Andy didn’t say anything.

  Lillian said, “I don’t think you should hold it against him. Do you hold it against him?”

  “I don’t think anything about it right now. It’s too … But, Lillian, Arthur works for the …?” She waited for Lillian to answer, and so Lillian finally said, “Doesn’t everyone? At least around here. Anyway …”

  But there was no “anyway.” When she was feeding Dean up in her room, an hour or so later, and feeling deeply embarrassed for being such a babbling idiot, Lillian decided that it was the storm that got to her, the storm that was getting louder and more violent by the hour. You never knew what you were going to do in a big storm. After Dean finished the bottle, she lay down in the bed and pulled the comforter up, snuggling with him, closing her eyes, and giving thanks that they were in Georgetown, not Usherton; if the house blew away or something bad happened, at least people would know it right away.

  1951

  HENRY HADN’T TOLD Mama or Papa yet what he was majoring in. As far as they knew, he was going to be a doctor or a dentist. Or he could go on to Davenport and go to Palmer. All Mama knew was that there wasn’t a doctor within thirty miles of Denby who had any up-to-date training at all, so a bookish boy like Henry, who had lived for eighteen years on a farm and still didn’t know how to drive a tractor, could make himself more than useful in some sort of medical profession.

  But science did nothing for Henry. He had seen more fetal pigs in his day than any of the other biology students, and he had never seen one that he wanted to slit down the belly. He also had to go to the dental school and have four cavities filled by student dentists, one of whom talked incessantly while drilling, and then, when the professor came over to inspect the fillings, he let out a little cluck. Henry knew that the student would be getting a D. But there was no offer to replace them. If Henry had felt any desire to take up dentistry, it vanished completely.

  Of course he liked his English-literature class, and of course he wrote his papers with speed and enthusiasm. The first semester, they read “The Miller’s Tale” and “The Wife of Bath’s Tale,” Everyman, Book Three of Le Morte d’Arthur, about Sir Lancelot, Doctor Faustus, Othello, King Lear, Twelfth Night, The Duchess of Malfi, ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, Pilgrim’s Progress, and, in the last two weeks, the first half of Paradise Lost. Over Christmas break, he finished that and went on to Robinson Crusoe and Pamela. By the end of the year, they were to get to Oscar Wilde, which was fine with Henry. The real benefit of the class, though, was that he met Professor McGalliard, and now, in the second semester, he was having a private tutorial in Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, or whatever you wanted to call it. After Christmas, he had brought that stolen copy of Beowulf back to Iowa City with him, and he kept it under his mattress. (He did not think his roommates would care if he had a book from the North Usherton High School library—their room was decked with street signs, girls’ underwear, ripped banners from other Big Ten schools—the Ohio State banner had been defaced in several ways—and even two hubcaps from the homecoming game against Northwestern.) He got along with his roommates fine, but neither of them knew something that Henry was proud and fascinated to know, that “foot” had originated in the Caucasus as ped and was of course related to the Latin pes, pedis, the Greek pous, the Sanskrit pád, and German Fuβ, that the “p” turned into an “f” by means of Grimm’s law. “Ball” had originated as bhel, meaning “to swell,” and was related not only, of course, to “bellows” but also to “follicle” and “phallus.” The Grimm in question was Jacob Grimm himself, who was also responsible for “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Clever Hans,” those stories that, in time-honored fashion, Lillian had only half remembered, and so had told to him in mixed-up and made-up versions (during one of their sessions, he related to Professor McGalliard the story of the wolf prince, his favorite).

  Professor McGalliard was kind and encouraging. He had gone to Harvard, and seemed a bit perplexed about finding himself in Iowa City. He only let Henry do etymologies for part of the session—the first job was to learn to read basic texts like The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and “The Seafarer.” Beowulf was to be saved for next year, when Henry had a better ear for the rhythm of the line. In the meantime, Henry was also taking German, and in the fall he was going to sign up for Latin. Eventually, there would be Greek, too, once he got hideous wastes of time out of the way like calculus and American history. You could only take medieval history as a junior, but there were plenty of books in the library that he could read on his own, such as Medieval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade and A History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours. It was pretty clear that he was going to have to improve his French, too, not because French itself was a language he was interested in, but because all of the best work was in French—Marc Bloch, that sort of thing. Professor McGalliard seemed rather amused at his enthusiasm, especially when Henry mentioned that he’d been raised on a farm. “I hardly ever went outside,” said Henry, to reassure him, but he just laughed at that.

  As for the other freshmen, Henry could not quite figure out why they were at college. His roommates, Forrest and Allen, were from Council Bluffs and Fort Dodge. They ate and slept Hawkeyes, and were furious that the president of the university would not or could not hire a decent football coach. Iowa hadn’t won the Big Ten title in thirty years. Henry was taller than Forrest and outweighed Allen by fifteen pounds. Neither of them would ever play football (pes bhel), but they talked about it every day. Forrest thought he was going to major in business, and Allen had no idea. They slept through classes as a matter of course and talked about girls all the time, though they never actually talked to girls. As for the girls, Henry liked girls well enough. Did he not get along perfectly with Lillian and quite well with Claire? He knew how to talk to girls, and he often watched them, but college girls were not like girls he’d known before. The particular problem was one of vocal timbre. His skin prickled when they made certain squawking or screeching sounds, and in bars and in the commons, they seemed to make these sounds a majority of the time. He went out sometimes with girls who were a little calmer than most, but, unfortunately, when they asked him what he was studying, he forgot and told them. Inevitably, their jaws dropped, and that was the end of that. Henry didn’t care. When he told Mama and Lillian that he loved college, that he was perfectly happy with his part-time job reshelving books in the library, and that he was dating off and on (he did take a girl from Davenport to the Christmas dance, and they looked great in the photograph), he knew they were imagining a life that he was not living. But that was fine. There was a ghost in him that would someday emerge from those books that he could not yet read, and that, he knew, would be the real Henry Langdon.

  THE RETURN ON their Rubino investment had been nineteen thousand dollars, plus the original six. In a single year, old Uncle Jens had rolled over in his grave twelve times, but that was not what Frank was thinking of when he looked at Andy and Janet and said, “Yup. So if we buy me an MG TD with a little of the payoff, what can we buy you?” Jim Upjohn had an MG TD—left-hand drive, very exotic, and not something Frank wanted—but there was nothing that he really wanted.

  “Oooh.” She glanced at him, and Janet, and then surveyed their small kitchen. By rights, she should say, “A house.” But she said, “I saw a navy shantung skirt with its own petticoat that was nine yards around the hem the other day. I even sat Janny in the corner of the dressing room and tried it on with the contrasting jacket.”

  “How much was it? You should—”

  She glanced around again. “I don’t think it would fit inside this duplex.” She reached for her pack of Luckies that was lying on the table. “Nutria is always nice. It can be quite blond, with lovely highlights. A nutria jacket with a nipped wa
ist?”

  “Why not the skirt and the house to wear it in? Those Levittown houses are twenty-five feet by thirty-two feet now.”

  “Oh, Frank!” Andy laughed. “But I’m not ready for a house yet. Just a very large skirt is fine.”

  It turned out, though, that what they bought was a television, so that Andy could watch the news. Dinner would be on the table when he got home—tonight it was minute steaks and mashed potatoes, some salad, and some red cabbage, which Andy was fond of. They ate quietly, and Andy was pleased because Janet actually took a bit of the cabbage. Andy said, “It’s sweet underneath. Bitter is the first flavor you taste, but if you take your time, it’s nice. She understands that, don’t you, lille elskling?”

  “We should try her on some schnitzel.”

  “We should try us on some schnitzel. I love that. I keep forgetting to find a recipe.”

  They moved into the living room, Frank carrying Janet and Andy carrying the last of her lemonade and her Luckies, for her after-dinner smoke. And then the news came on. Frank settled Janny in his lap and picked up a magazine. Andy’s preferred news show was John Cameron Swayze’s Camel News Caravan. Swayze had a circus-barker delivery style that made Frank laugh, so he didn’t mind it, though he found the “news” always to be a few days behind things, if you were keeping your eyes and ears open. The news show was only fifteen minutes long. Frank was about a page into the article he was reading, and Janet was sitting quietly, when Andy started yelling at the TV.

  Setting Andy off, he had once thought, was nearly impossible. Was there anyone as agreeable and accepting as Andy? They had never had an argument, and Frank liked it that way—Mama, not slow to tell Papa what to do, had given Frank a distaste for domestic noise. So maybe, startled at Andy’s tirade, he squeezed Janet a little too hard, but there she was, screaming, too.

  “Hey!” barked Frank, and Andy whipped around in her chair. She said, “He was right!”

  “Who was right?”

  “MacArthur was right! We should have gone into China right then and done in those Chinese communists, and Truman fired him, and now we’re all going to have to pay, because Stalin is going to give them the bomb!”

  Frank didn’t completely disagree with this assessment—no one did—so he only said, “But that was April or something—”

  “And he got away with it! I thought they would impeach him, but they chickened out, and now …”

  “Now what?”

  She reached for the baby—Frank paused for a moment before he handed her over, but decided it was safer in the end to do it—and took her in her arms. Janet’s crying subsided.

  Frank stroked Andy’s hair. Everything was quiet for a moment. There was a Tide commercial, and the music started for You Bet Your Life. Andy turned the TV off. Janet struggled to get down, so Andy put her on the floor, and she crawled to her toy box. Andy got up and came over, sat in Frank’s lap, put her head against his shoulder. She said, “I’m sorry. I snapped. But you know what? Every day, I sit in this duplex, and all I think about is bombs.”

  “You do?”

  “I do.” Andy sat up. She said, “Don’t you? Every single thing we do is on the surface. Every single thing we do is just a pretense that we all aren’t going to be blown to bits by the Russians.”

  “We aren’t going to be blown to bits by the Russians, Andy.”

  “Yes, we are.” She said this with icy certainty.

  “They don’t have a delivery system. They have a bomb or two, but—”

  She scowled and said, “We don’t know what they have, but they know what we have.”

  “We know what they have.”

  Janet came crawling back and reached toward him. Frank gave her his hand, and she pulled herself up.

  Andy did an odd thing—she picked up her skirt and ran the edge between her thumbs and forefingers, back and forth—then said, “Why did we bomb Nagasaki?”

  “I don’t know,” said Frank.

  “Does Arthur know?”

  “He might, but he’s never mentioned working on anything to do with the Manhattan Project.” Frank knew Andy had read the John Hersey book about Hiroshima. It was on the bookshelf across the room. He avoided looking at it so that her gaze would not follow his.

  “Was it showing Stalin something he needed to know?”

  “I don’t know,” said Frank.

  Andy put her face on his shoulder again, and after a while said, “You’ll tell me when they can blow us up, right?”

  “Right.” Then he said, “Honey, maybe this is an effect of listening to the news too often. It’s just a show, like any other show.”

  Andy nodded.

  After Janet went down and they were reading, though, the argument resumed. Andy looked up from her issue of Vogue and said, in a surprisingly bitter tone, “Everyone in the State Department is just busy as bees making sure the commies know all about us.”

  His mistake was saying, “Us?” He had picked up the morning paper, but in fact was remembering that night in Strasbourg when they discovered that the Jerries had vanished.

  “Yes, us!”

  He turned and looked at her. Alight with indignation, she was beautiful. He said, “I don’t think the commies care about you and me. Arthur and Lillian, maybe, but not—”

  “What about Judy?”

  “Judy?” He put down the paper. But of course he knew whom she meant.

  “You knew her! She knows you! You work at Grumman! Don’t you think she’s keeping track of you?”

  “Well, I would be flattered, but—” That was his second mistake.

  She leapt off the couch. “You would be flattered!”

  “Anyway, she doesn’t know who I am. She never knew who I was. She thought I was Francis Burnett from Dayton, Ohio. Baby, I’ve covered my tracks.” After making this flat joke of the thing, he reached for her hand, tried to pull her back to the couch and kiss her.

  Andy said, “Did you love her?”

  “No, Andy. I did not.” She stayed over by the arm of the couch.

  “Did she know that?”

  “Know that I didn’t love her? Yes. I saw her once a month. It was a very cool relationship.”

  “Did you tell her that you loved her?”

  “No.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I told her the usual things—that she was nice, that she was fun, that she was special, that she looked good tonight, that I liked her outfit, had she changed her hairdo, had she lost weight, had she been to the dentist, had she, I don’t know. I never said ‘I,’ I always said ‘you.’ ”

  “That’s the way you treated me in college.”

  “Is it? But I told you I loved you.”

  “Once.”

  “More than once.” But Frank felt his heart start to beat more quickly, the way he always did when they approached the memory of Eunice. He said, “Anyway, I was a jerk in college. We’ve agreed on that. You, Andy, are the person I love. You are my wife. How Frankie felt about Hildy nine years ago has nothing to do with how I feel about you now. Nothing.” She stared at him, and he held her gaze. Inch by inch, she eased toward him on the couch, and then they kissed, and he led her to the bedroom. There, he helped her unbutton her shirtwaist dress, and then take off the pearls and the girdle and the bra and the hose and the panties. He helped her slip her silk nightgown over her head, and then he kissed her good night. When she was breathing steadily and deeply, he turned out the lights, and regarded the moon through the window to the right of the bed. A half-moon. A good moon for hunting rabbits.

  Everyone he knew was afraid of the Russians. Arthur and Lillian muttered about the Russians all the time. At work, there was this constant sense of being prodded to stay ahead of the Russians, because the Russians, if they got rockets and long-range bombers, would have no scruples about using them, and even if regular Russians did have scruples, Stalin did not. The standard view at work was what Arthur had said months ago, that unless Stalin understood his every
waking and sleeping moment that he himself would be blown up within an hour of sending out the first A-bomb, blown up for sure and without fail, then Stalin would not hesitate to send out that bomb. Was that not the lesson of everything Stalin had done since the death of Lenin and the exile of Trotsky? Frank’s own experience in the war confirmed this. Who were the French and the Brits and even the Americans afraid of? The Germans. Who were Germans afraid of? The Russians. Why were they afraid of the Russians? Because the Russians were afraid of Stalin, and so would do anything. But Frank was sure that Stalin did understand what he was supposed to understand.

  Frank still had his shirt on, though he had taken off his khakis. Now he eased off the bed and slipped them on again. His loafers were at the bottom of the steps. He opened the front door and went out into the darkness, closing the door while feeling his key in his pocket. Maybe it was ten, but their residential neighborhood was quiet. Frank headed down the block, toward the park. Since the birth of Janet, he had stopped taking as many walks, but he still went out on hot nights, like this one, looking for a breeze or something. He wondered whether anyone else they knew would call what they’d had tonight a fight. He didn’t know. No blows, of course, no yelling back and forth (he heard the next-door neighbors but one do that fairly often), no thrown objects. (One family story had Granny Elizabeth throwing the coffeepot at Grandpa Wilmer once, when she finally got fed up with his overseeing her every move in the kitchen. Coffee grounds stuck to the wall for months, a reminder to him to watch his step.) Frank unclenched his teeth, and then unclenched them again.

  The air was thick with humidity and the smell of cut grass. Every house he passed had geraniums in pots and tiger lilies in rows and children’s toys scattered in the yards. The streetlights made the night a little stark and bleached out. The park, he thought, would be gloomier and more reassuring. He took some deep breaths. He was shaking, maybe not with anger. There was no reason to be shaking with anger. She was afraid of the Russians, she had heard about Judy, probably from Lillian, and anyway, Judy was free again—Hoover was as much of a screw-up in the end as Fredendall, Clark, and Eisenhower, wasn’t he? Frank unclenched his fists. Here was how he felt, walking in his quiet neighborhood in Floral Park, New York, now the most average of men—he felt more frightened than he had ever felt before in his life. There had been a fear he’d known in the army, even after he was used to the explosions: a sudden nearby boom would make his balls jump, and seem to shoot an electric charge right up his spine. This was not like that. This was vaster and higher, the same feeling he’d had in dreams, but now he was awake—he had been walking down the road, and the road had turned into a tree limb across an abyss, and he was out in the middle, surrounded only by air. His scalp prickled. But he hadn’t felt this fear in months, and now it was as if Andy had shot it into him like a bullet. Or had he shot it into her? Maybe, he thought, that was what love was. He opened his step and headed for the high school.